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Tony Stark: Earth's Best Defender ([info]allaboutego) wrote in [info]snapthread,
@ 2019-04-19 13:27:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:dr. strange (616), tony stark (mcu)

Who: Tony Stark, Stephen Strange
What: Meeting again for the first time?
When: Thursday, upon Stephen's arrival
Where: About town, the House of Dimensional Doorways.



It was kind of stupid how busy Tony felt in this little town of barely any people and no real notable projects to speak of. Every day he set to work making something with what he had (or making lists of what he didn’t) in order to build this place into something worth living in. The main goal probably shouldn’t have been that, not really. It should have been leaving - finding a way back to a reality that was his own and getting others back to theirs.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t figure it out. Dimensional portals weren’t really his strong point and even though he made time for research and compiling data (into the laptop he’d cobbled together from ship parts and other worlds) nothing was really coming up Tony for him.

So he built other stuff. A real proper power generator with better wiring and outlets for all the buildings in town, and a few lights for outside too. Plus hand powered washing machines and an assortment of other things, depending on what was asked for or needed.

He should have been pleased when Strange showed up. He’d been the man with the best plan against Thanos, at the time, after all. Following the path of that one reality that’d done it right had been important and Tony kind of figured that Starklandia wasn’t part of the plan. Getting it back on track could be good.

But upon learning that it wasn’t even the right Strange, Tony’s initial reaction was to just feel inconvenienced. He had systems to be building. Repairs to make, his own suit to be working on, but instead he was going to be the welcome wagon.

It was an idiot’s reaction, obviously. Because if there was anyone who could help them in not unexpected convergence of alternate realities, it’d be Stephen Strange from probably any reality, and Tony could use the help.

Still. It was probably a very good thing that Carol’s bar was opening up on Friday. Tony had a feeling he was going to need it.


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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-20 03:25 am UTC (link)
"What can I say," Tony said dryly, "We've all been exceptionally bad. There was no other w--"

Way. There was no other way. A bad choice of words, considering those were the last that Stephen had said to him before dusting off with half of the rest of the universe. It didn't seem so funny when that came to mind. Tony offered a sniff of disdain to distract himself and tucked his own hands into his pockets, too.

Well. At least Strange was in relatively good humor, so Tony tried a smile back, just for the sake of reciprocation, even if he didn't feel like it. Then again, if he waited to smile until he felt like it, the media would have eaten him alive before he'd hit double digits.

"You too," he decided, because yeah, this was less inconvenience and more an interesting meeting. It was like meeting up with that different version of Hawkeye except Strange was likely to have more answers and less quips about dogs. "You still seem you. Did you have to practice at all that wizardly demeanor or does it just come with the job?"

The thing was, he'd known his own Strange for less than a few days. This wasn't going to be a moment of quiet comfort because Tony wasn't sure yet what there was to prove or otherwise. "You want a tour? Maybe you can help with some of this problem solving, too." Because Tony was good but even he was at a loss.

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[info]supremed
2019-04-20 08:10 pm UTC (link)
"It comes naturally when you're perceiving multiple layers of reality at once," Strange quipped in return, eyebrows flicking a bit further up before coming down to their normal resting latitude. There was the rush of something in the air, the kind of sound you hear when a strong wind is whipping through a flag high on a pole. A flash of red and gold. It swirled around Stephen before slowing in cadence, behaving not so unlike the magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin. Eventually, the trademark cloak latched itself around Stephen's neck and came to rest.

Tony hadn't asked him to prove his identity, which made Stephen think he wasn't the first alternate reality to arrive in this nexus. It certainly made building trust easier. Reaching out a hand, the sorcerer gestured for him to lead the way. A careful eye would see that it couldn't stay still and moved in a constant, subtle twitch. The hand wasn't visible for long, though, and soon disappeared back into his pocket.

"You alluded to the fact that you thought I was dead. Care to extrapolate on that?"

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-20 08:57 pm UTC (link)
It sounded a little bit like bullshit to Tony, and he might have said so, but for the fact that the cape of infinite loyalty made an appearance. He'd wondered where it'd gotten off to, or if it was even a thing that this particular Stephen had, but there it was, as theatrical as ever. He raised his own eyebrow in response, but decided against anything quippy. For the moment.

The way Strange's fingers shook wasn't lost on Tony, ever observant particularly when it came to things like possible weaknesses. Not that he'd use it as such -- he didn't know the cause but he did know what it felt like for his body to not be on the same page with his brain.

"I don't just think you're dead," Tony said, kicking off a bit and thumbing in the direction of a few buildings. "COFFEE. Van Dyne's. Soon to be Pancho's Bar. There's the business district." Yeah, it was just the three places. Starklandia was very up and coming. Gentrification in action, practically. "I know you're dead because I watched it happen. It was a different version of you -- that's my house, two down from it is free if you're looking for a place to crash for the foreseeable future." He flirted with the subject of real importance even as he gave the tour -- Tony was like that, sometimes. Easily excitable, a little manic. "Does your reality have a Thanos?"

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[info]supremed
2019-04-21 12:39 am UTC (link)
Following with an easy sort of saunter, Stephen regarded each building in turn as Tony pointed them out. More than their exterior, he was interested in the psychic resonance in each place; what kind of emotions or magicks pooled inside each set of four walls and what that might be. Every blink of his eyes sifted through different energy signatures like he was flipping through the slides on a vintage projector.

"Coffee. Clothes. Alcochol. Really pairing down to the essentials, aren't you? A kind of minimalist design. That's very chic in modern architecture, isn't it? Do you know that these buildings are classic Tudor Period wattle and daub or is anything pre-Wright Brothers just kind of lost on you?"

He turned his head with a smile and winked, a bit of air audibly expelling from his nose in a voiceless chuckle. Stephen's expression grew more solemn as he continued--

"I know the Mad Titan. He has attacked Earth on multiple occasions. If this is your reality's first time encountering him, I expect that means he bears the Gauntlet."

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-21 07:57 pm UTC (link)
"Hey, they've got their priorities straight," Tony said with a shrug because -- well. Weren't those the essentials? There was also a guy who dealt in snacks and whatever else, but Tony wouldn't so much call it a store front as a traveling bodega.

"And don't be so pretentious." Tony said it nearly teasingly, because it was clear Stephen was doing it on purpose. Of course he didn't know what the buildings were based on - if there was anything out of his area of expertise it was architecture. Not the way things were built, mind, but the designs of anything he didn't specifically have his hands in. "I can tell you it was hell getting the wiring in them right, if that matters." It probably didn't matter.

Multiple occasions was not something that Tony had wanted to hear, and did not like, not even remotely. "With the gauntlet," Tony agreed, taking something of a turn past most of the houses and heading for one that sat on its own at the edge of town. "He was after the stones, and you happened to be holding the Time one. Don't suppose you have it on you, now?"

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[info]supremed
2019-04-22 03:50 am UTC (link)
"And here I thought pretentious turned you on, Tony," came his quipped reply as Stephen stared off down the street, eyes squinting and mouth still twitching upward. Even at this distance, he could tell they were moving toward something very peculiar. It was invisible to the uninitiated, but his Third Eye was wide open upon the center of his forehead and could only focus on one thing. That building.

He pivoted on his heel as they turned and slid his hands out of his pockets. Moving in nonsensical, yet clearly deliberate mudras, his fingers conjured orange circles of vibrating light filled with strange lines and patterns. In front of them shapes appeared. A golden fist, no, a glove. And around it six points of different colored light. Strange flexed his hands, the circles around them disappeared, and the illusory images he'd summoned sharped into focus.

One hand immediately slid back into his pocket as he stalked thoughtfully toward the conjuration, while the other held his chin.

"He's always after them," Stephen said as he walked a tight circle. Reaching out, he cupped the green light in the palm of his hand. "I guarded the Stone for a time. But ultimately we sent them away from Earth into hands. You can imagine why. They always drew attention. Someone was always chasing them for the own..." The Sorcerer released the light and took a step back. The six points of light rushed in together and formed an image of the Earth. "....Agenda."

The planet erupted into flames. Then it all faded away.

"Besides," he concluded with a sigh, returning the second hand into the safety of his pocket and out of sight, "if I did have the Time Stone, I wouldn't be stuck here, would I?"

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-22 08:54 pm UTC (link)
"Were you trying to give that a go?" Tony asked, offering Strange something of a side eye, because while playful flirtation was always a good time, Tony tended to only really do it with people he knew these days. So it kind of begged the question of how well this version of Strange knew some other version of him. It'd definitely been more than for a few days, max. "B minus, at best."

But then there was a light show and god, Tony really did kind of hate magic, even if he could sort of see how it could be a very useful tool. But mostly it was bullshit because it made absolutely no sense and defied the laws of science. So, like, that was definitely a thing.

It was interesting to watch though. Tony had to resist the urge to swat his hands at the images, just to see if the air felt any different. Now wasn't the time for experimentation.

"What place was possibly safe enough to send them off to?" Tony asked, curious. He'd already concluded that the things were too dangerous and still rather thought that a garbage disposal method would have been wiser from the start. "And maybe. Maybe not? Working theory is something broke when Thanos caught a beat, so it's hard to say what would or wouldn't work here."

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[info]supremed
2019-04-23 02:04 am UTC (link)
"The bottom of a black hole worked for a time," Stephen murmured. It sounded like a joke, maybe even came off like one of those playful quips him and Tony had been peppering back and forth since meeting. Except he was completely serious. The sorcerer kicked the heel of his boot against a cobblestone, listening to the heavy scuffing sound bounce around the acoustic street.

"The thing about the Stones is that they'll disappear for a time, then reappear, get destroyed, be reborn again." He took a breath and looked down toward that building. The one bright with energy in the lens of his Third Eye. "What I mean is that they are, essentially, primogenesitic constants, shards of universal quintessence. They'll always be in existence, I think, as long as the multiverse is. And it's almost like they want to be found. Like Tolkien's One Fucking Ring."

It didn't explain why they were here. What kind of anomaly had been created. Because Stark was probably right. Something went wrong.

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-23 10:38 pm UTC (link)
"The bottom of a black hole," Tony repeated, a little surprised. It sounded impossible. But if anyone was going to break science absolutely, it was Strange. And in those terms, yeah. A black hole was probably the smartest place to put them. There'd be no getting in or out of one again. "How?" He asked, because -- well. That's what he did. He asked questions. Tony didn't at all like not knowing things. Luckily, Stephen didn't seem to mind giving answers. What a good guy.

He sighed, a little annoyed by the analogy, but only because it was just spot on in the most obnoxious way. "I hate Tolkien," he decided, fingers tapping in an unconscious fidget over his chest, a soft click against the nanotech stored there.

"Anyway," he went on, gesturing to the House they stood in front of, "here we are. The house of dimensional doors. It's an absolute mind fuck in the least sexy way, but I have a feeling it's not going to shock you as much as it did me."

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[info]supremed
2019-04-24 04:21 am UTC (link)
It was clear that the good doctor took interest in the house. He sizes it up and down, studying it with the kind of intensity that he was not merely ascertaining the paint job but was looking at something else entirely. He reached out and touched it, running a few fingers across the wood (the ugly surgical scars on the back of his hand very apparent) before pulling away and looking at them like some kind of slime of residue had come away from it.

"Yes, that is very apparent..." Came his distracted reply, his mind anywhere but present. Stephen's Third Eye trained on the resonance that he had pulled away from the house. Completely alien, but maybe not so unrecognizable. After a quiet minute, he looked up at the house. Everything filtered away from his periphery; the prime materia faded into a blue and the astral came into sharp focus. The lack of astral entities prowling the perimeter of such an active location was a plus. Everything else was, well, cause for concern.

"It's somewhat like the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York. The Window of the Worlds is similar, but..." he scratched the hard line of his jaw, "...more ordered. I'm not ruling out that this webway isn't the byproduct of sorcery, further study required. Is there a pattern to where these doors lead? Is there one for every dimension of the current resident-- prisoners? -- os this pocket plane?"

Stephen considered reaching for the doorknob, interested in exploration, but resisted.

"I don't know, by the way. About the black hole. I'm a medical doctor, not an astrophysicist. I could say 'magic' but I suspect it would offend your sophisticated sensibilities."

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-25 06:28 pm UTC (link)
Stephen looked at the building the same way that Tony looked at machines -- like he was breaking it down to it's most minor parts and trying to rebuild it in his brain in a way that made sense instead of just looking at it as a complete whole. Mechanics, he thought, probably made a hell of a lot more sense than this place. This place was confusing and wrong and he couldn't even see past the most basic parts of it. Tony didn't feel particularly wronged when Strange spoke at him distractedly, like he was the least interesting thing in the vicinity currently.

"There's no pattern," Tony said after a beat and then gestured to the doorknob. "Go in. The front door just leads to the house. The doors inside go wherever the fuck they want. You can open and close the same door and get a different place every time. It's great for supply runs but frankly absolute bullshit on my nerves."

It wasn't something he liked to admit, actually. That he had a problem with stuff like this, with the unknown -- particularly when it came to doorways and wormholes. He'd dealt with enough of those in the past to know nothing good ever really came from them.

"And yeah. My sensibilities are offended on on levels." But less because of the black hole and more because ... of everything, actually. It was just how Tony lived now.

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[info]supremed
2019-04-25 07:44 pm UTC (link)
He traced a circle with his finger and tapped the center of it. The door opened slowly with a creak. A second brief spell conjured a sphere of twisting sigils that emitted a pulsing orange light to brighten the room as the sorcerer stepped across the threshold. Stephen looked around against the strong urge to shield his eyes from the bright auras that lit up all around him. It was an irrational instinct, of course, since he wasn't seeing them with his two eyes.

"No pattern to the destinations, interesting. Are they all locations on Earth? Different times? Different versions of Earth? Or are they different planets and star systems entirely?" Stephen walked slowly through the perimeter to examine everything he could.

After several minutes of study, Stephen returned to the here and now. He closed his Third Eye and proceeded to blink rapidly as his vision rushed back to greet him. He massaged his temples and took a deep breath before returning his hands to his pockets.

"I'll spend a lot of time in here studying," he concluded, "there are several spells I would like to use to help me glean information, particularly under the light of the Eye of Agamotto. Which, of all my artifacts, I am particularly pleased came with me. Transdimensional energy and magic is my specialty. But all that aside..."

He'd wave his hand to digress, but it was still in his pocket.

"How are you holding up? Or if that's too personal for a...stranger," the word elicited a laugh from Stephen because it was difficult for him to believe, considering who was looking right at him, "then what else do you want to tell me about this place, the situation, or the people?"

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-26 10:25 pm UTC (link)
Tony simply followed Stephen in, a little nonplussed about the new light spell, but not really having a reason not to like it either. This had been the only room that he hadn't bothered wiring properly for electricity, after all. It hadn't seemed like a good idea at the time, and it still didn't. He knew better enough than to play around with things like these. At least not in these circumstances. Once he'd built tech up to par enough, that was a different story.

He opened up one of the doors, leading to another dimension and simply looked at what was one offer -- something dreary, wet and dark. Maybe a forest, but it was hard to make out with only a front light source. It was fine. He didn't intend on going through it.

The Eye of whatever the hell was what'd housed the Time Stone in his own reality, but it was clear that wasn't the case here, seeing as Stephen had already said he didn't have one on him. So he nodded along, staring out into the void as the other man spoke, only turning when he asked him an actually question. Tony smiled then, a little lopsided but not overly amused. "Mentally or physically? No. I'm fine." That probably wasn't true, but he'd have told nearly anyone the same. "I'm in one piece anyway. We've got somewhere around thirty people. Some keep to themselves more than others. A lot of them are recognizable faces, but not all of them. And sometimes there are... multiples."

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[info]supremed
2019-04-27 10:10 pm UTC (link)
"At least this time you're not at war with them or trying to stop two alternate realities from crashing into each other and reducing everyone into oblivion," Strange replied flippantly to deflect the awkwardness he felt between them. "The opportunity to work together is almost...huh, novel, I think?"

He stepped around and made for the front door that led outside. When the light of day spilled across the opened door frame again, the sorcerer dispelled his conjuration with a simple gesture.

"I know it's difficult, especially being experts in our respective fields, feeling so helpless. But..." He sucked a breath in between his teeth and squinted up at the sun. "We put our heads together and figure it out. We come up with something. We always have."

Worried that it bordered on too personal and familiar for this unfamiliar Tony Stark, he quickly concluded with another laugh, "Too bad Banner isn't here or we'd have the three best minds on the Avengers."

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[info]allaboutego
2019-04-27 10:32 pm UTC (link)
The flippant response made Tony almost positive that those were things that had actually happened to him in some alternate dimension. He wasn't going to say his own position currently was enviable, but he was also glad that he wasn't dealing with those things, that was true. "The other me is about thirty years younger and very interested in maintaining his cheese fridge," Tony pointed out, because he needed to lighten the mood a little, too. It just was necessary.

He closed the door that held only darkness, and followed Stephen out of the House again. Which was fine, he didn't overly like this place.

"I don't think you're wrong," Tony said, studying Stephen's profile as the other man looked up at the sun. He was different than Tony's version -- not that Tony hadn't liked his own Strange, but he'd been a little unknowable and frustrating. That could be different here. It was clear the man had knowledge to share and more than a little wit about him too. "Let's leave Banner out of this for now. Two geniuses oughta be enough."

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[info]supremed
2019-04-29 12:09 am UTC (link)
Two geniuses. Right. One for technology and one for magic.

"In another dimension, I could still be New York's highest paid neurosurgeon, still have working hands, and still be a douchebag without a clue on how to cast the most basic spells. Or," he tipped a shoulder to Tony, "like in your reality, I could be dead. Makes you think the grass isn't always greener. Even if you get to be thirty years younger."

Stephen's steps were wide and lackadaisical as he moved out onto the cobbled street. The sun had started to sink out of the sky, casting long shadows between the buildings onto the stones. Out of idle curiosity, he tapped his foot to test the acoustics. Good echo.

"Suppose I ought to set up shop. Take a nap. Find something to eat. My bodega is going to go out of business without me visiting it every day." Had Tony ever set foot inside a bodega? The thought made Stephen snort. "Two down from you, you said? We've spent all these years with a good fifty five blocks between our headquarters. Now we're neighbors. That's funny."

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