A/N: Hi. *smile* I'm back! Sorry for the delay. And yes, I know this is a little short, and not much gets done... *cough* Anyway, Fear of Infinity is back on, and I'll talk more about that at the bottom.

Thank you to jy24, karina001, neah20, and guest for reviewing!

Title: Fear of Infinity

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: None

Genre: Drama/Adventure

Warnings: None

Summary: When Loki mentions two more Infinity Stones, aside from the Tesseract, that fell to Earth thousands of years before, the Avengers are thrown into a centuries-old war between Dark Matter and Innocence - also known as the stones of Mind and Soul.

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man, and the Avengers are but a dream that is not my own.


The investigation began in the later hours of the morning, when the sun was higher and the world wasn't half-obscured by darkness.

Natasha rose to find Zokalo already awake, one loop of his Innocence off his shoulder and in his hands, where he fiddled with it in boredom, tracing the edges and pricking his thumb on a spike.

"There are less self-destructive activities to pursue, you know," she noted, slipping in with a cat's step.

He glanced up and smirked at her, offering only a shrug. "Eh, that's no fun." He lifted his thumb to his mouth and licked the blood off absently. Most people, Natasha would accuse of doing it for pure intimidation effect. Zokalo, she suspected, had no such motives.

Natasha perched on a stool not far from him, watching him with a feigned air of apathy. He returned it with completely genuine apathy, which was almost… refreshing. It would be a mistake, of course, for him to assume that he had any sort of significant advantage over her in a fight, but, recalling his behavior around Klaud Nyne, Natasha didn't think that was it. Rather than assuming she posed no risk to him, he just simply… didn't care.

"Any ideas on where to start?" she asked, more to hear what he'd say than because she had no plans of her own. She suspected that he was apathetic. She was not disappointed.

Zokalo shrugged and pricked his forefinger. Natasha considered the potential benefits of confiscating his 'toy' and decided the ensuing scuffle wouldn't be worth it. "I don't give a shit." He glanced up, considered her slightly (carefully) irked expression, and gave a slightly uneasy grin. Ah. Not as careless as he appeared, then. "The illusions'll probably be thickest closest to the Innocence, it usually works like that."

"Of course it does," Natasha sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Of course what what?" Tony, with a cup of coffee in his hand and squinting drowsily, stumbled in drunkenly and collapsed next to Zokalo, slopping some coffee onto the table. "It's too early."

Zokalo shot him a grin and waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry your pretty head about it, Stark. Me and Lady here are talking business."

Tony squinted him suspiciously, but apparently decided he was too tired to deal with Zokalo's antics and gulped down half his cup of coffee. Natasha knew he'd brought the grounds with him - in typical Stark fashion - but she did wonder how he'd managed to formulate it into actual coffee in the state he was in.

This was more or less how Natasha felt about Tony one hundred percent of the time, so she felt somewhat vindicated by this.

"Are you talking business without me?" Bruce asked, conveniently choosing that moment to appear, bearing a cup of tea and much more visibly awake than Tony.

"We left Tony out too," Natasha said fairly, and Tony lifted his head.

"Huh?"

Natasha refrained from rolling her eyes. "Wake up, Stark, we're making a game plan."

Tony grumbled, but eventually, he rallied himself enough to prop his head up and stare at them hazily. Natasha decided that was close enough and looked at Bruce.

"Zokalo says that the illusions will be thickest when we're closest to the Innocence. We'll have to find out at least approximately where that is, and do our search from there."

"We could ask the finders first," Bruce noted, setting his tea down. "They should have a decent idea of where to start."

Natasha nodded, and then ignored a rainbow monkey on the ceiling - the obvious hallucinations were much less alarming than the, say, five completely believable people who had thus far entered the room through the closed door. Most of them had disappeared, but one of them was lingering and watching; Bruce had to glance at Natasha and get her confirmation to guarantee that she was a hallucination. They blinked out a few minutes later.

Natasha shook her head subtly and found Zokalo frowning at the same place, a surprisingly deep furrow in his brow, before he snorted and swung his head to refocus on the conversation, same as her.

"What other signs are we looking for?" Bruce asked Zokalo, who 'hm'ed disinterestedly.

"Akuma swarms are usually a good sign. Green glows. Shit like that, there's an Innocence around." He shrugged, finally returning his Innocence to its resting place around his shoulder. "Sometimes it's more subtle than that, and then it's just a pain in the ass, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess."

"Nothing more to it," Tony muttered in agreement, finally sitting up and stretching with a grimace. "Ow."

"Old man," Zokalo smirked, never mind that he was at least close to Tony's age.

"Shut up, spiky."

The finders appeared close to forty minutes later, and they spent almost another full hour making up a more detailed game plan. The hallucinations apparently got more intense the closer one got to the center of the town, so that would be where they headed first.

That decided, they set off.


How can they talk for so long without getting anything done? *sigh* I swear that only happens in this story. Anyway! So this marks the continuation of Fear of Infinity, which is nice. Now, as those of you who follow me more closely may have noticed, my writing schedule has gotten more intense since I last had this on. So, as this one still isn't one of my focuses, it's getting put on the 'back burner', so to speak. That just means that it'll get updated every two weeks instead of every week. I'm also shifting the update day to Saturday, because as it turns out, I can't handle writing two chapters the night before. *laugh* And I stupidly put Blackberry Bushes on Friday updates. So, the update day for Fear of Infinity will be 'alternate Saturdays', and I'll update my profile to match as soon as I remember. *smile* Thanks for reading, and please review!