Ethan’s cyberpunk smartphone vibrated violently against the mahogany coffee table.
The caller ID flashed in bright, obnoxious neon letters: TIN CAN.
Ethan let it ring three times before he lazily reached over and picked it up. He hit accept, not even bringing the phone to his ear, and put it on speaker.
"Start talking," Ethan said.
"My Audi R8," Tony Stark’s voice crackled through the speaker, vibrating with a mix of genuine outrage and caffeinated energy. "My pitch-black, custom-tuned, entirely irreplaceable Audi R8. J.A.R.V.I.S. just got an NYPD impound alert. Care to explain why my car is currently sitting in a Meatpacking District alleyway looking like a crushed soda can?"
"I ran into some turbulence," Ethan replied smoothly.
"Turbulence?" Tony scoffed loudly. "It’s a car, Merlin! It doesn't fly! The suspension is completely flattened, the engine block is cleaved in half, and the roof is caved in. Please tell me you didn’t have sex in my car and then destroy it."
"Technically," Ethan corrected, a faint smirk playing on his lips, "the second part happened before the first part could completely finish."
There was a long, dead pause on the other end of the line.
Then, Tony let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. "You are unbelievable. I loan you a two-million-dollar masterpiece of German engineering, and you turn it into a crime scene. Bring your mystical ass to my lab. Right now. You owe me an explanation, and more importantly, you owe me a car."
"I’m bringing you something much better than a car," Ethan said.
He hung up the phone.
Ethan stood up, grabbing the heavy, lead-lined containment box sitting on the edge of his desk. He raised his right hand and spun his fingers in a tight circle. A shower of golden sparks tore through the air, expanding into a swirling portal that opened directly into Tony Stark’s private, subterranean R&D lab at Stark Tower.
Ethan stepped through the sparks.
The lab was a massive, pristine expanse of polished white floors, glass walls, and glowing blue holographic displays. AC/DC was playing softly in the background.
Tony was standing beside a massive central worktable, holding a tablet. The glowing blue triangle of his new, non-toxic arc reactor shone brightly through his fitted black t-shirt. He looked completely revitalized—sharp, focused, and free of the palladium poisoning that had been slowly killing him a few weeks ago.
Tony pointed the tablet at Ethan as the portal hissed shut.
"That trick is never going to stop being incredibly annoying," Tony said. "Now, where is the compensation for my destroyed property?"
Ethan walked over to the reinforced glass worktable. He dropped the heavy lead box onto the surface with a loud, dense thud.
"Hey! Watch the glass, that's custom," Tony snapped, wincing. "What is that? A bomb?"
"Worse," Ethan said. He flicked the metal latches open and pushed the lid back.
A sickly, pulsing green light spilled out of the box, reflecting off Tony’s face.
Tony lowered the tablet. The arrogant, joking billionaire vanished instantly, completely replaced by the razor-sharp mechanical engineer. He stepped closer, his brown eyes narrowing as he stared down at the damaged Earth-1 Vulture Wing Core.
It looked like a piece of an alien jet engine, jagged and scarred from the molten heat where Ethan had ripped it free.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony ordered, his voice dropping into a serious, clinical register. "Run a deep-structure diagnostic. Give me everything."
"Right away, Sir," the AI responded from the ceiling.
A grid of blue laser light shot down from a scanner above the table, sweeping back and forth across the glowing green core. Holographic screens instantly sprang to life around them, filling with rapidly scrolling lines of data, chemical breakdowns, and energy signatures.
Tony swiped his hand through the air, pulling a holographic schematic of the core toward him. He expanded it, his eyes darting across the impossible numbers.
"Sir, the analysis is complete," J.A.R.V.I.S. reported. "The results are... highly irregular. I am detecting an unknown synthetic alloy that does not match any metallurgical combinations on the periodic table. Additionally, there is nonstandard energy scarring across the casing, suggesting exposure to exotic particle fields."
Tony frowned, zooming in on a specific cluster of burned wires. "What are those auxiliary nodes attached to the primary intake?"
"Those are sonic emitters, Sir," the AI answered. "However, the frequency parameters are not designed for standard acoustic disruption. They are precisely calibrated toward an arachnid neuro-response."
Tony looked up sharply. "Arachnid? Like... spider-hunting tech?"
"Precisely," J.A.R.V.I.S. confirmed. "Furthermore, the core is emitting localized spatial burn residue. It appears the engine utilizes micro-distortions in local gravity to achieve thrust. The physics involved are entirely foreign to our current models."
Tony slowly lowered his hands. He looked at the glowing green core, processing the sheer weight of what his AI had just told him.
He looked across the table at Ethan.
"Why does a flying junkyard bird have tech that makes physics cry?" Tony demanded, gesturing to the impossibly advanced alloy readings. "This isn't Earth's tech. Nobody on Earth has the fabrication infrastructure to build a spatial-distortion engine out of synthetic vibranium."
"You're right," Ethan said, leaning against the glass table. "Nobody on Earth did. Because it's not from this Earth."
Tony stared at him. The silence in the lab stretched for five long seconds.
"I'm going to need a drink," Tony muttered, walking over to a nearby counter and pouring two fingers of scotch into a glass. He downed it in one swallow and turned back. "Multiverse. You're telling me this is interdimensional tech."
"You already know magic exists. I told you other dimensions exist," Ethan said. "This is what happens when someone from another layer of reality decides they want something hiding in ours. An assassin came through. I killed him. This is what's left of his engine."
Tony walked slowly back to the table, staring at the glowing core. His mind was racing a thousand miles a minute.
He was a man of science. He liked rules. He liked gravity, thermodynamics, and solid math. Ethan Williams had walked into his life and casually shattered every single law of physics Tony had spent his life mastering.
First, the wizard fixed his arc reactor with a chemical equation that shouldn't exist. Then, he asked Tony to build "Hoi-Poi capsules"—pocket-sized dimensional storage devices. Now, he was dropping hyper-advanced, multiversal assassination tech on his desk.
Tony's legendary paranoia, the same paranoia that drove him to build the Iron Man suit in a cave, flared to life.
"This is a problem," Tony stated, his voice hard. "If things like this can just fall out of the sky... if things like you can just open a sparkling doorway into my secure, highly classified underground lab whenever you want..."
Tony tapped his glowing blue chest.
"My suit is built to fight tanks. It’s built to fight fighter jets. It is not built to fight magic, and it is not built to survive interdimensional hit squads."
"You're catching on," Ethan smirked.
Tony swiped the Vulture holograms to the side. He pulled up a blank, pristine blue schematic grid.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., open a new, highly classified project file," Tony ordered. "Sub-directory: Countermeasures."
"Title, Sir?"
Tony looked directly at Ethan. "Project Merlinbreaker."
Ethan let out a genuine, low laugh. "Of course you'd name your anti-me armor 'Merlinbreaker'."
"I'm a branding genius, what can I say?" Tony shot back, his fingers already flying across a holographic keyboard, inputting the base parameters. "I want armor that can scan for dimensional residue. I want shielding that can deflect mystical energy. If a portal opens near me, I want an alarm to go off before the sparks even form. And I'm going to use this green piece of garbage," he pointed at the Vulture core, "to figure out how to stabilize the spatial folding for your Hoi-Poi capsules."
"Ambitious," Ethan noted. "You think you can build tech that beats magic?"
"I think I can build tech that beats you," Tony corrected, a competitive, arrogant grin returning to his face. "You realize I'm telling you exactly how I plan to take you down if you ever go rogue, right?"
"I know," Ethan said smoothly. "That's why I'm going to help you build it."
Tony paused, his fingers hovering over the light-keys. "Wait. You're going to help me build the armor designed to defeat you?"
"I'll provide the magical signatures you need to calibrate your sensors," Ethan offered, shrugging casually. "I'll open portals for you to scan. I'll throw weak spells at your prototypes so you can test the plating. I want it to have some actual dignity before I completely destroy it."
Tony’s grin widened. The sheer, impossible challenge of it was exactly the kind of drug his genius brain craved.
"You're on, Wizard."
A translucent blue screen flared to life in the corner of Ethan's vision.
[ Research Chain Triggered: Magi-Tech Countermeasures ]
Partner: Tony Stark
Primary Research Lines: Magic signature detection. Portal residue scanning. Anti-dimensional field stability. Hoi-Poi capsule integration.
Stage 1 Objective: Help Tony detect and record a stable magical signature.
Potential Rewards: 3,000 System Points. Ben Tennyson Template Sync +2%. Magi-Tech Research Interface unlocked. Stark Trust increase.
Status: In Progress.
Ethan dismissed the notification. He looked down at the Vulture core.
"Keep the core," Ethan said. "Strip it down. Learn how it bends space. But keep it contained. If you let that dimensional energy leak, whoever built it might hear the echo."
"Relax, I run a tight ship," Tony said, waving a hand dismissively as J.A.R.V.I.S. began deploying mechanical arms to carefully secure the lead box.
"Good," Ethan said, turning toward the center of the lab to open a return portal. "Oh, and Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm keeping the Audi's wreckage. It really ties the alleyway together."
"Get out of my lab," Tony groaned, already completely engrossed in the glowing green data streams.