Jennifer pushed herself up from the bed, the faint chill of residual frost still clinging to her fingertips like a second skin. She rolled her shoulders, took a steadying breath, and headed downstairs. The mansion felt quieter than it should have. Too quiet.
The living room was empty.
Tony's holographic projections had vanished; the coffee mugs sat abandoned on the low table, one still half-full, steam long gone. Natasha's tactical jacket was no longer draped over the back of the couch.
The faint scent of her perfume lingered, something sharp and clean, like gun oil and winter mint—but the woman herself was gone. No note on the table. No scribbled message on the whiteboard in the kitchen. No quick text on the burner phone they sometimes used when plans shifted fast.
Jennifer stood in the doorway, staring at the vacant space where they had been arguing strategy only an hour ago. A slow, cold knot formed in her stomach—not the frost she could summon at will, but something older, more human.
Betrayal. Not the dramatic kind that came with knives or gods or eldritch violations. The small, petty kind. The kind that said, You weren't worth the thirty seconds it would have taken to say goodbye.
She crossed to the couch, picked up Tony's abandoned mug. Still warm. They hadn't been gone long. Long enough to decide she didn't need to know where they were going, apparently. Long enough to leave without a word.
Her fingers tightened around the ceramic until it cracked—quietly, almost politely. Frost spiderwebbed across the surface before she caught herself and let go. The mug shattered on the hardwood floor, coffee pooling dark and useless.
"Fine," she muttered to the empty room. "Don't need babysitters anyway."
The silence answered with nothing.
She needed to move. Needed air that wasn't recycled through the mansion's HVAC, needed distance from the sting of being left behind like an afterthought. Her gaze drifted to the tall windows overlooking the city.
Somewhere out there Loki was plotting, Thor was hunting, S.H.I.E.L.D. was scrambling, and her supposed allies had simply… walked out.
Pluto.
The thought arrived fully formed, cold and distant as the world itself. Far enough that no one could follow. Far enough that betrayal felt small against the backdrop of endless dark.
Jennifer raised her hand. Frost spiraled from her palm, blue-white and sharp, weaving into a perfect circular rift. Through it she glimpsed the faint, star-pricked black of the outer solar system and the dim reddish-brown crescent of Pluto hanging in the void.
No atmosphere worth mentioning. No warmth. Just ice, rock, and nine billion kilometers of nothing between her and the Sun.
She stepped through.
The transition was instantaneous. One heartbeat in the warm hush of the mansion, the next in absolute, bone-deep cold. Her soul-bound frost flared instinctively, wrapping her in a thin, shimmering aura that kept her body temperature stable and the crushing vacuum from tearing her lungs apart.
Gravity was light—barely a whisper of Earth's pull. She floated a few centimeters above the nitrogen-ice plains of Sputnik Planitia, boots barely touching down.
Pluto stretched in every direction: cracked, heart-shaped expanses of frozen nitrogen and methane, mountains of water ice rising like pale teeth against the starfield.
The Sun was a brilliant point of light, no larger than Venus appeared from Earth. Harsh shadows stretched for kilometers. No sound. No wind. Just silence so profound it pressed against her eardrums.
For a long moment she simply stood there, breathing in the vacuum (her frost aura converting it to breathable air within her personal bubble), letting the isolation soak into her bones. Here, at least, no one could leave her behind. Here, she was the only living thing for billions of kilometers.
And she was bored.
A slow, reckless smile curved her lips.
She extended both hands. Another portal opened—not to Earth, not to Mars, not to the frozen ruin of Venus. This one burned orange-red at the edges, heat bleeding through the icy rift like blood from a wound. The air on the other side shimmered with furnace glow. Muspelheim. The realm of fire giants.
The first giant stepped through—fifteen feet tall, skin like cracked obsidian veined with molten gold, eyes burning like forge embers.
He carried a massive iron club wreathed in living flame. Behind him came another, then three more, roaring as the cold of Pluto bit into their flesh. Steam exploded from their bodies in violent hisses.
Jennifer laughed—sharp, bright, almost giddy.
"Go on," she said, voice carrying perfectly in her aura's pocket of air. "Have fun."
The giants didn't need encouragement. They swung their clubs, hurling gouts of white-hot fire across the nitrogen plains.
The surface ignited in explosive plumes, frozen methane and carbon monoxide sublimating into roaring fireballs that bloomed and died in seconds.
Mountains of water ice cracked and melted, refreezing into grotesque sculptures an instant later. The heart-shaped plain became a battlefield of steam and flame and sudden frost.
Jennifer walked among the chaos, untouched. Fire licked at the edge of her aura and recoiled, hissing into harmless sparks.
She laughed again—louder this time—as one giant hurled a boulder-sized fireball that detonated against her shield in a shower of embers. The heat was glorious, defiant, everything Pluto was not.
For nearly ten minutes she let them rampage. Watched them carve molten trenches through centuries-old ice, watched geysers of superheated gas erupt and freeze mid-arc into glittering filaments. The destruction was beautiful in its pointlessness—pure, childish vandalism on a planetary scale.
Then one giant turned toward her.
He was the largest, his beard a cascade of living flame, his roar shaking the thin atmosphere she'd conjured. He raised both hands, fire coiling between his fingers like serpents, ready to hurl a blast straight at her chest.
Jennifer's smile didn't falter.
She snapped her fingers.
A portal yawned open beneath him—perfectly circular, edges rimed with frost. The giant's roar cut off as the ground vanished. He plummeted through, flames guttering, and the rift snapped shut behind him.
One by one she opened portals under the others—quick, surgical, almost bored. They fell screaming back to Muspelheim, fire trailing like comet tails until the portals closed and silence returned.
Pluto was quiet again.
Jennifer turned in a slow circle, surveying the aftermath.
The heart plain was a ruin of black scorch marks and refrozen melt pools, glassy sheets of water ice shot through with veins of charcoal. Steam still rose in thin white plumes that froze into delicate frost flowers the moment they left the hot zones.
Craters smoked where fireballs had detonated. In places the nitrogen ice had sublimated completely, exposing darker tholins beneath—organic tar that glittered faintly under starlight.
She laughed once more, softer this time. Not cruel. Not joyful. Just… relieved. The petty sting of abandonment had dulled beneath the sheer absurdity of what she'd just done. Fire giants on Pluto. A temper tantrum writ large across a dwarf world.
She exhaled, watching her breath freeze into glittering diamonds that drifted upward and vanished.
Enough.
She raised her hand once more. Frost spiraled, weaving a new portal—this one showing the familiar gray desolation of the Hammer Industries crater. What was left of it, anyway. A vast, shallow bowl of scorched earth and twisted metal on the outskirts of what had once been a thriving industrial park. Her crater. Her wasteland.
She stepped through.
The air here was warm, thick with the smell of old char and summer grass pushing through cracks in the concrete. Gravity welcomed her back like an old friend. No vacuum. No eternal cold. Just Earth, scarred, stubborn, alive.
Jennifer stood at the edge of the crater rim, looking down into the ruined bowl. Twisted girders rose like broken ribs. Shattered glass glittered in the sunlight. Weeds and wildflowers had begun to reclaim the edges, green against gray.
She folded her arms.
This place was hers—bought with blood and blackmail and fire long ago. A trophy. A scar. A reminder of the woman she'd been when she still thought money and power could fix anything.
Now it was just… land.
She tilted her head, considering.
What did one do with a crater nobody else wanted?