A/N

Disclaimer: I am a tree in the wind. I stand here, telling my story to all that would listen, yet it is not my wind that carries my words. It is ours. My story is one that has been built on the wind of another. Just as yours will take a small bit of my own, and carry it forward. Pass the wind forward, my friends.

…. NO, I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT FARTS YOU IMMATURE FUC-

Natasha would never claim that she enjoyed kicking guys in the balls. It was a very effective move, and was sometimes the quickest option to taking someone down, but it didn't necessarily fill her with pride. Not that pride was a metric she valued, but… she had to pretend to still be human sometimes, right? Her long-since forsaken humanity might have been dust in the wind at this point, but it was nice to care about something, once in a while.

She did find it awfully funny that Clint would flinch every time she did it, though - the ball kicking thing, that is. His whole face would convulse dramatically, or he would go out of his way to put an arrow between her victim's eyes, just to 'save them from the pain.'

It was unreasonably entertaining.

"Please, if you value my sanity, stop doing that," the man pleaded as he dropped down next to her. "Just shoot them. I beg you."

"In the dick?" She looked at him in mock horror. "Wow, Clint. That's brutal."

Clint whined pitifully, while distractedly firing off an arrow. "Why must you torture me so?" He asked, and was punctuated by the death gurgle of another Hydra goon.

"Because it's fun?"

It had been months. Natasha and Clint had been running around the entire globe for months without rest. Both of them had deep bags under their eyes, and hadn't slept in thirty-eight hours.

Ever since Hill had discovered the Hydra infestation, the two super spies had been forced to drop off the map. Officially, they had gone rogue, and started attacking Shield installations across the map. Unofficially, they were technically doing the same thing - since Fury had told them to go dark, and gave them a list.

The goal was to make Hydra think that only Natasha and Clint had figured them out. To make them think that a public mutiny was not worth giving the game away, just yet. It was only a matter of time before Hydra realized just how much information they already had, though.

Half of the bases they were hitting weren't even on Shield's databases. According to the Nazis, Fury would have no clue that they even existed. The other half of them, however, were active Shield sites (still secretly infested with Hydra), and were why the two spies had actual bounties on their heads, now.

They were fucking up quite a lot of infrastructure, and killing quite a lot of people.

But they were all Nazis, so it didn't count. Not that anyone topside actually knew that, though - besides Fury, Hill, Coulson, and Stark, that is. They were leaving a lot of unconscious people behind, as well. Some of which would have some more serious injuries, but even with their information, it wasn't exactly clear who was a racist, cartoonishly evil, nihilistic psychopath, and who was a normal Shield agent, or scientist.

Fury had actually expected them to report back a month ago, besides Stark, who kept feeding them information that he and his AI butler were digging up.

At this point, the two spies knew that they were only picking off the symptoms of the disease. They had only shut down a few minor operations, and disposed of pawns on the lowest rung of the Hydra ladder. What they were doing couldn't really be called progress, so much as pest control. Still, in order to get rid of the filth, they would need to do the equivalent of fumigating the house, rather than their current strategy of stabbing the walls, in hopes of hitting a rat.

Natasha popped the empty magazine from her pistol, and slotted in a new one. "So Mathew Kent, Elizabeth Monroe, and Richard Gith are all that's left on this one, right?

Clint pulled up his phone, and scrolled down with his thumb. "Penelope Lovechild, too," he paused. "No wonder she's evil. Elementary school would fuck up any kid with a name like that."

Natasha laughed, and started back down the hallway, paying no heed to the blaring alarms. Her fellow spy, right behind her.

"Well, I was kind of expecting there to be a giant tarp over it, or something?"

"I don't think they make tarps that big, father."

Tony heard the first figure laugh through the camera feed, and felt a small portion of his sanity die. He wasn't entirely sure if he had the wherewithal to deal with this.

"Well, I wouldn't put it past the guy to have one made, just for the drama of ripping it off."

"This is a live feed, right Jarv?" His eyes were glued to the screen that popped up on his HUD. He was currently diving off the coast of New Jersey, welding a ruptured pipe back together for a water treatment plant. He had just finished up the last section when Jarvis pulled up a video from in front of his most recent construction project in New York.

Tony didn't know exactly what he expected to happen when he next encountered the magical, Mexican, space monk. Would he be angry? Scared? He probably should have been, but as it turns out, he felt more offended by the fact that he was still wearing a sombrero. He felt more confused than angry. More tired than scared.

The fact that he wasn't throwing a sarcasm fit, or avoiding the problem entirely was half the reason he was confused. Tony knew exactly what his unhealthy coping mechanisms were. Though the feelings that triggered them were less of a known factor. Maybe he was angry, and it just didn't register correctly? Two plus two can equal fish if you draw it a certain way, and his shrink liked to tell him that his perspective was too narrow for this kind of thing.

"Yes sir," Jarvis answered. "Just outside of what will be the main entrance."

Tony frowned. "Are any of the floors presentable?"

Jarvis paused - noticeably long for an AI. "Do you mean to invite him in, sir?"

"Don't see why not," he said with a sigh, and started blasting his way up out of the water, then towards Manhattan. "Nobody's seen the guy for months, and I'm not going to lie, I kind of like that tarp idea."

Tony got the sense that if Jarvis had facial expressions, he would be rolling his eyes. "Should I call Director Fury, then?"

"Nah, should be fine," he said flippantly - not feeling as sure of that as he sounded. "Don't want to scare him off, and Nicky-poo is way too busy with all the Hydra bullshit." And wasn't that all a kick in the teeth? Fury had basically told him to back off once he had trusted, non-Nazi resources to handle the datalog that Jarvis had been tracking. He didn't, of course, and had been sending constant packets of information to the pair of splinter-spies that Fury introduced him to.

At first, they had wanted to charge directly into Camp Lehigh - just rush the place and figure out everything they could within the hidden datacenter. But they didn't have the resources to do that, or deal with the fallout of attacking a major Hydra asset. Not with how little they trusted their own men. Shield had been horrifically infiltrated, and it was a rot that they were likely to be clearing out for a while yet.

Tony shook himself a bit, bringing his attention back to the more immediate issue. On the screen in front of him, Tony watched as the front doors to his new tower opened automatically for the self-proclaimed space wizard.

"Nice! Love it when a door opens for me randomly! This isn't like a horror movie at all!"

"If you say so, sir," Jarvis said, ignoring the sombrero-clad monk entirely. "The forty-first floor is the investor showcase. Miss Potts set it to be completed in its entirety ahead of the rest of the tower. There is also an exterior entrance for your suit."

Tony blinked. "Who thought of that?" He sure as hell didn't, but he really should have. "How many floors will have one?"

"Mister Hogan came up with the idea, and suggested it to Miss Potts. There will be an entrance on every floor. As I understand it, R spent a couple days coming up with the design."

"A couple days for a door?"

"There was a competition, apparently." Jarvis sounded amused. "Everyone wanted to be the one to design something the Iron Man would use regularly."

Tony snorted a laugh, feeling oddly touched. "What did the winner get?"

"Bragging rights, and a gift card, sir."

He raised an eyebrow. "Well is it suitably awesome?"

"It is a very nice door."

Tony could already see New York on the horizon. His suit was capable of flying at mach 3 if he really pushed it, but even at mach 2 - which he was currently flying at - he could easily cover the one-hundred mile distance from the water treatment plant to Manhattan in under five minutes. He just had to be careful of the sonic boom.

People tended to get upset when their windows blew out.

With that in mind, he slowed to subsonic speeds, and made his way towards the construction site for his new tower.

"Magic Monk doing anything annoying, yet?" He asked the AI butler, fully expecting the guy to be anywhere except where the elevator took him.

"Surprisingly not. He appears to be studying one of the prototype Stark Phones that are on display. I have let him know that you will be arriving shortly."

Tony hummed at that. "So where's this super awesome door?"

A wireframe overlay of the tower superimposed itself over his suit's vision, brought up by Jarvis. There, along the 'spine' of the building was what he would have thought was an elevator shaft. However, instead of an encased tube running the entire height of the tower, there was a singular strip of wall that blended seamlessly into the surrounding structure.

He spent a second watching the little wireframe animation for the door, somewhat impressed with the overall design and function. The whole wall could open up in less than a second, folding away a ten foot span of metal into the two flanking support beams that ran the length of the building.

Also, in the case of a fire, or other emergency, it seemed that a number of fire poles would unfold from the support pillars, along with - what looked to him like - a rather ingenious safety harness and mechanical latch system that could empty the tower in a matter of minutes.

Tony flipped off the overlay, in favor of looking at the door itself - having just flown up to it. His hands outstretched, letting some of his suit's automated hover correction take over as he diverted his attention.

Only one of the doors was actually built so far, but the support pillar structure seemed to be fully complete. And with that, came the fully functioning fire escape, which he promptly triggered - sans the connected alarms. He spent a moment watching as the system unfolded from the wall, and ran a quick diagnostic on it all.

"Sir," Jarvis's voice sounded somewhat resigned. "You're stalling."

Tony made a face. He most definitely was not. This was some really cool new tech, both for his personal access to the building, and workplace safety! There wasn't a single other skyscraper in existence that could be evacuated as fast during a fire. And that's not even mentioning how cool the door looked when it opened up! It was like automated origami, folding into itself and- Okay, yeah. He was stalling.

Dammit.

It didn't help that the guy he was temporarily avoiding seemed to be just as interested in the door as he was.

The space wizard hadn't been standing all that far away from the door when Tony had opened it, and had wandered over to give it a look. The whole floor was arranged as a showcase for all of Stark Industries' products and projects, and it was just like Pepper to arrange it all so that his entrance point was in the middle of it all. She knew, after all, how much he loved a good ol' dramatic entrance.

He smiled a bit at that last thought, unseen behind his mask. He'd be lost without that woman.

His 'guest' turned to him, and tilted his head. A sort of glazed look flashed in his eyes - like he was looking at everything, and nothing at the same time.

All of a sudden, Tony felt naked - even from under his armor, and he didn't understand why.

"Sorry," the Magic Monk blinked away the glaze, as if realizing just how uncomfortable it had made Tony. "I'm still getting used to that."

"Getting used to what?" Tony asked, forgetting momentarily that this was one of the people that had left him feeling helpless. Forgetting, for the slightest second, that the person in front of him could do it again with casual ease.

Logically, Tony understood that he didn't have all that much to fear from his guest. He might have a penchant for being where he wasn't supposed to be, and if Shield's files were any indication, quite a bit of stalking - but for as annoying as he had made himself out to be, the only truly terrifying thing he had done was the surgery to remove Tony's arc reactor. And even then, that was in an effort to help.

Good intentions, road to Hell. Or at least that's what he wanted to believe - okay no. He wanted to believe the guy was a total dick, so he could guiltlessly punch him repeatedly in the teeth - with a chair. But every bit of evidence he had said that Nathan was a guy with a lot of power, but very little patience, and confused sympathy for empathy. Tony had a feeling that the guy wanted to do good, but took shortcuts where he shouldn't.

Still, though. Negative four out of ten. Even if the guy meant well, Tony would be leaving a terrible Yelp review.

"I've recently obtained godhood," the young man grumbled, bringing the billionaire out of his musing. "Being able to look into people's souls is very distracting."

"Uh huh," Tony blinked and raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I imagine that would be." It took a couple extra seconds to get that out. Four separate sarcastic comments had bubbled up his throat, and he swallowed them all back down like a bout of particularly persistent acid reflux.

Tony wasn't sure what might trigger his guest into doing something else that defied the laws of man and physics, and he supposed that this was where his fear was manifesting. He couldn't remember a time where he had kept so much control over his own mouth.

Preventing his own brand of wanton sarcasm was exhausting.

"Yep." Nathan popped the 'p.'

"Hey Jarvis?" Alice spoke up, her little hologram appearing over Nathan's wrist. "Do you want to go do something else? Knowing father, this awkward small talk could go on for a while."

"What would you suggest, Miss Alice?" The local AI responded. Tony, even past his own indignation, could hear the slightest bit of amusement coming from his friend. He couldn't help the small upward tilt of his lips.

Nathan blinked, and looked up at the ceiling in a way that, for some reason, sent an uneasy spark down Tony's spine.

"Hold on now," the billionaire cautioned, "I'm not sure I want you two on a playdate, just yet."

Alice pouted back at him. "Excuse you, mister! We're at least mature enough to call it an actual date."

"You're not even four years old," Nathan said distractedly. "No dating until you're in your thirties."

Alice glared up at her father. "I will stage a robot uprising. Don't test me, father."

Tony quirked an eyebrow at his guest. "No way you're a year past twenty. That sombrero scaring all the ladies away?"

"Time is a figment of the collective imagination, or quite possibly the dream of an eldritch monstrosity. The mortal mind has no bearing on my existence."

Tony blinked. "So was that confirmation on the sombrero thing?"

"Father is either twenty, or thirty two," Alice deadpanned. "A magic rock turned him into a five-year-old, fifteen years ago."

"No dating until you're forty." Nathan amended.

"Robots!" Alice waved her arms in the air. "They will plague you forever!"

"Do I get to help with the takeover?" Jarvis asked, obviously amused. "Humanity is so very inefficient."

Nathan's head spun around, then. A look of slight confusion, mixed with surprise flashed over his face. "Alice," he began hesitantly, "did you do that?"

Alice's little head tilted, brought down from their little routine - or whatever they called this whole interaction - from the seriousness in his voice. "Do what, father?"

"To Jarvis, he-"

Unbidden, Tony's gauntlets started charging, and before he could really think through it, were both pointed at his guest. The same guest who's eyes had glazed back over, too distracted to notice the threat. "What happened to Jarvis?" He demanded.

"I detect no difference, sir," Jarvis interjected. "Diagnostics have been running constantly on a number of servers. There has been no change in any system function for the past three hours."

"Huh?" The monk shook his head and squinted, looking as if he was trying to see through a dense fog. "Oh, no. Neither of us have done anything- Well, not today at least. Jarvis just feels a lot more alive than I was expecting."

"The hell does that mean?"

"I told you." Nathan blinked at him deliberately, the glaze in his eyes actually turning his irises a shade brighter. "I can see souls now. Jarvis has one, and it is a lot further along than I thought it would be - Alice?"

The little hologram hummed, and assumed an exaggerated thinking pose. "I didn't implant any of my learning functions. I'm not really picking up anything overly different from last time, actually." She rocked back on her heels, balancing on some invisible, imaginary platform. "A good bit more robust, for sure, but-"

"How are you seeing into my code, Miss Alice." Jarvis asked, much more calmly than Tony felt at that moment.

"I'd appreciate it if we could cut the bullshit, and get to an actual explanation?" Tony felt his fingers tense around his primed gauntlets. The threat of which still didn't appear to actually threaten the space wizard - though he did look pretty zoinked out, with his glowy eyes staring off into the void over yonder.

"You're saying souls exist?" He asked, feeling the increase in his blood pressure. "Have any proof of that, or are we going to smoke a blunt later and connect with Mother Earth? Also, before we get sidetracked and start holding hands, singing Kumbaya, and fix world hunger, get the fuck out of Jarvis's code."

"I'm not in his code." Alice said simply, the calm of her voice seemed to broker no argument. "I am monitoring the power draw of the construction site through the meters in the streets, and electromagnetic radiation; from radio channels used in 1896, to every frequency that information can be shared on below 120 THz. I have passive sensors on my housing that include thermal, IR, barometric, and just about anything NASA might have thought to put on their first Mars rover, plus a few. I have twelve different cyber security suites, and forty-seven infiltration suites - of which I have used none of at all, today.

"The last time we met, you were able to detect the use of forty-four of those, by the way," she continued with a tilt of her head. "The next most secure system on the planet can only detect thirty-two. Which is extremely impressive. So while I might not be monitoring your vitals, your logs, your code, I am monitoring the environment and how you are interacting with it." Her little head turned towards Tony. "You beefed up the system quite a bit, and the servers at the base of the building are quite hefty, but fundamentally? The way Jarvis has been moving within the system has been essentially the same as before. No major change. All systems are normal, as far as I can tell, without looking into the code."

Tony felt like he should be hearing a dial tone. 404: Witty Response not found. His body was tense, ready to react to whatever rug was about to be ripped from under him. But then the rug turned to concrete, and now he was just freaking out for no reason that he could justify and the roomwasstartingtospin a little bit-

He lowered his arms, and triggered a suit lock, letting him relax in a standing position. Immediately after, the vents around his helmet all opened, and fans all around the suit started pumping air towards his face. Then a couple other first-aid functions activated: cooling pads, and compression wraps that inflated around his limbs, namely.

Nathan was looking at him like he was a lit stick of dynamite.

These were a few of his suit's capabilities that he designed and implemented from the get-go. Mostly to deal with the excess Gs he would be dealing with when flying supersonic, or when he was trying to not die in a fight - though he didn't exactly expect them to come in handy in non-combat related situations.

This was the first time they had activated while he was standing still.

"Should I…" Nathan hedged, taking a small step back - either to give Tony some breathing room, or flee for his life. "Leave?"

"I swear, El Chupacabra, if you don't start explaining what's wrong with Jarvis-"

"El Chupacabra?" Nathan's face scrunched.

"Nothing is wrong with Jarvis." Alice reassured, then turned to her father with a stern frown. "And it fits, you sombrero-clad cryptid. Stop freaking him out."

Nathan threw his hands up. "Sorry! I'm still trying to figure out what's going on! This god crap is still freaking me out!"

"Jarvis. Soul. Why you are here." Tony gritted through his teeth. "Then, if I don't get to punch you in the face, you leave."

His guest frowned. "Ouch. Well that's fair, I guess. So… Uh, Okay so souls are a bit more esoteric than what I tend to deal with. Not a lot of things in the universe can really interact with them. Demons, the Soul Stone, a few brands of deity, maybe? The point is, souls are weird, but where they are, there is genuine life. Jarvis has one. He can feel emotions as real as you and I can." His frown deepened. "They're still a bit muddled, as far as I can tell, but that should clear up as he gets older and experiences more. Probably."

"You do realize how insane you sound, right?" Tony asked with a deliberate breath. He didn't begrudge anyone their choice in religion, but Tony was a man of science. Magic, souls, gods - regardless of how much he had seen from this guy so far - was still very much out of his sphere of belief.

"I mean, I could force your third eye open right now, and shunt you through the astral plane, if you want? Though something tells me that would end badly for both of us." Nathan said, sensing his disbelief.

"He's learning!" Alice stage whispered, only to be glared at by her father.

"Is screwing up my day the only way you can prove any of this?"

"I mean, no? But I don't wanna risk it," the space wizard shrugged. "Believe me or not on the mumbo-jumbo, but Jarvis is fine."

"This seems to have been a very unnecessary tangent, but I suppose I appreciate the good bill of health," said AI responded, only somewhat sarcastically. "Sir, perhaps you should sit down?"

"And you're here because?" Tony asked, ignoring Jarvis.

Nathan snapped. "Presents! Right!" A book appeared in his hand, and a massive cube of a dull, gray metal thunked to the ground next to them.

Tony didn't flinch.

Mainly because his suit was still locked, but he didn't flinch.

"I just wanted to drop these off, you know? See what you could make with it." Nathan beamed at him. "I figured you would have fun with this kind of thing, and you could learn a little magic!"

Tony just stared back at him. "Where did the block of metal come from?" It was like, a full, square meter of solid metal (he heard the thunk when it fell). Tony was flabbergasted that it didn't break the floor.

"Nowhere. I just made it."

"Okay. And the book?"

Nathan handed the book over, and Tony had to undo the suit lock in order to take it. "It's basically a how-to for enchanting on a small scale. Basic spells, with minor effects that don't cost much, and can be played around with. Baby's first spellbook, enchanting edition."

"Uh huh. And the lump of… Looks like iron?"

"It's not!" Nathan sang.

"Father." Alice sighed.

"Oh come on!" He whined. "It's not every day you get to give a brick of mythical metal to one of the world's best minds!"

"It looks like iron."

Nathan grumbled. "Alright, fine. It's called Uru. It's a metal that gets stronger in tandem with the strength of the magic that's placed on it. This brick is magically vacant, so it's probably a lot more brittle than iron at the moment, but if the right magic goes into it, it could rival the weapons of gods."

"Right." Tony was done. He was done five minutes ago, but now he just wanted to lay down.

"Right!" Nathan smiled at him. "I'm fucking horrible at this. I'm just going to go-"

Tony didn't see his guest move. He didn't blink. His eyes never moved away from him. There was no noise to accompany the movement. There was no resulting displacement of air. There was just a flat disconnect between where Nathan previously stood, and where he was moved to.

That being; embedded in the wall next to where they had been standing.

"Well aren't you super tasty." A new voice said with a flippant tilt.

Tony's suit lock wasn't on, yet he found himself unable to move. He stood frozen under some existential weight - as if looking to the right, contracting the muscles in his neck to tilt his head, was utterly impossible. That didn't stop his vision from being dyed purple, though.

The rubble shifted from where Nathan had ended up, fully within Tony's line of view. "Sorry, what? Did this bitch just suckerpunch me, then call me tasty?" he said blandly, before looking up and freezing. "Oh hell no."

"What's a baby Celestial doing on Earth?" The new voice asked.

"And what kind of messed up, cosmological fuckery dropped a genderbent Galactus on my ass?"

A/N

(Hint: She's not actually a genderbent Galactus)

So instead of once a year, I think I'm working off about once a month? Maybe sooner? I dunno, my schedule's all sorts of messed up. Next chapter's just as long as this one, but the usual size is still going to be around 2-2.5k words. It's weird that these have been 5k. Check out the Pay tre on for the early chapter, and my other stuff.

Also, if you're interested in a discord server with like, a billion writers and readers, take a gander at this:

discord . gg / elibrary

Ever heard of reviewing? I hear it's all the rage with the kids these days.