IX.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

"All right," Tony drawled, breaking the silence that fell after Souta's little nugget of information. Really, he couldn't understand why Steve and Sam weren't jumping all over the chance to get some information about S.H.I.E.L.D. that no one else had, especially after everything that went down not all that long ago. "I think I'm going to need you to start that over, from the beginning this time."

The kid snorted at him. At him. Like what he asked was really that hard. "Which beginning do you want?"

Tony couldn't help it, he started to pace. It was what he did nowadays as he thought. It helped him burn off anxiety, or some such psychobabble nonsense like that. Point was, he didn't care so long as he was moving. "First, who are you really?" He ticked the points off on his fingers. "Second, who the hell is this sister you may or may not have? Third, The Index? And finally, for the moment, what do you even mean by powers?"

He stopped pacing when he heard both Souta and Hill sigh. And when he turned around to look, both Steve and Sam had an eyebrow raised.

"Seriously?" Sam said. "Aren't you going to, you know, let them actually answer a question before asking more?"

Tony shrugged. "Why? We all want them answered, and this may be our only chance to actually get some answers." Seriously, Tony couldn't understand why they weren't jumping all over this opportunity. S.H.I.E.L.D. gave insight into their operations about as much as a nun opened her legs.

"Fine. To answer your first question, I actually am Souta Higurashi. I was born with that name and I happen to like it. And my mother and father are dead."

"Just enough truth for no one to question it," Steve finally said. And Souta nodded.

"OK, but that doesn't tell me why you don't exist elsewhere. There's no birth records, no school records, no nothing." That was what was really bothering Tony. No one should have their entire identity wiped that clean, not these days. Technology was too prevalent in every aspect of someone's life that they always left some sort of trace behind.

"Because S.H.I.E.L.D. wiped it clean," Hill answered this time. "There was…an incident, involving his sister. Unless you lived nearby their shrine in Tokyo, you wouldn't even know they had lived there."

"What type of incident causes that level of clean up?" Now, Tony was really curious. SHIELD did clean-ups, yes, but never to completely erase a family from existence. That took time, money and effort he didn't know they were willing to put forward. It was starting to look more and more like they were doing all this because of the sister, not the boy. Which made so much more sense to him. The boy, while intelligent and brilliant and creative, was just not that special.

So wrapped in his thoughts, he almost didn't notice the look Souta and Hill shared. Almost. The boy hesitated before answering. "That's more… Kagome and Fury are really the only ones who could fully answer that question. But after it happened, my mom and grandfather were dead, I became a ward of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Kagome's been moved around the world."

"I take it she was already involved with SHIELD before that, if she really is one of their first 'cover-up's, like you said," Steve said. And Tony had to nod in agreement. That had almost slipped his mind as he thought over all that could have happened. Plus, all the different things he could have JARVIS help him look into to see if he could find anything out about what happened. And if all that failed, then it shouldn't be that hard to track down one woman. Or so he thought.

Souta nodded, but it was Hill who answered this time. "Kagome has been around since the beginning, from my understanding. She's…" For the first time, Tony saw Hill at a loss for words. Or, at least, at a loss in trying to word something without giving away too much. Either way, it was a first. "Kagome is a very special case. She is both in her thirties, and over five-hundred years old. She's the first documented and proven case of a time travel, and an immortal because of the method used to do so."

Time travel. That was a new one. "You're not saying she traveled to the past? Because I'm pretty sure the only proven method for such a thing is only for traveling forward?"

Steve shrugged. "The Nazis were working on a few things to make such a thing possible. I don't think they succeeded, though."

"Because it just isn't possible!" Tony wanted to tear at his hair, but that would defeat the purpose. Instead he started pacing again, trying to think this through."

"You pal around with a Norse god from another world or dimension, or whatever the hell it is, and literally almost had the fabric of reality ripped open by a magical artifact, and you want to tell me it's impossible to travel back in time?"

Tony stopped pacing and glared at the kid. Who was entirely too smug about his whole tirade at the moment. "Point grudgingly given, kid. So how do you even explain what she did?"

"A magical artifact did it."

Tony glared at Hill this time, even though she didn't answer. "Just how many of these magical artifacts are out and about in the world that can destroy the world and reality?"

She glared back. "I can't say. Because most of them aren't even on Earth."

"What about hers?"

Souta and Hill both shook their head. "It's destroyed."

Tony narrowed his eyes, and he was pretty sure that Steve and Sam did the same. The two of them answered too quickly for it to have been the truth. "Right. Because it's just that easy."

Souta nodded. "Yeah. It is. Sometimes. Well, that time it apparently was." Then he shrugged. "She never really told me."

"OK, I have got to meet her." And that was the truth. All these answers just made him want to meet her. In his mind, she had to be someone with such charisma and power that she couldn't be overlooked. He wanted to see what kind of person could make Hill nervous and a secret agency completely wipe a family from existence. He had some answers, yes, but now he wanted more.

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