Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #109
Red Hearth, Mars[April 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
"I assume you had fun?" Jin'Ya asked him, for some reason, as he entered the portal room, smiling and whistling.
"Yeah, actually." He confirmed, feeling oddly satisfied with messing with the perpetual troll of the MCU, Tony Stark. It helped that he knew exactly how the man would react to his presence so he could make a better impression.
"Trying to buy me for a billion dollars," He scoffed, shaking his head as he got out of his suit, a little disappointed that he did not get to test it against the all mighty repulsor array but those were Mk 1 Repulsors anyway. The real test would be the UniBeam, coming from Tony's Arc Reactor chest unit, likely built in such a way to prevent immediate burnout of parts because of the sheer energy being transmitted from the Arc Reactor in a single go.
A simple solution that worked. The best kind of solution.
"So, what's next?" Jin'Ya asked him as they moved to the lower floors, as was scheduled, to do some new tests on his Rasengan Bombs, as he called them. Bruce had an idea about the Extremis' ability to absorb energy and use the Chi bomb to stabilise patients or to create even more powerful regeneration, whichever comes first.
Jin'Ya, on the other hand, had another idea. He was hoping to use the Dimensional Energy bomb to contain energy from an Infinity Stone, so that they could safely use their energy to attack enemies with devastating results.
Not gonna lie, he still got shivers and phantom pains whenever he tried to think about that Door. The one that was responsible for his current state of non handedness, but Jin'Ya made him realise that it was stupid to do so. He could not just ignore the Door that helped him escape from the machinations of Dormammu himself.
He just never expected to get something as hot potato as an Infinity stone itself so early in his life. He fully expected to become either strong enough or to develop something that would allow him to wield at least a single Infinity Stone without dying immediately but that was far off in the future.
He planned on becoming that capable before Thanos' minions first arrived on the planet or maybe, before Hela's imprisonment ending, depositing her on Earth. That was what he had planned on doing, defeat and imprison Hela once more, save Asgard, move the Tesseract, arm Asgard to the teeth and sic the entire civilization on Thanos.
Oh, they would lose, almost certainly, but in the process, so would Thanos. It would just get them more time, as Thanos would most certainly have to retreat in the face of such losses, not to mention the more extreme strategies he had in mind regarding suicide bombers to deliver Infinity Stone-powered weapons payloads.
He had it all planned out, going so far as to collaborate with Jin'Ya in order to create a message that would be transmitted galaxy wide as soon as Xandar was hit, exposing Thanos' plan to kill half of the universe.
Because the only reason Thanos succeeded so easily, was because he was patient. The man knew how to plan and knew how to wait for the right opportunity, allowing for decades of preparations to culminate in him getting all six Infinity Stones in the span of days.
That will most definitely not be the case this time. Sacrificing the entire Asgardian race against Thanos, along with some extreme methods, employing humans who would not think twice before sacrificing themselves for the human race, will most certainly damage both his spirit and his pride, two things that would hamper his ability to carry out his plan calmly.
Alas…..
He sighed as he reached the ritual floor. A different one from the ones they normally used. He planned on doing many things but reality had different plans, as he was somehow now the (not-so) proud owner of a conduit straight to the Space Stone, eliminating the need for any drastic suicide bomber-y tactics, that he did not like in the frist place but had convinced himself to be necessary for the continued survival of trillions.
The room itself was the same but the ritual circle drawn in the centre of the room glowed green. That is because the Eye of Agamotto itself was used to build this one, far before he even came back to Earth from Xandar because the Ancient One, being the uber Clairvoyant that she was, had predicted this day would come where he would face his fears and then use that Door once more.
"Let's get this over with," He mumbled as he stopped over the ritual circles, shivering a bit at the dense energy hitting his senses, crossing the threshold and sitting down in the center. The reason this ritual circle was different was because of what they were going to do here. The Infinity Stones were no joke and the energy coming out of them could just tear apart space all around him.
Even reinforced, the Space Stone held dominion over its name sake, so any mistake and he could just say bye bye to the Red Hearth and everyone currently in it, which would be bad, really bad.
Closing his eyes, he dove back into his mindspace, and saw the Blue Door once more, with the symbol of lightning carved on the bark of its tree. Contrary to the dull look it had a few months back, it was now brimming with energy, with arcs of blue energy zipping around the lightning symbol.
He took a deep breath and tried to get himself to open that Door. Jin'Ya was outside, the Ancient One herself had built the ritual, he had now crossed the first contact threshold which should, in theory and based on past experience, made it much easier to control the flow of energy, and now had a much better and clearer understanding of energy and energy manipulation in general.
Realistically, there was not much he could have done differently in the past few months to prepare himself better for this, so here goes nothing.
He dove out of his mindspace, only to find himself floating mid air. Not caring about that for now, he braced himself and conjured a hand to extend in front of him, with an open palm, and then willed for the Door to manifest on top of his conjured hand, since the imagery was supposed to help.
He flinched a bit as he felt a heavy weight settle on his conjured arm, forcing him to immediately strengthen it since the strain was heavier than he expected. He shivered a bit at the reminder of the pain he suffered that day but a shake of his head and another conjured head slapping him across the face helped him focus as he slowly, very slowly let the Door go, moving it around himself.
Getting a feel for the Door as it travelled, first slowly then much faster, until it was zipping around the place, creating buzzing sounds, all the while he kept his eyes closed.
"You should open your eyes," he could almost feel the Dragon rolling his eyes at him, mocking his fears which he did not appreciate, not one bit. So, feeling a little petty, he let the Door stop and then made it whiz straight towards the voice of Jin'Ya.
Cracking his eyes open, he let the Door stop just an inch shy of the invisible boundary of the Ritual circle, a few feet away from Jin'Ya who was floating mid air while just deadpanning at him, not fazed one bit at the stunt..
"Stop using it as a weight. Do something with it." Jin'Ya reminded him. He just glared at the dragon while the Door came back to float right in front of him, his conjured hands long since gone since he had no more need of them.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled the lever, as he imagined it, to let loose a small stream of energy, aiming in front of him. He smiled a bit as a blue laser of sorts shot out of it, impacting an invisible shield which made the green symbols on the ground glow brighter.
"More." Jin'Ya unhelpfully supplied, as he slowly pulled the lever more and more, increasing the density of the wave of energy. The ritual's shield held but now it was no longer invisible, instead manifesting as a large shield with mixed red and green sigils.
By now, he was about half way to the max level of the lever, and already the ritual's shields were not at their limits but the energy output was substantial. He could feel it, after all, since the Door was just a foot away from him. The shocking thing about this was that the Door was only about the size of his face and even then, the amount of energy coming out of it was phenomenal.
Still, the store of energy in that Door was not yet emptied so he continued to laser of an energy that bent space. After a few seconds, his eyes narrowed as he noticed something. The Red and Green sigils on the ground were much brighter than before but aside from them, a new color was introduced to the ritual.
Blue.
He felt the temperature around him plummet as he whipped his neck to look back at Jin'Ya who immediately replied, "Do not stop until you are done. Don't worry about that, it is by design."
He nodded, swallowed a bit and continued firing the laser that had almost caused his death last time and had also saved him from certain death so it was fine to say that he had mixed feelings about this Door.
That was fine. As long as he could use the very powerful weapon in his arsenal, he could make do with having complicated feelings about it.
After all, what were mere feelings, if they were in the way of completing his goals?
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