45 A Test for Time Part 1

Jake was standing on the cliff by Tony's mansion, trying to practice with his mist teleportation ability. Tony's mansion was about 500 meters away, and he wanted to try teleporting himself back to it. He willed the mist to surround himself, and to his relief, it did! He then willed it to take him to Tony's mansion. Jake vanished from the cliffside.

SPLASH!

Tony was sitting outside, having some breakfast by his pool, when he saw Jake appear above it and drop right in. He chuckled as he watched the guy slowly swim to the edge before climbing out, dripping wet. "That was a lot better this time, Jake!" Tony called out.

This time, he had actually made it to the mansion grounds! The other two times Jake had tried to teleport, he did not make it to the mansion... The first time, he only teleported a few feet in front of him, and the second time, he sent himself miles away to the local McDonald's. Needless to say, the patrons and employees there were shocked at seeing him appear out of nowhere.

Even though Jake was soaking wet, he didn't mind. He considered this a success. He was starting to figure out how this ability worked. Like his devil magic, he had to completely visualize where he wanted to teleport to. If he had a stray thought at all, like when his stomach rumbled and he briefly thought of food, he would not end up where he wanted to go.

"I think I'm starting to get the hang of this," Jake said out loud. He then went on to explain to Tony what he had learned. Tony told him that teleporting was going to be extremely useful, but he should make sure to be aware of his limits.

Jake agreed. He had explained to Tony everything he'd learned. Knowing the man was a genius, Jake asked him, "Is there anything you think i've missed from my tests so far?"

Tony pondered for a second before pulling out his phone. "Here," Tony said typing with a smirk before showing his screen to Jake. Tony had pulled up a picture of a location Jake didn't recognize. "Try taking us here while staring at the picture," Tony explained.

"But I have no idea where this place is, though."

"Exactly," Tony said. "That's the point. You've been visualizing the location in your head so far, but I want to see if you can teleport somewhere with just a picture and you not knowing where it actually is. Science is all about experimenting, after all!"

"But this is magic, though," Jake replied. They were not the same thing, no matter how much Tony tried to argue. Magic was just science no one understood yet...

"Quit whining, and let's go already," Tony said, excited for some reason. Jake figured why not as he grabbed Tony and focused on the photo as the two of them vanished from Tony's Malibu house.

...

The two of them faded into existence, and Tony let out a whoop of joy. "Hell yeah! You did it. I've been wanting to come back to this place for ages!" he exclaimed with some enthusiasm. Jake was happy the experiment worked, but had no idea where they were now.

"Where exactly are we, Tony?"

"This is the absolute wildest gentleman's club I've ever been to in my entire life! We're in Bangkok!"

"Tony, it's 11 am..."

"Not here, it's not. Here it's past midnight, and that means it's party time." Tony cheered as he ran into the club. The bouncer just took one look at Tony before recognizing him immediately and letting him cut the line. Tony waved for Jake to follow, and Jake just shrugged and walked in with him. Jake figured the place must be pretty good if there were that many people lined up to get in...

...

Two minutes later, Jake ran right back out the door, horrified, with a laughing Tony right behind him. "What the actual fuck, Tony? Those girls weren't girls at all!" They had... other parts.

Tony, meanwhile, was wheezing so hard he couldn't help it. "Oh my god, kid, the look on your face! Fucking great."

"How is this Bangkok's most popular strip club!?"

"I never said it was the most popular, kid. I said it was the wildest." Tony laughed.

"Whatever, we're going back now!" Jake grabbed Tony by the arm, and they vanished from the club entrance back to Malibu. When they got back, Tony just laughed a bit more before telling Jake he had some other work to do, and that Jake was free to do wherever in the meantime. Jake figured he would try teleporting himself somewhere… farther.

…

It didn't work unfortunately. He tried for over an hour to no results.

Jake didn't exactly know what to do with himself now. He had tried transporting himself to Asgard, but something felt like it was blocking him! He wondered if the entirety of Asgard was under some wartime ward that completely blocked all teleportation. He could only wait until Loki contacted him again to ask about that.

He was currently sitting on a sandy beach near Tony's house, just watching the waves. He felt lucky the beach was pretty empty... or maybe the whole stretch was Tony's private beach or something. Jarvis had been searching for signs of Thor for the past two days with no results. Jake felt like he'd been stalemated for the first time, with no visible path ahead of him.

"This is quite a nice beach. Mind if I join you?" Jake turned towards the voice and saw a woman with a shaved head who appeared to be dressed like a monk.

"I don't own the beach. Feel free."

"Thank you," she said as she sat down next to him in a meditative pose. "Sometimes when I am too stressed out, I come out to secluded places like this and just sit."

"And what kind of stress do you have to deal with?" Jake asked. He was himself under a fair bit. He was stranded basically alone in another dimension, Serafall was separated from him by a whole galaxy, he needed to find out what happened to Thor, and he needed to get stronger quickly.

"Hmmmm, I'm under a fair bit of stress right now, I'll have you know," the bald woman replied. "I guess you could say everything that I had planned until my own death basically imploded a few days ago." She gave a playful glare towards Jake, but he was too busy staring at the waves to notice.

"That's kind of morbid, planning out your own death and all."

"I suppose it was, not that it matters now... I had a successor picked out for my job, you know. He would have been a really good replacement for me."

"Had?" Jake asked. "Did something happen to him?"

"He was at the hospital that was attacked by the angel recently. He was a world-renowned surgeon and was there to demonstrate some new procedures he'd developed. Needless to say, he did not make it out." She honestly still couldn't believe it. She had never foreseen anything like this happening in any timeline. Asgard was supposed to be destroyed by Surtur, and Heven was supposed to be attacked and destroyed by Thanos before he made his way to Earth with his forces severely weakened from the battle against the angels. There he would finally be defeated by her successor, leading Earth's mightiest heroes. Now, Strange was dead, and Asgard was at war with the angels, meaning Thanos wouldn't have to waste his troops on them. And what was worse still was that the time stone stopped working ever since it found its true wielder. Every object of power in Kamar-Taj was destined to have a true wielder, and the time stone was no exception. What shocked her was that the young man next to her wasn't just destined to inherit the power of the time stone alone...

"..."

"I'm sorry to hear the man died," Jake said sincerely. He didn't like the fact that the angel had killed a world-renowned surgeon, someone who probably would have gone on to save thousands of people in the future. Jake wasn't going to gain a martyr complex and put all those deaths on himself, but he would try to do better in the future.

"I suppose sometimes things happen that are out of everyone's control," she said. "Tell me, Jake Gremory, do you feel like your own life is a bit out of control? That you lack the power to decide your fate for yourself." Her tone shifted somewhat as she became more serious.

Jake turned to the woman. Was he surprised she knew his name? Not really since he was all over the news with Tony since the hospital. He didn't feel like she was just some crazy monk spouting random jargon, though. "What is it you want? And who are you exactly?" He asked with narrowed eyes.

"Before I answer that, Jake, let me ask you something. Suppose you are in possession of one of the most powerful objects in the universe. That object itself has always worked fine for you, and you've grown accustomed—no, dependent—on using its power throughout your everyday life."

"Is this going somewhere?" he asked, confused. "And obviously you're talking about yourself, so you can drop all the 'yous,'" he added, slightly annoyed.

"Fine then," she stopped her whimsical questions. "I will be blunt then. I and my order have been in possession of a certain object of power for almost a millennium. However, recently it found its true owner when it, along with another object of power, helped them breach through the universe's space-time continuum." She gave Jake a stare as she said that. He obviously knew the person the supposed object(s) helped was him.

Jake was surprised this woman knew he was from another dimension. Not even Odin with his all-seeing eye was able to figure that out! "So you're saying this object is what allowed me to come here? I'm not buying it. I've time-traveled on my own power before. I didn't need any help."

She just scoffed at him. "There's quite a massive difference between some paltry thing like time travel and literally crossing into an entire universe without any of the higher beings guarding said universe being made aware. Such a thing takes a tremendous amount of power and mastery!" She explained in a huff.

Jake wondered if maybe she had a point. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, at least. "So this object is supposed to be mine then?" He asked her, and she gave him a mild glare.

"As I was saying before, Jake, if you belonged to a secret order that had been guarding such a powerful object for hundreds of years, would you be so eager to hand it over just because the object wants to belong to someone else now?" She asked him seriously.

Jake scratched his cheek awkwardly. "Um, probably not. But at the same time, you must be here for something," he asked her. She clearly was here for something, and he figured she was considering giving him the powerful object if she had brought it up in the first place.

The woman's serious expression slid off her face and was replaced by a slightly eerie smile. "The object in question will no longer work for me, so it's worthless as is, but I am still hesitant to hand it over to you. So how about a test?" she asked.

She wanted to test him? Jake was a bit annoyed at that, but at the same time, if this object was truly as powerful as she claimed, could he pass up an opportunity like this? He obviously knew the answer was no. "Fine then," he said. "I'll take your test. What is it?"

She nodded at him. She was glad that he chose to accept. That was already a good sign of his character instead of just trying to attack her and take the stone. "I suppose this is less of a test and more of a rescue. You are going to go and save Prince Thor from his abductors. Good luck!" She smiled at him before he felt himself falling through the floor! Then he was in the air somehow!

Jake looked up in shock, as he was falling, to see that the woman had somehow opened up a magical wormhole right underneath where he was sitting! "Oof!" he said as he landed on a sand dune in who knows where. "Ow, holy shit, this sand is so hot!" Jake quickly leapt up and shook as much of the burning sand off of him as he could.

The sun was pouring down some seriously blistering heat as he looked around. He could see the air almost vibrating with how hot it was! Everywhere around him was just sand, except for to his left. There he spotted a road that thankfully had an electronic sign with the location of where he was!

"Let's see here," he read. "Welcome to Death Valley, California! Caution, the current temperature is 123 °F! Holy shit, no wonder I feel like I'm literally burning!" He needed to get the hell out of this place! Ironically, devils and heat did not go well together.

He was about to use his mist to teleport away when, in the air in front of him, a small orange portal appeared in front of his face. A piece of paper slipped through, and he snatched it out of the air before it could fall.

Jake read the note. "Thor is somewhere in the town ahead, down the road. For this test, you are not allowed to teleport until he has been successfully rescued from his captors... from: T.A.O." Jake just let out an annoyed sigh before he deployed his wings and started following the road towards the nearest town. She never said he couldn't fly, after all. He wondered why the hell they would bring Thor out to this hellhole, or maybe that was the perfect reason because no one wanted to come here?

...

-POV ???-

"You did good work there, my slave," the man—no, monster—she hated more than anyone she'd ever known, said with a smirk. She even hated this man far more than her father, and that guy was a true dirt bag who'd tried to have her killed because he was jealous of her gifts.

"Thank you, master!" Her mouth automatically replied without any input from her mind.

"Come along now, let's go see who you've brought me," the man said in glee, and her body followed him along. The whole time, there was a fake smile plastered on her face, like she couldn't be any happier than when she was near this vile man! Locked in her own mind, she was screaming at him in fury, but no matter what she tried, she couldn't break his control over her!

She was one of the elite! Not just in the business world, but also as a mutant. She was the next stage of human evolution and an incredibly powerful telepath. And a month ago, she had been captured, experimented on, locked in her own mind, and forced to watch from within her mindscape as her body became this man's loyal slave. Her only solace was that he didn't touch her body in... that way. He was apparently a higher-level being above such 'baseless and vulgar acts.'

Eventually, she was forced to follow him to the cell where she had left the man she had captured for her hated master. The large blond man was now awake as he furiously pounded on the reinforced glass pane of his cell, trying to break it. Not that he would; that glass was able to withstand tank rounds without breaking.

"Who are you two fiends!? Do you know who I am? I am Thor, the God of Thunder. And when I escape from here, you will be in for a reckoning!" The prisoner shouted from within his cell.

Her master next to her just smirked. "Magnificent, isn't he? Not just an Asgardian, but a royal Asgardian in the flesh! I'm not usually one to believe in miracles, but it sure feels like one that we managed to stumble upon him and that his powers seem to be gone!" He laughed to himself maniacally. "HehehehehehHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

His laugh was so deranged and crazy that even their prisoner Thor stopped his shouting and was now looking at her master with a bit of trepidation. "Who are you?" Thor asked again. "And why have you taken me?"

"HAHAHAHA, how rude of me not to introduce myself," her master smirked. "You can call me... Sinister. And just know that I have some amazing experiments planned for you, 'Prince Thor'." He said the prince's name with a mocking tone. "We caught you so unexpectedly, though, that this facility is not equipped for my plans. So while we wait for my new research equipment to arrive here, I'm afraid you'll be confined to that cell." Sinister said to Thor, who looked genuinely afraid of being experimented on.

'He should be,' she thought to herself.

"Come along, my dear Emma. We have other prisoners to experiment on while we wait." Her master giggled as her body silently followed along. She would once again be forced to watch as her body participated in helping him with his horrible research… Sometimes she wished someone would come and save her, but she knew that was impossible…

-#########-

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