Chapter9:
While I didn't want to disparage mountain climbers, I honestly cannot say why the hell people would put themselves through this shit.
The first real patch of woodland we stepped into felt like salvation. I could finally see the end of those endless white slopes. As we crested another hill draped in moss and pine, the first signs of civilization peeked through the haze.
"Wow," Anna breathed.
Far in the distance, towers and walls marked the city of Novi Grod, their silhouettes rising against the horizon. Scattered across the countryside were small villages and farmlands, thin trails of smoke curling lazily into the air.
After the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, seeing open fields almost felt luxurious. I wouldn't call myself a nature lover, but after hours of freezing wind and blinding snow, the smell of dirt and pine was borderline heavenly.
"Kaw!"
The cry came from above a heartbeat before something sharp jabbed into my scalp.
"Ow—dammit!" I winced as a crow flared its wings and perched on my head like it owned the place. "Did you have to land on my head, you bastard?"
Anna laughed softly behind me, already pulling a few scraps of food from the pack Mystique had left us. The damn bird crooned at her, head tilted like he'd just discovered his favorite person.
"Ah, you little shit. Whose familiar are you, huh?"
"Kaw! Kaw!"
I didn't speak fluent crow, but I was pretty sure I just got sassed by my own bird. He hopped off my head and glided into Anna's waiting arms, smug as anything while he picked at the food.
I sighed. "Did you at least do your damn job, bastard? Anyone following us?"
"Kaw." A quick shake of the head.
That will never stop being weird.
"Alright. You know the deal—keep an eye out for anything strange."
"KAW!"
With a sweep of wings, he launched back into the sky… but not before smacking me across the face with one on his way out.
"Hey! Respect your master, bro!"
Anna's laughter followed the echo of wings.
"He likes you," she said, smiling.
"Doesn't fucking act like it," I muttered, brushing a feather off my shoulder.
We kept walking, the sunlight bleeding through the trees in soft gold streaks. The tension that had been coiled tight for hours finally started to ease. Still, even with the quiet peace, my thoughts drifted to less pleasant things.
The Wendigo mess had ended well enough, but the whole spatial displacement fiasco still lingered in the back of my mind. I hadn't forgotten the feeling of losing control—so I'd done some testing on the way down. Rigorous, tedious testing.
And god, was it annoying.
After a few quick trials, it became clear that I couldn't switch rapidly between the same ability. There was about a five-minute cooldown before I could toggle back to something I'd just used. In other words, no quick swapping between abilities to abuse my powers.
"Annoying," I muttered under my breath.
Then there was the Platinum Ticket. That one still bothered me. If Feats scaled with how "important" the people involved were, then earning one after preventing Rogue's adoption made a certain kind of sense. Still, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel proud or disgusted that the system basically rewarded me for chasing "important" people.
Would it have killed them to give me a damn manual?
And that wasn't even touching the familiar problem. The ones I'd summoned so far seemed loyal—but how far did that loyalty go? Would it hold if I ever rolled something more dangerous? Something demonic that claimed it just wanted to "help"?
Worries like that is why I had refrained from just ripping the two platinum tickets.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Anna's voice cut through my spiral.
"Just annoyed at my powers," I said.
She grinned. "Ah yes, the 'I get free superpowers and cool stuff' problem. So tragic."
"Okay, fair point," I admitted, snorting. "Still, it'd be nice if my power wasn't so arbitrary with its rules."
"Who knew gambling would have fine print?" she said dryly.
"Guess I'll just figure it out later." I shook my head, letting the thought go.
"Speaking of later," she said, stepping over a fallen branch, "do we have a plan?"
"Uh…" I rubbed the back of my neck. "I'll be honest, I've kinda been winging it."
"Great," she said flatly, stretching her arms behind her. "Am I going to regret not going with the blue-skinned lady?"
"Trust me," I said, "hell no."
She smirked. "So then, Mr. Know-It-All, whatever shall we do?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Were you always this snarky?"
"Only for a special someone," she said with mock sweetness. Then she wiggled her fingers. "Also, these rings make me weirdly giddy. Is this what drugs are like?"
I snorted and gave her a light punch on the arm. She laughed, the sound bright against the quiet forest air.
"Okay, well—there's a few things we can do, maybe," I said, thinking out loud. I'd checked dates earlier; a decent amount of shit should've already happened by now. The problem was my timeline knowledge of the MCU was fuzzy at best. Even the studios couldn't agree on when half the movies went down, and this whole crossover nonsense made it worse. Mutants showing up either meant the Fox X-Men movies happened here, or we'd landed in some comic-book-level alternate timeline.
Deep breath. Ignore the tiny thread of fear of getting chewed up by some cosmic assholes and focus.
"First—and honestly the worst option—we could try to contact Tony Stark."
"Iron Man?" Anna perked up a little. Of course she did. Tony was basically the spark that lit the modern superhero scene. "Why's he the worst?"
"Tony Stark isn't a bad guy," I hedged. "At least, not these days. He's rich as hell, which means he's got the resources to actually help us. The problem is his personality—ego, arrogance, all that fun stuff. Still, I know a few things that could convince him to lend a hand. So… it's an option."
Anna vaulted another log and looked back. "Other options?"
"The second option is Nick Fury."
"That's the S.H.I.E.L.D. guy, right? Weren't you saying Hydra basically runs half that place?"
"Yep." I popped the P like punctuation and a warning.
"Okay, tell me how this isn't a terrible idea."
"Fury's in a bad spot, literally half of his organization are Nazi infiltrator agents. That means I can sell him the info I've got and he'll eat it up. He'd help, and we could maybe neuter Hydra if we played it right."
Anna raised an eyebrow. "I sense a 'but' coming."
"He's a control freak. If we go to him, we get pulled into his war. Hundred percent chance we end up fighting Hydra head-on. This is the gun's blazing strategy."
"I wouldn't mind kicking their faces in," Anna said, stretching her shoulders. "Is there a third option?"
I nodded, trying to sound serious. "We could go to Nepal and see a wizard."
Anna blinked, then rolled her eyes. "Very funny."
I hummed, not laughing.
She looked at me like she was trying to decide whether I was joking. "You're kidding, right?"
I hummed again and skipped a little over a root.
"Wait—wizards are real?" she screeched, half-hopeful, half-delighted.
"Yep." I kept walking, letting the word hang in the air.
"You can't just not explain," Anna said, poking me in the side with a stick like she was trying to beat details out of me.
My durability took it without issue. I just hummed again.
I raised an eyebrow. "What's so great about magic, huh?"
"It's… well… magic!" she said, exasperated. "Come on! Who doesn't want to see real magic?"
I looked at her for a moment, then pointed. "Magic rings," I said, nodding at the faint glint on her fingers. "Intelligent flying crow?" I tilted my chin toward the black speck circling above.
Anna stopped, thought it through, and then made a face. "That's not the same," she pouted.
I snorted.
"Anyway," I said, steering us back to the point, "TL;DR: there are some wizards in Nepal who'd probably shelter us. But it's a coin flip. Honestly, I don't know how they'd react to us showing up."
"Are they evil wizards?"
"No…" I paused because there was Kaeceliius.
I really needed to check the timeline on that. If he'd already betrayed the Ancient One, we might walk into a damn mess. And I did not want to have to deal with Dormammu. Hopefully we had time. He didn't go rogue until after the Avengers I think, so maybe we still had a window.
Anna narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, I don't like that pause."
"For the most part they're decent," I said. "So I think that might be our best option."
"Hmm. I vote for the wizards," Anna said, grinning like it was the most obvious choice in the world.
"Of course, princess," I said with a mock bow. "Your wish is my command."
She laughed, the sound light and easy. It was nice hearing that again.
"Ah—but, uh, Jack," she added, scratching her cheek, "how exactly are we going to get there?"
Oh. Right. That part.
I'd been so busy thinking three steps ahead that I might've skipped step one entirely. Getting out of Sokovia would be…rough. Ugh. Please don't tell me the solution's calling Tony. Maybe. But there's no universe where I'm dropping Hydra-grade intel over an unsecured line to a billionaire with a god complex.
"I'm… working on it," I said after a pause. "We've been moving nonstop, and I don't want to test what happens if we keep abusing those rings. Let's just find somewhere to rest first—"
"KAW!"
The sharp cry cut through the trees. My familiar swooped overhead, wings slicing the air. The connection between us buzzed faintly—urgent, but not dangerous.
"Hold on," I muttered, already breaking into a sprint.
Branches whipped past as I chased the crow through the forest. Behind me, Anna surged forward, the rings still glowing faintly around her fingers as she caught up and then darted ahead.
We burst through the treeline and stumbled into a clearing by a narrow stream. Water trickled softly over the stones, breaking the quiet.
The crow circled once and landed on a low branch, cawing toward the opposite bank.
There, slumped over a fallen log, was an elderly man. His back was hunched, his clothes torn and streakes