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….
"Standard sleep spell," Loki shrugged, dispelling the glass in his hand as easily as he had created it recently. "He might be a decent person, but talking in front of him would be a bit stressful."
"Yeah," sad as it was, Tony was forced to agree. Explaining some of his acquaintances to Rhodey could take until morning without any guarantee he'd believe it. "So what are we going to talk about? Want a drink, by the way?"
"No thanks, I'm driving," the God of Mischief smiled at something of his own, but Stark preferred not to clarify.
Lately, he'd had too many complicated conversations, and the billionaire wasn't in the mood to burden his brain with jokes from his savior-buddy-God.
"Actually, I wanted to toss you an interesting topic for research, but now I'm not sure you'll care," despite refusing the drink, Loki began studying the selection of alcoholic beverages on the shelf behind him with interest.
"And about Vanko… Are there absolutely no chances?" green eyes slid onto Stark's face.
"I get the feeling he's ready to bomb the whole world to dust just to get to me," Tony turned away, applying himself to the bottle again.
"And then there are these people… Makes you want to create your own army for such cases," he finished with annoyance.
"Not the worst idea," Loki commented on this, immediately receiving a reproachful look from Stark.
If only anyone knew how much this infuriated him! So many years fighting off the intrusive attempts of almost all friends to surround him with a crowd of bodyguards, only for life to kick him in the face with a boot once again.
And with the appearance of the suit, he was already convinced that surely this wouldn't be needed anymore!
"What?" the brunet portrayed innocence itself. "You have no idea how many half-wits are in your government. And every second one, with the stubbornness of a ram, seeks a way to bring the world to the brink of destruction, generously spending taxpayers' money for these purposes."
"In such an environment, there will be many situations ahead where a personally loyal army will really come in handy, just to stop another idiot from grinding the world into dust."
"Really?" Stark narrowed his eyes skeptically.
"I literally just shut down a shop developing a biological weapon supposed to destroy 95% of the planet's population based on race. True, they thought their agent would destroy 'only' two or three percent of the population, but that doesn't excuse them," Loki shrugged.
"Before that, I shut down a shop trying to get the same result, but by technical means with the addition of certain mutants' powers. And shortly before that, I sorted out a World War III that almost started. And that's just in the last six months. So yes, there are a lot of morons in this world," the brunet nodded.
"And they are all very active. And all because one stupid black guy killed all the vampires… They were scumbags too, of course, but at least they understood what they were doing!"
"Vampires exist too?" not knowing how to react to the revealed facts, the engineer clarified the most fantastic of them.
Tony understood perfectly well that he had loaded up quite a bit and his brain wasn't moving nearly as briskly as he would have liked, but believing in the existence of vampires was still harder than… the first points.
"Not anymore, but about twenty years ago they ruled almost the entire planet. You know, eternal life, wealth and connections accumulated over centuries, plus the promise of immortality, very decent means for ruling the world from the shadows."
"Not to say they totally ran everything, interfered in everything, and were great family friends, but they had enough brains to keep the world from sliding into a total nuclear slaughter, as well as rein in overly zealous puppets from military departments and governments."
"But when a specially created virus wiped them all out, those who used to just follow orders from above started running countries themselves, and that's when all the clusterfuck of the last decades began."
"Holy shit…" Stark succinctly assessed the information dumped on him and washed down this thesis straight from the bottle.
"Anyway, let's not talk about sad things. If you don't like the simple option of solving the problem with Vanko…"
"I understand you come from an era where just taking an axe and sticking it in the head of an opponent you don't like is normal," Tony interrupted him, tearing himself away from the bottle.
"But it's the twenty-first century now, and such methods are somehow… not to my liking. At least, not to mine."
He realized he was being slightly hypocritical, but in Ivan's case, he felt some irrational guilt, and acting this way with the guy was repugnant for some reason.
"Well…" the God narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin, "in principle, I can send Vanya far away from Earth or… just block his memory regarding the reactor and hatred for you."
"Is that possible?" Stark instantly perked up, immediately coming up with a dozen options for setting Ivan up far away from any special services if the problem of him looking for trouble himself disappeared.
"More than possible, but it would be better for you not to meet afterward, and generally, it makes sense to place him in an environment as far as possible from what he is used to in everyday life."
"You can befuddle a person's head so much that he forgets his own name and believes in a completely different biography. But contrary to popular belief, such influence is not formatting a hard drive and installing a new OS…"
"…You can't just take and rewrite a personality, even the best mental influence will weaken over time and can always fly off at once from some strong shock."
….
Bonus Chapter on every 500 power stones;
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
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