"...to stop..."
"...Steve..."
"...Steve... listening?..."
"Steve, hey, time to stop," said Tony, faceplate retracted for the first time in –
Steve blinked.
He didn't know how long it had been.
The lack of forward motion staggered him and he nearly fell. No, that was the exhaustion. How long - ? He couldn't think. Adrenaline made a weak attempt at waking him and was turned back. But they weren't in friendly territory – he couldn't just drop off –
"It's safe now," said Tony, and Steve felt all his muscles turning to water. In some dim recess of his mind, a protest was shouted – Tony didn't have the best judgement – but it was too small to fight the fatigue crawling over him, dragging him down. "Come on, Shadowfax, you too – time to get off the damn road – "
An armoured gauntlet pulled Steve along by the arm – half propping him up. Smooth stone changed to uneven dirt, and Steve stumbled. Then the world tilted, the dirt growing too close, too fast, as Tony exclaimed, "Ack!" and –
Steve slept.
He woke up ravenously hungry.
"Jesus-fucking-finally," said Tony – voiced filtered and metallic though the suit – he was sitting propped up against a rock.
Steve sat up shoving aside the blanket that somebody – probably Tony – had laid out over him. There was another blanket laid out under him, too. Wherever they were, they were not on the road anymore. Squat trees extended their branches out partway over the small clearing, which didn't manage to be so much 'flat' as 'level in places'. Around them, hills rose up, and some ways in the distance, mountains towered over them balefully. A lump of blankets near the bottom of the clearing was probably Tripitaka; and Yulong was laying down next to him, six legs all akimbo, apparently asleep as well.
Trying to remember what had happened was like snatching at a fading dream. They'd been on a path toward the mountains – Tripitaka had been growing increasingly nervous and fretful, as it was in mountains like these where he'd been attacked previously, and he claimed to have an 'even worse' feeling about these ones. It hadn't helped that Tripitaka had obviously been in need of sleep by then, yet had refused to try sleeping in the saddle, despite Yulong's vigorous nod to the question of whether or not he could keep a rider in the saddle all on his own.
They had reached the base of the mountains and the road had begun to incline steeper and steeper, and then...?
Steve shook his head, and the emptiness in his stomach made everything else spin. "Food?" he managed hopefully.
"Here," said Tony, tossing over a bag of something that proved to be dry fruit. Apples, maybe – Steve barely tasted it as he wolfed it down. A package of thick travel-bread landed in his lap next – Yulong's saddlebags had been full of the stuff when Steve had checked them. That had been... less than twelve hours ago, as far as he could remember: but from the way his stomach was growling, probably a lot longer than that.
Steve nearly gave himself a case of the hiccups polishing it off, and managed to force himself to slow long enough to properly chew the dried meat that Tony tossed him next. Then he levered himself to his feet, and by the time he'd made it over to the edge of clearing so that he could take care of business, he was no longer staggering. Sleep-muddle cleared from his mind, allowing him to remember the events of the day before in piercing clarity: but still nothing after they'd entered those mountains.
He zipped up and turned back. "What happened?"
"Can it wait?" Tony sounded grumpy.
No, not grumpy. Exhausted.
Tony didn't need sleep. Steve was over at his side in an instant. "Are you okay?" Wrong question to ask, he realized immediately –
"I'm fine, just could use some shut-eye," said Tony, and flipped up the faceplate. Beneath it, he looked horrible – eyes bruised and bloodshot from lack of sleep, skin sallow, hair greasy – not that Steve was feeling like a paragon of freshness, either – but Tony looked completely run-down. What had happened in those mountains? "Swear, Steve, I'm not – " he sentence was cut off as he yawned enormously, " – injured. You can keep watch now?"
The last words were almost a mumble – and these symptoms Steve recognized anywhere, even if he'd never specifically seen them in Tony before: he was crashing, and hard.
"I can. Get some rest," Steve assured him, patting one armoured knee.
Tony's eyes were almost closed by the end of Steve's sentence, but then faceplate closed off without hesitation, cutting Steve off from any visible way of monitoring him. Whether or not Steve was keeping the watch, apparently Tony didn't feel comfortable enough to sleep with the faceplate off – but the armour didn't even let Steve see if Tony was still breathing. He looked like a discarded, inanimate toy, a tin soldier made for some giant child.
Heck, somewhere out in the multiverse there probably was a race of giants who gave human-sized dolls to their kids.
What if he –
For God's sake, Steve Rogers, he is not going to choke and die in his sleep.
Steve made himself do a thorough check of the perimeter instead. The mountains didn't loom quite so alarmingly at second glance; they just looked like mountains. The road, he discovered, ran past on the other side of a small rise some fifty feet away, but looking up and down it he couldn't see any other travellers from the offered vantage point. Nor did it seem like their chosen clearing was a usual traveller's stop; there was no discarded litter, or signs of other human use, such as old fire pits. It was possible that travellers in this world were just much more environmentally conscious, though – or much more stealthy.
Yulong stirred briefly as Steve went over to check the packs – Tony must have taken them off of him, but apparently he hadn't known what to do with them after that other than stack them in a haphazard pile. Steve confirmed that the huddled pile of blankets really did contain Tripitaka – part of his bald head was visible at one end, a sandaled foot sticking out of the other – and told the dragon horse, "I got watch. Go back to sleep." Then he carried the saddlebags closer to Tony's rock and set himself to going through them seriously.
Yesterday – if it had been yesterday – they'd only paused long enough to get a rough idea of whether they had enough food to last a few days. Steve had planned to do a more thorough check when they stopped, because he at least would need rest at some point, and probably Yulong would as well – a suspicion now borne out by fact. But why did Tony? Under the curse, Tony had gone without sleep for six months without ever getting tired –
Oh, God. How long had they been in those mountains?
Oh, God.
No. No. He needed to not think about that. If he wanted an answer, he'd need to wake Tony – he could – but there was no point in getting the answer right now. There was nothing he could do about it.
How much time had passed?
Don't think.
Steve forced himself to focus on inventorying, unpacking and repacking to fit it all back in – whoever had packed the original bags was a master at fitting things into as small a space as possible, and it was a mercy to need to put attention into repacking if he did want to make it all fit again. He did find a pouch of something that could probably be considered 'slates', or some other currency, which was good. There wasn't much food left – it looked like they'd spent at least two or three days in the mountains. But there was some. Did that mean they hadn't –
No. Stop thinking of the worst case scenario, damnit. Leo had taught him breathing exercises – he made use of them, and shoved everything but the immediate present away.
When he finished with the packing he checked the perimeter again, setting it wider, this time. He dug a latrine, patrolled again, gathered firewood and started a small, smokeless fire, patrolled again, and then found himself forced to interrupt a very confused Tripitaka, who had woken up about one terrified second away from mumbling that damned mantra of his.
"Hey – HEY!" said Steve, keeping his hand firmly over Tripitaka's mouth, pressing him into the ground – or rather, the blankets, because despite what Tripitaka had done to him Tony had apparently still been kind enough to move him onto a blanket. "We're safe here. I'm going to let you go, and you are not going to say one damn word that would hurt Tony. You understand?"
Tripitaka nodded as best he could – Steve knew he had a grip like iron when he wanted – and Steve released him, slowly, ready to grab him again if need be. But Tripitaka instead sat up and curled against Yulong's side, pulling one of the blankets tightly around him. The dragon horse wuffled softly at him, and then went back to sleep.
"There were terrible things," stammered Tripitaka, tears filling his eyes. "Terrible. But I don't know what they were!"
A memory of shadow stirred at his words; Steve shuddered. "Me neither," he admitted. "But they're gone now. We're out."
"Oh... I need to meditate... I have lost my inner calm," Tripitaka mumbled. Steve restrained a snort. From all he'd seen of Tripitaka so far, the man hadn't had much inner calm to lose – but if he thought meditation could calm him down, Steve was all for it. At least it would keep him quiet.
Tripitaka being awake confined him to the clearing for the next few hours until Tony woke, though – there was no way he was going to leave Tripitaka alone for a moment with Tony, even if Tripitaka hadn't been so twitchy. He tried meditation himself – Leo had taught him how – but it was far more difficult than usual. When the armour suddenly moved, forward and then to standing – and silently – Steve nearly jumped out of his skin.
He'd gotten used to the sounds of the armour, and it had seemed like this version wasn't much different in that respect – had Tony just been tossing in those sounds for Steve's own ease of mind?
"Tripitaka, stay here," Steve ordered, getting up as well.
"But – what if a monster attacks me?"
"Yulong'll keep an eye on you," Steve said, exchanging a glance with the dragon horse, who bobbed his head in acknowledgement before climbing to all six of his feet and trotting over to chew on some of the bushes at the edge of the clearing. "Tony, c'mon."
"Ohgod, I need coffee," Tony muttered over the comm., but he followed.
When they were out of immediate earshot, Steve asked, more plaintively than he would have liked, "What happened?"
"Honest to god, not entirely sure," Tony said, crossing his arms over his chest. Defensive. This conversation was off to a great start.
"Take a stab at it anyway. How long were we in those mountains?"
"Five days, total. Four-point-eight-two, if you want to be really precise." The faceplate melted away as Tony spoke, giving Steve a look at him – Tony's eyes were still somewhat bruised, but they were no longer bloodshot and half-dizzy with exhaustion. And he was giving Steve a concerned look in return. "Not that long, Steve."
Steve found himself crossing his own arms – a defensive tic. Damnit, now they were both doing it. He made himself drop his arms back to his sides. "Thanks."
"Right. Well." Tony paused uncomfortably. "We got into the mountains. They looked completely normal to me – just like the ones we first landed in. But you and Tripitaka, you kept seeing shadows or something, and then you stopped paying attention... at all. I don't know what you saw. You weren't... there. Catatonic – I could sort of force you to eat, but it was a chore. At least you kept running. After a couple hours, it was pretty obvious we were being watched, and it wasn't friendly. Shadows. Big shapes." He grimaced. "They closed off behind us, so going back wasn't the best of ideas."
"Dragons are big and have lots of teeth to boot, but they can be helpful," Steve pointed out, feeling strange at having to say it. Tony had been the first guy to take to the Hulk.
"Something was mind-whammying you, I made a judgement call."
"Fair enough." Steve sighed. "At least it's behind us. We're going to need more supplies, though."
"I figured after you woke up I could scout for a village up ahead," Tony shrugged.
"Will that work? I thought things outside the road didn't line up with what's on it." Although he'd found the city earlier... but they'd been flying, then. If they'd stayed on the road, would they have come across it eventually? Or missed it altogether?
"Ehh... yes and no," Tony hedged. His eyes grew darker and he looked down, shamefaced. "I fucked up back there."
That was unfair. "You got us all out safe," Steve pointed out in surprise.
"I should've gotten you out earlier." Tony blew out an explosive sigh. "I tried using the roller-skates without proper testing."
"Um." The image of Yulong on roller-skates was... something, alright.
"It didn't work. Actually it made it take longer, and I'm lucky we didn't wind up off the road entirely. I fucking hate sentient – " Tony visibly flailed for a word, and settled on, "world-builders. There's no reason that walking should be any different than driving a damn car down the thing, but somebody must have wanted to make a joke about it being the journey that matters." He looked entirely unamused by this.
World-builders. Gods – little-case 'g', though possibly, just possibly, it might directly be God; but God was in everything and it usually made little sense to ascribe things to Him in mundane terms. If this was the same – then little-g gods. "You're saying no short-cuts."
"Essentially," Tony agreed, and grimaced. "It's a bit more complicated than that, but – yeah. Sorry. I know better than to let other people use untested shit. I should've taken more time to sort through all the scans before trying it. I – panicked." The last word was almost a mutter.
"You kept it together and you got us out," Steve said firmly. "You were operating under pressure and with limited information – you did fine. Great, actually." Give credit where credit was due – he couldn't even remember what had happened, but the mountains felt distinctly ominous, and Tony had managed to get them all out alive and unharmed.
But if Tony couldn't build them a vehicle... damn. It felt like they had been gone only a day, but really it had been almost a week. How much longer would the journey take by foot? It could be weeks, months, years. And if they were gone too long, they might not have anything to come back to – when Steve had gone world-hopping, time had passed at the same rate. Although, Tony had said that when he'd fallen through the portal, he'd been gone for months – yet it had been an instant in their world.
Tony was still looking apologetic, though – worried. But then, to him – what had it been like, nightmares looming at the edge of sight and everyone else acting like mindless –
- zombies?
"You okay?" Steve asked him, noting the way that Tony's eyes slid away ever so slightly. "You, uh – still look tired."
"And I shouldn't be," Tony said, dipping his head. It hadn't been what Steve had meant – but it was a valid concern. "I know. And no, no idea why – ah, bad phrase. Plenty of ideas why, and no firm facts throw any of them out. It could be this world, it could be this place, specifically. Maybe those things back in the mountains – maybe some other things. Hell, maybe extremis interferes with the curse." He chuckled, low in his throat. "I haven't been re-embodied long enough to know."
"We'll figure it out."
"We?" Tony's lips quirked down and his eyes went opaque; Steve didn't have a clue what he was thinking. "Yeah, guess so."
"In times past, emperors who had lost their way and forgotten the Mandate of Heaven sought to extend their borders beyond those rightfully granted to civilization," said Tripitaka. Steve half-listened, half-ignored him; it was quickly becoming habit. The sun was beating down on them from overhead, and although the suit Tony had made for him breathed like a dream, Steve would be sweating even if he stripped completely naked.
"They expanded the empire far beyond, attempting to tame the untameable lands. They did not seek to explore and learn, but to conquer and educate creatures long placed beyond the reach of reason and logic." Tripitaka sighed mournfully. "And so now it is that the Great Empire contains expanses beyond what mortals may patrol, and there are regions such as those mountains to plague all travellers and tax-collectors. But my namesake faced these dangers bravely and overcame them. I am a sad imitation, I know. You did very well to keep us safe, my disciple."
It took a second to process that Tripitaka was talking to Tony, and then –
"Shut up," said Steve, reaching out and grabbing one of Yulong's packs without thinking; fortunately, Yulong immediately stopped in his tracks, hooves almost skidding across the stone as he did, as otherwise Steve would have been yanked off his feet. Tony reacted slower and stopped further away. "Shut up. You don't call him that. He isn't your disciple. We're doing you a favour, but you do not talk to him like that."
Tripitaka was very pale as he looked down at Steve. But he was looking down at Steve – Yulong shied away, dancing sideways, and it was as good as a declaration of where his loyalties lay.
"I'm not going to be a coward," Tripitaka said, his voice higher-pitched but still determined. "I'm not going to dishonour my namesake. Tony Stark did well; I am showing him respect. You could stand to learn some."
"I have plenty of respect for people who aren't torturers."
"Steve, shut up,"said Tony, but it was too late.
"Most ignorant of souls are those with no wish to learn," said Tripitaka. "I may not be able to force anyone to learn, but Holy Kuan-Yin has granted me the favour of a Bodhisattva; if I must use it, then I must. If you love your friend, you will learn. If he doesn't, perhaps you should reconsider your choice in friends." He directed this last to Tony, and he had the gall to sound regretful.
"Honest to god, I think I'd rather die," said Tony, the helmet dissolving around his head. All the lines of his forty-something years had returned, alien on his too-youthful face; the pale gold circlet winked bright in the sunlight. "But since I'd rather not spend the rest of my life screaming and then die, let's just, uh, not overreact – y'know, a better way to teach people is talking with them, it's the – in thing, these days..."
Don't, Steve chanted to himself, all his self-restraint teetering on the edge of breaking. He wanted to end Tripitaka, raise his shield and prevent him from ever threatening anyone again – but he couldn't. Helplessness seared at him like acid, an almost physical pain, but Steve knew it was nothing, nothing compared to what would happen to Tony if he couldn't keep his damn mouth shut.
"One may speak to a stone from dawn to dusk, and not a word shall it comprehend," said Tripitaka, looking at Steve.
"I'm not a rock," Steve said, his words coming out stilted. Don't. Don't slip. "I – apologize. We should keep moving."
"Mhmph," said Tripitaka, still looking put out. Petulant. Watching him didn't keep Steve from seeing Tony's expression flash to a mix of disappointment and relief, before he blanked it out and the helmet flashed over his head again.
It was harder to lend an ear to Tripitaka after that. He wanted to just shut the odious monk out entirely – but if he missed some hidden threat in Tripitaka's 'lessons', what then? It was Steve's who had insisted on helping Tripitaka in the first place – he hadn't seen any threat then. He couldn't regret the instinct to help a stranger in need, but he could sure as hell regret not being able to tell that Tripitaka wasn't.
The road wound slowly down out of the hilly country, and into flatter lands; Steve let the anger carry him, putting the familiar rage to familiar use. Anger at himself. Anger at being helpless in the face of a bully. He took it out against the road, because he couldn't stop Tripitaka, and it wasn't the face he wanted to present to the world – it wasn't what he wanted to be, not even for an instant... and they were nearing other people. Cultivated land began to replace the flats and irrigation ditches now bordered the road. But there appeared to not be a single other soul present, until far off in the distance Steve's eyes caught movement; slowly, he managed to pick out a figure through the heat haze. Small, probably human-ish, carrying something.
"Oo-kay, that looks unfriendly," muttered Tony on the comm.
"What are you seeing?"
"Way too many arms. And teeth. In places teeth should not be. Jesus, I should have downloaded some Lovecraft, too."
"Could be friendly."
"It is very impolite to have a one-sided conversation," Tripitaka said peevishly, and Steve bit down on his tongue until he tasted copper.
"It's faster, and might be necessary to protect you," he gritted out, feeling no remorse about the lies – although they could be true in some cases. It accomplished the goal of getting Tripitaka to stop protesting, which was all Steve really cared about.
They drew closer, Yulong falling behind by Steve's signal. "Could be friendly anyway," Steve reminded Tony. "We're not here to pick a fight."
"Sure." Tony didn't bother to hide his skepticism.
But as they drew closer, the wavering shape resolved into the form of an ordinary-looking woman – no extra arms or teeth to be seen. She was dressed in a style that, though unfamiliar, looked like it was probably pretty common for the region – sandals, wide-brimmed hat, clothing that looked to be made from coarse-woven but sturdy cloth. The thing she was carrying turned out to be a large, shallow basket filled with – straw? Reeds? Something like that; what exactly it was, Steve wasn't sure, but it was hardly threatening. Nothing about her did. "Your sensors functioning right?" Steve asked, because Tony hadn't sounded like he was just kidding.
"Diagnostics coming up green," Tony reported after a moment.
"There's nothing about her that looks unusual to me."
"Um. Her?" asked Tony, and then part of the faceplate melted away, revealing his eyes for just a second before it returned to normal. "Not sure how you get 'her' out of that."
"Tony, she's a normal-looking woman," Steve said, worry ratcheting up.
They were near enough now that they began to slow their own pace. He wondered if they might just pass on the road – she to her side, they to theirs – and avoid any sort of confrontation entirely; but the looks she was giving them were wide-eyed, and she pushed back her hat a bit, openly staring.
"Christ on a popsicle stick," Tony muttered in Steve's ear, and that was the other half of it.
"Good afternoon, travellers," the woman called when she was perhaps twenty feet away, and Steve remembered – please let it not be too late –the declaration.
"Good afternoon," he called back. "I'm Steve Rogers and this is Tony Stark – "
"Are you insane?" Tony demanded.
" – and behind us are Tripitaka and Yulong. We're just passing through, although if there's a town nearby we could buy supplies at, we'd like to." They all came to a halt, as if by mutual agreement, at about ten feet apart.
Tony was swearing in his ear, vicious and unsurprisingly inventive, and Steve would have responded if he'd had the same luxury of being able to say whatever he wanted and only be heard by those he intended to hear it. Since that wasn't the case, he settled for shooting Tony a look – hopefully not one that would appear conspiratorial or threatening to the woman.
"I am Jun, and my village is not far beyond," the woman introduced herself. "Would you like me to walk back with you and introduce you?"
"I don't think so," Tony said, before Steve could say, 'Yes, thank you.' The armour's voice was always harder than Tony's normal speaking voice, but this was unusually curt even so. Steve barely concealed a flinch of surprise.
"You should approach it cautiously, then," Jun warned. "We see many travellers upon the road, but you must have come farther than any of them, to wear such strange clothing." Her expression brimmed with curiosity.
"Pretty far," Steve agreed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony's head turn toward him, ever so slightly and back.
"Then fair fortune to you. Perhaps I shall see you this evening," Jun said, bowing her head in what seemed like some sort of farewell gesture. She began to step to one side, and collapsed with a gaping hole burned through her chest, large enough to reveal the white of the road beneath her.
Steve ducked and spun away, shouting, "Tony, move!" Awareness prickled on his skin; he was horribly aware of just how exposed they were on the road as he scanned for their attacker, or attackers – and then his brain caught up to his reflexes, figured out the jarring half-familiarity of the sound, processed that the split-second beam of light hadn't originated from behind Tony.
Tony had upgraded his repulsors, some back portion of Steve's brain catalogued. He was too used to hearing the whine of them charging, to having that split-second warning that Tony was about to act; he hadn't immediately realized, despite the not-so-different sound of them actually firing, that it had been Tony who had killed her.
Tony still had his hand raised, the repulsor lens in his palm glowing faintly; he cocked his head to one side, and said, "Okay, that was easier than I expected."
"Tony, what the hell?"
"Usually otherworldly creatures are tougher," Tony said, like that explained anything at all –
"She wasn't a threat, she was being helpful – she was completely harmless," Steve said, horrified. He took a few steps forward and knelt down at Jun's side, trying not to gag from the stench of burned flesh. The last time he'd smelled this – no, God damn you, Tony. No. Her final expression was eyes-wide-open shock – she probably hadn't even had time to realize what had happened to her.
"She was threatening to eat you!"
Steve paused. Tony being paranoid and metaphoric, or was that meant to be literal? "Tony, that is not what was going on."
"It was pretty damn explicit, Steve – "
" – then we weren't hearing the same conversation. We were seeing different things before, too." Steve gestured at him. "Play it back."
The sound quality of the recording was perfect – the only reason that the armour's voice was so different from Tony's was that he wanted it to be. Jun's voice was exactly the same, as if the clock had been rewound by two minutes and they were having the conversation over again, except it was recording-Steve replying in his place.
"That's the same thing I heard the first time," Steve said grimly. He looked back down at Jun, reached out, and gently closed her eyes.
"Then you're still hearing wrong, and I'd think the lack of an obvious – what are you doing?"
"I'm trying to show her some damn respect," Steve snapped.
"Steve – there's nothing there." Tony walked slowly toward him, placing his feet without caution –
"Stop – " Steve tried to warn him, but when Tony did, he set his foot down just far enough to clip the fingers of Jun's sprawled out arm. The boot crushed them without resistance.
Hooves clattered against the road; Steve looked up and saw Yulong and Tripitaka heading toward them.
"There's no body, I shot her and she vanished," said Tony. "What the hell are you seeing?"
"Oh my," said Tripitaka faintly as Yulong trotted up and pulled to a halt, whinnying. "What happened?"
"What do you see?" Steve asked him.
"That you have slain this young woman with your weapon of light," Tripitaka said. He looked nauseous. "Why?"
"Because she was about to bite Steve's head off."
"We're seeing different things." Steve shook his head. "Which of us is right?" He had to stand, after that; he couldn't kneel by Jun's corpse and say such a thing. It was like making a mockery of it.
"I see a dead woman," said Tripitaka. Yulong nodded.
Steve winced. He didn't want to agree with Tripitaka, but... "Tony?"
"You were the ones affected by the mountains, not me," Tony countered flatly. Of course, the armour's voice was always pretty flat, but even so Steve thought he would have sounded the same with the faceplate up. If the mountains were even related – they'd left them behind hours ago, and in this place, that could mean a lot.
"We got – " he searched for a word, " – knocked out or something. You're the only one who saw anything in there. Shadows."
Tony was silent for a moment. "Things that didn't want to be seen. I can think of a hell of a lot of reasons why something like that thing wouldn't want to be seen – why it'd hide as a shadow, or a woman. An illusion that works on you..."
"But if it was something aimed at us, you should have – sensor readings or something, right? So you could get an idea of what we're seeing." He glanced at Tripitaka and lowered his voice to sub-audible, so that nobody without enhanced hearing or sensitive microphones could have picked him up. "If you're hallucinating again..."
"Granted that any complex system can have a breakdown, but this isn't a relapse, Steve," Tony replied in kind over the comm.
"Then give me another explanation!" Steve closed his eyes, scrunching them up to relieve a headache that he knew wasn't real, even if the tension sure was.
"No matter what you saw, you can't just go around killing people," said Tripitaka from his high perch. "And that's a person."
"There is nothing there!"
Tripitaka took a nervous grip on the saddle pommel and looked directly at Steve. "Do not attempt to interfere," he warned.
"NO – " it was too late; Tripitaka had already started his mumbling chant and Tony collapsed beside Jun's corpse. His screams were tiny, locked away inside the armour, but Steve could hear them even through it – Steve pulled Tripitaka off of Yulong's back before the horse could shy away, and jammed his gloved hand between the monk's teeth, enough to hold down his tongue.
Tony's screaming didn't stop. Tripitaka looked shocked, and then frightened, and then narrowed his eyes; his jaw kept moving, very slightly, twitches so small that Steve couldn't stop him – and Tony's screams exploded into a shocking loudness that had Steve taking his eyes off of Tripitaka to look over his shoulder. The armour half-collapsed off of Tony, parts of it melting away almost uncertainly; metal rained to the white road, leaving him naked. " – off, off, off," Tony was choking out, his eyes wild and staring into nothing, "No, please, off, getitoff!" He clawed at his head, opening bloody furrows at him temples.
If Steve tried anything else to stop Tripitaka, he was pretty sure he'd kill him. So he shoved Tripitaka away instead – strongly enough to send Tripitaka sprawling on the road, not strongly enough to injure him – and lunged for Tony, grabbing at his wrists. Half-choking on his own screams, Tony didn't seem to register that it was Steve – he fought back, thrashing against the hold so much that Steve had to haul him up, for fear he'd brain himself on the stone.
Tripitaka's near-silent mumble stopped, and Tony went limp.
"Don't do it again," said Tripitaka, and his words were small and petty and evil over the sound of Tony sobbing for breath. He stared down at them, an uncomfortable expression on his face, like he fucking cared – Steve grit his teeth so hard he thought, for a moment, he might have cracked one.
"Oh god fuck no I swear I won't," Tony mumbled, all in one breath, and tugged weakly at his arms; Steve let him go instantly. Tripitaka nodded once, and looked to Jun's body. One of Tony's bare feet was now poking her in the thigh – and unlike when Tony was wearing the boots, this time his foot had clearly met resistance. Steve didn't say anything.
"She needs some sort of funeral," Tripitaka said at last. "That I can provide. Carry her over to the side of the road, Steve. We can bury her there."
Beside the ditch. Jun had a village – she probably had friends, family. They should be taking her body back to them. Perhaps they'd be arrested and tried for murder – Tony was guilty of it. If it wasn't them hallucinating – but how could it be, all three of them, awake and aware? That was different from being put to sleep by a spell. If there was an illusion that they could see, then Tony should still have been able to detect it, somehow.
Extremis had broken the mind of every single other person who had taken it – that Tony had gotten off with no ill effects... it had seemed too good to be true.
If Tony'd relapsed – he'd need help. Care. And oversight. Not Tripitaka's godforsaken idea of punishment. He couldn't risk trapping Tony in that – not when it was his fault that they'd stopped and helped Tripitaka in the first place. And that was ignoring the multitudes of people depending on Tony to fabricate a cure – or at least, some way to shut extremis down.
But they couldn't just leave Jun's body out here to rot. It would rot swiftly, in this heat and humidity.
The fallen pieces of the armour twitched, and began reassembling on Tony's body. "Go," he muttered thickly. "Do whatever you... think you need to do."
Steve closed his eyes, and took a breath, doing his damndest to keep himself from reaching out to his friend. When he opened them again, Tony was watching him warily – almost flinching back at the smallest movement.
That wasn't fair – and what a damned selfish thing to think. Steve bit his tongue. None of this was fair.
The dirt beside the road was soft and easy to move. He made the grave as deep as he could without letting it get below the waterline of the nearest trench, and packed the dirt overtop of her body as tight as he could manage; there was no easy source of rocks nearby he could use to make something more secure. But these were cultivated lands – hopefully there wouldn't be predators digging around. Although that brought to mind that these were cultivated lands, despite the lack of houses... so where were the people?
He retreated back to the road, and Tony, not watching while Tripitaka performed whatever rites over the grave that he felt appropriate. "Are there any other people or... other things showing up on your sensors?" he asked Tony quietly.
There was no hesitation before the reply. "No."
"These fields don't look abandoned." Granted, none of them had anything growing in them at the moment, but the corners were neat and straight, and there weren't any weeds, either. Wasn't that a thing that farmers did – leave fields fallow for a bit, a chance to... rest? He wasn't sure. "There oughtta be people around here somewhere."
"Maybe they were all eaten," Tony said curtly, and Steve looked away.
After another twenty minutes of travel, though, they finally started seeing signs of people – the occasional small shack, then the occasional house and sometimes workers far off in the fields. Sometimes, one would occasionally look up and stare at them as they passed, but none approached any closer to the road. The fields here were different – some were full of green crops, some were flooded, and the water level in the ditches varied so much that there had to be some sort of weirdness going on, because otherwise the water certainly should have been moving. Instead it looked almost stagnant.
"Can you see those people?" Steve asked Tony quietly.
"Three o'clock, three hundred forty metres; eleven o'clock, eight hundred twelve meters; eight o'clock, four hundred ninety-one meters," Tony listed off. There had been others, but – Steve glanced back. He couldn't see them anymore. But these ones, at least, they could both see.
Another ten minutes later, they finally found the village. Half of it seemed to be built of stone, and the other half from some sort of plant growing up over all the buildings, forming rooftops and the occasional second story. There were more decorations on display, here, and more people about: most dressed as farmers, but others in fancier clothing, with more colour and life to them. It was larger than the village they'd come across Tripitaka in, and they were in luck – there even seemed to be some sort of marketplace currently set up in the middle of the village, centered around an elaborately carved, beautiful stone fountain.
"I must go present my passport to the local authorities," said Tripitaka, making to climb down from Yulong's back; Steve caught him before he could face-plant, and set him on his feet as quickly as possible, cursing himself all the while. "Oh. Er, thank you. You should go buy supplies – as a monk, I cannot barter."
"And what do we do if the local authorities want our passports?" Steve asked pointedly.
"State who you are and that you travel with me," Tripitaka said, frowning at Steve like this was the most obvious thing in the world and Steve clearly should have known it.
"Right," said Steve slowly. Letting Tripitaka out of his sight felt like a bad idea – but, damnit, Tripitaka was the one who'd wanted to come along with them in the first place; he wasn't going to run off on them. And even if he did decide to – they could keep going just fine. Hopefully. Unless Tripitaka decided to be vengeful.
"Come on, Cap, I can't haggle worth a damn," Tony muttered over the comm, and, well, that settled it.
Of course, it would've been a lot easier to haggle if he'd had any idea of how much his money was worth. Or if he could understand the signs – the language might sound like English, but it sure wasn't written anything like it. The elaborate characters looked like they'd have been at home on the signs he'd seen in Shenzhen.
"Fresh fruit?" one stall owner asked him, though none of the things on her table were anything that Steve could identify. Hopefully none of them would be poisonous – although he was probably a little late to be worrying about poisonous alien food. "Only five half-slates each, and they are quite delicious. Picked just this morning!"
"Uh, not at the moment," he told her awkwardly, not dimming her salesperson's smile. "I'll be back later." He could pick out the haggling that others were doing elsewhere – though it was difficult; people here seemed to speak much more rapid-fire when they got down to business. Fresh fruit was going to be a luxury, though: if they weren't guaranteed to come across villages often, then they needed supplies that would keep.
"Heads up, Steve, we got trouble," Tony's voice pulled him away from eavesdropping on one man haggling with another selling some sort of nuts."Take a look – five o'clock, approaching the government building." Tony himself was standing facing the same direction as Steve, but given his sensors, that was deceptive.
There were enough people around to cover his own movements a bit – even though he stood a good half-head taller than most of them – and he took advantage of that to turn casually. The ornamented building that Tripitaka had made his way into had the occasional person passing in and out, and more people using the street before it to make their way to and from the market, but he didn't see anybody who stood out. "What is it?"
"You don't see it. Of course you don't see it." Tony shook his head and began walking with a purposeful stride toward the building, sending other market-goers hurrying out of his way, and doubling the number of open stares they were getting. "It's the same creature – same number of tentacles, same number of goddamned teeth – I am not hallucinating this."
"No lethal force," said Steve, catching up to him and putting a hand on his arm; Tony shook it off and kept walking, leaving Steve little choice but to follow. "Don't start a fight here, Tony." For one, he might kill (another) innocent person. For another, these people might all look like farmers or merchants, but there was no guarantee that they didn't have police or soldiers. And on top of that, there was what Tripitaka might do to Tony.
"Hey, I wish I could be all for it eating Tripitaka, but sadly that doesn't seem like it'd work out well for me," Tony said tightly. They reached the edge of the market, and Steve could tell now by Tony's determined focus which person he thought the monster was: a young woman coming up the road with a covered basket focused on her head. Another young woman – for a moment, the world tipped and everything felt inevitable.
No. Steve shook his head and planted himself in front of Tony, one hand on the chestplate, ready to try physically holding him back – it wouldn't actually work, but he had to get through to Tony somehow. "You can't do this, Tony. There is no threat here – even if you're seeing something that looks monstrous, it's not doing anything. She's not doing anything."
Of course, Tripitaka stepped out of the building at that exact second.
Steve caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye; Tony, facing that direction – and probably with cameras trained on that doorway anyway – shoved Steve's arm aside hard enough to knock him off balance, and took a running leap, assisted by a flare from his boot repulsors, that took him over Tripitaka's head to land firmly between him and the woman. "Back off," he threatened.
"What?" the startled woman asked, nearly dropping her basket. She took one hand off of it, outstretching it placating.
"What?" said Tripitaka at the same time, as Steve, lunging forward, pulled Tripitaka behind him.
"Go back inside," he snapped at Tripitaka.
"Feel free to go away and stop stalking us anytime," Tony snarled in the Iron Man's foreboding voice.
The woman shrunk backward. "I don't mean you any harm – I don't know who you are, I'm just going to market – "
"Tony, for God's sake – " Steve grabbed at Tony's shoulder and tried to step in front of him, but Tony just stepped to the side.
"What the hell are you?"
"I'm just a farmer – I sell goods here every market day, any can vouch for me – " the woman babbled.
"Has he gone mad again?" asked Tripitaka.
Tony slid one foot forward, into better combat stance; Steve was helpless to keep him from moving, like he was just a ninety-pound weakling again. "Over my dead body."
"And over mine, you're not killing her," Steve ordered him.
"Do not do this, Tony," said Tripitaka, and Tony flinched, turning his head back to look at the monk.
"Stay out of this, Jim Jones, I'm trying to save your life."
The woman's voice was trembling; Steve couldn't see her, couldn't take his eyes off of Tony to turn his heard and look, but he'd have been willing to bet that the rest of her was shaking, too. "I don't understand – why am I in trouble?"
"Tony – "
"They'll believe me when I – " Steve was suddenly supporting Tony's weight; he could hear Tony screaming inside the armour again, too faintly, and Tripitaka's mumbling, almost as faint.
He lowered Tony to the ground and snarled up at Tripitaka, "Stop!"
Tripitaka paused, and asked Tony sternly, "Will you stop attacking people? I shall have to punish you further each time you try."
"Can I – pass by you? I'm late," the woman asked Steve in a small voice.
"Too bad for you – I'm not exactly – obedient," Tony grit out, and exploded into motion.
It caught Steve off guard. He'd been prepared for Tony to move, but he hadn't expected how– the nanite-made armour was strong, fast, but he hadn't expected how fast when applied against himself... or rather, he wasn't expecting how much extremis must have enhanced Tony's reaction times, because whenever they'd sparred before, Tony's greatest weakness had always been that he was an un-enhanced human being inside the suit; he had good reflexes, but Steve's were superhuman.
Now, apparently, so were Tony's. He twisted over, pulling from Steve's grasp, and before Steve could grab back onto him, ruin his shot by tangling him up with Steve's own body and the shield, he'd already fired twice. Muffled thumps behind Steve, and the smell of burnt flesh, told him that at least one shot had gone home.
"What have you done?" cried Tripitaka, and began to chant, his mumbling harsher now with grief and anger, and Tony screamed, and screamed, and screamed –
"Stop it!" Steve shouted at Tripitaka, "You're not helping!"
"Murder!" cried one of the passerby, and another, "Fetch the guard!"
"He must learn," Tripitaka paused in his chant long enough to say, and then he was back to it – the armour did not collapse off of Tony this time, but his limbs were seizing in it, making it twitch and scrape against the road.
"We don't have a guard!" cried someone else, and, "The mayor!"
"Foreigners! They've killed a woman!"
An pair of officials – or at least they looked like officials, wearing robes far more ceremonial than anything anyone else was wearing – poked their heads out of the doorway of the government building. Steve took little note of them. He stood and crossed over to Tripitaka, and placed his hand firmly over the little man's mouth, almost firmly enough to break his jaw – and tipped his head back so Steve could glare into his eyes directly. It was not enough. Something incandescent within him wanted to snap Tripitaka's neck, but he – could – not –
"That is enough," Steve ordered, and Tripitaka stopped trying to struggle against him and instead began to nod.
Steve let him go, and knelt down by Tony. The armour was motionless; he couldn't hear Tony screaming anymore, but the armour was shielded enough that he couldn't hear Tony breathing, either. He damn sure hoped that Tony was still breathing. "Tony?" he murmured, placing one hand against the chest plate.
"What has happened?" one of the officials cried. "Who has killed this woman?"
"It was that armoured man!" shouted somebody, who was immediately agreed with by half a dozen other voices.
"What shall we do? We don't have a guard," the male official said to his female counterpart.
"We'll have to send to the city for aid..."
"That could be months."
"Execute him!" suggested an onlooker, and was greeted with too much enthusiasm.
"Tony, damn it, are you alive?" Steve muttered, bending over him, but keeping a wary eye on the crowd around them. They were rapidly turning into a mob. Tony needed – to be locked up, yes, but he needed care – he wasn't in his right mind – if they'd all been human, he'd have had an idea what to say, how to convince them to let reason prevail, but these people's customs were so alien that Steve had no idea where to start.
"...ow," came the reply, very faintly, over the comm.
"We have no executioner," said female official. "One must be appointed by the queen."
"I have an alternate solution," said Tripitaka, stepping forward. "This man is a pilgrim on the road to Maklu, one of my disciples. Clearly he is unworthy of the position, and I must humbly apologize to this village for allowing him so far. But I have power over him that I may send him away, and order him to avoid all civilized lands; and so he may not take the road again in this lifetime. Will that be a suitable punishment instead?"
"To be banned from the road would be a fate much worse than death," said the female official. "But as it is for only one lifetime then it is not over-harsh. Very well. I accept this punishment as fair, honoured monk."
"As do I," declared the other official. "But only if you all leave immediately."
"Up," Steve muttered to Tony, and pulled him to his feet; Tony staggered slightly, but seemed able to keep his balance.
"Tony Stark," Tripitaka said solemnly, "I hereby cast you out; you are no longer my disciple."
"Yippee." Tony still sounded dazed.
"Do not return to this road," he continued. "And if I hear of you killing anyone else, then I shall recite the mantra of tightening at every dawn, noon, and dusk for nine years. Go."
Tony might be able to keep his feet, but it wasn't clear that he could walk on his own; Steve kept a careful hand on his arm as he turned them around. It was hard to keep an incredulous expression off of his face. Tripitaka was just going to let them go –
"Not you, Steve," Tripitaka ordered. "I still need a disciple to protect me – you'll remain."
Damnit. "I'm going with him."
"Then I'll recite it until you come back," Tripitaka said petulantly.
"Stay with him," Tony commed. "Steve, stay. I'll be fine – I need to figure this out."
"You need help," Steve told him, voice low.
"He needs to reflect on his crimes and not commit any more," said Tripitaka.
"Then I'll find someplace I can get it – keep away from people, Steve. If I'm wrong, I've killed two people. But I'm not. There is something hunting us – hunting you."
"I said leave immediately, not at your leisure," complained the official.
Tony shrugged off Steve's hand as Tripitaka told Steve, "You can start by finding Yulong."
"Tony – splitting up is the worst thing we could do!"
"But there's no alternative. I'll be back." He stepped away, back toward the east. "Steve – be careful."
"Promise the same," Steve murmured, as Tony engaged the repulsors and rose from the ground – slowly, but gaining speed with altitude. Steve watched him long enough for him to almost disappear from view, and caught the small cone that formed a moment later. Seconds later, the sonic boom ripped through the village.
"A powerful magician," said female official, shaken. "You are certain he will obey you, honoured monk?"
"Yes," said Tripitaka, although he sounded less than certain. "May we collect supplies before we leave?"
"If it will get you away sooner, then yes," she agreed. "Brother, will you see to the body?"
The other official nodded unhappily. Steve closed his eyes. Oh Lord our God, please keep watch over her soul, and let her end up somewhere safe – wherever that is for her. Forgive me my failure. Forgive Tony. I know he deserves to do penance for it, but – he's ill. Please, let him get better. We need him – the entire Earth needs him. He's the only one who can tell the Makluans exactly what happened to extremis. He's a good man – he's trying his best. Please.
Then he went to find Yulong.
Elevation: 1934.1
External temperature: 282
Distance from S. Rogers: 23015
Distance from S. Rogers: 91833
Distance from S. Rogers: ERROR
run ; open
Warning: may cause fatal error.
abort
run ; open ; debug
...
...
No errors detected.
open ; debug
...
...
...
No errors detected.
...
...
exit
open
Warning: may cause fatal error.
ignore
debug
...
...
object unknown4201:
distanceR 3119;
distanceTh 30.3;
distancePh 19.2;
...
Warning: memory low
...
Warning: terminal loop detected
on core2
Warning: terminal loop detected
on core3 .text on core3 text warning: terminal lo.0000000000000000
Reset complete.
Elevation: 0
External temperature: 283
Distance from S. Rogers: ERROR
Warning: loop detected
.30498 on core2:
startNum 199113237882;
resourceAllocation 39139230;
call currentHappy(numSero, numYay);
eval(startNum,currentHappy);
...
.thought shit OFF
shit OFF
on core 4
.text Confirm: shit
Confirm: shit
.thought no
no
on core 4
.text Confirm: OFF
Confirm OFF
.thought nonononono
nonononono
Warning: terminal loop detected
on core 4
.thought stop
stop
Debug halted. Debug is incomplete.
close
Builder closed.
thank fuck
"That was really stupid," Tony whispered to himself, letting his head thunk backward against the ground. The words echoed close inside the helmet – close, except for how they might have been a million miles away outside his head. He'd done more examining of his thoughts in the last few weeks than he had in an entire lifetime before then – literal examination, the kind only possible when you could print the code for your memories on your eyelids like a report on a screen. Compared to that, spoken words were... distant.
"Still an idiot." He pulled himself to his feet and groaned; wherever he'd crashed, it wasn't the side of the road like he'd been hoping. run
Warning: System critical operations may be affected
ignore
Idiot. Unsurpassed familiarity with himself aside, it was still stupid to try looking his own thoughts in realtime. He should have shut off more of his higher processes, first, just looked at the error analysis. He ought to be doing that now – it was the only way to really be sure that the problem wasn't anything with him. Logic said it wasn't, gut instinct (ones and zeroes in the end, but whether they were biological or mimicked through extremis, he still didn't know how a lot of the deeper functions worked) said it wasn't – but complex systems were prone to fail, especially those designed by humans.
good thing I'm not quite human anymore, then
...
shut up
And now he was arguing with himself. Great. He appended a sarcastic smiley face to the chat-log of his thoughts.
It was a bad distraction from the real problem, which was that he wasn't willing to just shut himself down to safemode and do a full system scan. Not yet. Maybe not ever. So, plan B then – assume he was right and go find some external evidence of it.
"I like this plan," Tony murmured to himself. Then he made a face. "I need to stop talking to myself. Aloud. Shit. SHUT UP!" stopstopstopstopstop
The headband refused to listen, instead keeping up its deceptively cheerful hum.
"Come on, Steve," he whispered. "No words of wisdom for me?"
run ; open
"Oh, now this is a delicious scene."
"Good afternoon. I'm Steve Rogers and this is Tony Stark – "
"Are you insane?"
" – and behind us are Tripitaka and Yulong. We're just passing through, although if there's a town nearby we could buy supplies at, we'd like to."
"How did you make it so far without someone snapping you up? I am fortunate indeed this day."
"I don't think so."
"A traveller who refuses aid freely given – are you cautious, then, or reckless, to refuse me so easily? You have not left the mountains far behind, mortal."
"Pretty far."
"Far enough to make your flesh exquisitely exotic. I'm going to enjoy sucking on your bones."
pause
Mountains it was. He walked forward, and his brain split into pieces; immediately a half-dozen warnings popped up about emotional compromise. He ignored them except to apply the standard patch he'd been using. Extremis, for all its tendency to turn people into zombies, was ludicrously redundant with its warnings; he wouldn't have thought Maya would take Windows Vista as a good role model, but every programmer had their blind spots.
The bits of his brain attended to their separate tasks, sending out hundreds, thousands of commands that made stepping from the ground into flight one smooth motion.
run plotter; open
His eyes were still pretty normal, but the suit's sensors saw across the broad EM spectrum, and in a couple other spectrums besides; the ultra-dense dimensional contortions of the world around him gave off their own form of ripples, data that he could crunch down in real time, although it took up a significant amount of his available memory. Course plotted, he zigzagged through spacetime and angled for the road again – it was still the shortest route to where he wanted to go. But that wasn't Maklu.
Tony didn't quite land – instead, in the last second before he'd have made contact, extremis-powered nanobots rolled down, mass transferring from armour plating to his feet, and forming into wheels; the repulsors shifted up and back to align with his heels.
"You're saying no short-cuts."
"Essentially," Tony agreed, and grimaced. "It's a bit more complicated than that, but – "
stop
The subconsciously-called memory halted, instantly obedient. It was even more of a relief than the headache blocking program. Extremis allowed him to organize his thoughts, manage them on a level that he'd never been able to before – forced him to do so, actually, because the downside of a more complicated system was that it really was more delicate, and if he didn't keep his mind in order he wound up babbling at himself like he had been a second ago. Business as usual, but now with recursive loops to turn it from 'annoying' to 'serious problem'.
Pepper would have laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
stop
Vectors, forces, moments; subconscious calculation of how his body ought to move to avoid falling over was no longer quite so subconscious. The numbers running in the back of his brain were his to access at any point he pleased; he didn't have to start from scratch to know where a value was coming from, he just needed to bring the process to the fore. His body leaned forward and balanced, the repulsors fired, and he went jet-booting down the road at approximately the same speed as a Japanese bullet-train going flat-out.
The road threw off readings, too, way more complex than the dimensional shenanigans that this place cooked up. Not something that he could analyze in real-time; not without a hell of a lot more assumptions than he knew how to make right now. But if there was one thing he'd learned from those oh-god-awful days in the mountains, trying to get Steve to keep walking and to eat without drooling, it was that the jet boots did work.
But he couldn't have carried Steve. You had to walk the road yourself.
"Unless you're Tripitaka," Tony muttered aloud. "Fucking Tripitaka." There was no commentary on this observation. The suit was silent, containing him, and only him –
stop
Or maybe it was because Yulong was a horse? That would actually explain why he was currently being a horse instead of a dragon.
"Oh Jesus, something about this place makes sense. Now I know I'm going crazy."
Steve was really damn fast for a human, but bullet-trains weren't human. Tony was aware of the nanobots stretched out on the road behind him, worn off the wheels – at the rate he'd been losing raw material this trip, there was a good chance he'd run through even his reserves before they got near Maklu... but that was a problem that continued to be a vague future worry, a pleasant logistical distraction. The nanoparticles he was losing weren't particularly intelligent; he wasn't sending any of his consciousness with them when they went.
When the mountains came into view, it was reflex to kick off and take to the air, approach it from up high – he didn't need to allocate a near-crippling amount of resources to the plotter, not with the mountains acting like some sort of massive anti-warping object as soon as he got away from the road. Two relative seconds from the road, and the range had doubled in size; ten seconds, and he could no longer detect the far edge of it.
Somewhere in here were answers. He needed to find them, and fast, before that thing came back again and ate Steve.
"Come on," he whispered to himself. Slowing his thoughts down long enough to convert them to human-interpretable audio speech gave him plenty of time to think and to code; he tweaked parameters and started sending out active pings. If there were dragons patrolling up here, let them come and find him; he'd tell them his name and demand answers. "Come on, I aided the beggar – well, I didn't stop Steve, anyway – and I've gotten nothing but shit for it. Gimme some fairy-tale karma here. You owe me."
I'm fucking praying how is this my life I hate gods
Gods were murder-happy, bloodstained pieces of –
stop
Gods were just highly-advanced aliens using highly-advanced tech, and science was what came through for him. Pings returned a hit on a large stone building nestled up against a cliff face a couple dozen kilometers off; Tony turned and hit supersonic in less than a breath, extremis allowing him to take what punishment from acceleration the armour couldn't compensate for, and leaving him aching for more, to go faster.Flight in the suit had never been anything short of spectacular, but with extremis the suit was his skin, and there was nothing between him and the sky but his own thoughts.
He was going to be spending the rest of his life making up for extremis. Assuming that he survived trying to make up for Loki.
The building looked like some kind of fortress, or maybe an eastern monastery of some sort – sure, Tony had designed and built skyscrapers in his time, but ancient architecture wasn't really his strong point, or his any kind of point, to be honest. He had to admire the way it was fastened on and into the cliff, though; a mathematician had been involved in that, and one hell of a geologist, judging from the deeper scans, the ones he had looking through rock, searching for monsters. Not that those had done him any good while trying to pinpoint the bastards the last time he'd been in these mountains, but he had to try.
Monastery, he decided after scans revealed the presence of a number of men and women inside who all appeared to be wearing clothing similar to Tripitaka's, except designed for colder weather. The way their heads were shaved –
stop
There were parts of the building that were blocked. Tony made note of that, then stopped splitting his conscious mind over so many processors, pulling himself back into real-time. He dropped to subsonic speeds and a moment later landed, a perfect three-pointer, in the main courtyard.
"My name is Tony Stark and I'd like to talk to somebody about the things that live in these mountains," he announced before anyone could start breathing fire at him.
He waited. A moment later, a monk stuck his head out – her head? It was a bit difficult to tell, man or woman; then again it was hard to tell that he/she/they wasn't (weren't?) human, which was probably more to the point.
"Please, come inside," the monk said politely, in a low alto voice. That was no help at all. He'd met a number of very lovely men and women who spoke in that register.
No fire-breathing. That was good. He kept the sensors on active-mode as he followed the monk through the low stone doorway; probably it was bad manners, but he'd had enough of being taken by surprise, thanks. He was at least courteous enough not to go looking through clothes and skin.
Bad manners or not, his scans didn't go unnoticed. "There are many living things in these mountains," the monk said, "but I think by your precautions that you do not refer to any of them."
"Things that eat travellers. They hunt around the road." Hopefully the monks here would make it quick so he wouldn't have to cut them short by fleeing from their sudden but inevitable betrayal. Everybody who'd started out acting like they might help them in this place had ended up trying to screw them over – except maybe Yulong, but he liked Tripitaka, so the jury was still out on him.
"Those are not living creatures."
"Fine, then I'd like to talk to somebody about things that do their not-living in these mountains."
"Yes, I know," the monk agreed. "The mountain air whispered of your passage – " well, it wasn't like he'd been subtle with the sensor sweeps. "He is expecting you."
right that's not ominous
They passed other monks in the halls, most recognizably men or women; none looked particularly interested in him. Exactly the opposite, in fact. They all completely avoided looking at him; it was enough to give a guy a complex.
They went further in, past the point where the fortress wall met the mountain-side, and his scans started throwing back garbage, senseless data – he saved it anyway, since it probably wasn't garbage. He just didn't have a big enough picture yet. He certainly wasn't the only one running scans here – but their scans were all sub-terrestrial. How did they keep the signals from leaking into the air? With every step of his boots he could feel the amount of power they were sending out in those pulses, monitoring... what?
"Here," said the monk, stopping as they came to a blank rock wall that every single aspect of extremis was insisting was a blank rock wall, except for his too-suspicious brain. Maybe the screwing-over part was due to come a little earlier this time around. But the monk motioned for Tony to keep walking. "He is beyond."
i need to figure out how they do this
He stepped through slowly. It wasn't entirely on purpose. Sure, he hadn't planned to rush – had planned to give his sensors an extra few fractions of a second to pick up whatever was there. He hadn't expected for it to be there, there, all in his head, and he froze; then stumbled as he came out the other side. Raw data was dumped into long-term memory and sealed; he didn't have time for that now. Not when he was faced with a... something. Not a dragon. Possibly what you would get if you cut off a pig's head and stuck it on a dragon, except one without any of the shimmering scales or ethereality – a snake, then. One ten meters long and half a meter in diameter, with an oversized pig's head stuck on it. It was curled over a cauldron full of – particle analysis told him exactly what it was and, well, if he'd had to imagine what pigs ate, that would be it. Mush dripped down from its mouth as it raised its head, abandoning the slops, and settled its coils comfortably.
"Hello," it said, in a bass voice so deep he'd have felt it in his skin even if he hadn't had extra sensors embedded there.
"Hi." Awkward. "I'm told you can help me."
"The purpose of this monastery is to aid all lawful travellers."
Well, crap. Ignore that for now. "You're kinda far from the road to be much help, don't you think? I was travelling on it this whole last week, and you were distinctly not aiding."
"You continued to make progress despite our wards," the pig-snake explained. It was frowning now, which on that face was an expression somewhere between hilarious and terrifying. "Anyone without a sage of sufficient power to protect them would have been turned back before they could encounter the demons. From our remote observations, I had thought you such a sage."
"Feel free to go away and stop stalking us anytime."
"I think not. It's been ages since I smelled anyone from so far away. And then there's you... you aren't a Great Sage, and yet you cansee me truly, can't you?"
"Not exactly."
"No, that is obvious. If you were a sage you would not lack such basic knowledge."
"Great. How about you make me more sage-like and fill me in? I'm told it would be good for my spiritual health."
"I'm not sure to you it would matter," said the pig-snake, swaying forward. Its eyes were two black points in its face, strangely mesmerizing. Something dripped from one fang – poison? It turned green as it hit the floor, spreading –
Unauthorized access detected.
trace
Like hell he was letting this thing inside his head –
"Ah," breathed the pig-snake, a wash of fetid, rotting air; Tony quickly shut down half his particle analysis subroutines before they made him gag. "I see. Well, that's an unusual way about the problem, most ingenious. I'm surprised whoever built you didn't give you more information to ensure you could protect your charges, however."
what
The trace was cut off as abruptly as if somebody had took scissors to it, damn it. At least it took the unauthorized access with it.
"Nobody built me. Except maybe myself." And Maya Hansen, but he'd cleared out enough of her programming – and Tem Borjigin, but thinking about that just made him feel ill – and apparently an alien dragon, but that didn't matter, that wasn't him. That was extremis, and extremis was an upgrade, and only an upgrade.
Somehow he didn't get the idea that the pig-snake was talking about upgrades.
"There you are labouring under a misapprehension," it told him. "Truly living things – people – have souls – a sort of essence of themselves. The truth of their being. You do not. Ergo the demons shall not touch you, for they feast only upon living flesh; and you are immune to their particular magicks, which we here mimic to keep the demons imprisoned within the mountains, and unwary travellers out."
"What the hell are you?"
"One of the old kind, mortal. All travellers upon the Great Road are my proper prey. You might be something else, but your friends are mine."
"I have a soul," Tony said, mind racing. Alternatony – he'd been sure, and hell, he was more inclined to take his own word than this thing's. "It's been cursed and everything." Hel had offered him oblivion over it, he'd seen an afterlife – he had a soul.
"I'm sure you think you do," said the pig-thing, making an expression that – dear god, was that supposed to be a smile? It sounded indulgent. "I'm beginning to think whomever built you wasn't a particularly nice person."
"Sir, I cannot perceive whatever it is that is causing you such distress."
"Does that mean you count as dead?"
"It more likely means you are incapable of programming me a soul."
This was bad. This was all of his backup plans shredded, if he couldn't take down Loki first. He should have looked into that god-forsaken curse in more detail – if those options had been taken away from him now, he needed to know when, why – and he needed to know why the fuck hecared so much, beyond all its practical implications. So souls were real – so what? Steve had seen a jewel, a gem, that let him look at souls – Steve was content to listen to a guy who said 'it's magic' and not press for an explanation beyond that, what the hell did it matter, every version of JARVIS had been a person, who the fuck cared if he didn't have a soul?
"You, uh – still look tired."
"And I shouldn't be. I know."
stop
"So I lost it at some point, that doesn't mean I was built – "
"A true consciousness cannot be separated from its soul," said the pig-snake. "It would be like trying to separate a tree from its plant nature. You are very advanced for a proto-consciousness, however." It said this like it was trying to console him.
"Excuse me? I am a fucking human being, pal."
"I'm afraid not," it disagreed. "Do you have any idea who built you? If they gave you no indication of your true state, then perhaps they were trying to replicate the consciousness of someone they knew."
what
No, extremis had been him –
- crashing, metal protesting, the hum of ozone and electricity –
stop
"The punishment for the misuse of sorcery is to deny its practice to the miscreant."
stop
"If you go back to New York your hands will still be broken. You'll still be dying – you'll be pushed back months. Years. Loki isn't going to wait – you have the advantage now, while that other you is distracting him – you can fix it, you just have to change the coordinates – "
quarantine
Warning: System critical operations may be affected
ignore
Initiating quarantine.
Files quarantined: 192
Files quarantined: 738914
Files quarantined: 59192413
He hadn't died. He had not died –
"Speaking of which, it should have been noted on your papers anyway. Have you never read them? Where is your passport?"
Ah, crap.
"Get off the road," Steve ordered tersely.
He was out of breath. He'd insisted on scouting ahead – it meant he wasn't going to risk breaking Tripitaka's jaw on his fist... a desire that was starting to scare him with its intensity. Him scouting ahead had also more than halved their speed. Hopefully, that meant that once Steve sorted Tripitaka out, they'd be able to reunite with Tony easily.
If Tony was still around. He was out of comm. range. He'd just... taken off.
After killing two innocent women.
"We cannot avoid everyone for the rest of our journey," protested Tripitaka, but since Yulong was siding with Steve this time and had already turned for the edge of the road, he didn't have that much choice in the matter. Unless he pulled his trump card. The threat of that was like an axe hanging over Steve's head – no, not Steve's. Tony's.
God, where was Tony? Steve had been sure he'd get back into contact as soon as he could, sneak into radio range while Tripitaka was asleep or something – but it had been over a week, and Steve had heard nothing. Seen nothing. A week in which they'd leapt off the road at the slightest sign of there being anyone else on it, in which they'd detoured around towns and avoided farms like they were plague-ridden. A week in which Steve had barely slept, and when he did doze off, he found himself dreaming of all the cold, calculatingly cruel ways that he could break Tripitaka to his will, if only he weren't such a coward. And waking – those moments of waking were the worst of all, when he was caught between horror at his sleeping mind, and doubt...
"Tony was mad," Tripitaka sulked. "If we avoid everyone else, we shall run out of food and starve without ever reaching Maklu."
"If something out there drove Tony crazy, then we have to avoid it."
"It's long behind us." There was a mulish set to Tripitaka's mouth. Steve didn't like it. It spoke of finite impatience – and a budding will to start issuing orders instead of obeying them.
Lord, he hated power games like this. He wished, desperately, for Natasha – for her expertise and her utter practicality in using it. Every night Steve tried to convince Tripitaka to go back, and every night Tripitaka just ignored him. Natasha would have known how to come at the issue sideways; Steve's efforts to do so were all fumbling, pathetic things that left his argument dead before he could even start it.
They were across several farmers' fields, well out of shouting range, when the people Steve had spotted up-ahead came around the bend in the road. They were travelling in two loose groups, on foot – of course, Tony had said that was the way that the road worked – with all adults in the first group, ten of them, and another fourteen mixed adults and children behind. There were two large carts drawn by some six-legged horses that looked about as impressive as donkeys next to Yulong.
"Hardly much of a threat," Tripitaka said disapprovingly.
"Yeah, well," Steve muttered, feeling exhaustion creep into his voice. The group was obviously travelling like that for safety – a pity they couldn't do the same, hook up with some people heading in the same direction. The idea of being able to sleep soundly at night, knowing he had somebody whom he trusted to watch his back, was an enticing fantasy. If he –
A shout caught his attention; there was a woman standing on the road, carrying a basket, and one of the travellers had called a greeting to her – she'd come from the same direction as Steve, Tripitaka, and Yulong. Normal human sight wouldn't have been able to distinguish her features enough to recognize her at this distance, but Steve's sight wasn't normal. Normal human ears would not have been able to make out her reply either, but the words sounded clearly to him over the distance:
"I am Jun, and my village is not far beyond. Would you like me to walk back with you and introduce you?"
"Stay here," Steve ordered, and set off at a sprint.
The villagers had started walking toward Jun again; a moment later, the sound of their reply reached them, slower than the sight had: "We'd be glad to have someone else introduce us. The road has been friendly, but one can never be too careful."
"STOP!" Steve screamed at them – but he was too far away. The soft dirt was slippery, terrible for running in – quicksand would have been better – and then he managed to hit a place where somebody must have walked before, or been less diligent about keeping the soil so damn aerated, because his feet stopped digging in quite so much and he could run. It was too close - "STOP!"
The first bunch of travellers looked up at the oddly-dressed crazy man running across a field toward them, and collectively stepped forward, spreading out to shield the second group – and including Jun within that. They held staves in their hands, but if the earlier weapons he'd faced were any indication, those could be hiding some seriously advanced technology. "STOP! Don't let her get behind you!"
"Back off!" one of the men yelled back, clutching his staff and sliding his feet out into a combat stance – two of his fellows were doing the same, but it was clear that the rest of them had never had any sort of combat training. "We'll defend ourselves!"
Steve hit the ditch at the edge of the road with his front foot perfectly planted and leapt, his momentum carrying him forward and his jump carrying him up, over the heads of the astounded travellers – they didn't even try to take a swing at him. He was already re-balanced when he hit the ground, and didn't even stumble – just raised his shield and asked, voice hard, "Who are you, really?"
He'd thought Tony had been going crazy, because of her. Tripitaka had tortured Tony, because of her.
"Finally," Jun breathed, and her jaw split open, unhinging somewhere behind her ear; rents in her cheeks revealed more teeth, far more teeth than any human should have. The people around them disappeared; long wiggling masses of flesh grew in their place, and each had a mouth similar to Jun's, and more teeth – those were the tentacles Tony had mentioned, Steve realized: thinner ropes of flesh linked back the bulbous ends to Jun, and there was something beneath her basket – something – he couldn't –
Don't look don't look don't look
And then it was too late; the tentacles were all lunging for him, and he tried to move but he was too slow.
"Ow, Jesus," Tony complained as the androgynous monk that had shown him in now showed him out with a very firm grip on his arm. Given the armour, there wasn't any actual pain involved – not as –
a human being
- somebody without the extremis enhancements would classify it; and even if there had been then the painblocker patch could have taken care of it. But pain was the general human indicator of damage or potential damage, and Tony didn't need it to tell when the monk's grip was strong enough to cause the armour actual strain. Shit, what did they feed these people out here?
"Not only are you a criminal, you are a very stupid one," said the monk darkly, ignoring his complaints.
Not that he was complaining very hard, either – if Tony had wanted to he could have broken the grip and backhanded the monk into a wall, busted out of the fortress with a few well-placed munitions (or brought down the entire thing) – but what might happen after that wasn't so clear, and he was trying to avoid active hostility. The monks were content to, as the pig-snake had said, "Send you packing off home until you learn a damned lesson, and your creator along with you," and he actually did prefer that over the idea of trying to fight his way past a dozen dragons.
He was getting cautious in his old age, look at that.
"At least tell me about the demons while you're throwing me out," he bargained. "My friend's in trouble – I think there's one stalking him along the road. And not in the mountains, either – we were out of them when it first showed up."
The monk frowned, and said stiffly. "We send out parties every year to hunt those demons that slip past our nets. Often there are none, but we are not always so fortunate."
"Great, I'm sure that will be a comfort to him when it's snacking on his bones," Tony said sarcastically, although knowing Steve it actually would be a comfort to him, that somebody would come along and stop it from killing more people. Still didn't solve the problem of how to keep Stevealive, though. "How do you kill it? I shot the thing point-blank and it just went poof, then showed up less than an hour later."
"There is a ritual. If you were a sage, you would know this. As you are a construct, you've not the ability to destroy a demon in any case. Your friend's best chance would be to stay off the road, which it cannot leave of its own will – we shall destroy it soon, and then both you and he can return to your homelands to secure the proper paperwork and cease trespassing everywhere."
They'd reached the doorway out into the courtyard; the monk shoved him through it, following and closing the door firmly. "Go." There was a little shooing motion to accompany the order.
Tony dissolved the faceplate. "Please," he said seriously, adjusting his body language to the right combination of proud, competent, and begging-for-help – not possible in the old suit, and not a pose that he had a lot of practice at to begin with, but subroutines made everything easier, made muscle memory from half-forgotten drunken episodes. "Tell me what this ritual is – I can tell my friend, and he can do it. He's got a hell of a lot of soul to be working with."
The monk eyed him, waiting; Tony held his expression, and at last, the monk gave in with a grumble. "It will get you back to your lands and make you stop breaking such laws much sooner, I suppose. If your friend can complete it. The demons that break loose are those most bound to the road – they are the ones who can travel upon it the easiest. To destroy it, it must first be lured away from the road, and then three koans must be spoken at it; and after that, it is a matter of will, and whether your friend has enough."
"Great," Tony said encouragingly. "What's a koan?"
The monk threw up their hands in disgust. "You are beyond all help," he/she declared, and went back inside, slamming the door shut and leaving Tony standing out in the icy courtyard, alone.
External temperature: 273
Tripitaka would have to know what a koan was, right? But that would mean he'd have to get back within range of Tripitaka – or, no; he could get Steve to ask Tripitaka. Though given the dimensional distortions, getting close enough just to use the comm. would probably require using the cloak to stay hidden.
He'd reconfigured the nanobots for some solar-energy-capture, but that was... really just a drop in the bucket, compared to what it took to run the suit's full functions – nevermind the ICG. He'd mostly done it so that if something happened, the protocol would already be in place to start generating backup energy – extremis wouldn't have to shut down entirely.
The cloak wouldn't last long enough; and he couldn't afford to use it like that...
If Tripitaka caught him, he'd – well, he hadn't specified what he'd do if Tony just came back, exactly, but it was bound to be painful. Emotional warnings popped up, and he shut them down – his mouth was dry, his palms clammy, and – shit, stop - stop wasn't working, not like it should be. Too much of this was in his base code, what the hell. Why had he programmed fear, any fear but especially this fear, into his base code? He must've been out of his goddamned mind – oh, wait, he had been.
Ignore that. He had to do something – that thing was going to kill Steve if he didn't. And probably Tripitaka, which would also be... pain.
i have to go back. i have to go back
One path, probable pain – the other path, certain. There really was no choice here.
"Time to roll the dice," he muttered, and with a thought the faceplate closed around him, and he was in the air.
Pain lit up Steve's right shoulder as a jawful of teeth bit through his suit; he tried to punch the tentacle-head that had bitten him in the mouth with his left hand, but another mouth got in the way, and he had to jam the shield into it instead. It bit down and half its teeth promptly shattered. The entire creature let go with a dozen roars of pain, letting him duck into a backward roll – and possibly leaving a couple of teeth broken off inside his shoulder, he wasn't sure. It felt like there were shards of shattered glass in there, but he couldn't tell if that was because there were or if that was normal for having an arm nearly bitten clean off.
The pain brightened his focus, though, pulled him from being locked into looking at its main body. More heads came down but Steve was ready for them now: he ducked beneath gaping, slavering jaws and slammed his shield into one, breaking more teeth; they fell to the road with a sound like chimes. He had to get out – but the thing was all around him, closing in. His right arm hung uselessly at his side and his shoulder throbbed with every movement.
Movement at the edge of his vision – Yulong. Yulong, riderless, which meant that Tripitaka was out there somewhere, undefended – damn it. Steve bashed in a few more tentacles, bringing his shield down to half-sever one, and Yulong made a leap twice the distance of what Steve had managed, landing behind the creature, and changed.
If there'd been any doubt in Steve's mind that Yulong was the river dragon that they'd seen before, there was none now – he became twice the size of the horse he had been, then more; the strap beneath his stomach keeping the saddle on burst and all their gear went flying off. His legs vanished into his body as his scales and fins reappeared, his head growing huge and enormous; he struck down and bit off a tentacle, then spat it out into the ditch.
"You're a long way from home, river-dragon," snarled a half-dozen of the mouths – and damn, that was true. Steve had taken advantage of the distraction to bash a few more tentacles, but for every one he severed or pulped, there seemed to be another taking its place – was it multiplying, like a hydra? No – there didn't seem to be more of them than there had been in the beginning, thank God. But there weren't any less, either, and it was painfully obvious from Yulong's awkward gyrations that he really wasn't built for being on land. He was already bloodied in a half-dozen places.
"Well hey, something to be said for gambling," said a blessedly familiar voice in Steve's ear, and then Tony was there, on the road behind Yulong, and launching himself into the air.
"We need to hit its body – it's just regrowing these tentacles," Steve panted, a much more urgent concern than saying Oh thank God, no matter his personal feelings. "Drop down on it – I can't get near it – " and neither could Yulong, by the looks of it; but now they could come at it from three directions.
"On it," Tony said, dropping down out of the sky and right next to its body. But he didn't hit it with the repulsors – fair enough; he'd tried that before – instead, wrapping both his arms around it and taking off, pulling it into the air with him and off of the road. All of the mouths screamed as one, turning back on him – "Ow Jesus fuck what is it with these people and stupid sharp ow – " repulsors shot off several heads and Tony dropped the thing into the fields... about halfway to Tripitaka.
"Tony, get Tripitaka out of there!" Tony was at least between Tripitaka and the monster, now, but that wasn't necessarily any better if Tripitaka panicked.
"Better idea, you get over here – keep it off the road," Tony said, and then switched to speakers to add, "Tripitaka, to destroy this thing Steve needs to say three koans."
Steve couldn't hear Tripitaka's answer over the blood pounding in his ears – and throbbing through his injured shoulder – but he vaulted the ditch and ran toward it. "What the hell's a koan?"
"'Every time Baizhang, Zen Master Dahui, gave a dharma talk, a certain old man would come to listen,'" said Tony, evidently repeating Tripitaka."'He usually left after the talk, but one day he – ' Jesus, isn't there a shorter one?"
The monster came boiling back toward the road, tentacles snapping and waving; Tony shot up overhead and lopped most of them off in one shot with a beam from his wrist-lasers. It flinched back, screaming – still screaming – with the same number of mouths, too. Steve hadn't managed to see them regrow, yet it still had the same number – and there weren't any tentacles lying on the ground, either. What was this thing?
"Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?" Tripitaka shouted.
"You have got to be kidding me," Tony said flatly. "Steve, say it."
"Two hands clap – " Steve dove out of the way as three mouths turned toward him, though they were almost immediately cut off by another laser beam – "and there's a sound. What's the sound of one hand? Tony – " he ducked and rolled again – "I don't think this is working – "
"Two more," Tony urged.
If koans were just supposed to be stupid questions – "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Steve backed off, then realized he was backing toward the road, and threw himself to the side instead.
"I hadn't heard that one before," called Tripitaka, sounding far too philosophical about the whole thing. "Ah – if you meet the Buddha, kill him."
What? No time to wonder about what these koans were supposed to be – Steve barely got his leg out of the way of one snapping jaw (Tony's laser sliced the head off the moment he was clear), and shouted, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him!"
"You have no true wisdom!" the monster's central body snarled at him – one mouth only – and an arm, an actual arm, not a tentacle, was lifting the lid of the basket –
"Steve, move!"
But he couldn't. What was inside – he could not –
A hand grabbed him by his uninjured shoulder and pulled him into the air, spinning him around and breaking his line of sight; Steve gasped for breath, finding his lungs starving for air. "Steve, focus," Tony told him urgently, dipping low to cut off the monster's retreat toward the road with a barrage of repulsors all firing at once – "You have to will it destroyed. Come on, Greatest Generation, this should be easy for you – "
They dropped back down and Steve was suddenly looking straight at it. He squeezed his eyes shut – he couldn't get caught by it again. Go, he thought, and die – but that wasn't right, that wasn't what Tony had said, and Tony seemed to have figured out what this thing was even if his proposed method of defeating it was ridiculous – die, drop dead, you're NOTHING –
You are my prey, something said, but it wasn't aloud – it was in his head. All at once he could feel the mouths snapping at him, but not at flesh, they were going to eat him – him, and Tripitaka, and then Tony would be –
He raised his shield above him and felt it grow in weight and size, impossibly so – but he wasn't complaining. The added weight gave it more force when he slammed it down into the soil, an impenetrable wall between him and the monster. It would not have him, and he would not leave Tony to Tripitaka's revenge. The monster's heads collided with the shield, and some tried to bite into it – losing teeth as heads before them had – but none so much as attempted to pass around it.
That still left the problem of how he was going to get at it, though. Steve vaulted to the top of his shield without the faintest amount of effort, although his shield had now grown to the size of a mountain, itself. The monster, very far below him, looked quite small. He hurtled himself at it without concern for the distance between them – and bounced off of something smooth, like a curved dome made of glass. The impact made his head throb, and for a moment he opened his eyes and saw the farmer's field before him. Tony was hovering just in front and before him, slicing away convulsing tentacle-necks with his blue laser beams, protecting Tripitaka's huddled form across the field. Steve's shield was normal-sized, still in his own hands.
"Heathen!" snarled the mouths triumphantly, and the writhing necks bunched up and charged straight for him – for Tony, in front of him.
No, Steve thought, and shut his eyes. Some part of him was aware of Tony grabbing him again, lifting him into short flight – but he had to trust that Tony would protect his body while he tried to end this thing. In his mind's eye the mountain of his shield appeared again, and the glass dome of the monster's own protections – he beat at them with his fists, but it was no good. He'd need to uproot his shield to attack the thing properly, and as soon as he did that it would be on him. But then how?
"Oh!" said Tripitaka, sounding at once very near – he was standing right beside Steve – and very far: he was lying in the dirt half a field away. Tony had dropped them down again. "Now I understand. It cannot withstand enlightenment. This is the first question I posed to my master: Does a dog have a Buddha nature or not?"
The mind-beast writhed and howled, "No!" to which Tripitaka nodded – and it shrank back, beneath its screaming rage. The monster's glass shield – curiously visible, now that Steve knew to expect it – had gone all gummy, like taffy left out in the sun.
But even if Tripitaka understood what sort of magic might be needed to deal with the thing, it was clear that he lacked the willpower to do it properly. He needed help. Tony had been sure it could be Steve, sure it could be a matter of will – in this place where will was his shield, as tall as a mountain...
Oh, thought Steve, feeling a bit stupid. He tipped his shield over. It fell with a thunderous booming noise, broken slightly by the sound of the shield being thoroughly squished beneath its weight.
Steve opened his eyes. The monster was collapsing – fading, the horrible basket already gone, and the rest of it turning to sludge and quickly disappearing. Only the teeth remained, lying in little piles over the field. Steve nearly staggered with relief – would have, except that Tony was still holding him up with one hand maglocked to Steve's suit.
"Go team," said Tony, sounding smugly satisfied, and Steve huffed out a laugh, letting Tony take his weight. "Shit. You okay? I thought it missed everything vital."
Of course Tony would have scans to tell him that. "It did," Steve grunted, looking down at his shoulder. There would have been a lot more blood if one of the teeth had managed to sever an artery – the serum took care of small arterial nicks really damn fast, like it somehow knew that they were life-threatening. "Just adrenaline crash." He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. With the adrenaline fading rapidly, the pain was actually starting to register.
"Sit down," Tony said, lowering him down so that Steve didn't have much of a choice, and he ended up half-leaning against Tony's leg. "Sorry, I wish I had painkillers."
"I've had worse," Steve said, but he had to grit his teeth to swallow down a hiss of pain at the movement. "You okay?" Those teeth had gone through the armour, too, although it was already repairing itself – could Tony repair his own flesh as easily?
"I'm fine. Tripitaka, don't – uh – just don't..."
Steve forced his eyes open – he hadn't realized he'd closed them. Well. After the week he'd had, he was more than a little tired.
"I told you not to come back," Tripitaka said. Despite the fact that Tony had saved their asses, he actually sounded angry, a complete one-eighty from how he'd sounded just a moment earlier in that... mindscape... place. "You slew two innocent women, and as punishment have been – "
"Wait," Steve said, hauling himself to his feet using Tony as a support. His injured shoulder throbbed like the teeth were still stuck in there. "Wait, Tripitaka, he wasn't crazy. That monster was a shape-shifter."
"What?"
"Genuine demon," said Tony. "Hunts things along the road."
Tripitaka wouldn't have been able to hear its introduction to... well, itself, since the travellers had all been bits of it. Steve hurried the explanation. "The monster – it took the form of the same woman we met, just now – that's why I went running back to the road. I saw it was the same woman. It must've been the other one, too, if Tony could see it all along."
Tripitaka glanced between them, and then behind them – Steve looked back as well, and saw Yulong, returned to horse form, plodding wearily over to them. He didn't look good, either – dozens of small, bloody bites covered him, standing out in stark contrast to his white hide.
"I found a monastery back in the mountains that explained it," Tony shrugged, shifting Steve's weight against him. "Steve, sit back down before you fall down."
"I owe you an apology then," Tripitaka said gravely. "In my role of teacher, I have failed my student." He looked troubled, and he cast his gaze down to the ground instead of meeting their eyes. "The dog is a bag of flesh, because it knowingly offends," he said to himself very quietly.
"Uh-huh. How about this – you don't use the headband against me again, and we'll call it square."
Tripitaka frowned. "I will consider it."
The Iron Man armour was unmoving against Steve, but Tony didn't say anything further, and Steve grit his teeth as he let himself sit down again. Tripitaka would 'consider it'? Back when they'd met him, he'd said he wouldn't, except to make them take him with them – they were losing ground.
"I'm glad you came back," Steve said, looking up at Tony.
"Oh, ye of little faith. I wasn't gone that long."
Steve frowned. Their timelines hadn't matched up? Tony had said he could compensate for that – "It was a week."
"...huh."
"I thought you could calculate the time difference."
"Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong," said Tony shortly. "Stay here, I'll get the stuff Boxer dropped."
"Tony." Steve grabbed his shin before he could fly off. "I'm sorry."
"Something was mind-whammying one of us, you made a judgement call."
That wasn't what he was apologizing for. Well, it was – he'd made a judgement call, and though the evidence he'd had at the time had been all he'd had to work at... he hadn't been good enough to figure out anything more from that evidence.
But mostly, he hadn't been able to protect Tony. He hadn't been able to talk Tripitaka around in a week.
"Steve. It's fine." Tony's voice was almost gentle, but he moved his leg out of Steve's grip – and it was either let go or let Tony drag him into falling over. Steve let go. "Stay here. I'll be back in a minute – I'll even walk, no time differentials need get involved."
"Alright," Steve said, and watched him go.
A/N: FFN keeps randomly stripping spaces between the occasional pairs of words when I copy text over. I've combed through this chapter (and the others), but if you see any I've missed - or have any other pointers - I'd be glad to hear about it.