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The adamantium capsule floated on the waves of unreality. Though the term "floated", like any other term coined by man, does not fit finding and moving in the primordial chaos. However, it is as apt as any other. Because chaos is the primordial broth of space, time, reality, unreality, possibility, fantasy and everything that exists, exists, can exist and cannot exist in principle. It is not ether, energy or substance. It is everything and nothing at the same time. It is out of the chaos that demiurges create new worlds or originate under the influence of some factors, if not without them.
For this reason, the capsule was insulated from chaos as much as possible - get it inside, and a teapot could arrive at its destination. Or a god. Or the great nothing. Chaos is unpredictable.
Inside the capsule, the spirit of reason was in stasis to not waste energy and not stir up chaos with its emanations of reason. The capsule was expanded from the inside. It consisted of the capsule, a crystal with the spirit, a sealed drop of half-titan blood, and an obsidian reservoir with Pierce's mana pumped into it. All the enchantments were maximised, so the energy should have been enough for thousands of years of the capsule's internal time. Besides, the capsule was under a minifidelius and was hidden from most mages, gods and demons. That wouldn't save it from active search, but that's where the law of "Elusive Joe" comes into play - no one would want it. The various creatures of interworld chaos weren't interested in her either. These unimaginable beings had no mind or even a definite form. They simply existed in their non-existence, and only by entering some world could they gain reason and form, perhaps giving birth to a chthonic monster. Or perhaps not. But it happened rarely enough. So what was Vladimir Pierce hoping for, sending a pseudo-embodiment to such a place? On one property of chaos, read out in one of the ancient treatises of an inter-world traveller. Any object with a reality higher than chaos behaves like a float in water. It tends to float out of it into some embodied world.
This happened to the capsule: it was thrown out of unreality first into the grey haze of Limbo, the haven of dead souls, where any thought can change reality. Then into the Noosphere or, as it is also called, the mental plane and the Akasha library, where the knowledge of the entire given universe and even its parallel worlds is stored. You can get into any of the invented worlds, but they will not be real here. Next is the astral-mental plane - the dream world inhabited by nightmares and dreams. After that, into the astral-material world - the underside of reality and the reflection of the material world. It is here that magicians move through the dusk, shadows or looking-glass. And finally, having skipped the material world, the capsule entered hyperspace. It was scanned by a mind far superior to the human mind. Instead of destroying the intruder, who didn't even come from their cluster of worlds, this mind deemed him fit for something and sent her hundreds of light and time years away, dumping her on one of the worlds next to a dying man.
He was in his early thirties. A rather handsome tall brunet, overgrown with a black beard that remotely hinted at a once stylish espagnole. His black dishevelled hair was clogged with sand, and he hadn't seen shampoo or soap in a long time. The man's chest was glowing with dim white light, a circle of some technical device assembled from junk. The device was right inside the chest, not attached to the top. He was dressed in a tattered and baggy heavy leather jacket with gloves, similarly tight trousers, and metal boots that looked like steel sabatons made by a drunken blacksmith. The capsule activated its programme and began to merge the mind and spirit with the soul and body of the man who had died due to multiple fractures, gunshot wounds and internal bleeding.
***
Tony Stark. Genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist, and, from his point of view, fucking handsome, and, by the way, many girls who have been in his bed were in agreement with this, opened his eyes. The fact that he'd actually done it was already a miracle. He was a genius; he recognised that just as he recognised that breaking through in a prototype steel exoskeleton assembled in a cave of shit and sticks was suicide. But he didn't have much choice. He knew the terrorists wouldn't let him live, even if he made the required weapon for them. No, he was sure they would finish him off immediately afterwards. Besides, he had shrapnel in his chest; here was the irony, from a mine his own company had created, and only an electromagnet fuelled by the miniature cold fusion reactor he had assembled was saving him until now. No, he would have survived even with a couple of gunshot wounds to the joints of his armour. But not in a nine-story tin can fall without dampers or shock absorbers. In fact, he'd have to be mincemeat in a tin can, which would also be baked in the desert. Oh, how lucky some beast would be to find him - a ready-made canned food!
At last, he was able to blink and look around. And to his surprise, he found himself not in the scorching desert, in a cave again, or, as Red Skull would have it, in a hospital with his assistant Pepper Potts, but in his garage. Yes, he spent most of his time not in his office, for which he had an assistant, not at parties or orgies, despite the angry but often truthful tongues of the press, but in his garage. There, he fixed his collection of cars or developed new devices. Mostly weapons that nearly killed him. If he'd known they were falling into the hands of terrorists and killing innocent people...
- What would you have done, Mr Stark? Would you have stopped making it? Lose your fortune and the ability to do whatever you want? - someone behind him asked mockingly.
When he turned around, he saw a glowing spirit that only outlined a human being.
- Who are you? Apostle Peter? I'm an atheist, and I thought of heaven as... different," Tony said, looking around his huge garage, which was more like a car park and a workshop in one. The walls sloping to the sea at thirty metres told him that this was his home in Malibu.
- I'm not an angel or a demon but a spirit of the mind. And it just so happens that I need your body!
- Hey, I'm not one of those! I tried it, and I didn't like it! Stop; you haven't heard anything; I'll deny it!
- I'm not interested in your youthful adventures," the spirit replied indifferently. - My contractor sent me to other worlds to gather information on various technologies. Our world is in great danger, so it was a gesture of desperation.
- Worlds?
- What surprises you? Only your world was nearly destroyed once in your memory. I found it in the blocked memories of your mind. It was the fault of one Apocalypse, a mutant of incredible power. Back then, the entire world was disarmed and nearly stripped of all metal, which would have thrown it back to the stone age.
- How could I have forgotten that?
The mask of amusement flew off Stark's face as the memory became available to him. He had been a child then, but he remembered vividly the day when a blue-skinned mutant with black lips had appeared on every television and threatened to destroy all humans and everything they had created. But then it was like he didn't even remember it.
- I see only one reason: a magician or telepath of monstrous power made the whole world forget about it. And as justification for the destruction, a solar flare was presented. And thanks to compulsion, it was accepted.
- Damn, that's a dumb excuse," Tony laughed. - But what happens to me next?
- And then you have two options. Either I merge with your soul, and together we fulfil the task of my contractor. Which, by the way, has no time limits on its fulfilment; we can do it even at the end of our common life, though it is undesirable. Or I push your soul into the circle of rebirth and take over your body.
- Is there an option where you get far away and I live happily ever after?
- I've spent too much energy on the unification and healing of our new body. I just need more energy to find a new one.
- So I don't have a choice? What do I get out of this?
- The knowledge of an entire galactic civilisation, a body stronger than your Captain America and the opportunity to become a wizard?
- Son of a bitch, I'm in!
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