Storm ≛ Tony Stark ≛

88.

'Where to start? Umm... The Aether, first, is not a Stone, someone called it a Stone before. It's more of a... an angry sludge thing, so... someone's gonna need to amend that.

Here's an interesting story, though. Many years ago... my grandfather had to hide the Stones from the Dark Elves. Wooooh, scary beings. So, Jane, oh, there she is. That's Jane... She's... an old flame of mine... She... she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time... and then the Aether stuck itself inside her... And, she became very, very sick. So, I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from. And we had to try and fix her. We were dating at the time, you see. I got to introduce her to my mother... who's dead... and oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore. These things happen, though, you know. Nothing lasts forever.

I'm not done yet, the only thing permanent in life is impermanence.'

Thor's explanation on what was supposed to be a riveting story about what they didn't know went nowhere. It turned into a long tangent that caused most of his listeners to drift off into confusion. Tony tried to get the demigod to sit down but was shaken off. Thor swayed in his place and grinned drunkly at the mention of breakfast, to which he replied with,

'I'd like a Bloody Mary, thank you.'

---

Multiple attempts were made by the team to devise a plan to acquire as many of the Infinity Stones as possible. However, they didn't have enough Pym Particles to be able to jump around through time while naïve as to where each of the Stones had been in the past. But an idea was eventually brought up when Tony, Natasha, Bruce and Sue were laying around the meeting room. Papers were scattered everywhere, all with maps and diagrams of where they would be able to find the Time Stone. It had been the four's objective, while the other Stones were distributed to the other members of the group to decipher their places in history.

'That Time Stone guy...' Natasha started from her place on the table.

'Doctor Strange,' Bruce helped from his place on the floor.

'Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?'

'Ear-nose-throat meets rabbit from a hat,' Tony replied, the man next to the Romanoff on the tabletop.

'I think he helped birth my niece...' Sue mumbled, the countless hours of diagram-making and map reading getting to her head. She sat on the other side of the table from Bruce, her back against the table's leg and her head hung sideways in a painful position.

'I am almost positive he did not. He was blipped, honey,' Tony's hand met the top of Sue's head over the edge of the table, and he patted it reassuringly.

'Oh, yeah...' she said in a sing-song voice.

'He was also a surgeon, not an obstetrician.'

'Nice place in the village, though,' Bruce followed Tony's addition.

'Yeah, Sullivan Street.'

'Hmm... Bleecker.'

'Wait,' Natasha sat up from the tabletop. 'He lived in New York?'

'No. He lived in Toronto. Were you even paying attention?'

'Was anyone at this point?' Sue rubbed her right eye with her knuckle.

'Guys, if you pick the right year, there are three Stones in New York.'

There was a moment of silence before the realisation hit. Sue's head rolled out of its hanging position, and she looked at Natasha's reflection in the glass wall in front of her. It took a moment for Sue to count the number of Stones that would have been in New York at any given time, and then she realised she meant when the team were first in New York together. With the tesseract containing the Space Stone, Stephen Strange guarding the Time Stone and Loki's scepter containing the Mind Stone, they would be able to get them all in one trip back to 2012.