Chapter 27
Dudley and Sif shook hands, cameras rolling. “Enjoy your stay.” Dudley said.
“And you yours.” Replied Sif.
“Heimdall, take us back.” Ordered Thor, as the bifrost slammed down, and the reporters thanked the electromagnetic or pyrokinetic or something sciencey of a force-field like perimeter Tony Stark and co had put up.
Jane Foster fiddled with her tech, the first time she had gotten real good bifrost readings.
Dudley though, in the few seconds he shot through the bifrost, that it felt a lot like the floo system. In fact, this might even be the origin of the floo. He would see what Lilith thought. Then Hope was shooting through with him, and so was all the scientific equipment he had been I fired he was to take, with space for various plant, animal, food, and even air samples. There was a gas mask in his pocket just in case.
For all Lilith had given him all the bookings she had about Asgard, and he was unofficially trained to avoid any major faux pas, he was still the first human in recorded history to go to another planet.
He walked out of the bifrost along with Thor, Hope grasping his hand. She had experienced a portkey before, but this was not the same, not even close.
“There is a lot of gold.” Hope said.
“I have never thought on that.” Thor mused, before Heimdall cleared his throat and Thor said, “Ah, yes. Welcome to Asgard.”
“Thank you. Well, lead the way.”
Heimdall just stood there, stoic, gazing out with his seeing amber eyes, hands on the bifrost sword.
“The Allfather has said to lead the ambassador to the throne room, for an official introduction ceremony.” He said.
“Thank you, Heimdall. That is Heimdall, the all-seeing.” Thor introduced.
“Nice to meet you, although you might want to change that title.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because Earth is no longer in your sight, and even before that, because you never saw the real battles fought.”
“Which battles?”
“If you don’t know, I won’t enlighten you.” Dudley said. “But Heimdall isn’t the only seer*.”
Leaving that as his cryptic words, Thor, Dudley, and Hope set off for the citadel and the palace in its center.
*Yes, Dudley does know the whole story. All of it. Don’t underestimate him. He may not be the main character, but he’s pretty important.
Lilith picked up her phone, not recognizing the number. “Hello?”
“You’re the cousin of Dudley Dursley.”
“Yes, this is Lilith Stark speaking. Who’s calling?”
“This is Hank Pym and I want to know why exactly my daughter was sent off to an alien planet, and by a Stark,” he spit the name, “no less.”
“Mr. Pym, I spoke with Hope shortly before she and my cousin departed and it was their mutual choice for her to come along since neither of the two wanted to be separated from their respective fiancée. I don’t know what sort of grudge you have against my husband or his family but it would be nice if you wouldn’t let that cloud your vision”
“You mean my daughter was press-ganged by you Starks as a sacrificial lamb to some aliens for a power grab.”
“Mister Pym, what are you asking of me?”
“I want you to get your hands out of my family and bring her back.”
“Mister Pym, that is not my area, thank you for calling and have a good day.” Lilith said and pressed the big red button on her phone.
“She hung up!” Hank exclaimed to the dead line. “No, this is not happening again. Hope, I won’t lose you like I lost Janet.” Hank Pym muttered the promise to himself.
“Tony, you’ve been in the lab for 3 days straight, not even any coffee. Please don’t tell me you’re debugging JARVIS again.” Lilith said, walking into his lab. She was the only one he couldn’t stop from entering.
“New project.” He said zombie-like from behind his favorite computer screen setup, eight large curved screens all interconnected in a 180 degree array.
“Whatchamacallit?” Lilith had been raised proper, but she had been American for longer than that, not to mention the informality had always been her rebellion against the ladylike manners instilled in her by her father.
“Ultron Protocol. World protection so if anything happens to us. Or even before that.”
“I can’t, and you won’t for quite some time, remember? You look like you’re Teddy’s older brother and not his father.”
“We can still get hurt, and you can be put out of commission. You’re immortal, not everything-proof. What if an enemy gets to you? What if someone puts you in a coma? What if you are.” He paused, then forced it out, shakily. “Tortured?” He asked weakly.
“Tony, be careful, alright? Combine this with the Avalon Protocol, and give it sentience. We don’t want it attacking the wrong target.”
“Ok. I will.” And he did.
Hank would not give up. If an astrophysicist with no tech background but making her own equipment could make such a device, so could he.
It took him 2 months, but in the end, he did.
“Hope!” He exclaimed when the device connected.
“Dad? How did you get access to this technology? Not that I’m not glad you’re calling me, but Asgardians are a bit strange.”
“Hope, are you alright? Did they do anything to you?”
“Dad, I’m fine. I’m still the same Hope I was when I left.”
“Hope, you have to find a way back. Please.”
“Dad, I’m good here. I’m with Dudley, and we’re doing god work. Last week we managed to iron out so that Asgard’s main library and the library of congress would exchange information and records. This is never before seen work, good work.”
“Hope, please.”
“Dad, it’s as if I'm in another country. Sure I'm light years away, but a week after we got here, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Jane Foster hijacked the bifrost, well, reprogrammed it so Earth can use it just as well as Asgard. We’re on even playing ground here. You didn’t panic like this when I went to Japan to arrange supply lines for Pam Tech for three months. Why now?”
“Hope…” Hope lightly shook her head. Her dad could be paranoid sometimes, especially when the name Stark was somewhere involved. “Hope, I can’t lose you like I lost your mother.”
“Dad, I’m not going to die. I’m alive, and the readings we have so far of the atmosphere here say that while I'm here I’ll probably live longer.” She yearned to tell her dad it wasn’t the atmosphere at all, in fact, but the serum running through her veins, but that was the explanation the public would get, and with her father’s paranoia sometimes, he would get it too.
“Hope, Janet didn’t die. At least not the normal way. Remember what I told you about the Wasp suit?”
“Yeah, mom’s version of the Ant-man suit she used until she died. Or at least what it’s supposed to be, given I’ve never seen it.”
“Janet wasn’t murdered, that’s not why we had a closed casket. I didn’t have a body because she didn’t die in this world.”
‘You mean mom went to another planet? There’s a chance she’s alive.”
“Not another planet. Another realm, or whatever you want to call it, given you’ve probably picked up alien speech by now.”
“Dad, please. Stop storytelling and comparing about me here. I need to know.”
“Janet went into the quantum realm, and she didn’t return. You’re doing the exact same thing. Please, hope. I can’t lose you too.”
“Dad, give me another few months here.”
“Hope, please. Let someone else do it. Don’t the Starks have their fingers in all of this?”
“I can’t leave yet. Tomorrow we have to do a psych eval of Loki, the guy who tried to invade New York 3 years ago. Or rather we have to be on there so the device from the White House with actual expert Psychologists can latch onto our energy signatures. There has been a resurgence of Norse paganism recently, a SHIELD team dealt with some particular radicals, and a lot of hubbub about how we have to verify if he was actually guilty by our laws and what sort of sentence he got.”
“And what was it?”
“Life in prison for a dozen counts of mind control, which it enslavement combined with kidnapping and forced criminalism until the laws can be updated to accommodate it, the House is still debating on it, three years and it might take another few, as well as several hundredcounts of pre-mediated murder, not to mention thousands of counts of manslaughter from the people killed at the battle of New York, given the Chitauri army has been concluded to be of a hive mind therefore controlled by Loki until the connection was severed by the nuke Tony Stark flew into the portal.”
“When can you come back?”
“I don’t know, Dad. Dudley’s post here is pretty long-term, I left my second in command, Darren Cross, in charge of Pym Tech. Maybe in a year or two, when we’re ready to get married, because Asgard is nice, but it’s not home.”
“Hope, please.”
“Dad, I’m sorry. We can keep in contact, check in all you like, well, preferably not during all the political talks, but I do have free time. But their library is immense, and their tech is very different. Maybe I can find something, help find out what happened to mom.”
“I tried, Hope.”
“Well you’re stubborn and conservative. There might be something here that can help, or at least meshed with our own tech. Either way, thanks for telling me, and if you give me a few minutes I’ll start getting very mad it took this long. Nearly twenty years, dad.”
“I'm sorry, Hope.”
“Bye, dad.”
“Lilith, you would not believe what we found. Hope and I, that is.”
“Oh?”
“Turns out Hope's mom didn’t really die but went smiling in the quantum realm. So we looked into it, and I think that we can connect to her energy signature, since there’s a high chance she’s still alive, but we need to synthesize that and I’m not a scientist, and neither is Hope.”
“I’ll send it over to the right people. And Dudley?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you in a secure spot?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I need you to upload Asgard’s library, all of it, and I do mean the entire thing, to my personal database. You just gave me an idea and I need their research.”
“They’re already linking it over to congress and since their library is open to all, they’re also doing an exchange with Encyclopedia britannica. It’s all going to be there.”
“Not all of it, and you know it. Dudley, if the quantum realm is real, this is much bigger than you could ever have imagined.”
“Lilith, what’s in the quantum realm?”
“Do you remember the Asgardian stories we were both told as kids, of Life and Death?”
“By your father.”
“It doesn’t matter the source, the stories have certainly proven more valuable and stayed are far longer than he did. I’ve already proven half of them true, the part about death. The Quantum Realm is an alternate name for the place that is the origin of magic. It all ties together perfectly, how manic is everywhere. It doesn’t come from another realm overlaying out own, it comes from directly with it. Dudley, if we can access the quantum realm, the source of not only life but all of magic, deep, unlimited wells… Dudley, this isn’t just big. This is bigger than the infinity stones and the hallows combined.”
“Lilith, I have to ask. What are you going to do with this?”
“Dudley, you don’t trust your very own dear cousin? I’m practically your sister.”
“I do.”
“Good. Because the answer is absolutely everything. The powers of life have never been accessed by any since the Celestials are said to have gone extinct in their war against the Titans. The powers of death are not even known to most, much less anything about them recorded. I already wield one. If I can get the other?”
‘Lilith, are you sure your body can handle it? Especially when it’s your muddled genetics.”
“It has nothing to do with the fact that my bloodline encompasses 4, possibly 5 worlds’ dominant species, and the royal lineages of three of them. No, i will survive this. I can’t die, at least not for good. The worst case? My body burns out in eternal torture until the power is wrenched from my grasp by someone who can handle it. The best case? This won’t just change not just the world but the entire, infinite universe, Dudley. This can conquer the fabric of reality itself. Dudley, we can bring them back.”
“Lilith, I think a bit of your genetic insanity is peeking through. Either that or the Black family madness finally got you.”
“No, Dudley. Necromancy requires the powers of both life and death. I can tear back the veil of death, but like Cadmus Peverell, I can’t restore life. Even if I could find the Soul stone to restore a soul, the Reality Stone to bring them back, and the Power stone for the necessary boost, I wouln’t be able to use them. Death’s Hallows and the Infinity Stones are the one true opposite. They cannot be combined in one being unless they are all together. Six infinity stones and Three Deathly Hallows. Either way, it couldn’t be me, seeing as I’ve already died. But it can work within someone else. It can work within Darcy. There is still a chance, Dudley. Don’t sate it.”
“Lilith, are you sure this is the right thing to do?”
“Dudley, the four of us single handedly not only found and found a way to use all three hallows, we ended the single largest apocalyptic event ever in the history of Planet Earth. The twins could out-invent Tony when they were first-years. Professor Dumbledore had magic stronger than Merlin, and Mr. Weasley could meld magic with technology better than anyone else. Mum…. My mother out-dueled Voldemort and created a shield against the unblockable killing curse on the spot, Lee Jordan created the vastest intelligence network, so much so he had people inside the Death Eaters, imagine what he could do given the ever-expanding infinite universe? And Teddy, Teddy could have his parents back. His real parents. His whole family. Dudley, so could we. So could Tony. Dudley, this is good. Not just for us. For everyone.”
“What about overpopulation?”
“Expansions spells, refilling spells on food, if Wizardkind returned, Dudley, before the blood wars, we were on the brink of creating Avalon. A haven. If Wizardkind returned, there wouldn’t be a need for these things. We could solve everything. People who loved painting wouldn’t have to be stuck on minimum wage jobs barely making a living, and that’s the best case. Third world countries wouldn’t be impoverished. Earth could ascend to a higher level, as a whole. Utopia may be out of our reach because nothing is perfect, but we could make things far better.”
“And your network?”
“There will always be criminals. You just have to make sure you can control them and minimize their damage.”
“Alright, Lilith. You’re right. I’ll try. But please, don't do anything crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“The convergence is approaching.”
“It’s going to be a year, 3 months, 12 days, 8 hours, and 46 minutes late.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s how much time-Turning has been done since the last convergence.”
“Alright. Thank you, Lilith.”
“I’ll push through the tests.”
Dudley nodded, as he cut off the connection.