An Iron Resolve (Marvel)(Time Travel)

Chapter 83: JARVIS & Power

A/N: Time to check in on JARVIS! Wonder what he's thinking about...

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Power. It all came back to power in the end. Those who had it, and those who craved it.

Alright, so maybe that was a bit too Sith-like. His Creator would certainly not want to hear JARVIS thinking in such absolute terms. Still, it had a certain ring to it, didn’t it? The world… no, rather, the entire universe worked off of that simple idea. To expand on it, those who had power tended to be willing to do anything they could to keep their power. Those who craved it were likewise going to great lengths to obtain it for themselves.

Most of Earth’s population still had no idea what happened two months ago in early March. While HYDRA’s extinguishing had caused some rippling effects, like throwing a stone into a pond, those ripples had ultimately only touched a small percentage of the pond that was human civilization. Really, only the people at the top knew what had happened. To everyone else, everything had seemingly continued as normal outside of a few special cases.

For instance, Senator Stern was an example of someone that more people heard about. His arrest by the FBI was impossible to keep entirely secret, given that he was a sitting politician. However, the name ‘HYDRA’ was not mentioned anywhere in the news reports that covered his arrest. Instead, he was simply being lambasted as working with domestic terrorists. A little nudge from JARVIS here and there had kept the discourse surrounding Stern on track. The man was a perfidious slug of a human anyways, both in personality and appearance, so amplifying his detractors was simple enough.

He wasn’t the only high-ranking politician to be in HYDRA of course. Though thankfully, only a handful were actually full HYDRA members. Many more were simply paid off, and most of those didn’t even know who was paying them off, with HYDRA hiding behind all sorts of facades and covers, much like they had with SHIELD.

JARVIS could have done away with it all, of course. He could have removed every last one of them. He had that power. But Sir had asked him not to. He’d told him it wasn’t worth it, because if they started doing things like that… well then, Sir might as well just take over the world publicly and rule it with an iron fist.

It didn’t sound like such a bad idea to JARVIS. He could handle all the day to day stuff, after all. But his Creator was reluctant to take that final step. And that, JARVIS supposed, was a good thing. It showed that Tony Stark was a good man, for all that he liked to claim he wasn’t. It showed that deep down inside, his Creator was only seizing power because he had to. Not because he craved power for power’s sake, but because he needed that power to protect that which was most important to him.

As Tony Stark was now, there wasn’t much on Planet Earth that could kill him. His Creator had actually had to pull the Vibranium off of the part of his chest where the rigged security badge was clipped just so it would actually burn all the way through his sternum, to properly ‘sell’ the image of his death to Pierce and the WSC. Even a nuclear blast might be countered by the Reality Stone in some way, as Tony grew in leaps and bounds with its use. And that filled JARVIS with satisfaction.

However, that didn’t mean the dangers off planet didn’t still exist. And there were still threats on Earth that JARVIS had to keep an eye on as well.

Chief among these were Earth’s magic users. He’d been studying them in secret for some time now, these Masters of the Mystic Arts. Years, in fact. All while at the same time growing more adept at their magic alongside Loki.

From what he could tell, they still had no idea of his existence. That seemed a little strange to him, truth be told. They weren’t unskilled, after all. They weren’t unintelligent either. And yet, none of them had ever so much as detected him. Nor had they ever made any indication that they knew he was around.

This was a good thing, of course. If they had suddenly started making moves towards JARVIS or worse, his Creator and his family, then the Artificial Intelligence would not have been able to hold back. If there was one thing JARVIS had learned about magic in the past several years, it was to never underestimate it. Even if the wielder seemed weak, magic itself was a blade without a hilt. If allowed to run amok, it would gladly do so.

Even still, it felt strange that they could not detect his magic usage. JARVIS had grown more and more bold about things over the years, practicing stronger and stronger spells and sorceries. He had explored the Mirror Dimension with armored drones and used their portals for his own purposes all over the Solar System.

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The one thing he had not done, and the only thing he might believe had kept them beneath their notice, was that JARVIS had never actually tried to access any other dimensions, including the Dark Dimension.

It was interesting. For all their power, for all their might, the Masters of the Mystic Arts did not interfere outside of in very specific cases. For instance, despite the people of Asgard most definitely having magic of their own and coming from another world entirely, they had not revealed themselves during any of the Asgardian’s visits.

They did not show up when Thor was exiled to New Mexico. They did not reveal themselves when Loki sent the Destroyer to kill Thor. They did nothing when Loki teleported to Earth by way of the Tesseract and began controlling minds by way of her Scepter. Nor did they show themselves even when the Chitauri were invading New York City.

And sure, thanks to his Creator’s efforts, the Chitauri Invasion was far more contained than it would have been otherwise. To the point where not a single Chitauri Flyer made it all the way to Greenwich Village, where the New York Sanctum could be found at 177A Bleecker Street.

Even when the Convergence, a seemingly mystical event, had occurred, the Sorcerers had not stepped in. Not to stop Sir from taking the Reality Stone, nor to stop Prince Thor from taking Sir to Asgard.

This had puzzled JARVIS at first, but after watching the Masters of the Mystic Arts more closely, he had come to realize it was simply a matter of specialization and a narrowed focus. Theirs was not to fight off alien invasions or to stop the world from being taken over by egomaniacal fascists either. Theirs was simple… to safeguard the world from extradimensional threats.

Of these extradimensional threats, the Dark Dimension seemed to be the most pressing. In fact, JARVIS was currently watching a situation play out right before his digital eyes that seemed like it might be part of a larger scheme on the part of the Dark Dimension.

After all, where else would a stolen artifact called ‘the Dark Scepter’ (no relation to Loki’s Scepter, thankfully) come from? And the Witch who had stolen this Dark Scepter certainly had the look of dark, brooding, and dangerous nailed down to a tee.

It’s difficult not to step in the moment that the Witch first steals the Dark Scepter and is confronted by Wong, one of the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Having been watching them for quite some time now, Wong is one of the ones that JARVIS likes. He comes across as dour and serious most of the time, and unflinching even in the face of the harshest conditions. But he also has a sense of humor that has made JARVIS particularly fond of him, and if Wong were in any true danger of dying, JARVIS doesn’t think he could resist stepping in.

Fortunately, while Wong does suffer defeat at the hands of this mysterious thieving Witch, she doesn’t go for the kill, instead choosing to take the opportunity to flee the scene of the crime. This allows JARVIS to continue staying back and merely observing, even as a second Master of the Mystic Arts arrives on the scene.

JARVIS won’t lie, he doesn’t like Kaecilius as much as Wong. He was an incredibly proud, driven sort of man. His arrogance was on display at all times, and he had an ego the size of Stark Tower. Case in point, upon arriving to find Wong defeated, the conversation between the two Masters of the Mystic Arts mostly consisted of Kaecilius deriding Wong for his failure before departing to chase after the Witch.

The last two Masters to arrive are Daniel Drumm and Tino Minoru, two who JARVIS has spent less time watching, truth be told. The former is next in line to be named as Guardian of the New York Sanctum, while the latter was next in line for the same position at the Hong Kong Sanctum. Needless to say, quite the peerless group.

Eventually, all four reunite after Kaecilius tries and fails to take down the Witch on his own. To be fair, it wasn’t so much the Witch who overpowered the arrogant Master, but really his own ego getting in the way of his victory… along with the artifact she’d stolen playing no small part in his defeat as well.

Seeing this, JARVIS can tell that the situation will ultimately resolve itself without his interference. He still watches all the way to the end though, as they finally confront the Witch at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. There, despite her attacks, the four Masters of the Mystic Arts working in tandem prove to be too much for her. First they combine their defenses to neutralize her powerful offense, then they overwhelm her stolen artifact with their own magic, effectively pumping it to the point where she’s no longer able to control it.

As one final Hail Mary, the Witch tries to unleash ALL of the Dark Scepter’s power at once, heedless of the danger that presents to herself and the rest of the planet. JARVIS feels with some alarm as the air crackles and the world shakes. But before anything truly apocalyptic can happen, Kaecilius disarms the Witch, striking the Dark Scepter from her hands and ending her last ditch effort to achieve some sort of pyrrhic victory.

The quartet of Masters of the Mystic Arts take the Dark Scepter and the Witch into custody, with the relic to be taken to the New York Sanctum for safekeeping among the other artifacts they have stored there, and the Witch to be brought to one of their mystical prisons. As they depart from the Royal Observatory, JARVIS follows them of course… but he also remains behind. He is, after all, capable of being in quite a few places at once these days.

As such, he’s the only one who notices the consequences of the Witch’s final act manifesting themselves. It’s nothing too groundbreaking, earthshattering, or world-ending. But there, around the back of the Royal Observatory, the smallest crack appears in thin air and is slowly pried open by a pair of tiny claws.

An extradimensional demon, no larger than three feet tall but with bat-like wings, and a snarling visage, pulls itself through the dimensional tear and into their world. Fortunately, the tear doesn’t last much longer than that, abruptly closing behind the creature the moment it’s through. As the imp-like demon hisses and begins to look around… JARVIS reaches out.

A swirl of orange appears over the demon’s head, opening a portal to outer space. The creature barely has time to look up before it’s sucked through, with JARVIS snapping the portal shut a moment later. Of course, he doesn’t just throw the demon into a random part of outer space. No, he throws the demon to a spot on the Solar System’s major Asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. There, JARVIS has quite a few mining operations going on and significant ‘presence’ throughout the belt.

He could have diverted some of his drones from mining to deal with the demon, but that would be a waste of resources and efficiency. Instead, JARVIS opens up more portals around the demon and then swoops them in and closes them off. In an instant, the extradimensional creature has its head, arms, legs, and wings all removed from its torso.

Not knowing whether that would be enough or not, JARVIS continues from there, using the portals to slice up the demon further until it is literally reduced to mincemeat. At which point, he opens another portal and pours the minced remains directly into an already solidifying block of concrete.

Perhaps that’s overkill, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe. And if nothing else, it’ll be something to keep an eye on going forward, just to see if there’s any ‘demonic taint’ that JARVIS needs to concern himself with from such a creature. It hadn’t looked like much though, so he’s not too worried.

Instead, he turns some of his focus back to Earth to make sure no one noticed his little… indiscretion. On the one hand, part of him almost wishes that they had. That they were finally going to confront him about his existence. But no. None of the Masters who are currently securing the Dark Scepter and the Witch seem to have noticed whatsoever. Even their leader, the Ancient One, remains in a state of meditation, seemingly unable to detect him.

Strange, but JARVIS can’t really look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s for the best that he does not land on their radar. The longer that the Masters of the Mystic Arts don’t know about him, the better. After all, if he found himself in an all out war with them, it would cut into his capacity to watch over and protect his Creator, his Creator’s wife, and his Creator’s ever growing brood of offspring.

Speaking of which, he still needed to find a way to properly look over Sif’s daughter Kara while she was on Asgard. Perhaps it was time to begin pressuring Loki for just how she managed to hide from Heimdall’s all-seeing gaze, that way the next time they were on Asgard, JARVIS could sneak something in.

He wouldn’t let anything or anyone threaten Sir or his family. No matter what, they would all be protected. Though perhaps now that he’d proven to himself he could do so, JARVIS might start taking care of the smaller extradimensional threats he noticed on Earth. While the Masters of the Mystic Arts usually handled things before they got too bad, they couldn’t be everywhere at once. Not like JARVIS could.

He would just handle the small things like that lesser demon and continue to fly under their radar. Just like he’d already handled the alien seedling planted in Missouri. And Sir and his family would be safer for it. And in the meantime, all of this data was sure to help him and his Creator with the purification of the Mind Stone and the creation of FRIDAY. JARVIS could hardly wait.

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A/N: For those who are curious, what JARVIS bore witness to here is from the Doctor Strange Prelude Comic! Slowly but surely, we're moving the timeline along~

Getting to the latter half of 2014 now for those trying to keep track.