Seven Months Later – January 2010
Unknown Location, Deep Space
The planet had no name. It was a barren rock drifting on the edge of a dying star system, stripped of atmosphere and life eons ago.
It was a graveyard. And today, it had become a battlefield.
The surface looked as though a celestial being had thrown a tantrum of apocalyptic proportions.
The ground was cracked and uneven, littered with massive craters as far as the eye could see. Entire mountain ranges had been shattered, their remains scattered like broken teeth across the landscape. Deep fissures split the surface open, some stretching for kilometers before vanishing into darkness.
Blackened rocks lay everywhere.
That alone made no sense.
There was no atmosphere on this planet. Nothing to support combustion. Fire should have been impossible. And yet, large sections of stone looked scorched, fused into glassy formations as if they had been exposed to extreme heat.
Lightning scars crisscrossed the terrain as well - jagged lines etched permanently into stone, as if storms had raged here despite the absence of a sky that could support them.
At the center of it all stood a single patch of untouched ground. A perfect circle, perhaps ten feet across, pristine amid the devastation. An eye of calm in a hurricane of destruction.
Here stood a single figure.
He was motionless, his back to the apocalypse he had wrought, his gaze fixed on the alien horizon where the dying red sun bled light across the shattered landscape.
A whining, silver-white luminescence clung to his silhouette. It was not the golden warmth of chi, nor the eldritch orange geometries of the Mystic Arts.
Then the silver light vanished, fading like smoke caught in a gale.
Had it been real? Or merely a trick of the starlight playing across dust and debris?
—
Arthur rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension drain away.
That was freeing.
He surveyed the destruction with the casual satisfaction of a man who had just completed a particularly vigorous workout - which, in a sense, he had.
Every once in a while, he came to places like this. Empty worlds. Dead planes. Locations where nothing lived, nothing watched, and nothing could be accidentally broken.
Earth was many things - beautiful, precious, home - but it was also terribly fragile.
Here, he didn't have to hold back. Here, he could test the true limits of what he was becoming. Push boundaries that would be catastrophic to explore anywhere else.
He looked down at himself, examining the suit that had become his second skin during these excursions. To the untrained eye, it was just a sleek, matte-black bodysuit, tactical and understated. But under the red light of the dying sun, the material absorbed rather than reflected the illumination.
The outer layer was a weave of vibranium micro-mesh, enchanted with the highest tier of protective runes. Very difficult to make but worth every bit of effort. The suit absorbed impact and energy effortlessly, storing it for later release if Arthur ever felt the need.
Beneath all that lay systems adapted from Kree technology - life support, atmospheric processing, temperature regulation, radiation shielding. He could survive the vacuum of space for hours. Walk unprotected on worlds that would kill an ordinary human in seconds.
The suit also had another curious feature. It was at its centre. Six circular slots arranged in a hexagonal pattern, each roughly the size of a coin. The slots were too small for infinity stones but two of them were currently filled. One glowed with a soft blue light. The other pulsed with deep purple.
Arthur flexed his hands, feeling the familiar itch of power beneath his skin. Perhaps one more round—
Master.
Winky's voice echoed directly in his mind, utilizing the elf-bond. The mental link he shared with Winky had grown potent over the years, unaffected by the vast distance between stars.
Arthur paused, letting his hand drop to his side.
Yes, Winky?
It is time. The event you wished to attend. It begins in four hours.
Arthur glanced up at the alien sky one last time. The destruction around him was vast, a testament to power that would terrify Fury and send his paranoia into overdrive for years.
Thank you, Winky. I'm on my way.
"Time to go home."
Space twisted, and Arthur vanished from the dead world, leaving only the shattered mountains as proof he had ever been there.
If one had looked closely in that final moment, they would have seen the blue crystal in his suit glow brighter - then dim, just slightly, as Arthur disappeared across the stars.
—
Hayes Residence, New York
Arthur emerged minutes later from his study freshly showered, dressed in casual clothes. The scent of something delicious wafted from the kitchen - Winky's cooking, unmistakable in its perfection. No restaurant on Earth could match it.
Eileen was standing at the counter, reviewing what appeared to be the final preparations for lunch.
"You're back," she said. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten."
"How could I forget?" Arthur walked over, kissing her on the cheek. "Tony has been talking about nothing else for months. If I check my phone right now, I guarantee there are at least ten missed calls and a voicemail accusing me of being a bad friend."
Eileen chuckled, wiping her hands on a towel. "He sent a drone, Arthur. About an hour ago. It hovered outside the window with a little sign that said 'EXPO TONIGHT' in flashing LED letters."
Arthur laughed. "Subtle as always."
"He's been... busy," Eileen said, her smile fading slightly. "We haven't seen much of him lately."
"That," Arthur murmured, "is an understatement."
The past seven months had been a whirlwind for Tony Stark.
Since the "I am Iron Man" revelation, Tony had thrown himself into the role of global protector with a manic intensity that bordered on obsession. He was everywhere.
The news cycles had been dominated by Iron Man. Dismantling terrorist cells in the Middle East. Intercepting illegal weapons shipments off the coast of West Africa. Stopping pirates in the waters near Somalia.
The media had dubbed him "The Peacekeeper of the Modern Age."
Tony soaked it up. He gave interviews and turned every mission into a spectacle. To the world, he was a golden god, untouchable and tireless.
Arthur watched this special breed of superhero with quiet amusement. Most heroes tried to stay under the radar. They valued privacy. They understood that attention was a double-edged sword.
But not Tony. He thrived on attention.
The frenetic pace continued for two months straight before Tony finally slowed. The media assumed he needed rest—even superheroes had limits, after all—and noted approvingly that global terrorist activity had decreased significantly since Iron Man's debut.
They found nothing odd about the change in pace.
But Arthur knew the truth.
Palladium poisoning.
Tony had discovered the flaw in his arc reactor system the hard way. Slowly failing health. Increasing strain. A ticking clock he didn't talk about.
For weeks, Tony had been secretly searching for a cure. Running simulations through JARVIS. Testing alternative elements. Desperately seeking a replacement for the palladium that wouldn't kill him quite so quickly.
He still fulfilled his superhero duties, still made public appearances, still flashed that famous Stark smile for the cameras.
But if anyone looked closely, really closely, they would see the stress behind his eyes. The fear he couldn't quite hide.
Unable to find a cure, Tony had shifted gears with the pragmatism of a man facing his own mortality. If he was going to die, and he was increasingly certain he was, he wanted to leave something behind. Something that wasn't weapons or wreckage. Something that might actually make the world better.
The Stark Expo was his swan song, though only Tony knew it.
Arthur had expected all of this - the poisoning, the desperate search, the pivot to legacy. What he hadn't expected was Tony's silence.
Not once in seven months had Tony mentioned his condition to Arthur. Not a hint. Not a whisper. Not even a drunken confession.
Whether it was pride, or a desire not to burden his friend, or simply the belief that even Arthur Hayes couldn't solve a problem of physics and biology... Tony kept his mouth shut.
Arthur had solutions, of course. Multiple solutions, each more elegant than the last. He could synthesize the element Tony needed in a matter of hours. He could replace the arc reactor entirely with Kree technology. He could—
But Tony never asked.
And Arthur, respecting his friend's autonomy, never intervened.
There's still time, Arthur reminded himself. If Tony couldn't find the answer on his own, Fury would eventually point him toward Howard's research. And if even that failed...
Well. Arthur would step in then. He wasn't about to let his friend die over something as simple as pride.
For now, whatever was happening around Tony, even Ivan Vanko possibly seeking revenge, was not Arthur's immediate concern. Tony could handle it. S.H.I.E.L.D. would provide backup. It was too small an incident to require Arthur's close attention.
Arthur's gaze was fixed on something further away.
According to canon, while Tony was playing with robots and pretending he wasn't dying... a much more significant event was about to occur in the New Mexico desert.
Thor Odinson was about to fall.
Arthur's interest wasn't in the family drama of the Norse gods, nor was it in Thor's lesson in humility.
It was Asgard itself.
Asgard had been frustratingly unreachable despite Arthur's best efforts. He and Carol had traveled extensively across the cosmos during their adventures together, visiting worlds that most humans couldn't imagine, encountering civilizations that made Earth look like a primitive backwater.
But Asgard remained beyond their grasp.
The Bifrost was guarded. Odin's enchantments were absolute. The All-Father was a being of immense cosmic power, perhaps one of the few entities in the universe Arthur was genuinely wary of challenging directly.
Could Arthur and Carol together match him in direct confrontation? Perhaps. Probably, even, if Arthur was being honest with himself about how far his abilities had grown.
But that wasn't the point.
Arthur didn't want Asgard as an enemy. He wanted their knowledge, their deep understanding of magic.
Until now, that door had been locked.
And Thor's exile would be the key to unlock that door.
"You're doing that face again," Eileen noted, pulling Arthur from his thoughts.
Arthur blinked, refocusing on the present. "What face?"
"The 'I'm plotting something' face."
Arthur laughed softly as he crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her. "I have no idea what you're talking about, my love. I am the picture of innocence. Now come on, we need to get ready. We have an expo to attend."