This work is a piece of fiction. While inspired by real events, cultures, and practices in human history, the story blends factual history with fictional characters, dramatizations, and creative interpretation.
It is not intended to promote, glorify, or encourage any illegal activities, substance use, or harmful behavior. All depictions of sensitive topics are included solely for narrative and historical context.
For the effects of the story, all characters are to be considered above the majority age.
Reader discretion is advised.
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Earth-199999.
~11 BE (Before Emergence) ~ 2012 CE (Current Era).
Mr. Abner, Aragorn, A'Heelah, Aquila, Akila, or whatever the fuck his real name is, is a massive pain in the ass.
For the simple and petty reason of annoying Stark, the rest of my agents and I will now dream of that sultry voice threatening to erect a tombstone over our dead, cold, probably disfigured, and utterly broken bodies.
It's always a mess with him... her?... it! It's always a mess with it.
Years prior, when he nonchalantly informed me and Stark that he, a cornerstone of human society, would depart by 2023, I almost quit my job and sought an early retirement.
Where was I supposed even to begin? What was I supposed to start with? Rewriting the many agreements that were brokered under his name, maybe? NO! What reason in this soon-to-be dragon-forsaken land would I pull out of my ass? Oh, yeah, how about, because the eternal, immortal, unaging, unbeatable, and totally crucial dragon is gonna disappear in a decade? Who would even believe that shit?!
Yeah, no. There was no easy way out of this mess. Hence, if you can't stop it, then prepare for it.
The economy will crash? Then I started to acquire funds in specie and coinage.
Agreements will lose binding agency? Then I started to prepare blackmail and other forms of 'incentives' to ensure all parties involved would continue to fall in line.
The artificial satellite ecosystem of the planet will collapse? Then I delegated that to Stark. Only I know how much of that a blessing that pompuous manchild is!
To this day, through conning, my superspy wits, and the convenient genius billionaire, I've managed to prepare a countermeasure for almost all future eventualities that are sure to come... almost.
Only after I inquired with Danver did I understand how much of a deterrent Aragorn, and apparently the Fulgebunt Draconis Imperium and the Drachantheon Therion, were.
Carol, due to my request, started to build a reputation as Earth's protector after the Earth-shattering news Aragorn dropped in my lap like a pile of shit made it to her. Her efforts in trouncing the Kree and some of the pirate scum of the wider intergalactic biosphere have made progress I can recognize.
However... We know that won't be enough. Nothing ever is!
This convinced me that I was right. The world needed protectors. A team of exceptional people working together with the common goal of safeguarding Earth, and avenging it for when we fail.
The Avengers Initiative had to get rolling! It was not a matter of ifs; it had to happen.
Hence, inspired by the words of advice the pain in the ass had left to Howard Stark about half a century ago, I planned this 'tragedy'.
I didn't need Selvig's head to picture the Tesseract working as a two-way door.
Smack dab in the middle of Urbes Sorares, for all of us mortals to see when passing the South Canal, the permanent portal to the other lands of the Imperium lies.
It wasn't only that. Evidence, dating millennia, exemplifies Aragorn and his affiliates using portals to traverse the world and beyond.
So, the Tesseract was a two-way door, a foregone conclusion since the start.
Aragorn was departing, and there was no way to stop that.
The hard choices were mine to make. That is my job as Director Fury of SHIELD.
So... I made the choice.
I sabotaged the isolation field around the cube.
Aragorn had told Howard Stark that caution was advised. It wasn't hard to conclude that the reason was the ones on the other side.
I needed a crisis... And there was one achievable right there.
There was no better time than now, while Aragorn was still around. I had the candidates ready, but I lacked the motivation for their fates to intertwine.
Now, staring at the apparent corpse of my best agent, Coulson... I have no regrets.
"Hill, give it to him," I ordered.
"Sir," Hill assented.
Preparation is where I won't be beaten. That's my thing. What I do.
Hill brought a warmly glowing baton to Coulson's chest. Energy projection; I have to thank Aragorn's solidarity for allowing us to work with him on the armor for that.
Coulson's chest glowed for a second with the same warm orange light, his blood vessels jumping into sight due to the internal glow. And then magic happened, my type of magic. The type funded by taxpayers.
Cough, "Agh," Coulson groaned, his hands covering the wound we allowed Loki to land on him.
"Coulson, status," I commanded.
Cough. "Sir, regeneration in progress. Artificial heart depleted," Coulson replied through the pain. "Did it work, Sir?"
"Damn right it did!" I affirmed.
"Sir, was this alright?" Hill asked. "I doubt this flew over his eyes."
"Oh, you can bet it didn't," I scoffed. "Abner, without a doubt in my blackened heart, knew of our ploy."
Coulson removed his suit and shirt, and his regenerating wound was exposed to sight. The wonders of Kree blood under controlled exposition can't be denied. Still, this remains a Hail Mary for only high-value assets, like Coulson and Hill.
She is already outfitted with an extra life, just as Coulson was.
"... Did he allow it?" Hill asked with wide eyes in realization.
"That, or he didn't care to interfere," Coulson said. His voice and breathing no longer labored. "Both options hold different implications."
That's as far as Coulson can see; in reality, given the rumored mind-reading powers of his, and his known ability to see the future, I have come to doubt whether that ploy was really mine...
What if he glimpsed this future and rearranged the pieces for them to fall in place?
He had no need to remind Howard Stark of the need for security around the cube; isolating tech had already progressed that much by that date.
He didn't need to inform us of his departure.
He didn't need to... visit us today.
Maybe he wanted to watch the play. As far as I know, Loki would not have been able to intrude into any Obelisks regardless of the circumstances. Why would he flood him with dread? Sadism? I doubt it.
Maybe he needed the pieces to fall in place in New York...
But would he bother to plot this much?
Why would he?
...
...
...
Regardless of the truth, there's nothing for us to do other than lie in the bed we made.
Now... As I watch live footage of his barriers safeguarding my taxpayers, I'm convinced that he allowed this to develop to this point.
As I see the eyes that were filled with dread turn to hope at the sight of Banner tactically pummeling the aliens, I'm convinced he at least has the same idea I do.
Romanoff, Barton, and, most obviously, Stark benefited from the technologies and discoveries published by the Libralisk. Could it be that he planned this all that far ago?
Through Romanoff's blood, a version of the Super Soldier Serum lives, one that was only perfected after the immortal erudites of the Goddess Selene were involved.
And Barton, his amethyst eyes, what are they but a legacy of the draconic lineage? Not to mention the special arrowheads in his quiver as a result of various techs born from the Libralisk.
And Stark, the pompous manchild, what is his armor but a collection of the best and most appropriate armamentist technologies?
No... It can't go that far.
"Sir." Hill's voice brought me out of my reverie. "The council is on the line."
Fuck those bitches, is what I would like to say.
"Continue monitoring the situation," I instruct. "I'll take care of this."
Why do I suddenly feel like putting a .50 caliber on their asses? Strange.
"Director Fury, the council has made a decision."
Oh, yeah, here it comes. Go ahead, drop more shit in my lap, by all means, bitch!
"I recognize the council has made a decision. But given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it."
Fuck you and your decision, is what I would like to say.
"Director, you're closer than any of our subs. Scramble that yet-"
Fuck his white-ass, fuck his bitch of a mother, and fuck his bicth of a daughter for I care! He wants me to bomb Manhattan?!!! I suspected squids in the WSC, now it isn't a suspicion anymore!
"That is the island of Manhattan, Councilman. Until I'm certain my team can't hold it, I will not order a nuclear strike against a civilian population."
Maybe they want to take this chance to get rid of my team...
"If we don't hold them here, we lose everything."
"If I send that bird out, we already have."
What would the point be? The enemies are on the other side of the hole; how much of the explosion would make it to the other side? We don't even know what their number are. This is suspicious; could it be that some alien impostors supplanted the council and they are now trying to sabotage us? It could be Loki's doing and his mind raping staff... No, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are Hydra plants.
Aliens on one side, Hydra plants on the other... It's already a miracle I made it this far.
Whatever, I'll hang up these either Hydra plants, mind-controlled fools, or alien impostors!
Now, the situation doesn't look so bad. Stark is kitting the giant armored dinosaur worms, Hulk is dismantling all resistance with the skill I only found in some of my level 7 agents, Thor is another Hulk, Romanoff took control of one of their hover chariots, and Barton is providing supp-
"Sir, we have a bird in motion!"
Goddamn it!
I'm gonna bazooka their ass!
"Anyone on the deck, we have a rogue bird. We need to shut it down!"
Fuck this day.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
Devastation wrecked the Manhattan; a single leviathan grazing a skyscraper was enough to add hundreds of millions to the bill. Less said about one getting totalled.
Lightning rumbled, detonations echoed, and explosions added the last details to the painting.
Amidst this destruction, people, by a miracle of draconic origin, were safely witnessing the efforts of their heroes in defending their planet.
They witnessed the struggle, their battle that was no longer only theirs but also the world's.
And while they observed with undiluted attention the clash that would determine their future and that of the planet, Aragorn was silently cheering for Hulk.
'Heh, that straight frontal kick was definitely that of a Yakuza.'
|The fall into a Chitauri cushioned by his knees reminded me of Robin in Teen Titans.|
-A Manji Kick!-
>HAHAHAHA! He blew its head with a jab.<
'A jab from Hulk might as well be a full body committed punch.'
|If Rogers can beat a Chitauri, then Hulk can pulverize a Thanos.|
-But A Thanos with no Infinity Stones.-
>Now that I think about it, will Thanos even survive him? Maybe we (I) overpower Hulk too much.<
'We (I) could take a look into the future.'
|I doubt there's a need to ruin the surprise. Hela is still a difficult bone to break. Maybe he'll be exausted after dealing with her.|
-Even if he overpowers Thanos, we (I) can always buff the hell out of Thanos and debuff the hell out of Hulk.-
>It would leave a bad aftertaste, though.<
'Maybe we should trust our (my) friend. We (I) will trust that he will entertain our design and lose to Thanos.'
|Bah! What kind of trust is that?|
-If Hulk could hear us (me), I bet we would decline that type of trust.-
"Oh, the missile is here," Aragorn perked up and said.
Iron Man exited the island and flew to the incoming nuclear missile. Romanoff communicated that she could close the portal, and Captain America ordered her to do so immediately, only for Stark to say otherwise.
Iron Man followed the Missile and latched onto it.
"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip," Captain America said over the comms.
"Save the rest for the turn, J," Stark commanded Jarvis.
"Sir... Shall I try Miss Potts?" Jarvis asked, implying the worst.
"... ABNER!" Stark shouted. "About that extra life, it still counts even if my body is pulverized, right?!"
"Fly to your death without fear, Manchild," Aragorn replied through the comms.
"You know, maybe it's time I graduate that nickname. I'm doing something very grown-up right here," Stark jested. "Some would say heroic, even." It was his defense mechanism. Even though he knew he would survive, the dread of death was inescapable.
"If you survive by your own means, I'll consider it," Aragorn replied.
"Did you record that, Jarvis?" Stark asked in an upbeat tone.
"Sir, I did backups to the backups," Jarvis delivered.
"Excellent!" Stark accelerated with the nuke on his back to the warp hole.
Tension rose in the helicarrier.
Thor and Captain America followed with their gazes his ascending form.
Romanoff and Selvig did as well, and Aragorn... he teleported to Loki. He had already seen the outcome.
"Loki with a not-so-glorious purpose, are you comfortable in that indentation shaped like your body?" Aragorn asked. He pulled a stick from his storage and poked at the god of lies' cheek with it from a distance.
"Here to mock me?" Stiff like a corpse, he asked.
"That's a side benefit," Aragorn said. Loki tried to shake the stick from his face, but Aragorn didn't relent. "I wanted to ask you about Thanos now that Hulk's love tapps seem to have cleared your muddled mind."
"You knew?" Loki asked with wide and pained eyes.
"I beat the crap out of Odin, but my real call is the mind arts," Aragorn replied. "You were evidently mind-warped by the staff you so happily wielded."
"..." Loki had no words.
"So, Thanos, tell me your impression of him," Aragorn ordered.
Sigh. With a heavy sigh, Loki began to talk.
Outside the suite of the Stark Tower, the portal was closed, and Iron Man made it just barely in time.
Hulk, with none of the care he had shown Betty Ross multiple times in the past, caught Iron Man and cushioned their fall. Unceremoniously, he dropped him to the side before standing up.
It took the gentle roar of the green giant to stop Stark from crossing to the other side. Minutes later, Romanoff descended from the rooftop, and the men taking the elevator made it to Loki and Aragorn.
They found an exasperated god of lies and a listless dragon poking the former in his nostrils with a stick.
"Brother... just take me away from this lunatic," Loki implored. "Now!"
"Don't be such a child," Aragorn said before turning to the Avengers, Hulk in particular.
"I saw you mow down the insects like a death god!" Aragorn spoke with none of the emotion he showed other humans.
Hulk grinned at him and approached him. Aragorn replied in kind with his own grin and hovered forward.
When at a distance, both cock back their fists and punched forward. The expected shockwave never came; their fists stopped in a professionally controlled manner at the minimal distance.
"ARAGORN," Hulk greeted him with a hug.
"Long time no see," Aragorn greeted back. "I hope Banner didn't give you a hard time."
"PUNY BANNER IS PUNY," Hulk groaned.
"Yeah, I can imagine," Aragorn nodded in understanding.
"This is terrifying," Stark commented. "I'm grateful he is not directing so many emotions at me. I don't want to add more to the PTSD that I'm already nurturing after my trip to the other side of that wormhole."
Aragorn stayed chatting with Hulk, and while doing so, he pulled Loki's staff and began to study the Mind Stone on the side.
'With this one, we (I) have the signature of the missing Infinity Stones of our (my) reality."
|We (I) should hunt for Reality and Mind as soon as we (I) return.|
-Let's not forget the shit that awaits us (me).-
>... Ugh.<
'I wonder how Pietro is doing coordinating the world and Nirn.'
|The Unruly Teen should be alright.|
-Yeah.-
>He's got it covered.<
"Aragorn," Thor called out to him. Aragorn and Hulk put a pause to their animated conversation, and they turned to him.
Unbothered by it, Thor asked, "Can the Tesseract be moved under the protection of the Drachantheon Therion?"
"No," Aragorn succintly replied. "Take it back to Odin, tell him to stop dropping his dangerous trash into humanity. They can hardly do with nuclear fission and fusion, and your father wants to hand them over the keys to the universe?"
"As you wish," Thor said with a twitching eyebrow.
"What about the staff?" Romanoff asked.
"Would you like to keep it?" Aragorn asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Director Fury requested it be kept in SHIELD's custody," she explained.
"... Heh," Aragorn smirked. Stark, who caught a glimpse of the show of emotion from a distance, shivered. "We can make an arrangement like the one I did with the armor."
"May it be your will, Sir," Romanoff nodded and didn't dispute.
To ensure that Loki, the variant from the timeline the Avengers will create in the future, would be born. Aragorn ensured that certain happenings happened as intended.
For the following 5 weeks, he stayed within a SHIELD facility to study the scepter. Fury, and even Stark occasionally, took advantage of knowing his location to consult him about matters pertaining to his departure.
Then, as he always does, Aragorn disappeared from humanity's radar.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
Saakar.
With the sound of clinking bottles, glass, and metal bottles, the smell of something rotten beyond the point of fermented liquid and into the limit of moldy dust, the light of the console, Argorn teleported to Brunnhilde's ship.
'Depression can take so many forms. I remember I had high-functioning depression.' The Self of Aragorn that took most of Lucian's personality, the SurfaceSelf thought to his other selves.
|I think Lucian was not so highly functional, but compared to the little valkyrie... yeah.|
Brunnhilde's distinction from the heaps of trash surrounding her was only her vital signs.
-Poor Hygiene and Appearance.-
There was some dry vomit on her chin; she stank enough that Aragorn shut down his sense of smell.
>Changes in Sleep Patterns.<
It was midday, and two days ago she had been awake at that hour; today she was passed out.
'Social Withdrawal.'
Aside from trading credits and ordering booze delivered to her ship, she had not interacted with any other living being, and that was through a holographic display.
|Psychomotor Retardation, in her case.|
Aragorn had received the memory packages from Spark. He had seen how she moved at her own rhythm, a snail's pace.
-A persistent feeling of hopelessness, lethargy, and a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed.-
That was abundantly clear to his empathy.
>A profound feeling of despondency and anhedonia.<
It was undeniable.
"She is depressed," Aragorn said out loud. Brunnhilde frowned for a moment, then returned to her sleep. It was hard to tell if she was sleeping or passed out drunk.
Aragorn was the type of dragon that, in front of a desperate situation, given the chance and provided it doesn't affect him negatively, he would extend a helping hand.
However, Brunnhilde's case was not a selfless act of kindness.
"I can't make her a better fighter like this," Aragrorn commented.
Yes, his interest in the valkyrie was limited by the help she could provide Thor in his future clash with Hela.
He could 'cure' her depression in a fraction of a second.
Maybe 'cure' was the appropriate term, so much as 'erase'. Depression, as complex as the mood disorder was, was categorically an affliction of the [Spirit].
From the Trinity of Self, [Soul] and [Mind] manifested in combination as the [Spirit]. A damaged soul could and would lead to damage manifested in the spirit. A damaged mind would as well. The way these damages manifested could vary, from indescribable pain, changes in personality, fragmented memories, botched spirit-body coordination, and, pertinent to the case, depression, among other ways.
So, for Aragorn, who could interfere with the three aspects of the Trinity of Self, curing depression was as simple as bending and molding matter to his will.
However, whether it was part of his remaining morality, personal dislike, or simply directives he followed, he avoided such direct forms of interference with those he was not hostile to.
So, knowing of her dislike towards him, he decided on the next best thing.
Aragorn picked up the vakyrie that was more filth than living being with his telekinesis and scrubbed her clean with a quick, convenient cleaning spell. Then he opened an astral path and reappeared in Abeyance.
Aside from the incalculable expansion Abeyance had experienced and certain restructuration to accommodate the souls and the half-living residents of Abeyance, the limbo hadn't changed much in the eons since it was last visited by outsiders.
A theme of green celestial objects, sandy planetoids with shallow lakes or small seas; that was Abeyance.
Although the dimension itself hadn't changed much, the same wasn't true for its residents.
In many aspects, the residents of Abeyance built a more advanced intergalactic empire than the Duskari. In others, they were behind.
This was unavoidable. The people of Abeyance developed in a limbo realm where the main focus could be summarized into souls and exploration.
Souls, because it was a realm for passing souls, a limbo, and, although most energies and the most ethereal aspects of reality could not be observed by the living, they could study and learn from the effects these representatives of this invisible, fascinating, transient state of [Life] had on their surroundings.
Exploration, because Madelyne Draconisfilia exerted her authority over Abeyance in many ways, one of them being the constant expansion of the dimension, just like the Universe.
The combination of these major factors of influence in the people of Abeyance created an interesting civilization.
In Abeyance, the strength of the [Spirit] mattered more than the power of the [Body] or even the might of external factors. This made them quite the spiritual people. Aragorn liked to joke about them as strange cultivators to Madelyne.
In Abeyance, beyond the power of control, control over land, people, politics, and riches, what mattered was the ability to explore more the 'gift' blessed upon them by their Goddess of Souls and Abeyance.
Hence, contrary to the capitalistic, magically adept, chakra-wielding, belligerent, and somewhat crazy Duskari, the people of Abeyance came upon as detached from earthly desires.
Naturally, this was a generalization, and all kinds of people could be found in both empires, which counted with populations nearing the trillion.
Among these varied people, in Abeyance, the Valkyrior could be found.
"Aragorn," Madelyne called out after manifesting right next to them.
Following her, Kaguya and Sahara appeared.
"Imouto-chan," Aragorn smiled at Sahara.
"What's up, Old Man?" Sahara asked with a teasing grin.
"I see you've been influenced by the Unruly Teen," Aragorn shook his head as if observing a tragedy.
"Sweet Kaguya," Aragorn said to the Goddess of Chakra.
"It's been a few decades," Kaguya greeted with a serene smile. She approached him and locked her arms around his head and smoothered him.
"So this is the Brunnhilde those girls talked about," Madelyne said while observing with passing curiosity the floating, limp body of the valkyrie.
"Yes, thank you for stretching your realm in my direction; it made it easier to arrive here without matching the time of Earth-5H1N3," Aragorn said.
{A/N: Abeyance is a Limbo of Earth-5H1N3.}
Aragorn had met earlier on with Madelyne to have her stretch a part of Abeyance in Earth-199999's direction, as suitable as that analogy was in the realm of dimensional cosmology.
"I don't see Luci around, Kaguya. Did you leave him in your realm?" Aragorn asked.
{A/N: Luci was the child Kaguya had created and named after Lucian/Aragorn.}
"I didn't want to leave the Chakra Dimension alone while I visited Mady," Kaguya replied with a soft motherly smile. "Besides, he is already grown up enough to be my regent dimensional lord."
"Considering all of our 'kids' are at least millennia old," Aragorn smirked wrily, "I think all of them are already grown up enough for anything."
"Kagu-chan is protective like that," Madelyne interjected with a teasing smile.
"She even contacts Luci-chan at every decade to see how he's doing, can you believe it?" Sahara matched her sister/love interest's smile.
"... I worry," Kaguya said, twisting her mouth in a moue.
"Cute," Aragorn said. He jumped space next to Kaguya and began poking at her slightly puffed cheeks.
"I know, right?" Madelyne manifested at Kaguya's other side and mimicked Aragorn.
"An honest to Aragorn grown-up goddess pouting like a child," Sahara said in faux exasperation before tapping her P-Link and taking pictures.
"You three," Kaguya said while failing at swatting their poking fingers away. "Stop it."
"I don't think I will," Aragorn smirked.
"Impossible," Madelyne shook her head.
With Sahara taking pictures and recording them, the three spent a few minutes like that until Brunnhilde began to stir.
She groaned, burped, and then keeled over to the side to puke her guts out.
"Yuck," Madelyne scrunched her face and willed for the vomit to astralize into softly glowing green motes of light.
"What in Asgard's name?" Brunnhilde stopped her puking, confused at the transitional state of her puke.
"That's why I tried to stop you from downing half your stock," Aragorn remarked with schadenfreude.
It wasn't Aragorn but Spark in A-117 posing as him, but it was all the same to him.
"Shut up," Brunnhilde groaned. She still wasn't aware of her surroundings, and her focus was on her puke that was turning into motes of light. "What the hel did they put in my drink?"
"There was a lot of junk in that acid you call drink, I told you so," Aragorn pointed out. "Regardless, nothing your physiology couldn't deal with."
"Ugh, why do you torme—"
The moment she raised her head, she became aware of her surroundings.
Not only were there three goddesses by the side of her 'torturer', but she had been isekai'd.
"Where the fuck am I?" She asked in her usual irreverence.
"You were not listening to me, so I decided to fix you," Aragorn said with no regard for wording or respect for her autonomy.
"... Go fuck yourself," she snarled and began the laborious process of standing up. She achieved the monumental task and, with unsteady steps on the sand, began to walk with the sun at her back.
"Where are you going?" Aragorn asked. "You don't even know where you are."
"Why would I care? It's not like it makes a difference," Brunnhilde said without turning back. "I spent centuries, maybe millennia, in Saakar without knowing where I was; this is not different."
{A/N: Time in Saakar is funky.}
"She is charming," Madelyne noted, flippantly.
"She is grieving," Kaguya said with a sorrowful gaze.
"She also has a stick up her ass." Sahara was annoyed that she was being so crass with her sister.
"The Valkyrior are here," Aragorn offhandedly commented.
"—!" Brunnhilde stopped on her tracks and turned around with a threatening glare.
Aragorn held her gaze for a few seconds before ordering, "Don't look at me with those eyes."
His eyes flashed red for an instant, and she lowered her gaze almost instinctively.
"I understand that you are afraid of Hela and your hate for her finds release in me, but don't overdo it," Aragorn looked upwards to the setting sun.
"... I'm sorry." She had a hard time apologizing, but she did in the end.
"I was not lying to provoke you," Aragorn continued with the conversation. "Your sisters are on this planet. Go look for them, you have one month. You can't stay longer than that in this realm."
In truth, with Madelyne's permission, she could stay as long as Madelyne allowed it. But Aragorn was not willing to stay longer than that, and since Madelyne was stretching the realm towards Earth-199999, he didn't want to force her to hold it like that for long.
Brunnhilde didn't run. She didn't rush to her sisters. She felt she didn't deserve it. She knew that they would console her, she knew they would spar through combat her sorrow out of her, they would drink ale like old times, and she couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear the thought. More than their deaths pained her, more than she hated them for abandoning her, she hated herself.
So, even after Aragorn approached her and patted her head and she gained an instinctual sense of their direction and distance, she didn't move. Not even after Aragorn and the Goddesses disappeared.
With the emerald-tinted sky above her, the warm yet comfortable sand below her, and the comforting breeze that seemed to try to uplift her [Spirit], Brunnhilde stayed there unmoving. Even with the people she loved dearest at her reach, she stayed kneeling in the sand in a silence that didn't reflect her mind's turmoil.
"Will she move from there?" Sahara asked.
"I'll give her a week, after that I'll sic the Valkyrior on her," Aragorn shrugged. "People who care for you are one of the best remedies for depression... in some cases."
"If you say so," Sahara said. She put the valkyrie out of her mind and asked, "Would you like to see the divine artifacts I forged?"
"That's one of my visit's objectives," Aragorn nodded. "A war is approaching, and weaponry capable of assisting you is most needed."
"You're gonna love this," Sahara excitedly grabbed Aragorn's hand and led him to her forge. "Element was a pain in my perky butt to work with. I only managed to do it with Onee-chan's help."
"... that's impressive on its own," Aragorn admitted. "I thought only I could work Element."
{A/N: Element was the material/metal Aragorn created to build Seraph's body.}
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
On one of the countless beaches of white sands and turquoise waters, Aragorn, Sahara, Madelyne, and Kaguya lay facing upward to the night sky populated with myriad stars.
What each of the goddesses and Aragorn saw was different. Aragorn, with his All-seeing eyes, could study the most minimal and abstract of details in the celestial objects. Madelyne, with her white orbs and as the dimensional lord of Abeyance, could not only see but also be there as she was nigh-omnipresent in her realm.
Sahara, as the Goddess of Love and the Forge, could not only experience the vision granted by divinity but also could sense the love of her believers spread throughout the inmeasurable cosmos. And Kaguya, as the Goddess of Chakra, one of the variants of energy tied to [Life] could see the glow of life in the half-alive, half-spiritual existence of the people of Abeyance.
Each experienced differently the mundane joy of stargazing.
"Still no signs of them?" Sahara asked.
"... No, just reality getting more warped by the second," Aragorn replied. "They created pockets of altered [Time] around the Kree and Shi'ar. Those are gonna be a mess, depending on how they are undone."
"Couldn't you have tracked the energy that created the pockets to the source?" Sahara asked.
"While, depending on the method, reality warping consumes energy, it is not like the 'miracles' born of psionic energy that can be traced by following the energy to its source," Aragorn explained.
Psionic energy spread through space, and then its wielder could accomplish what their mind envisioned. With reality warping, whether space or any other medium was there, it didn't matter to it. All that mattered for reality warping was the limits set by [Reality], for example, Wanda Maximoff from Earth-616 could not say 'No more mutants' and expect all the mutants outside her reality to vanish along with hers.
"Reality warping, it's like becoming the dimensional lord of reality," Madelyne added. "I, as the lord of Abeyance, have the authority to make changes to it, and for that," she extended her hand and the stars blinked like Christmas lights and rearranged to draw a caricature of her sister, "I don't need to reach with my energy. I just will it, and so long as I have a clear picture and some understanding of what I desire, it is done."
"Doesn't that mean that Earth is fucked?" Sahara asked. "They could desire to extinguish us, and that would be it, no?"
"Normally, some difficulties and restrictions aside, that's the case," Aragorn said. "But your cores protect you to some extent, or you could use anything that protects you with my energy or barriers."
"Is it about this?" Kaguya asked, in her hand, wilder than a wildfire during summer on a windy day, a bluish white flame appeared for a fraction of a second before she extinguished it.
"Yes, there was a misty shroud I created during my early days in Void-chan to hide from Void Beasts. That shroud manifested in the protective side of my abilities," Aragorn explained. "Not only does it fight off divine influence, it also protects against [Alteration]."
"But how long could that last?" Madelyne asked. Like Kaguya did, she pulled Aragorn's energy through her contract with him and manifested a blueish white flame in her palm. She held it longer than Kaguya; however, before the flame could escape her control, she extinguished it like Kaguya.
"I don't care much if your bodies get warped out of existence; your souls are what matters," Aragorn clarified. "It is still not a 100% protection arrangement, but it will be enough for your cores' Excape function to activate."
"Excape?" Kaguya asked.
"It's a running joke between me and myself," Aragorn chuckled. "It's the escape function to summon your cores to me. We joke that the skill is rank EX."
"So we will be vulnerable to reality warping?" Madelyne asked for clarification.
"Yes, but you should be able to put up a good fight before you're expunged," Aragorn explained. "Before Void-chan betowed me [Paradoxical Existence], even I could have been warped after some resistance by a reality warper capable of affecting a universe. Now you'll be in a similar situation. Capable of resisting it but only for so long."
"Does that mean that you can't be warped now?" Kaguya asked.
"Probably not by someone or something of lower existential value to me," Aragron said. "You can never know when everything can be possible."
"So the Madame is immune to it then," Sahara affirmed.
"Ah, well," Aragorn winced to that affirmation.
"That didn't sound promising at all," Madelyne jested.
"Main body Noona is immune, but dragon Noona is vulnerable to it," Aragorn confessed.
"What's the point in the main body being immune if her presence alone would 'warp' reality into [Death]?" Madelyne asked with a deadpan.
"That's why Noona is going for the support role and will take care of freeing Gaea from Earth," Aragorn explained.
"How is she doing on that front?" Sahara asked while furtively lessening the distance to her sister and reaching for her hand.
"Even though I'm its creator, it's a shitty spell," Aragorn grimaced. "It's complicated beyond measure, even more so because Gaea is to Earth as Earth is to Gaea. At this point, even she has a hard time telling herself apart from the planet and vice versa."
"Does that mean she won't be ready for the war?" Kaguya asked, concerned.
"She should be," Aragorn confirmed. "I know she had successfully cast the spell a couple of times, but she won't aim at our Chocolate without a total assurance of success."
"War sounds like a mental exercise," Sahara hissed in complaint. "It makes me miss the times when all we had to do was follow your guidance in Sunagakure," she added with a wistful gaze lost in the ocean of stars.
"... Those days when I was looking for ways to spread my legs to Aragorn were certainly fun," Madelyne added.
"Did you have to word it like that?" Kaguya shook her head like a disappointed mother.
"I didn't have much fun at the time, with my emotions lost and all of that," Aragorn furrowed his brow, "but I can't deny that in retrospect, those were fun times."
The three deities and dragon stayed like that, in the warmth of a comfortable atmosphere shared among people who loved each other deeply, gazing at the stars now forming a caricature of Sahara and recounting tales from beyond bygone eras animatedly.
They, at least this trio of the Drachantheon Therion, were free like that. Their dimensions, the Chakra and Abeyance Dimensions, didn't need to participate in preparations for the Great Moving.
Abeyance was already on Earth-5H1N3, and the Chakra Dimension had no embodied residents aside from Kaguya and her son. This dimension was mostly populated by almost sapient chakra spiritual bodies, aka spirits. She didn't need to prepare anything because her entire dimension was going to migrate.
Wanda, in Hell, enjoyed a similar arrangement; however, she kept busy with her twins, who were now experiencing the 'joys' of teenagehood.
"They met," Madelyne said while almost jumping from her beach chair.
"Ooh, what's going on? Did they fight? No, that's a silly question; of course they did. The question is, how much did they pummel her?" Sahara spoke as if is asking about the latest gossip, or maybe about a telenovela.
Aragorn had no interest in their emotional reunion, nor did Kaguya; however, for the sake of his project, he paid attention to their reunion with one extra eye.
It went just about as well as was expected from barbarian demigoddesses. There was a lot of fisting, and not of the deviant type, involved in their interaction for it to be referred to as an emotive reunion. However, whether the future king of New Asgard was a masochist or the mentality of Asgardians operated fundamentally differently from mortals', it was working.
Aragorn didn't care; if it was working, then it was, and that was it. Hence, a month later, after turning a blind eye to the valkyrie and her sister, he teleported to her for pick-up.
"You don't look indistinguishable from a heap of trash now." That was Aragorn's greeting.
Brunnhilde had already parted with the valkyrior, and she was waiting for him in one of the many dunes found on the planetoid.
"You're still a jerk," Brunnhilde shot back.
"Is that what you call your benefactor?" Aragorn asked.
"... You didn't return them to Valhalla," she pointed out while looking away.
"They didn't return to Valhalla," Aragorn said. "It was their choice."
"Why?" Brunnhilde asked. She couldn't wrap her head around it.
"Come on, even you're not blind to it, are you?" Aragorn scoffed.
"... Asgard's royal family," Brunnhilde spat with scorn.
"Yes, just like you, it disgusted them how Odin smeared their sacrifice by trying to hide it all under the rug," Aragorn spoke for her and them.
It was a pattern Aragorn was familiar with; for societies that grew alongside deities, the legend, myth, tales, and stories left behind of their achievements and adventures in life mattered.
Just as Achilles marched to Troy despite knowing his prophesied death—driven by the promise of eternal glory—the Valkyrior mobilized against Hela, despite the certainty of their demise.
Yet, they were denied their just reward by Odin. Counted can be those who remember the might of Odin's Valkyrior, even fewer those who would dare to speak of them.
Hence, whether because Madelyne took a liking to them and Aragorn manipulated them with the truth, or because they fell in love with Abeyance in its citizens, the Vakyrior decided to stay in Abeyance and serve Madelyne instead of transferring to Valhalla.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"... T-Thank you," she managed to say after much effort.
"You really are prideful for one so weak," Aragron humorously mocked her.
"Shut up," Brunnhilde kicked some sand at him. The projectile sand veered off-course and never reached him.
"Maybe I should learn about pride from you," Aragorn chuckled.
"You're prideful enough," Brunnhilde replied. "Just in an odd direction."
Brunnhilde remembered the time she woke up to him (Spark) petting her and giving her hair a finish that had her doubting if he somehow had used magic to turn her hair into strands of mirrors. When she criticized it, she received the hardest, coldest glare she had ever seen Aragorn do.
"Let's go, I need to put you in form for your next reunion," Aragorn cut a portal open with his tail blade and gestured to it with his head.
"What next reunion?" Brunnhilde asked. She was slowly, but with firm steps, making her way forward. She had vowed to her sisters to leave behind in Abeyance the persona depression had built for her and to strive for a future to call hers.
"Of course, your reunion with Hela," Aragon replied.
"He—" The name got stuck in her mouth. Her brain was working overtime to compute what Aragorn said.
Yet...
"HELA?!" She shouted in shock and with many more emotions that swirled violently in her stomach at the mere mention of Hela's name.
"Don't worry, we have enough time to make you into a useful support for our dear muscle-headed prince," Aragorn spoke in a sing-song tone before forcibly shuffling Brunnhilde through the portal without giving her the chance to decline.
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Sakaar.
It had been decades since her visit to Abeyance; time had always been funky in Sakaar—what with so many wormholes surrounding the planet—however, since her return to the dumphole, she had suspected that her 'shifu'—as he forced her to call him—had done something to time. Or gravity or space, she didn't know which of the three he was affecting to dilate time.
Why did she suspect him? In hindsight, it was obvious. Whenever they trained, she felt the days were longer, literally. And she was sure it was not because Aragorn correlated training with torture.
Unless your senses are borderline omniscience, the battlefield is a space of untrackable chaos, her shifu had told her. Then he unceremoniously dropped her just below the Devil's Anus.
All martial arts under the purview of the laws of physics start with your feet, he told her.
Yes, this was common sense; she knew that much, but if that was the case, why was she training over a literal mountain of trash? Everything rolled, everything shuffled, everything broke, and everything stank!
However, what made her almost go against her instincts of self-preservation and try to strangle Aragorn to death was when he began to instruct her in ranged combat after the first decade of physical conditioning.
What was the point of the spiel about getting used to combat in all types of terrain if she was going to be fighting from a distance? And more than anything, she wanted to know what the fuck a training arc was and why he used that as an excuse at every corner!
But she understood, it was logic that bordered on smarts. There was no way she could ever stand on the same battlefield as Hela. Hela was a monster, one so powerful that Odin himself feared. And if her shifu was to be believed, she got stronger by dying with her body intact.
She had no delusions of facing that monster in face-to-face combat.
So, Aragorn's approach was smart... Still, she was no range fighter.
After she was drilled to a level Aragorn deemed 'sufficient,' he dropped her in the middle of the Grandmaster's colosseum and had her survive.
That was when she lost her shit.
She went through mortal—as in deadly and not of mortals—physical condition as if she were to play a CQC role, only to be told she was to be a ranged fighter.
Then, she went through grueling training with the bow, the lance, artillery, and snipers, only to be dropped right in the middle of a restricted arena specifically created for close-quarters combat!
She was livid, irate, wrathful, vengeful, furious, and more than anything, filled with hate for her damned shifu.
She fought like a vengeful fury, she took damage, she dealt twice as much, at least, she ambushed, she was ganged up, she played defense, offense, she hid, and much more, yet the only fucking thing she did not do was play ranged support. The fucking role she trained so hard for!
And when the last of the gladiators fell to her lance, which, mind you, is a weapon meant to be thrown—which she never did—she turned to the Grandmaster's view box to find her shifu exchanging jokes with the overlord of the planet.
At that moment, for the first time since she returned to Sakaar, she felt grateful for Aragorn's training. Because when her lance flew true to Aragorn, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that, were it not because her shifu was beyond the concept of monster, he would have fallen to her shot.
Needless to say, Aragorn caught her lance with his telekinesis and gave her an approving look.
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Earth (-199999).
After leaving the little valkyrie with some homework and waiting for her 'knight in shining armor' and his 'green noble steed' to come pick her up, I returned to Earth.
I stopped interfering with the space-time mesh, and the messy timeflow of Sakaar returned to its chaotic normal after my departure. Although I don't think that a true competent warrior, whether close-combat or ranged, could truly master combat in less than a century, the little valkyrie was as ready as could be. Now she simply needed to wait for Hulk and Thor to come pick her up—Ah, and Loki.
I believe with these two, Hulk and Brunnhilde, Thor will overcome the wall his sister ought to be for him—Ah, and Loki too.
Now, in preparation for the upcoming war, and to facilitate things for Pietro, I'm creating armor for the Playboy. I saw reality posing as my FurtureSelf already deliver the finished product to him before his departure to Earth-5H1N3, so I need to actually complete the armor so that reality doesn't fall into a paradox.
It was quite the intriguing event to see reality bring the finished armor from the future because it was as if I were putting in an order for an item through Amazon, and then it was delivered. Except Amazon was reality, and I had to 'declare' without a shadow of a doubt that I would create the same armor in the future, otherwise... paradox.
So strange, so interesting. Anyway, since I could see the future and I knew part of the future thanks to my previous knowledge of the movies, I could pull this trick. In Earth-5H1N3, where there's no future—or where there should be no future, in light of recent events—I could never pull something like this.
{A/N: It's a broken use of his concept of Paradoxical Existence; technically, he could be nigh-omnipotent in a timeline with a future. If it wasn't clear how he did it, ask in the comments and I'll write a detailed explanation.}
Anyways, to fulfill my 'promise/contract' to reality, I returned to Earth to pick up some of the Manchild's armors that he is sure to blow up in a show of character development to Virginia Potts.
Any Iron Man's armor costs more than a limb in the American Healthcare System. A single vascularized composite allograft (VCA) transplantation's cost can range between $500,000-$1,000,000, with the cost of a lifetime supply of immunosuppressants considered.
An Iron Man, depending on the model, and with the latest Arc Reactor included, costs around 5 billion dollars, so yeah, I'm certain it's cheaper to get the four limbs of all your direct and extended family members replaced than a single armored suit.
Now, I know the Starks throughout the multiverse can be excessive, but Anikidamn! Even I don't splurge like that, and I technically am infinitely wealthy. Assuming an armor costs a modest sum of 5 billion dollars each, he blew up about 20 billion dollars to show his growth in character.
To put it in perspective, about 70 to 80 countries have a GDP of less than 20 billion dollars...
Yeah, my maids can complain about plenty of my defects; however, they can never say I splurge like that.
Hence, here I am, again, like a stalker, following the Manchild's fight against the counterfeit human torches of Aldritch Killian. Now, this bloated-with-ego human will call me again his fan...
Technically, since I enjoyed the MCU movies and even some of the series before I was drafted to fight the insect scum, I could be considered his fan, but I won't let him find out no matter what; not this Manchild, not the Playboy, and not any Stark in the multiverse!
'Uhmmm, those Extremis Soldiers are interesting.'
-Their Extremis is different from the one we (I) created when attempting the perfect Super Soldier Serum for our (my) maids.-
|It was determined that the tap into the inner energy was too unstable for our (my) taste.|
>That's true, but as a sole enhancer, it is quite something.<
'Could it be that the Manchild didn't use it during Endgame because he also found it too unstable?'
-That could be it, but even then, why didn't he cure James Rhodes after he lost mobility from his waist down?-
|Yeah, that was strange. He could have Extremis'd him and then cure him like he will do this Virginia Potts.|
>That was the original, untainted purpose for the Extremis Serum.<
'Weird.'
-Strange.-
|Bizarre.|
>Odd.<
While me and my Selves evaluated the deeper meanings behind plot convenience in movies from my past life, the climax of the battle arrived.
Manchild blew Killian with Mark XLII, only for him to return as a tender ribeye and declare he was the Mandarin all along, Gasp! But then he got sucker piped by a hot and messy Virginia Potts, literally.
Then she dismantled Killian with a missile and ended him for good.
"Am I gonna be okay?" she asked after coming down from the Extremis high and realizing she had just killed a human.
"No," Manchild replied. "You're in a relationship with me. Everything will never be okay. But I think I can figure this out, yeah. I almost had this 20 years ago when I was drunk. I think I can get you better. That's what I do. I fix stuff."
"And all your distractions?" Virginia Potts asked.
"Uh... I'm going to shave them down a little bit," Manchild replied.
'Oh, no. You won't,' I think.
"Jarvis. Hey," he touched his earbud.
"All wrapped up here, sir," Jarvis replied. "Will there be anything else?"
"You know what to do," Manchild says while locking his resolute eyes with Virginia Potts'.
"Could you not?" I interject.
Virginia Potts' temperature escalated, and the Extremis began to show under her skin and behind her eyes. She raised the gounlet in her right arm and shot at me with the repulsor in its palm.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Manchild exclaimed.
"Hello there," I greeted.
"Pepper, put the arm down," Manchild reached hurriedly to lower his mate's hand.
"It's no skin off my back," I shrugged off. "Anyways, Jarvis, could you wait on destroying the armors?"
I tapped into the electromagnetic spectrum and made the request both with my voice and energy manipulation to the VI.
"Sir?" Jarvis asked me and Manchild.
"Yes. Put a hold on the last order," Manchild replied.
Slowly, while Manchild calmed down his jumpy mate, the remaining suits landed near us with robotic ease.
I moved to inspect each of them. They were battered up, as was expected from fighting off a bunch of human-shaped thermobaric meltdowns, but otherwise in pseudo-perfect condition.
"Are you sure you're not my fan, Abner?" Manchild asked.
"I'm beyond the concept," I replied.
"Right. How could I forget that you were there when Mister Big Bang was nothing but a nascent spark," he jested.
"I thought humanity was still not recognizing that part of the record of the North Scale," I said.
"Ever since a hole was opened above New York, we've been reevaluating the previous belief that the author—you—took some liberties with the North Scale's record," he explained.
"I never understood why you would believe that when you've been watching me for almost 500 years update the North Scale with your history," I pointed out.
"Not that I or Tony are the ambassadors of humanity," Virginia Potts joined, "But do you blame us? Mr. Abner, you took credit for some of the most important miracles of the Abrahamic religions. With over half the population believing in some form of the same God, it is no wonder."
"Let's not forget about the part of Jesuschrist being a pothead," Manchild added.
"Cannabis was hard to come by for him, so technically he only smoked weed a few times, not enough to be called a pothead," I clarified. "Only the times I brought some over for him."
"... Is that any better?" Manchild facepalmed. "You were Jesuschrist's dealer!"
"I wouldn't declare us friends, but we were friendly," I said. "Knowing his future, wouldn't you try to be good to him?"
"Not the point," Manchild shook his head.
"Actually, didn't you discover my home from the time I spent in the preglacial eras?" I changed topics. "Wasn't that proof enough of the North Scale's veracity?"
"... Who would believe that spent millions of years breeding almost sentient giant spiders?" Manchild said with exasperation.
"Didn't the Imperium share some holographs of my Kaiju Spiders in the Isthmus' lakes?"
My babies, they have finally developed sapiency. They are already taking their first baby steps towards a woven language. I've seen some of them doodle in their webs.
"... I don't think you have what we call common sense," Manchild let out a heavy sigh. "Anyway, about my suits. You want them, right?"
"Yeah, I'll take them all, don't blow them up," I assented. "I'll even do you a solid and give you some advice that will definitely come in hand."
"Advice from you?" He skeptically eyed me.
"What?" I asked, tilting my head.
"It's not gonna be something crazy that only you can replicate, right?" He asked.
"No, it's related to the future," I clarified. "Yours and that of those around you."
"... This sounds sketchy," Manchild continued with his annoying shit.
"T-Tony," Virginia stammered out. "I think you should agree."
"Fine," Manchild conceded.
"Great," I nodded. "I was thinking of doing horrible things to you; you should thank your mate."
"W-What?!" He exclaimed.
"Now, about the advice," I ignored him and continued. "My advice is that you should not get rid of the Extremis after you perfect it. You will need it, and so long as it isn't harmful, you shouldn't pass on the chance of giving your biological suit some upgrades."
"Biological suit?" Manchild asked.
"Isn't your body a biological suit for your spirit?" I asked back.
"... Right, thank you for the advice, Abner," he shut his mind and ignored my accurate description of his current status.
"Whatever," I said. "I'll see you again in about a year and a half."
I stored the armors with a flick of my tail and was about to jump away when—
"Hold the fuck up!" Manchild exclaimed. His PTSD acted up.
"Are we getting invaded again?! Because if that is what you're implying, then," he turned to Virginia Potts, "sorry, Pepper, but I want my armors back."
"Tony," she exhaled heavily.
"We're not getting invaded again," I clarified before they end up with strange ideas. "This time the problem will be somewhat local in origin."
"... I don't know, I feel like I'll need my suits back either way," he said.
"... Nope," I declared and then jumped to the Isthmus.
I wonder what Ultron's approach to wiping humanity away will be. With me here, that's impossible unless I allow it, and Ultron isn't Thanos, so I wouldn't allow it. Will he try to kill me? No, I don't think any AI, insane or not, would reach that conclusion based on the data history and the North Scale can provide.
Should I take a peek?
Yeah, let's take a peek.
...
...
...
...
...
Well, this Ultron certainly acts like a competent AI, not like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
'They will lose.'
-Yeah, we (I) certainly didn't see that coming.-
>He is more cunning than expected.<
|So we (I) will have to interfere.|
'It's unavoidable.'
... Yeah... Even I don't see flaws in his approach to creating a new world. Of course, the only flaws are those that my existence introduces, but based on all the data available to him, his plan is flawless. Unlike a certain meteor plan.
Well... I'll be humanity's Deus Ex Machina this time, that's alright.
╚═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╝
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{A/N:
Please check out my P@treon account! There are already 10 chapters ahead for premium members, which is at least 100,000 words. Premium members also gain access to a new chapter every week.
[email protected]/ExistentialVoid
Free Members get access to all free chapters, and I upload free chapters about 12 hours earlier on P@atreon.}
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