Message in a Portal
Tony stared at the tablet with a sense of confusion he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
“...and the florist only does fruit baskets instead of flower baskets, the venue in Greece is booked three years ahead, which completely alters which reception area we need to rent, and —”
Pepper's words became an incoherent mess, barely entering one ear before immediately exiting the other. He could listen intently in business meetings, memorize every word of a scientific lecture but something about this — this went way over his head.
“Pepper," Tony handed the tablet back to her, his brows knitted tightly together. "Don’t we have a wedding planner for all this?”
Pepper took a much needed breath. She paused briefly, her expression flooded with skepticism.
“Yeah,” she said, dumbfounded.
Tony raised an eyebrow, waiting expectantly for more to follow.
There always was with Pepper.
“I don’t trust her." And there it was. "She almost booked our wedding in Greece — for 2023!”
Tony shrugged and smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Tony,” Pepper warned, her tone low. “Don’t start.”
“Hey, I’m kidding — hey.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her close to his waist, wrapping his arm around the small of her back. “I got this. I fix things — remember, it’s what I do. I’ll fix this.”
Tony winked, his open eye glimmering with a charm that only he could manage to pull off.
“Mhmm…" Pepper squinted her eyebrows, her expression doubtful but her body language loving, leaning into his grip with a soft hum. "I don’t know how much I trust you, either.”
“Well, I trust you,” Tony said, earnestly. The palm of his hand caressed her freckled cheek. “You are the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I have ever met. Whatever you feel you need to do to make this day special — do it.”
He put heavy emphasis on his last two words, ensuring that the point was made and heard.
“Yeah?" Pepper blushed, a glowing appreciation shinning on her face. "Well, I have something in mind to make tonight special."
She leaned forward to whisper in his ear, her breath hot against his skin. Tony couldn’t help the grin that washed over his face, the butterfly’s in his stomach bouncing around as strongly as his first day with the women.
“You do now, do you?” He gripped her waist tighter.
“I do." Pepper smiled, ear-to-ear. "I think we’ll —”
“Mr. Stark — hey, wait right there — Mr. Stark!”
The commotion from the hallways startled Pepper. She wiggled herself away from Tony with a short, harsh gasp.
Whereas Tony barely blinked, exaggeratedly rolling his eyes.
“Sir, stop right there! Sir, don’t make us —”
“Will you get off me? Can’t you see I need to get to Tony —”
Tomy stood still, more annoyed than anything, as the voices got louder and more persistent, yelling commands and directions that were clearly being disobeyed.
“Sir, we need proper identification before you can —”
“Oh my god.” Pepper gaped, stepping away from Tony and quickly jogging towards the door. “Bruce?”
Tony practically spun around on his heels at the name, his head whipping around so fast it made his vision blur.
Walking into the room — all but running, with multiple security guards gripping his arms in an attempt to detain him, was none other than Bruce Banner.
For a quick moment, Tony's expression fell flat, shock etching deep into the contours of his face.
His heart barely skipped two beats before realization dawned on him.
“Take it off, Wilson,” he demanded.
“What?” Bruce furrowed his eyebrows, shaking off another guard in the process. “Tony, we need to talk—”
“Real funny, ha-ha.” Tony sarcastically slow-clapped his hands, taking casual steps towards the chaos at the entrance of the room. “You must have downloaded, what — a thousand, two thousand photos to get such great body replications? Maybe you aren’t as dim-witted as I pinned you to be.”
Pepper shook her head. “Tony, I think —"
“I’ll admit, Fury was funny." Tony pointed a rigid finger at Bruce. "This, though —”
“Tony, it’s me,” Bruce insisted, still slapping away the hands of multiple guards.
Tony narrowed his eyes, harshly. “What do you take me for, some kind of —”
And that’s when Tony noticed it.
The waver in the voice, the ripped pants, twice over-sized jacket with no shirt underneath. Not to mention the slight tremble to his entire figure — tilting his head to the side, in the right light, Bruce's skin almost had a twinge of green to it.
On his long list of unexpected things to happen today, tomorrow, and for the next month, this surely had to be at the very bottom.
“How would you explain your work on anti-electron collisions?” Tony was quick to ask.
Bruce blinked. Twice.
“Well that’s...that’s complicated, that's…” he stammered, pulling tightly at the long trench coat covering him. The security guards enclosed around them, only held off by Tony’s hand when his palm shot upright — telling them, without a single word, to back off the hell away.
Looking around, Bruce dropped his shoulders with a resigned, heavy sigh.
“Okay, well, two electrons have a charge of minus two E, so the end product must as well. Lepton number conservation is required, and we have Le equals two within the equation. At this level, it looks difficult to produce additional particles which satisfy just these two conservation laws. If you work in QED the only vertex is the photon one—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Tony interrupted, shooing away the guards. “Go — get. Do something useful.”
Bruce fought the urge to stare when the group of security guards backed away, some retreating into the halls, some leaving entirely. His attention was ultimately diverted back to Tony as the man took long, fast steps in approaching him.
“Wilson couldn’t quote that even if he stayed up all night rehearsing it,” he mumbled, gripping Bruce’s face with both his hands. They patted his cheeks, pulled at his earlobes, moved his neck side to side —
“T'ny...” Bruce’s words were garbled, barely audible as Tony pulled at his bottom lip. “Wha'….'re 'yu d'ing?
“Just checking to make sure it’s really you, buddy,” Tony said, far from enthusiastic — a drop of venom lacing into his tone. “What’s it been? A year? Year and a half?”
Bruce frowned, wiping away the taste in his mouth from the sudden and intrusive physical exam.
A year.
They both knew he had that coming.
Pepper immediately joined Tony's side. "Bruce, are you alri—?"
“We have a problem," Bruce blurted out.
Tony made a face — at both of them.
“Yeah we do,” Tony retorted. “You’re standing in the middle of my foyer half naked. You don’t expose a lovely lady to that kind of obscenity — Pepper, look away, dear.”
Pepper made a face right back at Tony, and didn't try to hide it either.
“Tony," she started. "Hear him out.”
Tony kept his composure, shoulders held back tight and posture tall. He dug his hands deep into his blazer pockets, eyebrow cocked up as if to say, ‘well, go ahead.’
Bruce looked back and forth between them both, his pale face adding to his already distressed expression.
“I think something bad is going to happen.”
Sixth period sucked.
Peter dialed the code to his locker combination, wondering if there was any way he could get the door to open faster without straight-up ripping it off its hinges. After an hour spent in Anatomy and Physiology, he was ready to die — swing into a building and knock himself out cold, never to wake up again.
All because Flash decided that learning about male anatomy was a perfect time to make fun of him.
Now half of the student body was laughing about how much his head resembled a penis. It was nonsense, if only for the fact that his head could never resemble such a thing.
And he should know, considering he had one to look at.
Switching textbooks from his locker, Peter grabbed what he needed and shut the door with a loud thud, turning around only to have the screen of a cell phone shoved directly in his face.
Peter had to squint at first, the screen so close to his eyes he could feel the heat from the device.
When his vision cleared, he began to wish he hadn't even looked at all.
"Knew it," Peter mumbled, ducking his head low, shaking it with frustration as he held his books close to his chest.“ Mr. Stark's not going to let me live that one down…”
Ned winced, swiping away the article with pad of his thumb. He followed Peter as they took off walking down the halls. “At least they aren’t calling you a menace anymore."
Peter huffed air out of his nose. “Menace or failure? Which one is worse?”
His head stayed low, paying attention only to his books and the sneakers he wore on his feet. The entire situation had been eating Peter up, stripping him of his confidence that he barely clung onto most days. It seemed no matter what, he couldn’t win.
It wasn't just YouTube watching him now, it was the entire world.
And they criticized every move he did.
“Dude…" Ned frowned, pulling at the strap to his backpack. "What happened?”
They turned a corner where Peter apathetically kicked the wall, sulking with frustration. It gained the attention of faceless students walking by, a few teenage girls stopping to stare and giggle. He barely looked up as they watched, more annoyed at their gawking than anything else.
“I don’t know!” he admitted. “The guy is like, crazy mysterious. He had all these tricks and gadgets that he kept throwing at me. And there were these balls — these strange balls that he kept tossing around, and I couldn’t sense when they were coming. And when they broke, it released a neurotoxin mist.”
“Neurotoxin!?" Ned’s jaw dropped. "Like…effects the nervous tissue neurotoxin?”
“That’s what Karen said, yeah." Peter nodded, lowering his voice when he spoke. "But no one was bothered by it.”
“Maybe there's a delayed reaction?" Ned scratched his head. "Maybe everyone will get sick later?”
Peter shrugged. “No one has said anything yet.”
“And you said you couldn’t sense it?”
“That’s what I said.”
Ned sucked in a lungful of air, whistling as it came out.
“Crazy.”
Peter scoffed.
Crazy wasn’t the half of it. Between the fish-bowl helmet, the magic tricks, the gas-smog-mist-fog-whatever the heck it was, he had no clue where to start with this guy.
Toomes had a motive, Toomes was easy to pin down — they at least knew what Toomes was doing. He couldn’t tell you left, right, up or down what this weird-o wanted.
Aside from attention. He and all of New York quickly figured out that the guy craved attention.
Peter readjusted his hold on his books, wishing he hadn't lost his backpack — again. “Oh, and he spoke to me in Spanish."
Ned frowned, his lips pursed outward with confusion.
A beat went by.
“Why?”
“No clue." Peter shrugged, turning another corner. "It’s like he plays up this mysterious act he’s got going on.”
“Spanish mystery.” Ned chuckled, nudging his shoulder against Peter's. “I'm going to call him Misterio.”
“Better than Bird-man.” Peter kept his tone light, the corner of his lips pulling slightly.
Ned froze mid-step. “I thought that name was cool!”
“Liz’s dad was one hundred percent using Vulture wings, Ned." Peter rolled his eyes. "He was so The Vulture.”
“Eh, whatever." Ned shrugged it off. "Mystery-man is officially Mysterio."
And just like that, the problem was dropped.
That’s what Peter loved about his friendship with Ned — their conversations never had to drag on, not once the point was made. The worst issue he'd came across came with the his spider-powers, something that, to this day, was still brought up on a constant basis.
It would never fail that Ned's Google searches would bring new and odd questions to the table. It made Peter thankful for the small things, he supposed.
Like how he didn't have to lay eggs, or how his head wasn't fused with his thorax.
They walked into homeroom together, both slamming their textbooks and backpacks down on their designated seats.
“So what are you going to do next?” Ned asked, his voice nearly drowned out by the overheard bell.
Peter resisted the urge to groan. If that wasn't a million dollar question that his pocket change couldn't afford. Street muggers and bank robbers were one thing — those he could take down with his eyes closed.
But the idea of having another Toomes lowkey made his blood shiver a little bit. He really wasn't sure where to start when it came to people like that.
“Mr. Stark says I need to stay away." Peter finally answered, giving a shrug as he slipped into his desk. "That if he shows up again, I need to ‘leave him to the Avengers.’”
Ned sat down slowly in his desk, opposite side of Peter. “Aren’t you an Avenger?”
Peter stared at his desk for a moment.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Ned blinked, his confusion growing.
“So why doesn’t he want you involved?”
“I don’t know, man.” Peter gave a half-hearted shrug. “I guess ‘cause I messed up the first time or something. I'm probably just a failure to him.”
The shrill of the bell came to an end, just as their teacher slammed the classroom door shut behind her.
“Alright class, page one-hundred-six in your review book, fifty-eight in your exam review!" Ms. Warren all but yelled. "Finals in two weeks, let's prepare!”
As Peter flipped through the pages of his textbooks, Ned leaned over to his desk — the legs of the chair ready to tip over.
“So...are you going to stay away?” he whispered.
Peter craned his neck, looking at Ned like he had grown six heads.
“No,” he said, his tone resonating the ‘duh’ all over it.
A beat went by, and he looked up from the books again, dumbfounded.
“Of course not,” Peter whispered. “Jeeze, Ned.”
Tony rubbed at his temples, both of his index fingers pressing harshly into his skin. He sat across from Bruce in the conference room of the compound, leaning over in a chair and gingerly massaging away the headache that formed behind his eyes.
“Okay, let me get this straight.” Tony sat up straighter in his seat. “You were in space?”
Bruce nodded. “Yes.”
“And Thor was with you?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re not in space.”
“Correct.”
“But Thor still is.”
Bruce paused, mentally double checking his answer before saying. “...yes.”
“And when you returned…from space—”
“Yes, Tony, I was in space!” Bruce snapped, his arms thrown high in the air before smacking down on his thighs. “I was in space, on a planet called Sakaar, with Thor. A group of people rescued us — well, one person. Two? Definitely one, the other was a green woman, and there was a talking raccoon…and tree…and bug lady…”
“FRIDAY," Tony held his wrist to his lips, speaking directly into his smartwatch. "Send in a med team, pronto.”
“No!” Bruce jumped up from his seat. “No, listen to me. I’m not mental, I —”
Tony didn’t need to respond; the disbelief on Bruce's face was enough. As if to make matters worse, Pepper — who was silently leaning with her back against the wall — had a similar expression.
“Okay, I’m still mental in…that way. Personally though, I wouldn’t call it that." Bruce sighed, slowly sitting back down in his chair. "Just hear me out. Please.”
With every fiber of his being, Tony wished things could be relatively normal in his life. Between aliens, space, kids with radioactive spider bites, men transforming into giant green creatures, a sentient Android living in his house — what even was normal any more?
Sighing, he spoke back into his smartwatch. “FRIDAY, cancel med team.”
Tony looked up at Bruce, leaning back in his chair and crossing both his legs. “Okay? So you were rescued by a group of people…and things, and then…?”
“And then this portal opened," Bruce continued. "A bright, orange portal. A man came out of it and he told me to give you a message.”
There was a pause, a heavy moment of lingering silence that filled the room.
Stunned, the only thing Tony could do was repeat what he heard. “A bright orange portal opened and a man came out of it—”
His response was condescending, downright drowning with sarcasm.
Even Pepper held her forehead in the palm of her hand.
“Tony, listen!” Bruce insisted, frustrated at his disbelief. “I know it sounds crazy — hell, everything I’ve been through sounds crazy. Hulk was in space for over a year as some sort of gladiator warrior but — but listen, the man told me you needed to know something. That I needed to return to Earth to deliver the message to you.”
Aliens, space, kids with radioactive spider bite — Tony looked to the ceiling and kept his gaze fixated there. In the grand scheme of things, Bruce's story wasn't far from the rest of his crazy, weird life.
“Alright, I’ll bite." Tony sighed. "What does magic-portal-opening-man want me to know?”
“He said a war is coming for you." Bruce's expression softened. "That it’s personal, but could lead to your demise, and that one day you’ll be needed for greater things.”
Tony, in response to the eerie message, smiled ear-to-ear, immediately looking behind him where Pepper stood.
“You hear that?”
Pepper groaned. “As if that’s not going to swell your ego.”
It didn’t break his grin; his finger still pointing at his chest with a sense of pride. He was ready to go on about saving the earth — again — or saving the planet — again — and hell, how overall awesome he was, especially now that he was being told he'd be needed for bigger and greater things.
Tony never had the chance to speak his mind.
“Warn your team, nothing is what it seems.”
Tony turned his head back around, his lips drawn into a frown.
“What?”
“It’s what he said,” Bruce explained. “Warn your team, nothing is what it seems.”
It was almost unsettling to hear the words come from a man he hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Tony locked eyes with Bruce, as if to make sure he was being serious about things.
The gleam of concern that reflected back to him was enough of an alibi to his story.
“Did he say anything else," Tony drawled on, "besides some cryptic line from a tween’s dark and emo poetry book?”
“Uh..." Bruce scratched his nose, thinking back with a shake of his head. "No, no…just…just that he was strange.”
Tony scoffed. “Yeah, strange is a great way to wrap up his personality.”
“No. Strange,” Bruce corrected. “It was his name.”
Pepper stood from the wall she had been leaning against, her heels clicking on the floors as she walked towards them.
“His name was Strange?” she echoed.
Bruce nodded towards her. “He was the one who brought me here. Opened another…orange portal thing…and here I was, surrounded by your guards.”
“No more information than that?" Intrigued, Tony crossed his arms over his chest. "He just sent you here with some dramatic message about not trusting things and me being a great asset in the future and blah blah blah?”
“I—I tried talking with him, Tony, I really did,” Bruce insisted. “But he wasn’t having it. I don't think he wanted to give me any more information. He sent me here before I could ask anything else.”
Normal was so far gone, Tony wouldn't have recognized it even if it slapped him straight in the face.
“Hm.” Tony tapped at his chest, a subconscious habit he had picked up from his arc reactor days. Though there was no longer a hole in the middle of his sternum, he still found himself doing it when in deep thought.
Finally, he looked behind him where Pepper stood. “I wonder if this has anything to do with the fish-bowl freak?”
Pepper shrugged, whereas Bruce furrowed his eyebrows.
“Fish-bowl freak?” he repeated, sparing no ounce of confusion from his voice.
Tony jumped from his seat, encouragingly patting Bruce on the back as the other stood up as well.
“Oh Bruce-y Bruce, we have a lot to catch up on. Come come, follow me.” Tony slung his arm around Bruce's shoulder, directing them both out of the conference room. “So, how is the God of Thunder these days?”
Web swinging really did make him feel better.
The rush of air against his body, the adrenaline from the drop, the excitement as he swung — it felt as if all his problems were on standby, the only focus being him and the skies.
Peter sat on top of the George Washington Bridge, his legs dangling over the edge as he munched on the sandwich between his hands. In front of him the sun was setting, the colors reflecting off his Spider-Man mask, half of it pulled up to his nose to make room for each bite he took.
His evening had been quiet; no one had laughed at him yet, and no one blamed him for causing any trouble. Peter considered that a good day in his book.
The water below him was still and the bridge’s lights were beginning to light up. He’d be best heading back to Queens soon, especially if he wanted to study for his mid-term final.
There was something so calm about being so high up though, a sense of peace he never got to feel anywhere else. Certainly not at school, and while he loved May, he worried too much about her to ever not be panicked around her.
Here, now, just him and the city in front of him — that’s where he felt himself.
“Karen?” he asked through a garble of food.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Does my mask have a camera in it?”
It felt like forever ago that he took scenic pictures. It used to be his favorite hobby, especially getting shots of New York's famous bridges.
But since Ben died...
“Whaaa?” Peter stopped slouching, pulling his mask back down and over his face. “That’s so cool. How does it work?”
Peter couldn’t help his eye roll — of course Mr. Stark would have that in the Baby Monitor Protocol. It was like no one had any confidence in him, always questioning his every move. He could stop a bus for crying out loud — he deserved a little trust.
“Okay, well…how about…” he hummed to himself, his legs dangling faster. “Oh, of course! Program it for ‘cheese!’”
Peter stifled a laugh at Karen's false cheerfulness, the words almost sounding foreign to his ears. While he and Karen had fantastic conversations, and she provided support when he felt at his loneliest, she was still only a computer.
But even so, he’d never deny her company.
“Alright, Karen, on the count of three.” He aimed his eyes out to the vast water’s below him, the cityscape sparkling in the background. “One, two…”
Distracted, Peter never got to three.
Rather, he focused on what was below the bridge, noticing that down near the edges was a mass of fog. It was too neatly confined to be from the weather, or from the river. It moved slightly, slowly, like a boat traveling across the waters.
Peter stood up, crouching on the bridge and balancing himself with the pads of his fingertips.
“Whoa,” he whispered. “That must be him. Mysterio.”
Peter nodded. “The man from last night, at Times Square. He must be using that crazy fog to sneak away…maybe out of the city?”
The fog only grew more condensed, turning into something more of a cloud than something from the river. If Peter hadn't been looking there all along, he wasn't sure he'd have even seen it.
"Yeah, but Mr. Stark isn’t here right now, I am." Peter was busy webbing up his backpack to the bridge when he spoke. “I’ve gotta take this chance to get him before he gets away again.”
With his backpack secured, Peter began to look all around him for a way across the river. He definitely wasn't in the mood for swimming tonight, especially not in the Hudson River.
Peter paused for a moment, considering her words.
“Well, that’s…pft…that’s nothing.”
“From upstate!?” Peter blinked, the shutters to his lens whirring at the movement. “Damn, that’s fast.”
“No! No Karen, no. I’ll just…uh…” He thought for a second, fidgeting with his web-shooters as he stood up from his crouched position. “I won’t fight him. Mr. Stark told me not to engage him, so I’ll just track him.”
Emerging from the middle of his chest, a spider-shaped tracker buzzed in the air, replicating the movements of a fly. He watched as it swooped down to the waters and soared out of sight.
“Fly, little drone-y,” Peter encouraged, a wave of his hand following suit. "Fly!"
Within seconds, the Karen spoke again.
Peter pumped a fist in the air.
“Sweet!” He shot a web out in the air, waiting for the feel of attachment before swooping down from the bridge. “Let’s follow him. Maybe I can hitch a ride on a tractor trailer again!"
“Oh don’t be such a party-pooper, Karen." Peter chuckled, his body flipping in the sky before his web attached to the nearest building. "YOLO!”
“You only live once!” Peter ran up the side of a building with smooth speed, each movement he made getting him closer to the mass of fog.