A/N

Get ready. This one's a long one.

"Man overboard! Faerun has fallen through the Drop room hatch!"

Morgana told me that Fury had not hesitated to bark the warning call. I tucked my arms and hands close to my sides to speed up my fall. My goal was to end up far enough away from the metal behemoth overhead that a stray wind wouldn't catch me and throw me up against the Helicarrier's side. And this high up with the massive engines churning to hold the literal aircraft carrier in the sky, it was a concern.

Morgana told me that Tony rolled off the Helicarrier as soon as he heard Fury's call. The armor was practically shredded and barely holding him aloft as he pushed his craftsmanship to try and reach me. Steve was using the comms to try and get a clearer location for Tony to fly to, his fists clenched diamond hard inside his gloves. I saw Natasha's eyes go wide and glassy as she heard the news over her comm.

She feels guilty doesn't she?

Very.

I do too, but it's not like I planned on being this dramatic about my departure.

I spread myself out once I was far enough below the Helicarrier to not get blown back up into it, still falling. I was smaller than the super strong cage that Thor had been caught in, and we were still very high up even with the recent loss in altitude. I didn't want to chance getting knocked unconscious.

I didn't hear the roar of Tony's repulsors over the wind in my ears. I just reached for my scant supply of magic to form wings. Just to slow down enough so I wouldn't hit the water at terminal velocity.

Then I spied a faint trail of orange sparks in the air below me. Far away still, but visible and...familiar.

She got my message.

She did.

I smiled as a magic portal opened under a mortal wizard's power, just large enough for me to fall through. The shift from gravity pulling down to the side was fairly abrupt. But I had dealt with worse. The portal had caught me falling towards earth, but its mate had been set at a right angle. Then I was falling down again, but Morgana felt no urgency as the ground approached. So I trusted her and remained calm.

A slide composed of the shining lines of MCU sorcery was lifted up under me, redirecting my momentum into a loose spiral. The conjured slide ended but I kept going as far as I had momentum. I safely coasted to a stop, completely unharmed and laughing as the rush of what had just happened hit me. A burnt orange robe was visible in the corner of my eye, standing a short distance away. I looked up at an ageless face, elf like and graceful, which showed the tiniest smile

"It was not too difficult of a transition for you, I hope."

She said in All Speech that Morgana remarked wordlessly was utterly flawless. Because of course it would be. I managed to restrain my laughing into a grin.

"I'm best friends with a Gravity Mage. My sense of orientation has already been through hell."

She offered her hand in a polite gesture and I was about to accept before I thought better of it. My hand pauses before it made contact with hers.

"By any chance I could get some gloves?"

Psychometric talents are enough of a thing that I shouldn't need to explain why, right?

The Ancient One had been defending the Earth and her pupils for longer than anyone could really conceive. Long enough that her name had vanished underneath the memory of her deeds. And I did not doubt that what she had witnessed was not for my eyes to behold. And if she was wearing the Time Stone... I liked my mind intact and I had had a long stressful day. There was no way of knowing what I could see or if I could handle it.

She smoothly shifted her fan in her hand and offered it as a grip for me to rise instead, and this I did accept. I swayed slightly as the world righted itself once more.

"I'll see to it some are brought for you."

"Much appreciated."

Looking around, I recognized the hallway and stairwell of the New York Sanctum. And there was a faint, but discernible trace of ethernano in the air. I felt a little silly, casting about like a hound with a scent. But my escort's smile felt almost indulgent.

"You mentioned you would need time to recuperate your energy. A room had been prepared to your specifications. I found the idea quite novel."

I looked up at her, surprise painting my features.

"You actually did it? I thought I would need to do much more begging and pleading considering what I was asking."

The Ancient One gave a graceful nod.

"Under most circumstances, interdimensional interlopers do not ask for me to use the Eye of Agamotto on them or their living space, let alone refer to its true name when doing so. But I looked through the waves of fate when your message arrived. And...I find myself agreeing with you. There is a shift in the course of destiny where you touch current events. The potential for a better future is within reach should you remain capable of action."

We were walking up the stairs, and doorways flashed to various locations around us.

"I'm very grateful and don't wish to be rude, but...have you considered my second request?"

She gave me a sly, sidelong look.

"Generally speaking, we never give novices access to a slingring."

"I know. I just need to look at it for a while."

I tried not to sound as if I was begging, but I kind of was. I was fairly confident I could recreate it with some time to study it. But addressing the Chitauri invasion would be most efficiently done with a method native to the MCU. And a slingring had literally endless potential with how I had seen Portal Magic applied.

The Ancient One stopped before a door that I was sure had been a smooth wall when we turned the corner.

"For seven years, you have practiced and studied magic. Others will not get so much time to master your abilities as you have, and will shoulder still greater powers than can be bestowed by a slingring."

The door swung open at her nod and she extended her hand, the heavy gold ring, resting on her palm. Meant to be worn on the first two fingers of a hand.

"Use it well, young Faerun."

I took the offered item and stepped into my small, sparsely furnished cell, the door closing behind me and the spell I had asked the Ancient One to weave around it engaging. Time had been woven around this space in such a way that I could effectively rest for a full 8 hours while next to no time passed outside.

Now, 8 hours in a space that had no Ethernano would only let me recover a pittance of overall energy. Even Earthland access wouldn't put me back at maximum if I could rest close to its atmosphere. But there were planes of existence that would allow for a full, brimming recovery of all available magic. I just had to access them.

"Faerun should be close enough. It more or less operates on the tabletop RPG rules to let me get my power back. Bless RPG long rest recovery capacity." I decided, tapping my arm as I plopped down on the cot. "But first..."

I had some major decompressing and resting to do before I could reasonably tackle my latest issue. The final invasion would closely follow the attack on the Helicarrier so as to take fullest advantage of the division of the Avengers. A matter of hours, at most. So I had to dedicate at least two hours of rest to actually sleeping, and would spend the rest preparing for the battle, and events beyond it, and then hope for the best.

My first order or business was to find a way to maximize my time spent in this room. So I wrote out a careful way to combine the multi-dimensional properties of the sling-ring and my own brief experience with the realm of Faerun in my brief interactions with it. It took only 15 minutes of work to set up a circle of wards around the edges of the room that would help me regenerate my energy and actually be able to participate in the invasion.

The sling ring hung suspended in an intricate circle of runes and revolved slowly, pulsing in time with the masterful web of spells that the Ancient One had spun around the room to let me take my rest without missing the fight.

Apparently, the Chitauri invasion had been paralleled by a similar assault from the same species through the Mirror Dimension. Only they fell more in the psionic/telepathic purview than the infantry and chariots that had attacked the city in the Prime Material Plane. And why had they sent the wizards against the wizards and not the bait and switch?

They were counting on Loki having successfully divided the military response to the invasion, so they were sending the bulk of their special forces against the wizards. Yes, the reason that there was not a sight or sound of magic users in the MCU until Dr Strange was because every kind of catastrophe that befell the world in reality was paralleled by an attack from one of the other planes. The Avengers just got the really visible parts of the battles, everyone had been fighting something on another plane.

I mean, the primary nexus point of their higher dimensions was called the Mirror Dimension. That meant it had to, in part, reflect reality. And the reality was the MCU was messed up.

I also meditated with Morgana to assess what information she had managed to store about handling the Infinity War and Thanos.

She had put failsafes in JARVIS, well concealed in places Tony was not likely to find, to encourage Vision's eventual creation. She had communicated lists of deep cover Hydra agents in the ranks of SHIELD and other organizations from what we had gleaned while on the Helicarrier. She had addressed the identity of the Winter Soldier. And made doubly sure to emphasize the kind of conditioning he had undergone to turn him into that.

Your parents' deaths, your mom's death, was not Bucky's fault, Tony. It's no different than when Hammer took over the suit Rhodey was piloting. He had no control over his own actions. And when he did wake up, he had to face up to the fact that he killed one of his friends.

Morgana had also entrusted JARVIS with a loosely written proposal that was a safer, more protected version of the Accords. A list of rights and agreements that enhanced individuals, such as Bruce, Steve, the Maximoff twins and Peter, the Avengers as a whole, and the other enhanced type humans that popped up, could rely on as protection. Putting them into play early, laying down ground rules, would give them a leg to stand on when the stars faded from people's eyes and they started to look for ways to capitalize on the chaos of their world. They could get more freedoms rather than the harsh restrictions of the eventual Sokovian Accords.

Those damn Accords were part of the reason that the Avengers were splintered and divided when Thanos's last blow came down on the Earth. They and the people who were making a grab for power. The team would lose the first take of the Infinity War because of their division. If the Titan were stopped before he managed to claim all the Infinity Stones, then Loki could yet live under his own power. Wanda would never lose her mind from grief and become the dark Scarlet Witch that menaced multiple universes. The five year Blip that rocked the world wouldn't upend and destroy so many lives and relationships.

I knew fixing the Accords wasn't going to prevent Civil War entirely. The meeting was just what Baron Zemo used to exact his revenge and further his anti-enhanced human agenda. The documents themselves were a human response to try and establish control over things that they feared.

Zemo would have found some other way to break the Avengers apart if his best options weren't available. But could I really put down warnings about him when as long as Ultron was handled more effectively, their accidental death would never set him on that path?

Keep his family from being killed? Avert Ultron entirely?

And the politicians who had been pushing for the Accords in the first place. They were rushing into it after the Avengers had directed and controlled themselves, no legal counsel had been shown to explain the language and allow fairness. But the view of the movie was solely to emphasize the divide. And it was called Captain America: Civil War so it was naturally skewed to portray him favorably.

Gonna let politics be someone else's problem.

That was left with a whole lot of question marks in my notes. It was a sticky situation for everyone involved. I circled back to what I could reasonably do, minimize casualties thanks to foreknowledge and good planning.

I had a theory that Ultron had become what he had been thanks to Thanos's lingering influence over the Mind Stone. After all, his means had been...rather well aligned with what Thanos would end up doing to earth if he succeeded. And that kind of focused intent didn't just vanish, it had to go somewhere. It was simple math.

Mind Stone + Thanos = Ultron.

Mind Stone + JARVIS = Vision.

Vision might actually be my best bet at handling any curveballs long after I'm not here anymore thanks to JARVIS.

He was self aware enough to know he had limited life experience. He just had an iron clad sense of right and wrong to guide him. But if he had some kind of know how to draw on, he could be a much more outgoing part of the Avengers from the get go. His own person rather than a holder for an Infinity Stone.

I would need to talk to JARVIS some more. Organize what Morgana had given him and supplement it with ideas and a reasoning program that could teach him the basic social cues and patterns it took most humans 20+ years to learn. Combining intellect with his nearly endless understanding.

But I had more immediate concerns than what would happen in the next five to ten years. I couldn't preoccupy myself with stopping every bad thing that ever happened to everyone, much as I would like to. I could only prepare and hope it was enough. There was no guarantee that the Crack would allow me to come here ever again, let alone when.

There was a set of standard clothes that had been left for me by whoever had set up my room. An open tabard in gray, trimmed with a navy blue, meant to be belted over a long sleeved dark shirt and dark long pants. There was also, blessedly, a hair brush and some hair ties. And some means for me to rig my syllabary on my belt. I took inspiration from how the Sheikah Slate or Purah Pad were mounted on Link's belt. I could even access it with a touch.

The outfit felt like a cross between what a complete novice wore, the gray parts at least, and the blue and black attire Stephen Strange would wear as the Sorcerer Supreme. But the nod to the traditional garb was enough for me to copy their standard magic circles, as well as benefit from the centuries of absorbed training and practice.

I would have no special artifact such as a clock or staff, but I could hardly complain about that. I was just an interloper here to mess things up and hopefully leave things better than I found them.

I'll get my chance to see whether enough is enough. If the Time Heist still needs to happen, it will be going down in a little under 6 hours in real-time. And I'll be able to know if I need to do more before I let Thor take me home.

After I finished teaching my new outfit every useful quirk or trick I could, and mediating and practicing with the slingring so I could use it however I needed to, I let myself go to sleep.

-vVv-

I was fairly certain I was sleeping until just before the battle started. But it felt as though almost as soon as I closed my eyes that the Ancient One was still standing before me. Hands clasped behind her back, still holding her fan.

"Your presence has already changed a great deal, Faerun. Come and see."

I got up, leaving my body behind to rest and followed the Ancient One through several wormholes through the dimensions until we stood in the Mirror Dimension. I touched one of the planes lightly, feeling it both flex under my touch and shatter, only to reform in countless pieces. The Ancient One started to cast some spell, hands moving deliberately, slowly enough to let me watch. Morgana was instantly analyzing how she commanded the plane around us to reflect and refract different portions of time of the current event.

Still a teacher even now.

I watched her demonstration closely as she bade the mirror's around us shift, and triangulate to show us another place. But the same approximate time.

The viewing portal she made showed Fury, Steve and Tony all in the main control room of the Helicarrier. And they all looked grim.

"-pull through. It was touch and go for a while, but Faerun saved his life."

I felt a burden lift from my shoulders as I realized that Phil Coulson had survived.

"This pleases you?"

"He didn't deserve to die."

I wasn't going to over think that part. Just be happy that Phil would get the chance to go visit that cellist.

Audrey Nathan

Yeah, her.

Fury was speaking however. Laying out the situation to the two charismatic focal points of the Avengers Initiative.

"We're dead in the air. Got no communications, no location on the cube. Thor, Banner... I've got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye...And maybe I had that coming."

I watched Steve and Tony's faces as Fury made the list of their current set backs. And I was not mentioned. I touched the screen, and Morgana poked at Fury's own feelings. Fury who had watched me jump.

It was nothing he had not seen before. But he still felt the wound of thinking that a child had chosen death over the fate several of his men had been subjected to.

"Yes. We were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. But I never put all my chips on that. I went for something even riskier. Stark knows this."

"This is pretty much word for word what happens in the Primary Timeline." I remarked to the Ancient One.

"Just watch."

I watched Fury lay out the Avengers Initiative for Steve. It was all a review for Tony but now he had another kind of perspective on it. It was personal for him now. So Fury was correct in thinking that it would hit much more deeply than it ever had before for him. An old fashioned idea of a team of remarkable people. He was careful with his words. Choosing to frame them those who did what needed to be done. Who worked together for the sake of others. I listened closely to every word until Fury paused. And I could feel the world shifting.

"Faerun died believing in that kind of idea."

And softly, almost non existent, he sealed the deal with his last two words. A term he had been avoiding until now.

"In heroes."

Tony stood abruptly, eyes fixed on a distant point but aflame with a ferocity. Though he was not yet a father he had all the potential for it. All the potential love and devotion. All the fury and anger.

I am Ironman.

Steve's reaction was subtler, more contemplative. Cooled steel rather than zealous fire. This was a hat he had worn before. Being an active symbol. And now there was someone for him to fight for. Connections, however tenuous, that had been made to anchor him to this time and the job.

I felt the impact of the event ring through my projected body. The first assembly of the Avengers. They weren't starting because of the dying belief of a good man. Fury was spinning it now as not letting down a child both of these men had wanted to help. Who both felt they had lost the chance to help in any way. He was giving them someone to avenge.

And my 'last words' even aligned with that incredibly well. 'They will choose to get up and try again. Every time.' Since none of them had any idea that I had been planning to survive the fall, I didn't hold Fury choosing to martyr me against him. But it felt weird. Being considered to be dead.

The scene shifted. Tony was standing in the now empty Drop Box room. Staring at the space where the cage had been. The last place I had been seen.

Steve walked in, looking down. The same memory running through his mind.

"She should never have been in here."

"No she shouldn't have been."

Tony turned towards the soldier, the man he disliked irrationally, but was now finding himself in perfect agreement with.

"What was she thinking? She knew how dangerous he was. She knew better than any of us!"

He punctated that by gesturing at the gap where I had claimed my route to freedom. Steve glanced to the side, seeing the menacing blood stain on the wall where Coulson had laid.

"She was saving someone's life."

"Why was that her job? Why didn't she just hide, get somewhere safe, wait until he was gone! Why didn't she do what any sane, reasonable, normal kid would do!?"

Tony had spoken to me and had made his assessment in a snap. He knew I was smart and creative. He knew that when I had felt uncomfortable in my cell, I had snuck away to go find Bruce. Even moving through the air vents to avoid detection. But Steve didn't rise to Tony's question. He had no answers. But he had one of his own.

"Is this your first?"

Tony looked over sharply at Steve.

"My first what?"

Steve had never looked older and sadder than he did right then.

"Your first kid."

My heart clenched when I caught a glimpse of what he had seen in his life span that was both short and long.

Those are concentration camps, aren't they?

Yes.

And Morgana quietly blocked more of those images from transmitting to me.

Anthony Stark heard everything Steve wasn't saying, his genius brain made the same connections I had. And his eyes went glassy for an instant with emotion. He saw the young soldiers that Stane's weapons dealing had killed. He saw the children in the villages he had fought in when he was first appearing as Ironman and destroying his illegally sold weapons.

"...no she wasn't. It never goes away, does it?"

"If 70 years on ice didn't wipe mine out, I don't think anything will."

The dimension around myself and the Ancient One rippled with the impact of this. A totally unique conversation that had never happened in the Primary TimeLine. Featuring something that was missing in Steve and Tony's relationship. This moment of pure connection. Shared pain. Shared guilt. The brief battle had forged an agreement that was now being tempered and strengthened with this talk. This glimpse of each other's regrets. Tony turned back to the end of the walkway.

"I'm not marching to Fury's drum."

"Neither am I. He has the same blood on his hands that Loki does. But right now, we have to put that aside and work together. Personal disagreements can't be more important than this."

But Tony's always churning mind had made another connection as he looked down at the closed dark space.

"He made it personal."

"That's not the point-"

"No, it is. That is exactly Loki's point. Why Fae? Why go after her? What could she do to him?"

Steve with his uncannily sharp recall thought back.

"She was fine when she was just defending herself from him like on the bridge. But in the lab the same thing seemed to wipe her out. But wizard or not, she's a kid."

Tony strode back towards Steve, eyes burning with fervent anger.

"Exactly. A kid. Best way to piss someone off is to hit them where it hurts. And going after a kid would do that. It's what made Banner lose it after she talked him down. He's gearing up for the grand finale and he wants us in pieces over what he did."

"He's using her to tear us apart."

The scene dissolved and Morgana told me that things proceeded more or less as per the Primary Timeline as when Coulson had died.

"I don't understand how this is any different." The admission came out with a sheepish tone to the Ancient One. "It's still to avenge death. Just my...death instead of Coulson's."

"Phillip Coulson was a soldier in the battle, albeit in an unconventional sense. You were innocent. A child who will never see life or her home again. For people such as these, that carries a very different weight."

The Mirror Dimension warped and I saw all of the Avengers were they currently were at. Natasha and Clint in a med bay, Thor picking himself out of a crater, Bruce trying to find some clothes. Morgana prompted the recall of my last interaction with Steve and Tony in particular. In the lab.

"You weren't stopping."

Steve and Tony had been the catalysts to the tension in the lab, the ones Silvertongue had been working on the most. The ones who were fighting. And they had seen, in their eyes, a kid struggle against a force that visibly drained them, pleading with them to stop fighting with each other and help her go home.

Both of them had an unparalleled drive to do what they thought was right. Steve had devoted his life to standing up for those who couldn't stand for themselves. Tony was paying back a lifetime of war profits and lives taken. Keeping the innocent out of harm's way was the one thing they could and always would agree on in principle, thought their methods might differ.

And there had been a functional camera in the Drop Box. And they had both watched me help Coulson. Watched me run away from Loki. Watched me deliberately choose to jump rather than become enthralled. Heard my vouching that 'they' would choose to keep fighting.

This coupled with your other interactions has them realizing just how abhorrent you find Charm Magic. They feel it was their fault for allowing you to be forced to make such a choice between being enthralled and...jumping.

It was a powerful, guilt inducing sight. A moral obligation that they could not help but feel. Their absence had made it so there was no one else who could help Coulson. Their fighting had, in their minds, damaged my trust in them but not broken it. My last known words were ones of determination and citing that 'they' would do the right thing.

"Hopefully it doesn't all get undone when I turn up alive." I mused. I would need to make my appearance with wings to explain how I had survived the fall, since I assumed that the Ancient One would rather not get the Sanctums involved with the Avengers just yet. The world wasn't quite ready for that revelation when they were barely coping with alien life being real and as hostile as some of the conspiracy theories like to claim.

"You intend to fight beside them."

I glanced up at her.

"I won't give your secrets away. But I couldn't live with myself if I let them keep grieving needlessly. I never intended for them to feel like that."

Though I did wonder what else would have been available to push them if not death. Maybe Fury would have lied and had Coulson go deep cover to sell the illusion.

"Before battle lines are drawn, I could find the means to send you home."

My spine stiffened and I felt my heart throbbing in my chest.

"That is a very generous offer, Ancient One. But you know I cannot accept. Not if it's on my behalf that they are fighting."

They were doing this for the innocent who could not protect themselves. And I was vulnerable in a way that they were not, but I 100% qualify as someone who had to be protected full time.

No one. Absolutely no one in my circle of peers back home would run away from a fight of this scale. Fighting to protect those who could not protect themselves was what we did. It was why we trained the way we did. Learned all that we could. Because there were monsters in the world, human shaped and otherwise, that would not care if you liked peace and quiet. They would kill you, enslave you, or otherwise abuse you all the more because they had power and you didn't.

"You are just a child."

"Childhood innocence is a luxury I cannot always afford. If the Avengers will suit up to avenge the death of an innocent, then I will make sure that as few innocents as possible die."

They never went over the numbers of how many actual casualties there were from the invasion. That wasn't the point of the movie. But I knew it had to be a lot. There were only six Avengers, and the Chitauri would go for the biggest threats first. But there were simply too many of them for the number to be zero. Too much destruction.

For a split second, the Ancient One actually looked her age, as she looked down at me. A quiet understanding and grief of her own evident on her face.

"If you die, you will never see home again."

"I'm well aware of how Death works." I said very, very dryly. The Ancient Ones concern came from a good place but boy if it didn't sound condescending.

"But despair and fear are their own death. And the people of this city will have their idea of safety brutally torn away from them from these events."

Nothing messed with your head as much as having something you thought was concrete and for certain be proven wrong. The country as a whole was fortunate that battle had rarely ever come to their shores and threatened their way of life. But this was an entirely different scale of violation and trauma.

The Ancient One looked back at the screen she had formed in the Mirror Dimension, seeing Tony carefully repairing his armor so he could make the flight back to Stark Tower. To see Steve go and retrieve his shield and then get Natasha and Client, rallying his troops. We saw Thor pick up Mjolnir again and summon his battle armor in its entirety. Saw Bruce, who had managed to get some clothes, watch the Patronus who had escorted him to the ground fade into silver light once he was awake and no longer needed a guardian.

"So be it."

The Ancient One intoned softly. Ominously. Events were now in motion that couldn't be halted or reversed. The Avengers were going to assemble for the first time in this Universe.

And I would assemble with them.

I wrote out stabilizers to tap into Harry Potter spells and refine my use of the slingring and standard applications of the MCU sorcery. Shields, lashes and other manifestations of solid objects. I had Morgana run a quick search on other popular mainstream stories that could be useful and she came back with Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons as useful source materials.

So I started writing out basic setups for them to give me access to some supportive spells, specifically for area of effect and longer range attacks that the basics of MCU conjuration style sorcery would not give me. I was planning on primarily evacuating civilians from the war zone. But I doubted that the Chitauri or Loki would be so obliging as to let me do that unmolested.

And I also wrote a shield type rune that would take the energy from the Chitauri weapon fire and massive blunt force energy and convert it into ethernano. And I made...about two hundred copies of that spell and stored them in my syllabary ready to go. I figured I would need this a lot. And my resting time was starting to run down. I felt well rested, and I had as much ethernano as if I had been resting for several days back home.

I have mobility from my own flight, portals from the slingring, which has the energy cost reduced down to dismissable amounts thanks to having a support item and clothing supporting the story. I've got a handful of iconic Dungeons and Dragons spells, and an array of reliable cantrips. And some unique aces from Magic the Gathering.

But none of that meant anything if I couldn't do what I ultimately intended: Evacuate those who could not fight to safe spaces and counter some of the shock and fear that this invasion would cause. Which meant I needed to create safe spaces. And so far, my only thought was to warp people through the portals outside the battle zone. But that wouldn't really help with the morale of the situation...

Morgana quietly hummed to let me know that our time was coming to an end. It was time.

I secured my possessions and exited the room. The Ancient One was there waiting for me.

"The invasion will begin shortly."

3 minutes.

"Then I'd better get to work."

The Ancient One nodded thoughtfully.

"That would be best. You have an army to raise."

I stopped and gave her a suspicious look.

"A what? Hulk's gonna be there. He's better than an army."

She gave me a tiny, mischievous smile.

"You'll catch on." Then with a graceful motion, she opened a portal under my feet and I dropped for about 15 feet before my wings snapped out and stopped me from falling too far. Looking around I saw steel girders and glass windows. A gleaming tile floor teaming with color and movement. People. Hundreds upon hundreds of people.

In costume. A large, large number of them...were in costume.

Morgana...this looks like a convention.

It is.

When is Comic Con in New York typically supposed to be held?

A common date range in other worlds is in the fall, typically in mid October. In this universe, it happens to be early May. You have less than 2 minutes until the portal opens.

I took a deep breath, some people were staring and smiling, probably thinking I was some extreme cosplayer. Or was showcasing some kind of technology.

I mean, if you subscribe to the Magic is just things Science Can't Explain Yet then I basically am.

Some people were already pulling out their phones and lifting cameras to snap pictures. But looking down at the sheer quantity of costumes, and people. All who were gathered here by a mutual love of...stories. I felt a big, maniacal grin cross my face.

Morgana, I know what we are going to do today!

-vVv-

I waved a hand and opened a portal with a rapidly growing spiral of orange sparks and popped outside of the convention center. I could sense the gathering energy in the distance, the warm up of the Tesseract pulling a certain point in space closer to Earth to allow for passage.

I then reached for the Story of the wizard who would one day become the Sorcerer Supreme. Stephen Strange was several blocks away performing a surgery right now, but who he could be...that was still available. And I used it to cast Duplication. It was little more than a variant of Shadow Clone Jutsu, but it was one I could use right now. I made five doubles.

The five carbon copies of me, faces set and determined, turned and zipped away, already having their objectives set. three of them would map out a perimeter to evacuate the populated areas. The people who didn't have easy access to the subways or means to get off the streets. One of them would head to the New York Public Library, which was close to the epicenter of the invasion, and all would do what I was doing now. The last one would go into the convention center and start preparing.

I turned back towards the convention center. I tapped my syllabary and started to fling the energy conversion seals at everything that I possibly could. Every building. Every street. Everything that could become damaged either from the blasts or the physical damage of this battle itself. One hand guided their placement, while Morgana took the other and started speed writing out even more of them. I paid special attention to ensure that the convention center itself would be locked down and well defended. Then I tapped my syllabary to link up all of those sigils I had placed.

They would be how I could sustain the massive energy output I was going to be undertaking. They were specifically written for Chitauri, this was not something that could be easily replicated

I was so focused on my task that I didn't consciously notice when the portal opened. But the screaming that started was pretty hard to miss as was the sudden rush to get indoors. The Chitauri were aiming for large concentrations of people and this definitely qualified. Morgana pinged that several groups of chariots were coming this way as were some Leviathans with ground troops.

Tony is having his conversation with Loki.

And how is that going?

"And there's one more person you've pissed off: Her name is Fae."

Shaking away the soft feelings that Tony would invoke the name of a near complete stranger at that moment, I zipped out in front of the convention center, where most of the chariots were already charging, weapons drawn. I snapped the line of magic in my hand, activating my protective conversion runes. A subtle orange glow began to form, flowing from my hand to coat everything as far as the eye could see. Which, given that it was Manhattan, that was pretty limited even from the air thanks to the abundant buildings. The first scattered shots of gun fire were absorbed, not completely, but just enough that they wouldn't cause permanent injury. Blocking them entirely would have been too costly and lessened their effective time. But this way, casualties could be limited, although a bad shot to the head or other vitals would still cause fatalities.

And with that, I muttered 'sonorous' to boost my voice and pulled on my All Speech, now powered with a fully charged reserve of ethernano that was being supplemented by incoming energy.

"You will go no further!"

The lead chariots slowed and stopped, and started to bunch up just as I had hoped. The amped up translation spell was letting my intent be conveyed even to the Chitauri.

The leader pushed his chariot forward, hissing behind his face mask.

"Who are you to command us, wizardling?"

I answered him, hovering on curved, elegant wings, runes swimming over my hands as I wove my enchantments together. And as I tapped a very specific Story.

"You may enter this city, but you will not take it."

The movie scene where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli blocked the pirates from entering the river and sailing to aid Mordor. A comedic scene where their ace, the undead army, was revealed. The Chitauri's laughter would genuinely give me nightmares. A scratchy hiccuping cackle sounded from the quartet of chariots, their gun men and the drivers. The speaker got out his next words through his mirth.

"You couldn't hope to withstand an army the size of ours, earthling!"

I decided to let his gross misconception that I was in fact from Earth slide. I had gotten the pause that I needed after all. Every eye from the convention hall entrance was on me, seeing me through a thin layer of amber magic that would help keep them safe. There would be no going back from what I was about to do. My voice was being broadcasted everywhere, loud and clear.

"I didn't ask how big your army was." I moved my hand out to the side, in full view of the people in front of me, and behind me. I flicked my finger and created a tiny bead of orange light. It followed me back around to the front again, forming a circle of my fingers around it. Runes rapidly spiraled out from my fingers, the calculations of speed, mass, final size, placement and heat all coming together in an instant as I completed my spell.

"I said I cast Fireball."

The orange dot shot out from between my hands and right into the center of the four chariots, hissing almost noiselessly through the air. It exploded in a giant glorious sphere of bright flame that engulfed all four of my targets. The Leviathans were getting closer, but I needed to mop up those chariots first.

"Magic Missile." I intoned, sweeping my hand in a wide arc sending out five bolts of energy that zipped unerringly through the air to find the three surviving Chitauri. Morgana was aiming them. They would not miss. Two of the gleaming bolts went further past the now dead enemies to land smack in the closest Leviathan's eyes. It roared and flew off course, breaking its charge. It ran up against the barrier placed over a building, which flashed and bent around it, slowing its damage but not being able to stop it. Some debris fell, bricks crushed inward. But the building was still standing and the people inside were still alive. And the force of the impact, made the barrier itself grow stronger and push back against the Leviathan, pushing it back into the street. The excess energy was siphoned down the leylines I was using to base my spellwork on and flowed into my fortress. The convention center.

The soldiers that the leviathan had been carrying leapt free, rappelling down into the street to try and catch a few stragglers. I dropped down lower, a new spell at the ready as Morgana tracked the precise moment to release and-

"Lightning Bolt!"

Orange electricity parted the air with a crack nailing three of the descending Chitauri and killing them and grazing another two. Then I spun my hand to open a portal the size of my torso, just in front of the Leviathan's nose. It couldn't stop moving forward from where the barrier had bounced it. So part of its face, and a good portion of its body before it came crashing down, was portaled to a carpool parking lot Morgana had chosen for being out of the way.

My voice was still magnified, but I could hear the wild cheering of nerds in the convention center behind me as they heard familiar words used in their defense.

I tapped the familiar story in my syllabary, just a hint of it and the world's own knowledge and belief, plus the location was fleshing out the rest of the story.

"All wings report in."

Morgana let me hear all of my duplicates respond to my call.

"Comicon, engaged and active in Haven 1. First wave is ready for action."

"Automon, approaching Haven 2. ETA 34 seconds."

"Oldschool, location for Haven 3 has been found. Beginning ritual."

"Search, standing by."

"Rescue, standing by."

Three of my duplicates would be doing the invaluable work of making safe spaces for people to run and hide in until the fighting was over. Places with plenty of stories and life to draw from. The other two would act as search and rescue and move civilians out of the splash zone of the fighting into the Havens.

So I took up a powerful thread of a story and intoned the next phase.

"Lock S-foils in attack positions."

With a low hum, a veritable flock of Star Wars space fighters, ranging from the small toy models for children, to larger collectors models, to Lego model sets flew out of the center and started peppering the Chitauri with tiny amber lasers.

-vVv-

The duplicate of Fae who was going by Comicon had a lot of standing authority not by her clothes, but by the simple fact that she was still in fact flying on amber wings. She zipped through the convention, unerringly finding all stalls and locations that catered to the Star Wars fandom. And every one that had a model ship of any kind, she said the same thing.

"I need to borrow your ship models. You will not regret it."

-vVv-

Another duplicate, going by Automon hovered in front of the New York Public Library with her voice magnified even over the chaos: screaming as loud as she could to every statue within the sound of her voice:

"Command Sequence: Daedalus Twenty Three! Defend Manhattan! Begin Activation!"

And the Lions that guarded the entrance of the library rose from their pedestals and leapt for the Chitauri that were chasing a flock of civilians that were scrambling for the doors.

-vVv-

The duplicate called Old-school was hovering over a small but well established park just south of Stark Tower. Thick, sturdy trees stood in close groves, carefully tended to grow strong and tall. And speaking aloud with her hands outstretched over the park:

"'Certainly the Forest of Fangorn is perilous. Not the least to those who are too ready with their axes. And Fangorn himself, he is perilous too! Yet wise and kindly nonetheless.'"

Trees shock themselves in response to her voice, roots writhing in the ground as branches tossed and awoke to the story she was offering. The city itself was a living thing, not just the people and the fixtures that were in it. But the trees and wildlife as well. And now these trees were being offered the chance to wake up and defend against invaders.

Is this brand the wisest course to invoke? Morgana questioned. Fangorn is not known to be kind and this could just as easily threaten some of those we are trying to protect.

Oldschool smirked as one tree root tossed a Chitauri into a building after letting a human run past unmolested.

Morgana, this is New York. These Trees are also New Yorkers. And I cannot think of a more appropriate enhancement for them than this.

-vVv-

I was listening to my duplicates to their work as I continued to expand my field of influence and build up the story near the convention center. Chitauri would go for the strongest threat, so by building defenses somewhere, they would automatically seek that out in an attempt to earn glory in combat. And I needed the people inside to see what I was doing to let my duplicate do her best work.

One crowd of cosplayers who was huddled in the parking garage as some Chitauri marksmen tried to hit them was startled when I swooped down, but I opened a portal for them with a spin and my slingring, which I was so tempted to just never return to the Ancient One it was that dang useful.

"Go talk to the other me through there if you want to make these a-holes regret picking New York as their primary battle ground." I told them, grinning and waving them through. To their pragmatic credit, the more reasonable ones dragged their gawking friends through the portal with a few calls of thanks and zealous determination to get under cover.

There is another group that is too large to portal through and too scattered to defend effectively not too far away.

Morgana gave me a pin on my map to follow and I flew off. I amped my voice again, weaving the spell over the squadron of armed and aggressive aliens.

"You know, it's really unfortunate: You all are just tall enough to be stormtroopers!"

And suddenly, their aim got so much worse, comedically worse. Not another hit landed on a human. I saw several stray shots hit their own comrades, which caused no small amount of angry infighting. I saw one civilian, who had fallen and almost been facing a full firing squad, laughing hysterically as he scrambled away from the bizarre sight.. He was wearing what appeared to be a long brown robe with a tan tunic and belt. There was a plastic lightsaber by his side.

I flew down lower.

"You alright?"

"Aliens are attacking, I'm talking to a flying fairy, and my only weapon is made of plastic." He held it up with a half hearted, slightly manic smile clearly on the verge of a panic attack. I regarded him for a long second, thinking of my plan.

It was one thing to animate toys with the belief of their fans. But people...

I do want to be able to boost morale. And there isn't much that can do that better than enabling someone to act of their own accord.

The Day is Crack.

Can I take that as it will work out and people won't have any incidents?

Yes.

Excellent.

I drifted in closer to the hyperventilating man, placing one hand on his head and focusing on his story. His passion for the story he was wearing right now. A fairly generic Jedi costume, but it had an untold amount of potential. Potential I intended to use.

"The Force is strong within you."

And I saw him suck in a huge breath...and he was calm. Controlled. I moved out of the way of some shots aimed at my back but he also moved. Dodging two blasts of pale, deadly energy without even seeing them coming rolling and rising to his feet in two effortless motions and finishing with an instinctive Force Push that was more akin to a backhand. It sent the Chitauri who had been bearing down on him flying against a wall, which took him down easily.

"What the-!"

The Crack has censored his reaction to keep the rating intact.

He composed himself rather quickly, then looked up at me and announced.

"I'm gonna chalk this up to a bad acid trip."

"I mean you absolutely could and if you do: Valid. But on the other hand, you will never, ever have the chance to do this again.."

I pointed down at the lightsaber in his hand and he followed my gaze. The gray plastic hilt in his hand was shiny metal, or more specifically, durasteel. And the green 'blade' portion of it was gone. His eyes went wide.

"No way..."

He looked it over hurriedly, all over searching for something. But eventually he paused and in a trance, he clicked a button and with an iconic snap-hiss, the glowing green plasma blade extended. I pushed a little more magic into the minor enchantment to help guide his steps and aligned it with the protections I had put up everywhere.

Wide shocked eyes looked up at me as I started to fly higher. The green light of his new weapon casting a strange light over him. For a second, I saw a little boy staring raptly at a movie screen, in absolutely awe of what he saw there. I gestured towards the orange tinted building.

"Get towards the convention center. There are more protections there and less chance of friendly fire on your surroundings. They need someone at the door to help defend the others. Have fun, my Jedi brother!"

-vVv-

In the massive area of booths and stalls, Comicon was hovering before a group of con-attendees holding armfuls of Pokémon Plushies.

"Yep, dead serious. Sing the Pokémon theme song and do not stop for anything."

"How is that supposed to help?!" One incredulous Deadpool asked, holding up a life size Altaria plush.

The duplicate smirked and snatched up a Pikachu from one of her volunteers. "Watch!" She sang out in a clear, firm voice:

"I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!"

With every word and note, the plush in her hand started to glow orange, and all too soon, it moved in her hand. It grew larger and more sturdy, fur sprouting from the yellow polyester. It shook its heads, black tipped ears flapping gently and cheeks sparking with electricity. It leapt to the ground, took a stance and waited. Fae made a go-ahead gesture to her volunteer, who actually had on a rather impressive looking Ash'ley' cosplay. She spoke in a shaky voice.

"Th-thunderbolt?"

The Pikachu let out the iconic cry of his kind and a torrent of vibrant electricity launched at the doorway and the approaching Chitauri who was thrown back. Fae gave her newly dubbed Pokémon trainer a thumbs up.

"Just keep singing, and they'll take care of the rest."

The former Deadpool naysayer, staring at the now living Electric Mouse an awed expression then shouted the next line of the song.

"To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause!"

All those holding the plushies joined in, singing with gusto and wonder shining in their eyes. And the harmless stuffed animals started to glow. From a tiny Togepi, to a massive Snorlax that was being held between two people. They grew heavier or lighter. They moved, and some started to float and fly.

The oncoming aliens couldn't dim the joy that this event elicited of childhood dreams coming true. Comicon grinned as she issued her final orders.

"Keep all legs and arms inside the convention center at all times, as outside of it, Friendly Fire is still enabled."

The floating wizard chirped and clapped her hands as she flew off.

"Live your dreams, trainers! Make em blast off like Team Rocket!"

A short time later, Comicon paused as she flew over a stall that happened to have some Link Cosplayers.

She did a quick loop over them to reverse her momentum, grinning down at them.

"Y'all wanna help? We need some more people at the door to stop the ground troops." Having seen what she had done to the Pokemon stalls, a good half of the convention attendees were chanting the Pokemon theme song like an anthem now, taking as many pictures as they could of the closest thing that they would ever see to a Pokemon in their lives.

"What do you need us to do?"

The duplicate tapped her syllabary at her side guiding runes into several circles with a few calculated waves of her hands and spoke cheerfully.

"It's Dangerous to Travel Alone, Take these!"

The magic circles wrapped around her hands. And with some very corny looking finger guns, Fae sent orange magic to spiral around the various fake weapons that the four of them held. The Master Swords became real, deadly metal, their muscles hardened as if they were used to swinging actual swords, and knowledge poured into their minds on how to go about doing this without dying. The plastic shields two of them carried were now sturdy, true metal Hylian Shields. She also aimed at the pockets of the two who did not have shields, which grew heavy with the promise of destruction. Bombs, deku seeds, and some fairies to lend them support. Ie, recharge the magic on them.

"You have limited supplies. Make the most of what you've got." And when one of them stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small bomb, he swallowed audibly.

"All equipment will only affect Chitauri and their gear, no humans or human property will be harmed in the use of these enchantments. The fairies will supplement the spell making your weapons real to let you last longer. Hold the door everyone."

Three of the now newly armed Hero's of Time raced off with shouts, brandishing their newly bestowed blades.

"For Hyrule!"

"For Zelda!"

"For Narnia!"

Fae laughed, calling after the last one.

"Wrong fandom, but I love the enthusiasm!" She glanced back down at the last one who was still staring at his copy of the Master Sword with literal tears in their eyes. They looked up at Comicon with awe and worship.

"Marry me?"

"Not the right moment and I'm too young for you, dude." She said with a chuckle, she spun a portal into being and dropped it over her to zip away.

-vVv-

Oldschool paused in her flight around the newly awakened Fangorn forest as a massive crash sounded and she saw that a car had been tossed by a diving Leviathan to land in a tree.

A large, old willow tree.

She dove down and circled it quickly, inspecting it top to bottom and then laughed.

"Oh, the Day is Crack indeed. Of all the cars that it could have tossed, it threw a freaking Ford Anglia at the thing. Perfection." She cleared her throat and held her hands out over it again, thinking through a minor modification of the lines she would need to reference.

"Can you believe your luck?" She called to the Chitauri playfully as they tried to close range on her and open fire. "Of all the trees you could have hit, you got the one that hits back!"

Bark stretched and swelled as magic power coursed through the old wood, growing taller and stronger and angrier. In short order, there was a violently thrashing tree that crushed every Chitauri in its reach, even digging roots up out of the ground to pull them closer. The other more subtly awakened trees moved to herd the invaders towards their violent brother.

Old-school quickly wrote on her syllabary some extra protections that the new Whomping Willow would only strike at Chitauri and not humans. Then she tracked and found her new evacuation location and went to work.

-vVv-

A Darth Vader Cosplayer with a few Stormtroopers around him were hiding, trying to stay away from the doors. One of the troopers asked Fae's Convention duplicate if there was anything that they could do, after observing a Typhlosion Lava Plume some Chitauri into atoms.

"Well that depends on Lord Vader back there, as Vader's Fist was really the only Stormtrooper battalion that actually managed to hit something." She nodded back at Vader, whose face was pale against their dark armor.

"I'm literally just a cosplayer, lady! I can't go out there!"

She snapped her finger, voice dropped an octave to resonate, deep dark and familiar.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

And the Vader cosplayer shivered, and an iconic rasp of a ventilator filled the air...one Stormtrooper leveled their gun and fired into the heated battle between an Espeon, a Bulbasaur and several Chitauri who were trying to gain access to the center after finding the other magical defenses too difficult to penetrate. They fired the previously fake plastic gun. And a red bolt of energy impacted the alien's shoulder and made it screech in agony.

"You don't have to fight if you don't want to. But you are the anchor for the troopers who do. And you've only got the powers for a little while. Be a shame to not enjoy using them on entirely deserving targets with a safety built in that means you're not gonna hurt any of your buddies here."

"But what if I get in trouble for property damage or something?"

"I somehow doubt alien invasion was on any insurance's list of covered perils. Besides- Burning Hands." Rays of scorching heat flew and incinerated the leaping Chitauri without so much as a whimper. "-No one's ever gonna believe this enough to point fingers at anyone."

As Comicon flew away, she saw the cosplayer put on his helmet, and heard another familiar snap-hiss of a lightsaber, this one red. A supportive booth attendee hurried began to play the Imperial March with a dozen others belting out the notes wordlessly in support without any prompting.

That makes a total of 5 lightsaber wielders in play in the defenses.

Could probably use a little more long range stuff here. And more space for refugees.

There was simply no end to the work. Or to the cheers and affirmations of support that the non-combatants were lending their champions, further strengthening the temporary enchantments that Story Magic was allowing them to use.

I blinked when I caught a glimpse of one of my Duplicates Portalling inside and then outside of the museum of Natural History.

What is she doing?

Boosting morale.

-vVv-

Automon whooped, holding up a repeated spell that made a thudding, steady beat rock throughout the air as a life size, shrieking T-rex stomped through the streets, empty of all save her enemies. The 40ft, ancient predator snapped up several Chitauri who screeched in panic at the sight of the massive predator. A dozen more were trampled. The wizard on her back howled with glee, spamming Magic Missile at the flying chariots around her.

"Polka will never die!"

-vVv-

Possibility is there that by invoking the Percy Jackson story, Automon has gained a measure of Demigod willingness to try anything.

Noted.

Deeming the defenses well underway, and the other two duplicates were using their slingrings to funnel evacuated civilians into the Library, the convention center and my miniature Fangorn forest, I decided it was time to check in on the Avengers themselves. This had all come together rather quickly, so per Morgana this was still, somehow, before the first official assembly. I zipped through the air, and paused when I saw someone familiar down below. Wearing an ill fitting shirt and too large pants, and riding a small moped through the torn up streets.

It was Bruce.

I dove down, flying alongside him.

"Lovely day for an alien invasion, isn't it?"

He jumped and miraculously kept the vehicle steady.

"How long have you been able to fly?"

"About five years now." I answered cheerfully. "Come on, the others are this way." I led him down a relatively intact side street to where Steve was almost ready to issue instructions.

"You look better." He remarked, glancing between me and the road he was navigating.

"I got someplace with enough energy for me to formulate a portal to a place with ethernano." I flashed a portal open over Bruce to catch and redirect some falling rubble away from him.

"SHIELD really has all the toys." He muttered, eyeing the portal that quickly vanished into orange sparks.

"SHIELD only wishes they had this."

Stragglers have been caught in a broken stairwell.

Morgana showed me the image of two Chitauri, clawing their way through the rubble to try and get a clear shot at them. Two women in business casual clothes and two broken heels between them both.

"I'll catch you with you in a bit."

And I veered off towards the muffled screaming from within the building. I opened a portal in the side of the wall to the Chitauri's backs, which would not disturb the buildings structure. Then I whistled and drew their attention.

"Hello there. Melf's Acid Arrow." Two bolts of energy shot from my hands that splashed hissing orange semi liquid onto the ground slammed into the Chitauri. One of their center mass and the other in their neck. The former screeched and turned his gun towards me. Morgana tracked where the shot would land on me and I spun my wrist to open one portal before me, catching the blast, and one above him. Functionally making him shoot himself in the head.

I flew into the building carefully reshaping my wings to avoid clipping anything.

"Can you hear me in there?"

"Yes!" One voice called back, shrill with panic.

"I'm gonna get you out, hang tight for a sec."

OK, will the idea work?

It will. It would be riskier without the Crack. But they will be unharmed.

I channeled the sorcery totem into manifesting a pickaxe, glowing with orange runes and hummed the Dwarves Song from Snow White. With a few jabs, the rubble from the collapsed stairwell cleared, reverting back to its original state, revealing the two terrified women I had seen. I gave them a smile when I managed to see them clearly.

"Hey there. I know you're probably hyped on adrenaline, and very scared, but there are safe spaces I can send you to. Now, this is an important question: Are either of you fantasy, or science fiction fans?"

It stood to reason. Bruce had had no indication that I had been thought dead. So he wouldn't have thought to mention it to everyone that I was still alive. So I glided in, through a hastily made portal, runes at my fingertips, on fiery orange wings and sparking with energy. Two of my Duplicates, Search and Rescue, had dismissed themselves to give me enough power to work with the Avengers. One was still recreating Harry Dresden with the 'borrowed' T-rex model from the Museum of Natural History. One was zipping around, portalling stragglers out of the fight zone and supervising our safe zones and activating other statues with the Daedalus Automaton spell.

And I was getting stared at like people saw a ghost that just appeared in their midst.

Morgana hummed that Tony was talking to Steve.

"We got Banner. And Fae."

Morgana showed me a flash of Tony's face inside his armor. A look of relief and vulnerability no one would be able to read on his face plate.

"Well tell them to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you."

He flew around the corner with a Leviathan on his tail.

And I hung back and waited as Thor inspected me, head to toe for any kind of injury. I gave him a smile and a thumbs up, still riding high on the collective belief in fiction from the Comicon and the belief in me personally that my duplicates had accrued in their rescue missions.

"I don't see how that's a party." Natasha said flatly.

Oh but this is.

I looked around, tagging everyone with a mental marker and pulling up the map of Manhattan to keep track of everyone.

This is my adventuring party for this day. This combat.

I tapped my syllabary, gliding down to Clint.

"Can I see your comm?" I gestured at his ear. He was looking me over too but unlike Thor, he was doing a full 'Dad Check'. It was different, I couldn't tell you how.

"Don't suppose I could convince you to sit this one out."

"Not a chance." He looked at me, hair vibrant and curling with power, eyes aglow with renewed vigor, hands coated with magic and wings glowing on my back. And he sighed and pulled his ear piece off and showed it to me.

"Thanks! Gemino."

I tapped it with a finger and said my spell, making a perfect functional copy of the device appear in my hand. The copy wouldn't last more than a few hours, but it would last long enough. And typically yes, the awkwardness that existed between Harry Potter magic and technology would typically make this a useless endeavor. However!

The Day is Crack.

I fitted the earpiece on, tapping into the channel they were going to be using.

Morgana, we up?

We are connected. Due to the conjuration aspect of this communication device, I could also make my voice heard if needed.

Steve gave his orders. Tony was placed on perimeter watch duty. Thor was sent to bottle neck the portal. Clint was posted as a look out.

"Fae, herd civilians away from the fighting, and Chitauri to this spot."

I accepted my marching orders with a nod. I could tell that the idea of asking a child to fight didn't sit right with any of them. But they were outnumbered as it was. I zipped away, flying with Tony for a second before splitting off towards another civilian I could sense who was trapped in a ruined building.

Steve didn't need to tell Tony to keep an eye on me. He had already resolved to do that.

And I heard Hulk bellow as he began to do what he did best: Break everything in sight.

Truth be told, most of my time to shine had already passed with Comicon, Automon and Oldschool's stunts. And the Library. I saw a statue of Columbus using his flag to bash a Chitauri upside the head, and a heavy metal horse charge over another three of them with resounding impunity. And I saw William Shakespeare deliver the most beautiful smackdown by throwing his book and nailing a chariot driver, bringing the whole thing crashing down.

Oldschool must have made it to Central Park and taken over waking the statues.

Indeed.

I heard Tony's voice come at me.

"Kid, you wouldn't happen to know why I just saw a T-rex a few streets over eating Chitauri?"

Oh...Automon had gotten further than I anticipated. But I was glad this was working for her. The day being Crack seemed to be working out fairly well and the Chitauri were used to large predators. Just not quite the same kind of primal savagery that an apex dinosaur was capable of. Or just how fast those massive leg of theirs could make them move.

"It technically was not me."

"It literally is you. I'm lookin at you right now.."

"I promise I will put the T-rex back in the Museum of natural history with no damage and give anyone who asks a ride."

"I want one."

Clint called over the comm.

"Sure thing!" I heard Morgana ping a building and saw one wall had been large collapsed with a woman struggling to pull herself up a precarious ledge to solid footing. I cast another pre-set rune to make a large inflatable cushion beneath her. "Hey! I've got you! Let go." She looked back at me, swallowed a scream and then slipped. She landed safely and I portaled her to Haven 3 in the Park.

How are we doing capacity wise?

Haven 2 in the Library is most occupied in the smallest space. Haven 1 still has room and is the most actively defended. Haven 3 still has ample secure space but less defenses as some trees have been broken down.

Have Oldschool reroute those she finds to Haven 3. And tell Comicon to get volunteers to reinforce the enchantment.

-vVv-

Comicon received her orders from Primary via their shared mental roommate with a hum, considering the matter. The Trekkies were at the portal space, helping organize and place those who had been beamed in. All concessions for the comic were being cracked open to help settle and calm the rattled rescued souls. And as many as possible were monitoring news, cameras, everything that showed them what was happening in the wider city to get information. An area for the injured had been organized as well. With a spark of hope and wonder from their literally magical defenders, human resilience had kicked in and they were resisting the urge to despair. She flew up over the milling crowd in Comicon and called.

"Hey! Anyone who wants to help and is wearing Lord of the Rings themed costumes, raise your hands! We need reinforcement in Bryant Park for the Fangorn Forest spell!"

One voice rose above the rest, hoisting a admirably realistic replica of Anduril.

"You have my sword!"

"And my bow!"

And five different dwarf cosplayers bellowed in unison:

"And my ax!"

Comicon laughed at the enthusiasm.

"Oh wow, you people understood the assignment." Several others stepped in with a variety of outfits ranging from Gandalf to a quartet dressed as the hobbits. There were also a number of elves, tieflings and other high fantasy outfits that would help the High Fantasy genre of Haven 3.

"Now, to be clear. I am not asking anyone to go charge out and fight. Just stay in the park and let the magic do the rest. And if anything not human gets too close, you'll know what to do." She flew around tapping each of the cosplayers lightly on the head and pulling up a strand of runes up from their wills. Their focus on assisting, and the admiration and wonder for the people they were portraying. She wove them together with the combat experience of the characters and judgment of the characters. The courage to stand their ground and the judgment of when to let a treant step in. And plot armor and resistance to damages.

Their wholehearted trust was so pure and powerful, Comicon hardly needed to donate any of her own energy. She just took what they gave her, combined it with the strangeness of the day, and the rest of it built itself. A squadron of crudely but very well acted Uruk-hai called then.

"Hey, what about us?"

Comicon considered it... Then shrugged.

"What the hell, the Day is Crack! Alright: Proud Uruk-hai: you march for Bryant Park! To war! And Nazgul, I see you back there. You can go too!"

Once the orange portal spun closed behind them, Comicon turned back to the rest, eyes sparkling. She hadn't been told to stop reinforcing the park after all and there was another very strong, well loved story to build up there.

"Where are my wizards at? Hogwarts represent? I've got a whomping willow that also needs some back up!"

-vVv-

Per Morgana, Comicon had upping the defenses in Bryant Park and our Fangorn well in hand. I was hesitant to send any innocent civilians anywhere close to combat, but as the Chitauri were learning that these places were only fighting defensively, they were leaving them alone to try and win the glory of killing the Avengers, who they had been primed to fight. And shuffling the costumes, magic bearing believers around would strengthen the overall defenses.

And widen the impact of what I was doing.

So glad Thor offered me Asgard's formal protection.

The ability to weaponize what I had on this scale would make a lot more than just Hydra sit up and pay attention. Thankfully, I was suspecting that this was only possible because the Day was Crack and the impact of this would fade from most people's minds as time went on without a refresh of the mad energy of the day.

"Fae! Got a group of civilians that were cornered, Captain's gone to 'em, they need to be bailed out."

"Roger that." I could easily see where in my mind's eye with Morgana's help in reproducing the memory.

Haven 3 has more defenses now and still has a lot of room. I'll send them there.

Oldschool has also connected with Emergency responders to get medical help into all three Haven's.

That was also excellent news.

I jumped first to Haven's Intake area and waved a portal open.

"We're gonna get a large group." I told the EMT who looked more or less like he was in charge. He had been working with Oldschool, and it was the kind of day where you just didn't question the identical copies of someone running around.

"How many?"

"At least 30."

The orange sparks spread wide and I flew through the portal.

"Everyone, move for the portal, it will take you to safety." I caught the falling Chitauri that Steve had taken out to prevent him from shooting the lot of them like fish in a barrel. Morgana gave a wordless warning.

"Silence!" The bubble of magical silence kept the worst of the grenade going off overhead from damaging this area down here. Concussive force was not the same as soundwaves itself, but they were similar enough that I had been able to lessen their impact within the area.

I made sure all the civilians were through, and did a complete scan before I closed the portal. Then I flew out to check on Steve.

Natasha wasn't with him anymore, so she must have hijacked a chariot to try and get up to the Tesseract and the Portal.

I glided down to where Steve was picking himself off a car groaning in pain.

"Oh, bad landing. Hold on." I rubbed my hands together as though I were charging some electric paddles. Then I laid both hands on his shoulders. "Enhance Ability: Bear's Endurance."

My runes spread out over his shoulders, reinforcing the strained muscles and aiding his recovery rate to mend the bruises at an accelerated rate. The effect would let him resist more taxing effects as well as give him a brief boost of vitality. Morgana took over sustaining that boost.

"That's new." He grunted, sliding off the car.

Director Fury is speaking with the council now, rejecting their order to fire a nuclear strike on the island.

Oh, we are so much closer that I thought. Wow that was fast.

"Are civilians out of the area?" Steve asked, already walking off the new bruises.

"That was the last large pocket of them. Everything else is isolated and there are three duplicates of me running around doing the same."

"And the animals?" Steve asked, watching as Automon rode through the streets with a whooping war cry as her mount chased a flock of chitauri and...sheep.

Polymorph?

Polymorph.

"Automon has it in hand."

"If you say so." Steve grabbed his shield and went back for the stray foot soldiers that were managing to duck into alleyways were the vicious jaws of the carnivorous dinosaur couldn't reach them. I considered my options from here.

If we're at the point where Fury got ordered to blank slate the island, then a few important things are going to be happening in very close succession.

Among them being Clint running out of arrows. And as Morgana reminded me: Loki was going to be heading that way shortly in one of the flying chariots, and we had some payback to deliver.

Have Comicon send me...that. You know what I mean. And have her get into position.

Clint was generally quite well adjusted. He had gotten the stuffing beaten out of him by Natasha, and then realized the small, scared little girl he had comforted only a few days earlier was in fact very dangerous. He could see her even now, casually reversing gravity in a street and making the Chitauri float up into his bow range. She also zipped over and tapped his quiver speaking that unfamiliar word again. He felt weight materialize in his quiver and reached back to realize she had spontaneously created new arrows for him.

"You were gonna run out." She told him matter of factly. "I can't duplicate the speciality tips, just standard points."

"It'll be enough. Thanks."

"Hawkeye!"

Natasha's call made Clint's trained eye instantly swerve up to track the gaudy golden horns that Loki had donned. Impressive but easy to track by their shine even at this distance.

"Nat, what are you doing?"

"I could use a little help!"

He made his selections carefully with a very special payload for the ass that had made him dance to his tune. Fae gave a savage grin that brought to mind all the warnings about not messing with fairies from old stories.

"I can help too." She glanced at him side long, blue eyes aglow with a light that would have made him uncomfortable at the reminder of his own enthrallment. But this was pure, childish joy not any cold distant menace or calculation. "I won't poach though."

He considered it, then everything else that she had demonstrated in the last 20 minutes...then nodded, drawing his bow to be at the ready.

"We've got him."

She had been quite good about lining up shots for him after all, getting certain stubborn targets out from behind cover. She held out her hand and there was something blue and white in it. And squishy. Clint recognized it from Lila's current fixation.

"The blue shell? From Mariokart?"

"Natasha, break left and down, let Loki pull ahead."

Her free hand moved almost like she was conducting some music, Clint could see faint orange strands in the air, humming as she plucked them, eyes fixed on their target. Natasha did as Fae bade, and Loki's chariot overshot hers, just barely.

"'Pride Cometh before the Fall' is an old story, but always good. And something about using children's toys against them always seemed to hit the egomaniacs the hardest." She turned towards Loki's small caravan and tossed the shell in the air with a solemn intonation.

"One shell, two shell, Red Shell, Blue. Death on swift wings comes for you."

The wings shimmered, the blue parts gaining a distinctive scaled pattern, the white spikes growing sharper. The wings beat a few times as it lifted up from her hand, seeming to quiver with excitement before it zoomed off entirely under its own power.

"That isn't going to actually kill him, is it?"

She scoffed.

"Nah, it's a kids toy from a kid's game. Won't even bust his chariot, just send him flying. But it will be really funny and useful."

The shell spun around Loki's chariot once as he looked on in bewilderment, before it dive bombed him and he was launched straight into the air. A clean, beautiful shot. Clint waited half a second and shifted the arrow in his grasp slightly so the light would gleam off of the point. He had witnessed Loki's abilities and behaviors first hand. With that kind of warning...

Loki snatched the arrow out of the air before it could strike him, landing back in his chariot, hair ruffled, missing his helmet but already recovering his swagger. Clint wished he could see his face more clearly as he activated the explosive in the arrowhead and knocked Loki out of the sky as well as destroying his chariot.

"Magnificent." Fae remarked with a grin. "Now, I note he has lost hold of the shiny stick. Imma go see if I can find it cause we'll need it to close the portal."

And with that, she was off again, twisting gracefully in the air to throw another lance of lightning at a Chitauri that dared shoot at her. Part of him rankled seeing a kid fly off into a warzone and there was something disturbing about how easily she had adapted to the situation. Like this wasn't anything unusual or stressful for her. It was a stark difference compared to the kid who had tumbled into SHIELD's underground base only two days earlier.

But his gut told him that her terror then and her need for someone to calm her had been genuine. And that she might be powerful and terrifying in her capabilities to bend reality, but she was in no way a threat to anyone with good intentions.

And he really was running on empty for his special arrowheads. Time to relocate to better cover.

-vVv-

Comicon supposed there were technically other things that she could be doing right now other than lurking here with a camera she had borrowed from one of her 'troops' at the convention center. But, she crouched just inside the upper story of Stark tower, almost vibrating with excitement.

This was it.

This was the moment.

Clint's exploding arrow made Loki's chariot crash into Stark Tower, soon to be Avengers Tower. He picked himself up quickly enough, looking far less put together than he had previously. And then Hulk jumped into the scene and Comicon had to stifle her excited giggles. This moment needed no commentary. Not yet.

Loki slammed through a large and doubtless very expensive window and into the far wall and hardly seemed winded. Hulk grunted as he landed, dust and glass fragments jumping as he slammed his fists into the ground and started forward.

"Enough!" Loki bellowed, making Hulk pause in confusion. Very few people had ever tried to talk to him, so he was always curious about it.

"I am a god, you dull creature." He snarled at the green giant. Not realizing that Hulk was in fact plenty smart. Enough so to realize when he was being insulted and be touchy enough, ie, proud enough of Bruce's intelligence, to not tolerate the disrespect. Comicon bit her lips, leaning forward, camera fixed on the duo. Loki did not seemed to have noticed her, focusing instead on Hulk.

"I will not be bullied by the likes of AWK!"

And it happened.

Hulk yanked Loki's feet out from under him and trashed him around like a child did a floppy doll. Bashing him into the hard tile floor, one massive hand gripping him by one leg. Then he paused, lifted him up to look at him...And then looked at Comicon, lifting him as though asking for her opinion. She considered it...then shook her head,

Hulk promptly swung Loki into the ground twice more, then walked away without a backwards glance.

"Puny god."

She kept it together after that. It was listening to Loki's low moan of pain that broke her and made Comicon start to laugh hysterically. This was only broken by the camera beeping. She stopped and looked at her borrowed gains and her shoulders slumped.

"Oh come on, memory full?"

-vVv-

I found the scepter turned spear right where I knew it would be. One of the upper levels of Stark Tower, lying on a graveled portion of the roof where Loki had dropped it after his confrontation with Thor. I flexed my hands inside the gloves borrowed from the Ancient One, casting mending to return them to their former state. I had to play fast and loose with some of the effects. But the point was just to have something safe between me and the scepter.

I knew my hand was shaking as I reached out and just barely brushed the handle with a finger.

The presence of the Mind Stone was overwhelming even without direct contact. At this point, it was searching for someone to hold it. But the compulsion that Thanos had woven around it with its own powers was currently in tatters, not yet recovered from the force of will Thor had exerted near it to loosen it's hold on his brother. Everything that it had left was being focused on keeping control of Loki, not on anyone else.

But the echoes of Infinity still resounded like a bell tower in my head and I flinched, hissing and covering my ears as though that would help.

"Fae." I looked up to the roof and saw a fleck of red. Natasha was looking down at me with Dr Selvig close at hand. "We need the scepter to try and shut the portal down. Get it up here."

I had been flying all over the place. I had compressed a piece of time and spam written a means to convert enemy energy into extra resources for myself. I had animated a T-rex that was even now rampaging over the few foolish foot soldiers that were left while Automon and a flock of bronze eagles from some official building somewhere gunned for the rooftop where a whole ring of chariots had pinned Hulk down. I had long since surpassed the 6 impossible things before breakfast rule set by Alice in Wonderland.

And the hardest thing I would do today could very well be carrying a spear for about 20 feet.

I didn't let myself overthink it. I just trusted our mental defense to Morgana and picked up the spear. My wings guttered as the scepter reacted to my presence. Someone close by, but someone receptive and capable of using it.

The quiet, premature sentience of the Mind Stone asked for help. For freedom from the pall Thanos had cast over it.

The enthrallment tried to coax me to open the portal overhead even wider.

My wings faltered, parts of them fading out as I clung to my flight spell, feeling every nick and scrape I had gained over the course of the battle. And the looming threshold of magical exhaustion. That was what the hostile, possessive spell most of all. Weakness.

My stomach rolled within me.

I changed my focus. Putting aside the laughter of the Avengers movie. The striking cinematography that had brought this conflict to life for so many. The awe, wonder and worship of people standing up, even fictional people, fighting the bad guy and saving the day.

I focused instead on two words, breathed out with a sigh of relief and disbelief in the quiet aftermath.

"We won."

This fight was going to be victorious. The Chitauri would come away with a bloodied nose and the knowledge that Earth was not easy prey and would exercise all due caution before threatening it again. Everyone here would meet up, and sit in total silence in a small Greek restaurant and eat shawarma.

We are going to win.

It was hope, not happiness that got me the rest of the way to the roof. I released my flight spell with a gasp and dropped the spear at Natasha's feet, hurriedly turning away as I fell to my knees and was sick. I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw Black Widow regarding me with concern.

Commander Fury is no longer in command. Override order 7-Alpha-1-1. There's a missile coming aimed for the city. T-minus 3 minutes.

My head snapped up, feeling my eyes glow as a flutter of true worry grew inside of me. The death that no amount of my skill could prevent. That rested all in the hands of a man flying around in a fancy tin can. This close to the Tesseract, I could feel a tiny bit of residual ethernano that I gratefully captured and stored for absorption later.

"Get the Mind Stone." I rasped to the Black Widow and Dr Eric Selvig, wiping my mouth. "Get the portal ready for closing. But don't shut it yet. We'll need it."

A tiny aguamenti and an underpowered scourgify let me get the bad taste out of my mouth. And give an abbreviated explanation to Natasha of why I had reacted.

"I'm a Story Mage. Everything that can have history has a story that I can read and make use of, whether fact or fiction. Just like there are cues that can let you predict future events in a story you read, when there are big events around me or coming, I can tell something will happen." I pointed out over the sea where the Helicarrier was still maintaining its place, camouflaged and about to be the source of our problem. "Something's coming from over there that could end every story, every life in this city."

Selvig was hurrying to set up the computer he was using to direct and command the Tesseract's power and the access to the Arc Reactor that was letting the portal remain open and stable. Power had to be cut from the arc reactor and the Tesseract at the same time. Natasha opened up her comm to everyone, eyes on me as her mind, trained for spy work, connected exactly what I was telling her.

Knowledge is power. And I can access pretty much any that I want.

"Got a tip that something is incoming from the sea, does anyone copy?"

A flush of warmth and relief suffused me as she spoke. Not only because she trusted me, but because she didn't reveal her source.

"There's a nuclear missile headed to the island from a rogue bird."

Fury's tone was scratchy, the wind on the Helicarrier deck making it hard to hear him.

"Its payload could wipe out Midtown."

I heard a new roar of a finely tuned, very high tech engine as Tony threw off his last attackers and gunned for the open sea, Jarvis using his access to the SHIELD systems to pinpoint the nuke's exact location for him.

"Could also wipe out something else."

Tony's slightly ominous words made me start to hurriedly searching through my memories and feelings. Anything happy, anything I could use to get up closer to the portal again.

I knew he would be fine. I knew he would just barely squeak through and make it back.

I am Ironman.

And that didn't make a difference at all in what I wanted to do.

You are going to be a dad Tony. The best dad. You haven't properly met any of the kids yet that you'll fall in love with. But they are there. They are waiting for you. Not your money, your skills or your fame. You.

Just you.

Morgana adjusted my comm as I heard Steve's warning.

"Stark...you know that's a one-way trip."

His tone was odd. Knowing. Understanding. He had taken a similar flight before and had not expected to wake up again. I reached for every stubborn ounce of life within me and let my voice be heard over the comm.

I love you 3000.

No, not one way. Not if I can help it. Gana, give JARVIS the Coordinates to aim the missile once he's through.

With as Many Chitauri as we had killed, tracking them back to their mothership in our awareness was a piece of cake. Morgana handed the packet of information over. It would shorten the distance that Tony would need to go into that empty space.

We watched in tense silence as Tony crested the lip of his tower, flying the missile up and up until both vanished through the portal.

And we waited. I walked up to Natasha, watching the sky. Because there were time lines where Tony didn't make it back through. He had squeaked by with little more than the skin of his teeth. I laid my hand on the end of the spear. The Mind Stone's response was immediate, turning towards me with both hope for liberation and compelled hostility. Natasha, despite being largely deaf to magical nuance, felt it too and her shoulders tightened with wariness.

"Fae, what are you doing? Get back. This thing made you sick."

"Correction." I mused, looking upwards at the portal. "It wasn't the Mind Stone itself that made me sick. It's the inverted power that it is carrying. Someone used its own energy to befuddle the Mind Stone to be able to mentally enslave targets. In its natural state, it does not have that capacity."

Need more story. More exposition.

Morgana's subtle prompting made me keep talking though I wanted nothing more than to watch and hope with bated breath for Tony to come back through.

"Free will is a fundamental part of life. It's not just the right of sentient beings, it has to be there for there to be the full scope of life. It's one of the most important abilities people can have. Their choices let them define themselves. Work themselves into the fabric of reality. Change it even."

The portal was still empty of a falling red and gold humanoid figure. Morgana could sense that all Chitauri had fallen as the missile exploded in the mothership, effectively cutting the alien forces in half yet again and removing them from Thanos' roster until they could rebuild their population.

But Tony was still not there.

Morgana was searching and managed to find him through JARVIS. Tony was unconscious, but the AI could still survive the vacuum.

He has fallen off course to pass through the portal.

I slapped my hand more firmly on the haft of the spear. Channeling my intent through the Mind Stone.

Where is he?

The Mind Stone was barely in contact with the Space Stone. The two were resonating together, their powers merging. Letting me become dimly aware of every sentient mind in the vastness of space.

Tony Stark. Ironman. There is only one of him in all this universe.

But it was still hard to pin down the light of any one mind, even as brilliant as Tony's in the vastness of the universe. So I shifted focus to try and pick out one human mind near a massive dead zone. The chain reaction of the Chitauri mothership exploding would be snuffing out many lives...

But there were two other places in the universe with a similar chain of sudden deaths. Thanos must have been invading another planet. Or maybe Galactus was devouring something. There really were too many global threats in the MCU.

We are running out of time. The Mark 8 can withstand a vacuum for a short time, but Tony is running out of air.

I bore down on the Mind Stone.

Your chance to live and have your own free will, and mind is somewhere through this portal. And if Tony Stark dies, that chance dies with him.

Without Tony, there would be no Ultron. And without Ultron, there would be no Vision. That caught Mind Stone's attention. It was the singularity that was all about free will and the force that sentient creatures exerted on the universe around them simply by being able to make their own choices. And the dichotomy of the matter was that it could not do what it represented in the universe as one of its primal forces under its own power.

The Mind Stone was about control and influence. So it talked to the Space Stone and between the two pieces of Infinity I functionally held in my hands. Steve made the final call to close the portal, but I didn't move. Didn't let Natasha move the spear head forward to finish the job. That hand was now coated in the yellow-gold power of the Mind Stone. I lifted my hand and caught a current of the Space Stone's blue energy, winding the two together. Merging them and unifying them with intent. The blue pillar of power was now cut off, the portal was smaller. But it was also still open, ringed with yellow and blue energy that moved in harmony without ever merging.

And the hole in space, the doorway to a place unwarmed by a sun and now utterly desolate save for one mortal life and one artificial mind that the Mind Stone was homing in on. Because even in the vastness of the whole universe, there was only one JARVIS. That was what was enough for the Mind Stone to find and shift the portal to catch Tony.

Far up above, a distant red and gold figure was falling.

I pulled away from the power I had been channeling, knowing I was going to spend a considerable amount of time in recovery for that stunt even with the Crack in my favor. Natasha and Dr Selvig were the only witnesses to what I had done. I activated my comm.

"Can someone catch him? I don't think he's awake enough to command his own thrusters."

And he had been especially careful to design the autopilot feature that it could not be controlled easily by an outsider. He had learned his lesson when Rhodey as War Machine was piloted against his will. So without his cooperation, JARVIS couldn't land the Mark 8 safely.

It went exactly as per the movie from there. Hulk leapt up and caught Tony bringing him safely back to the ground, and giving the bellow that started his heart back into wakefulness. He would need to get the mini arc reactor insulated if he decided to go back into space casually. Or just allow them to remove the shrapnel and the battery it was powering.

I sagged onto the rooftop, feeling like my every part of me was unraveling with weariness. I could have fallen asleep right there on the gravel. But black clad legs came before me, the golden haft of one of the most dangerous items in the universe in hand.

"We're not done yet, kid."

I looked up at her with a smile that was only a fraction away from crying.

"I know."

I didn't mean to come here. I have probably thrown several potential timelines into absolute chaos. But I want to stop the Infinity War.

I took Natasha's hand to rise and followed her down to the stairwell to the Stark Tower proper. Loki was still there, stunned and immobile.

She...encouraged his remaining unconscious.

Atta girl.

I thought dimly, following the Black Widow. The goal was to arrange things in such a way that when Thanos came to Earth the first time,he would meet with a unified Avengers. The group that could meet his challenge, and protect not just this planet, but the rest of the universe from his plan.

I've got so much more work to do...and about 5 days left of Crack to do it.