#Enter Victor Kiraly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kila9nishika · 7 years

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Tony in Star Wars 5/?

I have returned? Sorry for the wait, @peskylilcritter, anyone else actually following this...

Long post for the long wait?

Star Wars Note- Attempting to draw an inclusive timeline of the Clone Wars is hard. Important to note is that I have made Obi-Wan and Anakin’s time with the 212th and 501st begin much earlier in the timeline than is canonical. Some events are EU and some events are canonical. You don’t need to be particularly educated about the details of events, just be aware that stuff is going on behind the scenes, and that it will show up “on-screen” if it’s important.

Marvel Universe Note- This is canonical up to and including Avengers (2012), but not including any of the movies or TV or associated media following it. I may include characters and concepts from later MCU ‘events,’ but this is not canonical Phase Two and beyond. That said, there are characters and plot concepts taken from Age of Ultron, so please be aware of spoilers.

4th Month, Day 11, 25032 Galactic Standard. Jedi Temple, Coruscant.

Anakin looked up from his datapad when Obi-Wan’s presence coalesced outside of his door. A moment later, a businesslike knock cut through the air.

“Come in, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, projecting his voice. “Your biosignature is in the lock.”

The door opened softly, and Obi-Wan stepped into Anakin’s rooms hesitantly. “I don’t want to intrude,” he said, “but there was something I wanted to show you.”

Anakin set down his datapad in surprise. Obi-Wan sounded almost - uncertain? Nervous?

“Sure.” Anakin stood up. “Is it far?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Just west of the North Tower,” he replied. His Force presence was still tinged with nervousness. “It’s a bit of a walk, but we won’t have to leave the Temple.”

Anakin thought for a moment. He had messaged Padmé, but she was busy until later this evening, which meant that his afternoon was free for whatever Obi-Wan was so worried about.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Obi-Wan smiled, and took his hand. Anakin almost jumped, barely noticing as they began to walk. When was the last time that Obi-Wan had held his hand? A year ago? Two? Definitely before Geonosis, but how long had it actually been?

The walk was shorter than Anakin had expected, though that may have been due to some of the back corridors that Obi-Wan had carefully chosen. It was almost as if Obi-Wan didn’t want to be seen. Anakin had never even heard of some of these corridors.

The door they stopped in front of opened easily to Obi-Wan’s palmprint, but they were stopped by a droid two steps into the room.

“Master Kenobi!” the droid exclaimed. “It has been a long time! And who is this? They are not on the permitted list!”

“This is Knight Skywalker, QT-70,” Obi-Wan replied. “He is with me. I take responsibility.”

QT-70 looked at Anakin suspiciously for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well. Rolls updated. Knight Skywalker permitted, under responsibility of Master Kenobi.”

“Thank you.” Obi-Wan stepped past the droid, letting go of Anakin’s hand. “Is Cerella still here?”

“Room 27, Master Kenobi,” QT-70 said, wheeling back to guard the door.

Anakin looked around. They were in a long hallway, with doors every ten or twelve feet. The closest door had a large number 2 attached to it.

Obi-Wan began to walk briskly, and Anakin sprinted to catch up.

“Where are we?” Anakin asked, once he had drawn level with Obi-Wan outside of a door numbered 27.

Obi-Wan gave him a pained smile. “Many people who are Force-sensitive are not found by the Jedi until they are adults. Often, if they do not know that they are Force-sensitive, they feel that they are going mad. Many times, we find them only after they have attempted to make their lives easier with drugs.”

Anakin froze, remembering the many (many, many, many) lectures that he had received about drugs since he had been brought to the Temple. Some drugs could block your access to the Force temporarily, but stronger and stronger doses were needed as time went on, and the side effects were harsh. Most drugs simply hid Force perception within a larger range of strange feelings, and the user could go mad. Jedi were trained to filter out drugs, poisons, and alcohol, but it took training to be able to do it, and it only worked on a case-by-case basis. Even Jedi Healers could not purge an addict of drugs.

“We were lucky, when we found you, when Tony and I met. You had not yet turned to darker things to attempt to cope, and Tony had learned that it didn’t help.”

A chill ran up Anakin’s spine. “What do you mean?”

Obi-Wan’s pained smile turned sad. “When he was your age, Anakin, Tony was desperately using every drug he could find in an attempt to block out the Force. We have to be thankful that he grew up on a relatively primitive planet. He didn’t have access to things like Merthian Blue and Sparkling Ragusian. When none of the drugs he used blocked out the Force, he simply stopped using them and began drinking alcohol instead. He could have been a Jedi’s worst nightmare, a rogue, untrained Force user, desperate to escape the insanity. Instead, he accepted that he couldn’t change anything, and moved on with his life. These people - they didn’t, or couldn’t, do that.”

He knocked the door to room 27.

August 5, 2015 Common Era. Dubuque, Iowa, United States of America, Earth.

Clint blinked at the room full in front of him, and decided to yell at Pepper later. She hadn’t told him that he was running herd on a bunch of teenagers.

"So..." Clint drawled. "Could you guys tell me who you are?"

The girl closest to him (she had stood when he walked in) bounced on her heels. "Like, totally!" she beamed. "Right, so, I'm Kitty Pryde, graduate of Xavier's Institute and studying patterns and computer languages, I'm seventeen and it's, like, totally cool to meet you! I mean, you're like, one of the coolest Avengers! Um." She blushed. "Right, so the girl ignoring you on the treadmill is Annie Wagner, she's, like, a technopath and totally builds stuff in her sleep and she wants to be a marathoner. The blindfolded girl genius at the piano is Ruth Aldine, she just, like, knows stuff, and she's kinda traumatized cuz her brother was like, awful. The gorgeous blonde sleeping on the couch is Sue, Susan Storm, and she's like, the mathiest math genius ever. The guy on the video games is Johnny Storm, he's, like, an idiot, but he's Sue's brother so he's here."

"Hey!" Johnny didn't look away from his video game. "Don't bad-talk me to the new babysitter!"

Clint grimaced. "Not a babysitter," he interjected.

"Yeah, whatever," Johnny said.

"Anyways," Kitty said, her cheerful voice a bit less bright. "The guy glaring at you like he wants you to die is Victor Kiraly, he always looks like that, he's from Latveria and he's probably, like, Tony Stark's dream child, cuz he's like, awesome when he gets going. Also, he writes a lot. Like, a lot." Her smile faded. "And Reed Richards isn't here, cuz he's like, normal, so his parents want him to spend most of his days at school and stuff. He's also a supergenius, but he's also like, an asshole."

Clint stared. He was exhausted just listening to this girl talk. "So," he said slowly, "what have we got?"

To his surprise, Victor stood up, lifting an enormous pile of slightly-beat-up notebooks, and slamming them onto the table. Clint picked up the first notebook. "May I?"

Victor nodded, scowl still firmly in place.

His surprise turned into outright amazement as he turned each page. Outlined, in excessive detail, were series after series of probable situations involving the disappearance of Tony Stark.

"This is incredible," Clint breathed, closing the first notebook.

Victor rolled his eyes. 'They are Susan's numbers, just my projections of them,' he signed in perfect ASL. At almost the same time, Kitty blurted out "You can read that?"

"Of course I can read it," Clint responded absently. "It's just Hungarian. And Victor, whether or not the original math was Susan's, these detailed analyses are incredible."

Kitty looked even more impressed than she had when Clint had first walked into the room. Victor, to Clint's eternal amusement, blushed.

August 6-November 19, 2015 Common Era. Dubuque, Iowa, United States of America, Earth.

The awkward start to what Kitty was enthusiastically calling the “Investigators of the Universe in Search of Tony Stark Initiative, Searchers’ Brigade for short,” thankfully eased out as the days went on. Once they had made sure that Tony wasn’t on Earth, the group of teens really began to get to work. And boy, did their work impress Clint.

“Dammit, Laura,” Clint said one evening, staring distantly into a cup of tea. “When I was Kitty’s age, SHIELD was recruiting me. At Annie and Sue’s age, I was a merc. So I can understand them, sort-of. But Victor and Ruth? Damn, even Reed’s still a kid, even if he is in college. Johnny’s nine!”

Laura had said something soothing, but the calm didn’t last.

“How far does the universe go?”

Everyone in the strangest lab in Stark Industries stopped. The piano had stopped playing, and Ruth was standing in the middle of the room, a faint frown on her face.

“How far does the universe go?”

Reed took a deep breath, only to be cut off by Kitty and Sue simultaneously saying, “Shut up, Reed.”

Johnny dropped his video game control and grabbed Ruth’s hands. “Hey Ruthie, what d’you mean?”

Ruth tilted her head to the side. “Sorry. Heimdall can’t see, yes? But Victor says that Heimdall follows the Yggdrasil interdimensional line, yes? And, sorry, that’s different than our universe, right?”

“So,” Johnny said, “Heimdall thinks he can see everything, but he’s actually only watching one TV show, while Tony’s on the same channel, but at a different time of day.”

“Johnny!”

Johnny looked up, surprised. Sue grabbed her little brother in a bear hug. “That’s it!” she exclaimed.

Victor, for the first time since Clint had met him, spoke aloud. “Yes,” he said, a tiny smile on his face. “It is space and time, and not dimensions.”

Kitty cheered, both fists in the air. “You guys know what this means, right?”

Everyone looked at her.

“If we can figure this out, and find Stark, we’re going into space!”

4th Month, Day 11, 25032 Galactic Standard. Jedi Temple, Coruscant.

“Ben!” A tiny, Core Standard human with stone-grey hair and wrinkled skin nearly pounced on Obi-Wan as soon as he entered room 27. “Ben, Ben, how are you? Did you come to see my pictures? Have you talked to Tara yet? Did you hear that we went to a park? We’ve never done that before!”

Obi-Wan smiled, embraced the overly-excited older woman, and guided her over to a small sofa. Feeling rather like a third-wheel, Anakin sat down on Obi-Wan’s other side.

“Hello, Cerella,” Obi-Wan said gently. “I’ll see Tara later, you know that. I’d love to see your pictures. Did you draw pictures of your trip to the park? It sounds exciting.”

Anakin watched with no little amount of astonishment as Obi-Wan conversed with the woman, expressing great interest over her ‘pictures,’ (which seemed to be scribbles on flimsiplast,) and asking all about her trip to the park. After approximately an hour, Obi-Wan stood up.

“I have to go, Cerella,” he said gently. “I want to have time to visit the others before I have to work.”

Cerella nodded solemnly. “Tell Tara I say hello,” she said, her eyes big and hopeful.

Obi-Wan smiled. “I will. Before I go, Cerella, I would like you to meet a friend of mine.” Taking Cerella’s hand, Obi-Wan guided the woman to touch Anakin’s hand. Strangely, while she had completely ignored Anakin’s presence beforehand, she now seemed to suddenly realize that he was there.

“Who is this?” Cerella demanded, jumping backwards. “Is this your friend, Ben? He’s all fuzzy inside, and he’s got strings all over!”

Obi-Wan seemed to just glide right over Cerella’s strange pronouncement. “This is Anakin, Cerella. He is a Jedi Knight, and was my Padawan.”

Cerella blinked. “Padawan? I saved the Padawan. I saved him, didn’t I, Master Jedi? Ben, I saved him, right?”

Ben sighed, and patted Cerella on the back. “You saved him, Cerella. You saved the Padawan. Why don’t you write a letter to the Master Jedi, now? You can tell him all about the park.”

Cerella refocused. “Yes. The park.” She nodded sharply. “Goodbye, Ben.”

As soon as they had left Cerella’s room, Anakin turned to Obi-Wan. “They never go to a park? Are they just trapped here?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. “Anakin, they go to the same park every week. Cerella just doesn’t remember.”

Something sick roiled in Anakin’s gut at the idea of not remembering the pleasant days alongside the bad ones. “Fine,” he said. “But why does she call you Ben? And who’s Tara?” He frowned. “For that matter, who’s the Master Jedi, and who’s the Padawan she was talking about?”

Obi-Wan stopped in his tracks. “I’ll take you to see Tara in a bit, she’s a bit further down the hall. She calls me Ben because that’s how she met me.” He sighed. “The Master Jedi and the Padawan are a bit more difficult to explain.”

2nd Month-5th Month, 25014 Galactic Standard. Poc, Langhesa System, Meram Sector.

“Master, there’s something not quite right about the way the Aalang strategies work.”

After ten days with neither a proper bed nor a proper meal, Master Qui-Gon Jinn was beginning to think that there was something not quite right with his Padawan.

“Padawan, try to get some sleep.” Qui-Gon glared at the continuous drip that their makeshift shelter had developed in Poc’s near-constant downpour. Why someone had thought it was a good idea to turn this planet into an ecumenopolis, Qui-Gon would never understand.

“Master, seriously, just look for a moment.”

Restraining a sigh, Qui-Gon turned to look at the scratches his Padawan had made in the dirt. At least their shelter’s dirt floor was relatively dry (for now).

His Padawan pointed at a rough representation of the most recent attempt by the A’a Poc to retake the planet’s main communications tower. “They’re not just anticipating the A’a Poc’s actions, Master, they’re reacting before the A’a Poc have even made a decision, yet.”

Qui-Gon blinked. “You have my attention, Obi-Wan.”

His Padawan’s cheeks flushed. “I noticed it when I was going over all of the analyses that we were given before we got here. It started about five months into the civil war, and has been getting progressively more accurate as time goes on. Look at the attack on the spaceport ten days ago.” He drew a couple of quick lines in the dirt. “Logically, you would think that the A’a Poc would be trying to protect our entrance, since they’re the ones who called for help, so the Aalang should have tried to cut through here -” Obi-Wan drew a quick line. “But instead, they came around here, where the A’a Poc should have been strongest, except -”

“Except that our ship crashed, because of that idiot Kra’shenk,” Qui-Gon finished, frowning. “There was literally no way to know that, not from Poc. Not unless…” The thought was chilling.

“Not unless they have a Force sensitive or a Force user on their side.” Obi-Wan swept the dirt smooth, his face dark. “We’re going to have to look for them, first, aren’t we?”

“Indeed, Padawan.” Qui-Gon had a dark feeling about it, which he did his best to move past. Stay in the moment. “Indeed.”

With that goal in mind, they moved a bit more swiftly. Now, instead of struggling to find the headquarters of the collapsing A’a Poc, they could follow the Aalang - or, as was often the case with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, get captured.

“They were right where she said they’d be,” one of their captors grunted as they entered a large complex near the former capital city. “Dunno why we can’t just get them out of the way. It’s more work this way.”

“We can’t!” Another one of their captors spoke up, sounding panicked. “You heard what she said - if we do anything to them, it’ll go bad for us, but if we just capture them and hold them, it’ll go good.”

Master, Obi-Wan projected, who is ‘she’?

Qui-Gon did his best to maintain a neutral expression. I have no more idea than you do, Padawan.

They were brought into a large area filled with prisoners, but kept in a separate cell. Roughly an hour after being dragged in, prisoners were all fed, and then something odd happened.

The leaders of the Aalang began circling through the prisoners, walking with someone who had not been included in any of the intelligence sent to the Temple. The stranger was a young Core Standard human woman, probably eighteen Standard years of age.

Her Force presence was enormous.

Qui-Gon winced as the girl drew ever closer to their position. Padawan, do you feel that?

Obi-Wan, who was pretending to sleep, didn’t move. Yes. What’s wrong with her?

Spice. Merthian Blue, if I don’t miss my guess.

“Here there are, the Jedi are here,” the girl chirped. Her eyes were wide, silvery-blue, and unnaturally focused. “To bring, to save, to win, to live.”

Obi-Wan took a startled breath.

Padawan, what is it?

Nothing, Master. Just a vision. Her words are...did you feel it? Her words are laced with the Force. A verbalization of a vision.

Qui-Gon was a bit dubious, but he was not an expert in visions, and Obi-Wan did have a tendency to be plagued with them. If anyone would recognize that aspect of the Force in another, it would be his Padawan. You suspect they are using her as an Oracle?

Yes.

Hours later, after observing all of the other prisoners collapsing simultaneously in sleep, (thank the Force for Jedi training in filtering out drugs and poisons,) a slim shadow flitted through the chamber. It stopped in front of their cell, and sank to the ground.

“Master Jedi, here you are.” It was too dark to see properly, but the singsong voice was the same.

“What is your name?” Qui-Gon murmured, leaning forward.

“A name, a name,” the girl sang softly. “What is a name? Once Cerella knew herself, then she feared, and then she fled, now she sits in front of a cell and hopes a prisoner will free her.”

They broke out that night.

They couldn’t take Cerella with them. She was absolutely dependent on Merthian Blue, to the point that she would die without it, and they had no way of supplying it while on the run.

Thankfully, the A’a Poc finally managed to retake the main communications tower, and Qui-Gon called for assistance, which actually arrived in less than a month. The civil war was - well, disassembled, more than ended. Then, for one of the strangest Jedi requests in modern history: a lot of Merthian Blue.

Civil wars don’t end that easily, though.

Five steps from their transport off planet, the double crack of two blaster shots rang through the ambient noise.

"Obi-Wan!"

The shooter was taken down quickly by the port’s guards, but Qui-Gon’s focus was directed entirely on his Padawan. Obi-Wan had gone down without so much as a sound.

“Obi-Wan, breathe!” Qui-Gon ordered. Obi-Wan’s lips twitched in a macabre parody of a smile, his robes already staining dark red with blood.

Sorry…

“Death is happened, Master Jedi, what?” Cerella had shoved herself to Obi-Wan’s side, her hands twitching and her Force presence ringing eerily.

Obi-Wan’s Force presence sank away, leaving only the faintest of impressions behind.

“Obi-Wan!” Qui-Gon gasped. Padawan, no!

Cerella grabbed Obi-Wan’s head in her hands.

“No!” she cried. “No more death!”

No more!

She flared with light - not only in the Force, but also visibly, enough to make approaching aid flinch away.

If the Force was sound, then Qui-Gon would have been deafened -

And then, suddenly, miraculously, Obi-Wan’s presence snapped back into place.

Mas-ter?

Cerella, who looked as if someone had literally drained life out of her body, collapsed.

Note: All Marvel-verse characters are based on canonical comics and TV universe characters, if they are not part of MCU. That said, they are only based on those characters, and are different due to being in a different universe.

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