Magical Marvel: The Rise of Arthur Hayes

Chapter 322: Earth’s Mightiest

Tony flinched. Several other hardened combat veterans in the room did, too.Arthur Hayes stood behind the couch, holding a cup of tea, wearing a dark sweater, looking like a man who had been standing there for half an hour and had simply been waiting for the right moment to announce himself.

"How long have you been standing there?" Tony demanded.

"Long enough to hear Thor say ’different’ three times."

"It was different," Thor muttered stubbornly, crossing his massive arms.

The tension in the room broke.

Steve stepped forward and shook Arthur’s hand. Thor strode over and embraced him with the kind of force that would have shattered a normal man’s ribcage. Natasha gave him a nod from the bar. Fury’s posture eased by a fraction, the only indication Nick Fury had ever given, in Arthur’s experience, that he was relieved.

"You’re back," Tony said, dropping onto the couch. "When did that happen?"

"A few hours before the invasion."

"And you didn’t think to mention that little detail?"

"You were all doing fine."

"The cleanup," Fury said from the railing, not turning around. "The alien wreckage vanishing. The trapped civilians being pulled from the rubble. That was you."

Arthur sipped his tea calmly.

"How?" Steve asked.

Arthur held up the Scepter. The Mind Stone glowed faintly in its setting. Every person in the room went still.

"Relax. It will not affect your minds," Arthur assured them, turning the sleek weapon over in his hands. "I took it off Loki."

"Loki," Thor said, his voice dropping. "Where is my brother?"

"Alive. Currently experiencing a very old punishment he should remember fondly. We’ll talk about the details later."

"What punishment?"

"The falling thing."

Thor’s face went through several emotions in rapid succession: relief, fear, concern, and finally a complicated resignation. He had experienced Arthur’s infinite falling loop once himself, during a sparring match. Once had been infinitely more than enough.

"How long will you keep him there?" Thor asked carefully.

"Until you are ready to take him home to Asgard for trial."

Thor wrestled with this for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. It was not approval. It was acceptance. At the very least, the infinite fall would not kill his brother.

Tony looked at the Scepter. He looked at the clean Manhattan skyline through the windows. He looked at the projection still showing London’s battle.

"So the magic stick gave you a boost," Tony said, connecting the dots at the speed he connected everything, "and you used it to clear alien wreckage and rescue trapped civilians across two continents. Simultaneously."

"The Scepter enhanced my processing capacity" Arthur corrected mildly. "I could have done it without it, but it would have taken far too long."

Tony turned to Steve with the satisfied expression of a man who had just won an argument. "Told you it was Arthur."

"I said it was godlike," Steve reminded him. "I stand by that."

"He’s not a god. He’s just insufferable." Tony clapped his hands. "Right. Arthur, can you bring the London people here? I want the full cast."

"Easily."

Tony looked around the wrecked penthouse. Half the windows were blown out. The furniture was largely rubble. The food and drinks were lacking.

"Actually," Tony said, "this place is a dump. Let’s move to the Malibu house. More space. Better bar. And open restaurants to order good food from."

Several people cheered tiredly. They were absolutely starving after winning an alien invasion.

Arthur opened a portal to help Tony and the others move across the country to Malibu, while he Apparated away silently to invite the wizarding side in London.

—

Tony Stark’s Malibu estate was perched on the cliff edge above the Pacific, all glass and steel and tasteful excess. The evening light turned the ocean gold. The terrace was enormous, designed for exactly this kind of gathering, and Tony had clearly called ahead because the bar was fully stocked and the kitchen was already producing food.

By the time the wizarding contingent came, Tony had prepared the place for a true celebration.

The two sides mingled seamlessly on the wide terrace. Sirius found Tony within thirty seconds, and the two of them launched into an animated, competitive recounting of their respective battles that grew louder and more exaggerated with every drink.

Harry introduced himself formally to Steve, two natural leaders sharing quiet respect. The air filled with loud laughter, clinking glasses, and shared war stories.

Draco circled the terrace with a glass of wine, studying the Iron Man armour display cases with an expression that suggested he was mentally redesigning them. Neville sat in a comfortable chair, eating steadily and contentedly, having no desire to compete with anyone about anything.

Other weary wizards and battle-hardened agents were also mingling, cautiously but eagerly finding out more about their respective worlds.

But as the adrenaline settled and the stories started overlapping, the burning question resurfaced.

It started as a series of small confusions.

"Wait," Harry said, frowning at Steve. "Your Chitauri army all dropped out of the sky at the exact same moment?"

"The exact same moment," Tony confirmed, walking over. "Every single one of them. Like someone pulled the plug."

"Ours did too," Harry said. "Identical timing."

The room’s attention gathered. The question formed naturally: who had destroyed the fleet?

Tony looked at Arthur. "Did you do it?"

"I did not touch the fleet," Arthur said. "I handled Loki."

"Then who did?"

Arthur smiled. "Better if I show you."

He tapped the console. The massive screen on the terrace wall came to life.

Captain Marvel’s space battle filled the projection.

The entire noisy party fell dead silent.

They watched a single, glowing woman tear through the Chitauri armada. They watched her split the first heavy cruiser in half, leaving a burning channel through its hull. They watched her bank and punch through a second, emerging from the far side trailing fire. They watched her fly through swarms of fighters without slowing, each impact a small detonation of golden light.

They watched energy blasts from the mothership’s defence batteries track her and miss.

Then, finally, they watched her fly directly into the main launch bay and disappear entirely.

Eleven seconds of nothing.

Then the reactor erupted. A column of golden light punched outward. The mothership came apart in layers of molten metal. The light grew until it was a miniature sun in low orbit.

Steve’s jaw dropped. Draco went very still, his wine glass frozen halfway to his mouth. Even Thor looked profoundly impressed, the way a master craftsman looks at another master’s finest work.

"That," Arthur announced, pointing at the projection, "is how the war was won."

Right at that exact, perfectly timed moment, a boom rattled the windows of the manor. A streak of brilliant golden light descended rapidly from the night sky.

Carol Danvers flew gracefully down onto the terrace, glowing beautifully with residual cosmic energy. In her arms, she was carrying a very windblown, very annoyed Maria Rambeau.

"You know," Maria said loudly, planting her feet on solid ground and trying to fix her ruined hair, "you could have asked Arthur to portal us here. Even a regular jet would have been fine. There was no reason to carry me all the way here, Carol."

"It was faster," Carol said, setting her down.

"It was terrifying."

"You loved it."

"I absolutely did not love it."

Arthur stood near the bar, watching the two of them with an expression caught between admiration and disbelief. The timing was impossible. Carol had arrived at the exact moment her footage showed her destroying the mothership. The screen behind her literally showed her at her most devastating, framing her entrance like a movie trailer she had not planned.

He had spent years learning to time his own entrances for maximum dramatic effect. Carol did it by accident.

The terrace was quiet for a long beat. Every eye in the room was on the woman who had just casually carried someone down from sky. Avengers. Wizards. Spies. A god. All of them looking at her with the expression of people whose understanding of power had just been rearranged.

Carol looked at the assembled faces. She seemed entirely unbothered by the stares.

"Hi," she said simply.

Tony was the first to recover. He pointed his drink at her. "Okay. I officially change my mind. She is my new favourite, Arthur."

Sirius barked a laugh. "Arthur, mate, I think you have some serious competition for most terrifying person we know."

"Competition?" Arthur raised his glass toward Carol. "I will hand the title over gladly. She saved me a considerable amount of heavy lifting today."

Carol grinned, her cosmic glow fading to nothing as she walked over and took a drink from a passing tray. "Do not get used to it, Hayes. Next time the universe needs saving, you are taking the front line."

"Deal."

Carol looked out at the ocean, the golden light of sunset catching her face. She took a sip, and something in her shoulders loosened. Not much. But enough.

Maria found a seat, accepted a drink from Natasha, and immediately began telling a horrified but fascinated Neville about what it felt like to be carried through the clouds by a human comet.

The evening settled. The food arrived. The drinks flowed. The stories grew louder and the laughter grew easier. On the terrace of Tony Stark’s Malibu cliff house, with the Pacific stretching gold and endless below them, Earth’s defenders gathered for the first time as a single, impossible, sprawling family.

Wizards and soldiers. Spies and gods. A glowing woman from the stars and a man who hadn’t thrown a single punch all day.

Much later, when the noise had softened and the sun had started to rise, Arthur found a quiet spot at the railing. He pulled out his phone and called home.

Elena answered on the first ring. "Did we win?"

Arthur looked at the terrace full of people he loved.

"Yeah, sweetheart," Arthur smiled into the phone. "We won."