Hello my friends, sorry for the long break, was suffering from writer's block and then the holidays came up. Well now that things have quieted down I will be doing my best to post regular updates! Well, with that said here is the next thrilling chapter in the series and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it! I don't own Marvel, it's intellectual properties or it's characters, this is a fanfiction I do for fun. Here is…

Chapter Twenty-nine

Harold Joseph Hogan, better known to his friends as Happy Hogan, held Morgan Stark tightly in his arms as they rode the elevator up to the recovery ward in the hospital. Once Happy had regained consciousness and could calm the terrified daughter of his friends, he used his cellphone to call Pepper to see where she was. Instead of hearing the voice of Stark Industries CEO, Friday answered and had told him what had happened and where to go. Once they reached the hospital,Morgan was non stop with questions. "Is mommy alright?" Happy looked straight on ahead, not daring to catch sight of the tear filled eyes of his niece. He needed to be strong for her no matter what, and he knew that would be more difficult if he saw her cry.

"Mommy's just fine, sweetie. She's just getting some boo boos fixed up." Happy tried his best to keep his voice even and convincing. "Did the man pretending to be daddy hurt her?" The Head of Security cleared his throat a little before answering. "Well sometimes when people help other people in danger, they get hurt too. It happens to everybody, police officers, soldiers, superheroes. See, your mommy was already a superhero before she became a superhero, because she's your mommy and mommies are always the best superheroes. So she may have gotten hurt but it wasn't that bad, because she's the best." Morgan sniffled and smiled a bit, just as the tears came back. "But you didn't answer my question, did the guy pretending to be daddy hurt her? Why was he pretending to be daddy?"

Before her uncle could answer the doors to the elevator opened, with Peter standing there to greet them. "Happy, Morgan! Thank God you're both alright!" The young wall crawler said and wrapped them both in a tight hug. Morgan clung to her surrogate brother's neck, transferring herself from Happy to Peter, and the trio walked down to the recovery room Pepper was in. As they walked, Peter tried to say in a low tone to Hogan so Morgan wouldn't catch on. "Now, there's a few things you should know when we get in there. Pepper's out of danger and resting comfortably. She's awake, but sore. We gotta keep Morgan from tackling her. Also, there is one more thing. It's really important and we…" the young man never got to finish as the young Stark squealed in his ear as she caught sight of her father, Tony Stark. "Daddy!!!" Morgan squirmed out of Peter's grip and ran to Tony. He had been talking to the nurse, asking when Pepper may be able to eat in order to keep her strength up when the excited voice of a child calling for her father caught his attention.

He hadn't realized the call was for him until her small body had tackled his legs, nearly taking him out at the knees. Looking down at her, all he could see were Pepper's beautiful eyes crying tears from a broad range of emotions down the cheeks of her innocent face. Tony melted then and there, falling to his knees and scooping the child into his arms. My daughter! Pepper and my baby, here on my arms. And I almost killed her mother, how can I look this kid in the eyes with what I did? Stark beat himself internally as he cried, burying his face in the little girl's hair, until he felt Peter's hand on his shoulder. "Mr. Stark? We should probably go into Pepper's room and talk this out. Come on." Tony let himself be led back up to his feet and move to the room, until Happy blocked their way in. "Kid, take Morgan in to see her mom. Hold down things until I get back. I gotta have a talk with this...Mr. Stark." Stark nearly recoiled from the dark tone in Happy's voice, but he knew he deserved it. He handed Morgan over to Peter and watched them go in, and nearly yelped in surprise as he felt himself dragged away to a less busy hallway.

Hogan grabbed Stark by the front of his shirt and hauled up so his feet dangled from the floor as he said in a harsh and hushed tone. "Who the hell are you?! What did you do to Pepper? I swear to all that's holy if you're one of Beck's illusions I'll…" Tony managed to hold up his hands and say. "It's me. Tony. Tony Stark. You're real name is Harold Joseph Hogan, you were a professional boxer back in the day. Nicknamed Happy because you never smiled, it stuck with you ever since." Happy shook the man in his hands as he said, "That's common knowledge, everyone knows I boxed and worked for Tony afterwards. You gotta do better than that!" Again Stark began to explain, "We trained together, in the boxing ring, remember? I kept using mixed martial arts on you to throw you off and you called it dirty boxing?" Hogan's stance shifted, as his tone did as he asked, "Alright, what else? You know that I have no trouble throwing you out that window over there, armor or not. Right?"

Tony suppressed a laugh as he replied, "After the explosion happened that put you in the hospital, you remember waking up to seeing the TV on with Downtown Abbey playing and everyone else was wearing their I.D. badges properly?" Happy placed him back down but didn't let go, as he said. "Yeah, it was really nice to wake up to that. How did you…" Tony put a hand on his friend's shoulder as he replied. "I told the head nurse about all of that, how you thought the show was elegant and you were a stickler for the rules. I wanted you to be comfortable when you woke up." Hogan breathed a sigh of relief and crushed Tony in a tight hug. "Can't believe it's you man. I missed you! We all did! How did you get back?" The smile on Stark's face fell as he answered back somberly. "I'm not exactly back like you think I am. I'm not the Tony Stark from this time. And if I don't go back, it could have serious repercussions for everyone." Happy could only stare with this mouth hanging open as he searched for the right words to say.

Dr. Strange stepped through a portal into Natasha's room, calming down the staff in there and rushed over to her. "I've been instructed by a reliable source to take you and the twins into protective custody. We'll leave as soon as you're ready." The Master of the Mystic Arts said as the Avenger shrugged off doctors trying to assess her injuries. "Will it be safe for them? To travel I mean? They literally were born hours ago…" Strange nodded his head as he waved his hands at the twins bassinets, levitating them to follow them into the sling ring portal. "They'll be just fine, I promise. It's literally stepping from one point to the next. Trust me." The Black Widow narrowed her eyes slightly as she said, "I've been told to trust people before, and it's come back to bite me in the ass. Just recently in fact. Not saying I don't trust and love my husband but with what just happened with his doppleganger I hope you can understand my need to make sure you are who you say you are in order to protect my children."

"I'll say this, even with all the powers and knowledge I have, I still wouldn't want to get on your bad side. That is exponentially multiplied now with your children's lives at stake. I'm here to help, please let us move quickly." With that the Black Widow was reassured and followed the Sorcerer Supreme into the portal. They exited into the Sanctum Santorum, where Wong, the Dark Widow and her daughter were waiting. The Dark Widow was kneeling on the floor, her daughter's face buried in her neck. A look of joy and relief on the wounded Avenger overrode the pain of her injuries for the time being. The super spy saw her counterpart's physical condition and ran over to her, kneeling next to her as she asked two questions that mattered most to her. "Nat, are you alright? Where's Steve, is he alright?" The other Nat opened her eyes to look at her twin and replied. "I'm fine now, as long as she is safe I don't care what happens to me."

She took in a breath, as pain and exhaustion began to catch up with her on top of her unease of what had happened. "Steve is still fighting the Black Tarantula. Loki transported us here and went back to help him." Natasha looked as if she'd just been slapped in the face. She rounded on Dr. Strange, "Take me to them now!" The Master of the Mystic Arts shook his head in defiance as he said. "You are in no condition to be fighting. Your rib is still healing and you gave birth mere hours ago. You go there now you will die. Then who will protect your children?" The Dark Widow spoke up then, "You have to trust that Steve will be ok, he would trust you if the situation were reversed. He is an Avenger just like us, he'll do whatever it takes to stop whatever the Black Tarantula is trying to do." Natasha hesitated for a moment before looking back at the twins. She closed her eyes and blew out a heavy breath and nodded her head in agreement.

"Alright. As soon as I have healed though I am going to help Steve. I'll gather the Avengers and we will take the fight to the Black Tarantula. If we don't act quickly he could be more dangerous than Thanos was." The Black Widow said, trying to steel herself for whatever may come, but finding it difficult to push aside her fears for her family. Her counterpart said then as if reading her mind. "Loki sent us here for a reason. To have the wizards here put us in the mirror dimension in order to keep us safe. That way Steve's doppleganger can't use the Infinity Gauntlet to kill us or worse." The Dark Widow looked back up at her twin as she said. "I know what you're feeling. I know you're struggling to control your fear, the fear you're not an Avenger anymore. Fear that you can't protect your children or your husband. I went through it. It will pass. But if you try to fight now with that fear in you it'll only lead you to make more mistakes. You don't want to go through what I went through."

Shocked, Natasha could only stammer out, "I-I can't just hide. I can't just hide and do nothing while everyone else…" the Sorcerer Supreme chimed in then, "You won't be doing nothing. You will be surviving. You've already proven you're a great leader, like Captain America. If he falls you will need to take his place in the role of leading the Avengers, and making sure that the children of Black Widow and Captain America may live to inherit their parents legacy." The super spy nodded her head, moving to her children and gently caressing their faces. "How long will we be there?" Nat asks in a soft voice in order to not wake the children. Before anyone can answer, a portal burst open in the middle of the room, with Captain America, Loki and the Scarlet Witch stepping through it. Natasha ran over and threw her arms around Steve, before regaining her composure to look at her husband and ask. "What happened? Did you kill him? Is it over?" To which the First Avenger could only look away and shake his head.

As she looked at him, she could see the damage to his uniform, but no blood seeped from any wounds. The super spy caught sight of Mjolnir in Steve's hand, and as she raised an eyebrow he asked. "Did you ever doubt I was worthy to lift it?" Nat replied in a coy tone. "Oh no, I knew you could lift it. That time at Tony's party, when you all took turns trying to lift Thor's hammer, you were the only one to budge it. I have a feeling you could have picked it up then, I just thought the reason you didn't was because you didn't want to steal Thor's thunder." Each of them shared a laugh briefly before Cap said. "I plead the fifth on that." Hearing talk of his brother, the God of Mischief turned to Dr. Strange and asked. "The Black Tarantula said he snapped Thor out of existence. Did he? Tell me!" The others were not quite sure what to make of Loki's sudden concern, as he had in the past tried to kill Thor multiple times.

The Master of the Mystic Arts excused himself for a moment and stepped to the side. He looked into a mirror and began to converse with his reflection, and with a swipe of his hand changed to another. One right after the other Strange spoke to the Sorcerer Supreme from each parallel universe, until he found the one Loki came from. They spoke softly, almost barely audible, before Strange walked away from the mirror. "I'm sorry, but yes. He did kill the Thor from your world." The Black Widow was still confused by Loki's presence as she asked. "Wait, if this is Loki from 2012, how could he come from a different dimension? Shouldn't he be from a different time? And if Thor was killed then wouldn't that kill him now?" Dr. Strange then began to explain in a simplified of a version as he could the ripples of traveling through time using quantum mechanics compared to using magic. "By using most scientific methods to travel into the past, in most aspects you're still bound to the laws of nature. The reason you can't change the past is because the past you seek now becomes your present and the present you left becomes your past. This distortion can actually lead to the creation of alternate realities or timelines."

"You would have to use a method of science, or use magic, to step outside of the laws of time and nature in order to alter something in the past. Using quantum mechanics itself is basically sending you to alternate timelines to begin with. It's far more dangerous than actual time travel, as the slightest reverberations could have ripple effects across the multiverse, as we now can see." Steve absorbed all that in, and even though he knew he couldn't make total sense of it now as it out of his field of experience, he filed it away for later use. He commented then, "So you're saying that if you want to go back in time, the right way, it's gotta be with magic or with the right science?" Both the Sorcerer Supreme and the God of Mischief answered yes in unison. Realizing that the super spies and children were still at risk, Strange opened the pathway to the Mirror Dimension. "Hurry, we don't know what he'll do next."

Wanda spoke then, a hint of nerves and uncontrolled excitement in her voice. "You don't have to worry about that. He no longer has the Mind Stone. I do. He can't hurt you anymore." Dr. Strange turned to the Scarlet Witch and said calmly. "Wanda, that's not true. He could still do damage with what Stones he has. I know what you're thinking." They all turned from him to gaze at Wanda, who clutched the Mind Stone to her chest as the Sorcerer Supreme continued. "I know you love Vision and think you've got any easy way to bring him back. However, we don't know if he'll come back the same or not. We won't know what problems he might have or might cause." The young Maximoff shook her head as she said. "Come on, this is Vision we're talking about. He's one of us, we owe him!" Natasha began to turn to her to comfort her, until she found she was rooted in place. A glowing red haze of energy held her and everyone else in place as Wanda said in a near growl. "I'm bringing back Vision, and that's final. No one will stop me. No one."

The Dark Widow said through gritted teeth, "No one was going to step you! But don't you think that solving the issues at hand now would be a good idea? We could all work together to bring back Vision if you'd…" In a burst of power Wanda sent them all to the floor as she shouted. "No!!! You're just trying to step me! I won't lose him again." The Scarlet Witch flew through the ceiling then, continuing on until she left the building. Once she was gone the others could move again. "Great, we're down a heavy hitter now." The Black Widow said as Captain America helped her back to her feet. "Give her some time. She's spent all this time without the man she loves, she's bound to act irrationally. We should focus on the matter at hand."

Meanwhile, back in Boston, Taskmaster was stalking an injured police officer. The officer crawled backwards, taking aim with his Glock and popping off shots whenever he could. The bullets bounced off of Taskmaster's shield harmlessly, who chuckled to himself as he thought darkly. Thanks, Cap. Watching you has really paid off. Can't wait to see how you hold up against me when I'm through here. He drew his longsword from the scabbard on his hip and prepared to finish off the cop. A hail of gunfire chewed up the ground in front of him, causing Taskmaster to raise the shield to block the debris and any stray bullets. When he thought it was clear he looked over the top of his shield to see two booted feet slam into him. The mercenary was flung a great distance away, and as he came to his feet he saw Falcon land nearby him. "You should be ashamed of yourself. If you're gonna be a copycat, at least get it right man. You look like a cosplayer who can't make up his mind. Are you Captain America with that shield?"

Sam began to say before winging away back to the safety of the air as the shield whistled where his head had been. "Or are you He-man's villain Skeletor? I can't tell with that fake ass skull mask you be wearing right there and the larp sword you draggin around." Again Falcon was forced to swoop away as Taskmaster made a flying lunge to try and hack his flying advisory down to the ground. The Avenger retaliated by shooting his pistols at Taskmaster, trying to corral him away from police and civilians. Once he was sure he had him in a favorable spot Falcon swooped back down. Knowing that his opponent could photographiclly copy his movements and use them against him, instead of going for a drop kick, Sam killed the thrusters and had the wings retract. He hit the ground and went straight into a shoulder roll. He closed the distance between himself and Taskmaster and tried to land an upper cut.

The mercenary dodged the attack, slicing down at Falcon with murder in his burning red eyes. The sword bounced off the wings Falcon had extended in anticipation of what his foe would do. Taskmaster wheeled the deadly blade around to strike the other side, finding the same thing to happen as before. Grinning his skeletal teeth even more, the mercenary feinghted another strike at Sam, only to change it into a quick and powerful thrust. Again, Falcon had managed to think ahead and was already using his thrusters and wings to pull him backwards from the weapons reach. As Taskmaster looked up, Sam kicked him in the face, smirking as the merc fell into the dirt. "Man, thought this was gonna be a challenge. They all said you was hard!" Falcon said as he watched Taskmaster glare back up at him.

"Oh, you think that we were fighting the whole time? Nah, I was just stalling. Studying you. I think I got all your moves down now, you're dead man." The merc said, his voice modulator deepening his voice and adding malice to its tone. Unseen to Falcon, Taskmaster pushed a button on his gauntlet that recalled his shield to him. Thanks to antigravitic technology and gps tracking the shield flew straight and silent back towards them. Without warning it crashed right into Sam's thrusters pack, shorting it out. Taskmaster wasted no time in getting up in the Avengers face, engaging in a brutal display of martial arts skills. Sam did his best to hold his own, landing solid hits when he could, but it was clear the mercenary was the faster and superior hand to hand fighter. With a flying spin kick Taskmaster sent Falcon whirling to the ground, spitting out blood and saliva before looking back up at the terrifying sight of the merc. He picked up his sword as the shield flew back into his other hand, and with a maniacal laugh asked. "So, got any other bags of tricks you wanna show me boy?"

Falcon smirked, as a small blip appeared on his goggles, that was approaching at high speeds. "Yeah, I got one more. Say hello to my little friend!" Not getting the reference, Taskmaster jumped in the air in and effort to plunge his sword into Sam's chest when his faithful drone A.I. Redwing swooped in. It fired a grappling hook that attaches itself to Taskmaster before yanking him back to slam him into a parked car. The force of it knocked him out completely. "Well, one down. Wonder how Cap and the others are doing." Falcon said as he rolled Taskmaster over to cuff his hands behind his back and waited for the cops to arrive.

Well that's the end of Chapter 29! I hope you all enjoyed it and I'm sorry it took so long to get it up here. I am really going to try and make regular posts and updates. If there any ideas you want to see in the story feel free to leave them and I will do my best to see if they can fit in the story. I want to create the best story possible for you fans out there. Thanks for all your support, stay safe out there!