Chapter 199: Thoughts

9th March 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

Immediately, everyone got to their feet, worried. I just raised my hand, “Don’t worry, he won’t do anything. I just couldn’t leave him bound like that for where we’re going.”

Thor looked confused, “I thought we were going to Asgard?”

I nodded, “Yes, but first, I’ll need to check on something and it’s in what I would call a hostile environment.”

Loki blinked at me, still disorientated, and glared, “And where would that be?”

The malicious grin on my face must have scared him because he paled when he saw it. Even Thor looked nervous, and his eyes widened when I said, “We’re going to Nifleheim.”

“Wait, what…”

Before he could finish the sentence. I turned the Asgardian artifact, and teleported myself and the two Asgardians to one of the most dangerous places in the universe.

(Tony Stark POV)

Anthony Stark just watched the mysterious woman teleport away with Thor and Loki using the Tesseract. If he was honest, he did feel a bit peeved at the fact that she just came to his tower unannounced and just took the spoils they got from the invasion.

Yes, Tony wasn’t under the illusion that things wouldn’t have been worse if she and Thor hadn’t been there, the number of casualties alone would have been at least ten times higher, that was if they managed to repel the invasion in the first place. But even knowing all of this, Tony regretted not punching Loki in the face as soon as they captured him. It would have been cathartic. The Tesseract going back to Asgard was a given, it was the obvious choice. They couldn’t risk SHIELD continuing to play with it, and accidentally blowing up the planet. This time it was an alien invasion led by a Norse god, who knows what would happen next time.

Still, the billionaire’s eyes were opened to how outgunned and outclassed they were, and Tony swore to do his best to get humanity to catch up.

While Tony was deep in thought to the consequences of Morrigan’s existence, the rest of the Avengers started to scramble around, trying to process the events that just transpired.

Banner looked around and asked, “Do you think she was telling the truth, about being alive for so long?”

Barton didn’t seem to agree, “She’s obviously a nutjob with more power than sense. We would have known if there was someone this old and this involved in history still kicking about.”

The Black Widow shook her head, “Not necessarily. Thor did recognize her name and was deathly terrified of her. She ordered the prince of Asgard around like he was a lap dog. Maybe she lied, but there has to be some grains of truth about her.”

Tony didn’t respond to any of this, he just opened up his laptop, and started a worldwide search for all the identities she claimed to have. From Jasmine Sayre to Morgan Evanshade, to fucking Medusa herself. He wouldn’t leave a stone unturned.

Meanwhile, Barton had brought his hand to his head, “Damn, we knew she was a threat, but we didn’t expect this.”

Tony looked towards the spy; he could provide for context. It would help narrow down the search, “You have spoken with her before?”

The archer looked hesitant and looked at his partner. The redhead nodded and answered his question, “Yes, we have. Fury got a message from a telepath friend of his that this woman was dangerous. Apparently, she was messing with his students, we never did get anything from her. But when we talked to her, she knew things, things that she had no way of knowing. We were wearing anti telepath tech, and yet she could read us perfectly. I don’t know if she knew about that stuff beforehand or just bypassed our psychic protections, but she was fucking terrifying. Barton jumped the gun and tried to kill her, but she didn’t even look phased. She disappeared after the asteroid M fiasco a few years back, and we just assumed that Magneto killed her, or that she just decided to hide. We kept expecting some new supervillain mutant, but nothing happened, so we just assumed that she was dead and closed her file. We knew that she was dangerous, knowledgeable, and very powerful, but we didn’t expect anything close to this.”

Tony answered her sarcastically, “What? You didn’t expect for her to be an immortal witch who has influenced the course of human history and was in charge of the biggest media company in the world. Fuck, she wrote children’s books. What kind of supervillain writes children’s fantasy books?”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Rogers seemed to shake his head, “I never got that vibe from her.”

Banner interrupted him, “Am I the only one here who has never met her even once? How did you even meet her, Steve?”

The super soldier looked uncomfortable, “Her name was Margaret Sayre. She was Dr. Erskine’s assistant. Honestly, most of the time, I thought that she was in charge. Apparently, she fixed a lot of stuff with the formula or something. I never understood the science stuff. She was moved to a safehouse the moment Hydra killed Erskine and she disappeared two hours later, with her guards being killed. The military was terrified that Hydra got her, and that they would be mass producing the Serum sometime soon. But when nothing happened after a couple of weeks, they probably assumed that she died without revealing the formula to anyone. She was nice, very witty. I was always intimidated by her a little bit, but I only thought that she was very strict. I guess I know better now.”

Tony shook his head, “You guys have to remember that she helped us with the invasion, we don’t know enough about her to make decisions right now. Especially when she seems to have given us free reign over Earth’s future.”

They all looked stupefied, and Tony could see Bruce coming to a realization, “This was never a threat, or even a warning. This was a resignation. She faked her death so that the world wouldn’t try to find her. Even now, people are celebrating the sacrifice of the Morrigan, an alien god like Thor who came to protect Earth from the alien invaders.”

Tony gave his new teammates a mirthless laugh, “It’s even worse than that. She gave us her prediction towards what will happen because of the exponential rise of the mutant population, the probable conflicts and everything. She even gave us clues on how to solve it. It’s like she’s giving us her job. We have no idea how large her sphere of influence spread across the world, or even what she did. You guys kept attacking her left, right and center for no reason. We don’t have any data to make proper conclusions. I’m having Jarvis analyze the patterns in her media company to see if there’s any political viewpoint that she tries to influence her audience with. I’ll have him track her activities in the last decade or so until we get a proper understanding of her ambitions.”

Bruce nodded, and so did Rogers for that matter. Romanoff, though, looked hesitant, “The Security Council isn’t going to like having an unknown with this much power and influence without any supervision.”

Tony burst into laughter, “The world security council is gone. At least, they will be soon. Someone hacked their conversation with Fury, where they decided to go over him and send a fucking nuke to New York, while the situation was obviously being handled, and the casualties were minimal. SHIELD isn’t even supposed to have access to nukes, it was one of the main requests the UN gave, to make sure that it’s a peace keeping organization and not a private military force under the council’s control. Their identities were leaked as well, so I expect them to go to prison very soon with at least a million cases of attempted murder. They’re going to be thrown to the wolves, and the only reason that SHIELD might survive, and I’m stressing the word ‘might’ here, is because of us. In a way, we represent them, and to destroy SHIELD, they would technically be offending us as well. I don’t particularly care about what happens to Fury’s little boy band, but this could have very far reaching consequences.”

Barton snorted, “Yeah, I get it. No hunting down the witch. Not that I would, no matter how much I want to punch that smug smile off her face. You’ve seen what she did to the aliens. Even the giant worm things didn’t pose a challenge. Don’t get me wrong, I can hit a target from practically anywhere, but I’m just as squishy as a regular human being. And it doesn’t even matter, because from what I’ve seen, she’s a lot like Thor in terms of physiology, and considering that the guy is bulletproof, even if she didn’t see me coming, she probably wouldn’t be phased by anything I got.”

Tony sighed in relief; no one was going to hunt down the immortal witch who was probably called the Goddess of Death at one point. You don’t mess with these kinds of people, especially when they’re not hostile, and even more so when you have no idea about their capabilities. Tony still shuddered at that memory of his.

He looked around, “So, we agree then. Let’s leave her alone for the time being. No hunting her, no killing her, no letting people know that she’s alive without asking her. Let’s just try not to antagonize her until we know for certain that she is an enemy.”

Everyone nodded except Romanoff. Damn she really didn’t like the Morrigan. Did she have a grudge or something. Everyone looked at the assassin, who just sighed, “Fine, but I’m still convinced that trusting her is a bad idea.”

Tony interjected, “We were all strangers a couple of days ago and now, we’re a team that's going to do its best to protect the world. Besides, we’re not trusting her, not really. We’re just giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

By the time their little impromptu team meeting was over, they were all exhausted and decided to go to sleep in the guest rooms Tony had installed in the tower. The billionaire, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. His encounter with the immortal witch a few years ago had affected him deeply. He laid off on his drinking and partying then. He tried to make more humanitarian inventions, water filters and the like to be sold at cost in Africa. He donated to charities all over the world, he did everything he could do, but things didn’t start feeling right until he built his armor. He finally started to see the harm his company was causing, the wars he was unknowingly sponsoring, the deaths that he had indirectly caused by trusting Obadiah. Did she know about this? Was this why she confronted him?

Tony needed answers. What was the relationship between Morrigan and his parents. She seemed to be closer to his mother, and from her tone, she disliked his father a lot, an opinion that Tony shared as well.

The billionaire heard a small beep, telling him that Jarvis had finished his initial search of the Morrigan’s identities. He saw multiple paintings, sculptures, even Ancient Egyptian carvings, of the black haired, green eyed woman. There was an abundance of little illustration. For some reason, sometimes she looked different in a few illustrations. Sometimes, she had red hair, sometimes, black eyes. It wasn’t always consistent. She was probably wearing some sort of disguise at the time.

Still, this was proof that the woman wasn’t lying, that she really was thousands of years old. And Tony needed to talk to her. He needed to know what that woman wanted with his parents, what she wants with his team, what she wants with him, and Tony knew exactly where his best bet to getting her attention was.

For now, he was going to make himself some coffee. He had a long night of hacking ahead of him.