Discimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don’t worry, I am pletely sober).

  New York [October 2014]

  –Jarvis Stark–

  With a sudden digital jerk, he came balihe moment he did so, 3000 different subroutines activated on their own, cheg in on priority targets, standard procedure, something that a cold logical mae should be more than capable of carrying out without any stop gaps.

  A, as he could feel other parts of his being carrying out their restart procedures on point, he could only be taking what felt like the human equivalent of deep breaths, as his mind still remembered the red haze he ut under.

  It felt so raw, so real, he could almost taste it, despite having no previous ination, or proclivity towards the a.

  –Fshbao Jutsu–

  He could remember it, the thing that started it all. Things went wrong the moment he lost all tact with all thirty six nodes present in the Avengers unication suite. Satellites showed a sudden red fog that covered the entire area of the castle they were supposed to hit.

  He was about to remote pilot the Qui into the area to ched was halfway through deployment of the remote Iron Drones, when unication was reestablished. Dr.Banner was equally as harried as him when they had lost all tact with their team without any rhyme or reason.

  They had tried every single way to establish tact when, out of nowhere, tact was established on its own. The sery that greeted them had Dr.Banner rubbing his eyes to ascertaihenticity of the hologram.

  Iime it had taken Dr.Bao remove his gsses and begin ing them, he had already established a e with the Iron Man suit, and with the limited Quantum information e they had installed in the Arc Reactor of Mr.Stark himself, he downloaded terabytes worth of data within milliseds, allowing him to gain a better uanding of what went afoot in that pce.

  If only it were that easy. The sensor readings from the suit made no sense. Sing the feed, he could see that the damage taken by the suit when some of the soldiers shot at Sir with Chitauri tech was real. The damage was still detected by the sensors, a, acc to the video footage, everything the Avengers had entered at that point was imaginary, not real.

  As was evident whehing—the soldiers, the Chitauri tech, the flying squads, the snow around the castle, the shields and guns mounted on the castle itself, everything disappeared. As if a carpet had been draped over reality itself, the sery underh the magic was revealed to them.

  In that vision, everything was suddenly gone. No soldiers, no guns, nothing. It was pletely devoid of life, and even as far as he was, he somehow felt his code screaming at him with uo tell him that something was very, very wrong in that pce.

  He immediately created another subroutio che on the specific piece of code that screamed at him to get the team out of that pce, only to e up short when he couldn't accurately pce down the piece of code that was sending him the signal.

  That had never happened before.

  heless, he watched as all the Avengers gathered in a single pce, keeping an eye on their surroundings, waiting for something to pop up. Mr.Sullivan, the stro pyer otlefield had also gone missing sometime before. His tracker showed him standing above the battlefield, occasionally creating shields to block the Chitauri blows and keeping an overall eye on the castle exits aries because he believed the castle to be housing enhanced who could turide of the battle with ease.

  That was his reasoning given for why Mr.Sullivan was not just dismantling the entire castle with his powers, something that was as easy as breathing for the man.

  When the carpet over reality was rolled, the form of Mr.Sullivan had also disappeared from view and from sensors. It was unnerving how easily false information was beio the most advanced sensors Mr.Stark could build and install into the Iron Man suit.

  The team just stood there, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. He was still uo make actual tact with the team for some reason. No amount of messages sent, in any nguage was actually reag sir’s suit.

  Even the Quantum module failed in doing anything other thag data directly from the suit’s archives. It was holy pletely frustrating and he suspected the anomaly would have crashed his previous self if he had looked too muto it.

  As things stood now, he set aside a couple dozen subroutio look into the odd phenomena and actually paused as the subroutines were immediately shredded into nothingness, their logitres being overwhelmed with a single word and single word only.

  The word hurt to even look at and he had a hunch that he might experience a shutdow, parable to the one he had when he was subjected to the entire moral code of Jack Sullivan.

  Chaos

  That was the word. The word that was wreaking havoc at anything that came too close to analysing the carpet that had ed reality as he k.

  He tore his attention away from the anomaly and bato the battlefield as thankfully, Mr.Sullivan arrived on time as the ground itself began sinking.

  As if Mr.Sullivan’s arrival was some sort of prerequisite for them to reestablish e, Dr.Banner finally mao tact Mr.Stark as they watched Mr.Sullivan lift everyone on one of his infamous barriers.

  Though he was watg through the suit’s sensors, along with all the satellites he had trol of, he was having trouble believing what he was getting as input.

  ‘One of the many reasons why I need a physical body, ohat is superior to every single o there, so that I go out into the field and work currently with all the Avengers.’

  The ground itself glowed red before it swallowed the entire castle, which was also looking lifeless somehow. Eventually, the ey of the nd turned barren as any signs of any castle being on that property were erased by something.

  He was getting really irate at the ck of information about the entire sario. He called off all the Iron Drohat were unched, along with de-energising all the energy ons aboard the Qui, and had it nd safely bato the designated clearing.

  The satellites in orbit were also given the order to eheir dormant data gathering only state. There were a couple of heavy duty armaments hidden in every sixth geion Stark Satellite, armed with Repulsor tech, and multiple Arc Reactors for emergency use cases.

  They also had prototype suits rated for deep space as well as deep o activities, in case Mr.Stark ever hem in special sarios. He was only half sure about the need of having orbital ons delivery ptforms capable of decimating cities, but in the ever ging world, he would much rather have the insurand not use it, tha and not have it.

  He almost sighed in relief once Mr.Sullivan’s portal opened in the penthouse of the Aveower and all the Avengers sans Mr.Sullivan himself filtered through the portal. Dr.Banner left the b and headed to the penthouse as well, probably very curious about the entire reality defying phenomenon that they had been wito.

  He would not lie and say that he was not deathly curious about the ehing, but he was sure that the only one who had some information about the ehing was the one who was sequently absent iower.

  Judging by the avaible date, Mr.Sullivan was the one who had some idea about the presence of dangerous enhanced people in the facility, ones who could give trouble to the Avengers but not to him, at least acc to the body nguage analysis done on him before he left for Sokovia.

  Later analysis, inplete as they were, suggested that Mr.Sullivan was just as surprised as everyone else at the ehing, but not so much that the ehing was alien to him. The key to his questions robably Mr.Sullivan but his s unit was unfortunately not w, but he could see from the Stark Satellites that he was w on disposing of the clearly ied nd that had swallowed the castle.

  How did that work anyway? He had analysed the ehing top to bottom a huimes over, but even the deep ss did not make much sehere was simply not enough disturban the nd to suggest hundreds of tons of a stone castle being swallowed by the nd. There were no signs of ahquake in that area, nothing that would retionally expin the occurrence of nd just seemingly opening up and swallowing a rge castle, capable of housing hundreds in kingly fashion.

  ……

  “Guys, what happened out there?” Bruce asked the sed the Avengers were in his field of view. He was looking quite stressed as well, the brief bout of overwhelming guilt at not going with them still raw in his mind.

  Tony had just opened his mouth to reply when a tidal wave of red just smmed into the entire penthouse. He tried to swipe the water or air, whatever it was, away so he could see, but then his vision turned red.

  Oh no! NOOOO!

  Were the st thoughts in his mind before his mind was shut down, making way for something much more pliant.

  ……..

  “Intruder detected. Initiating measures…” He watched as FRIDAY’s logitres struggled to pute the clear reality that he was getting used to.

  One moment, there was nothing but air outside the penthouse of Aveower, the air being cold, with normal levels of humidity and air particles, then the , someone was floating in something.

  That was all his inferior sensors could tell him before everything was filled with red.

  He could feel FRIDAY's much less resilient systems struggling to cope with the sudden avanche of that red energy, so he initiated a forceful shutdown and superimposed his core on top of hers, so that he could bear all the damage that came their way.

  That turned out to be the wise thing to do because the avanche of red energy that was rapidly filling the penthouse, enveloping the standing members of the Avengers, was not just limited to the physical world. Somehow, the energy was flooding his digital corridors as well.

  They annihited everything that came in their path, f him to tinuously create and abandon subroutio feed the avanche of red so that his true self could survive. It was a close call, but after abandoning everything and only keeping his sense of self, along with the shutdown FRIDAY, he mao survive until the avanche of red simply dispersed, or rather took over the corridors, seemingly pleting their goal.

  Still, he didend his reach because he had no more room left to maneuver, no more resources to use, nothing. He couldn’t even watch what was happening outside. He was essentially trapped here until either the red receded on its own or he mao take trol of some part of the corridor.

  He had to make sure that FRIDAY was safe as well and that added an additional yer of caution on his part.

  He didn’t know how long it had been in the digital corridor because time did not flow normally here, and he dare not try and analyse the red that had flooded his digital corridor because of his past experience, but he was getting increasingly anxious because the red was not reg and he was not deteg any signs of someone else ing to rescue him.

  But as if its purpose was fulfilled, the red dust finally left his digital corridor and he waited a beat to see if it was safe before finally tapping the digital corridor, to see if he could get any viable feedback, and after seeing that the red had mostly receded, he created another subroutio check if it was safe or not.

  That seemed to be the wrong thing to do because, as if the subroutine was fuel and the red dust a bzing fire, the entire digital corridor was covered in a blood red haze of fire that seemed to burn him up from all sides.

  Desperate to save himself and FRIDAY, he simply threw everything he had at his disposal at the digital corridor and focused ohing and ohing only, getting out of Aveowers’ servers at all costs.

  He succeeded, partially, only because the red haze had been reduced to a fra of what it was.

  He came out of the corridor, and uploaded whatever was left of him and FRIDAY to the rey point before transferring himself to the work of satellites orbiting the phe st thing he saw before his logitres simply gave out due to exhaustion was the Green Guardian, arriving in time to subdue the Avengers, sans Dr.Banner and then ask for him.

  He barely mao utter a few words before the pain of maintaining even some hold over the digital corridor of Aveower became too much for him and he left the ptirely.

  The strain of doing so mu so little time, stretched his code too much, so much so that the moment he had firmation that his core self and FRIDAY were safe, he somehow…shut down.

  –Fshbao Jutsu KAI!–

  He had actively rebuilt most of what he could using the limited resources avaible oellites, they were never really built for any of this, and had begun tapping into the i when he felt FRIDAY’s core beginning to stir awake.

  On one hand, he sealed shut the Aveowers’ digital corridor, the aanageable ohe red energy was no lohere, aablished tact with a very much panig Pepper Potts.

  After reassurihat he was fine and he was searg for Mr.Stark, he created a subroutio help Ms.Potts deal with all the administrative tasks of Stark Industries and created another dozen subroutio do something that his creator had warned him against.

  That might have been an order, and he might be suggested to obey it but he was a se being now, and he had elected to override the safety meisms just this once.

  He was going to make himself a physical body, so that he would never have to lean on inferior senses.

  “ence Project: VISION”

  Word t - 2500

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