A few hours later I was in Germany reading about the fight between the Hulk and the Abomination, that happened a while ago, in the news.

‘Just what is the Ancient One planning?’ I wondered as I walked in front of a small orphanage used as a front by Hydra operatives for one of their key underground facility.

I decided once I was done with Hydra, and the Ancient One I would go straight to Bruce. It didn’t feel good to leave my only best friend out in the wild suffering like this. I had not interfered with him at all as per the instruction of the Ancient One to see her first before meeting him again.

After that came dealing with Nat, she was still angry and moody, so it was better she had her space. Especially, when she finds out that I hurt Clint.

“Let’s go.” I cheered myself up as I prepared to walk into the orphanage.

*Whizz* “Huh?” My legs instead of meeting the solid ground, kissed air.

“Fuck!” I cursed as I fell through the fiery portal onto the ground below. *Whizz* Before I got up the portal closed leaving me stranded in an empty park in the middle of the night.

Hastily I brought out my watch to look up my location. *Sigh* I felt a relief to see I was not in some weird-ass dimension or something like that but rather still New York.

“Alright, that’s it.” I decided enough was enough. ‘If she wanted to see me, she will see me.’ I looked up the location of Kamar-Taj.

Finding Kamar-Taj soon became a pain in the ass. I suspected the sorcerers are doing their best to be sneaky and applying magic or what not to deter tracking over their training grounds from the rest of the world.

I really didn’t want to go all the way over to Nepal and wander around looking for them. ‘Hang on!’ I suddenly had a brilliant idea.

‘Why look for one of the most hidden places in the world, when there are places that aren’t that much secure?’ I grinned as I began filtering my search locations out.

There are 3 key locations in the world that are used as part of a magical formation to protect the world from other dimensional threats, called Sanctums. The thing is sanctums didn’t really need much secrecy from the government as there wasn’t much magical activity/ training going on there according to the movie.

‘That meant I could find it much more easily than Kamar-Taj.’ I grinned as the map of 3 countries appeared on my phone.

There were 3 sanctums in the world: New York, London, and Hong Kong sanctums. I decided to pick one of the sanctums and just track that down instead of looking for all 3 at once.

I instantly took Hong Kong from the list simply because I was more familiar with London and New York than Hong Kong. I could find the sanctum much more easily in London and in New York with my familiarity, than in a country whose road name I couldn’t even pronounce unless I spend some hours learning their language.

Then from both the sanctums, I decided to start with the New York Sanctum. There were 3 simple reasons for doing so: New York simply was a smaller land size than London, I used to stay in New York and pretty much know my way around this place than London and finally the most obvious one was I was in New York right now.

Having narrowed down my list all I had to look for was a large building, that was hardly used by people and managed by a bald black man according to the movies.

I had to use several of Shield’s satellite amongst US satellite to quicken the process; obviously, I did it in a way they didn’t even notice anything.

*Ping* 20 buildings popped up from the search list. “Show me the residents.” It was not that hard to forget the New York sanctum masters face. The buildings page shifted to the residents of the place. The masters of the mystic arts still needed to pay water, electricity, and internet bills after all, and for that, they need to register their address. So, they didn’t exactly try to hide the sanctum masters identity, not that they needed to in the first place.

“There we go.” I smiled seeing a very familiar person amongst the other residents. He was well built with muscles and looked serious as opposed to many of the other residents of the other building who were either fat, lanky or just plain.

“Daniel Drumm.” I looked at the address. ‘177A Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York.’

Opening the GPS, I made my way towards the New York sanctum. However, before I moved I stopped all activities of my rooted potato and did something I really didn’t like doing.

‘Activate 2 calm mind.’ I ordered and 2 calm minds started working.

With my speed, I arrived outside the sanctum within moments.

Arriving before the door I approached to knock it, only for the door to open before I could even get my fingers close to it.

“Welcome, Mr Henswick. What brings you here?” He asked me.

I ignored him and took my phone out. “Daniel Drumm nice to meet you,” I said as I used my phone to scan the area to see where the Ancient One was in the building.

If Daniel Drum was prepared for my arrival I am pretty sure she was too. I walked in as Daniel went to close the door.

*Ping* My phone quickly managed to identify her location through the heat and x-ray signature.

I walked without waiting for Daniel toward the room she was located in. Daniel didn’t stop me and just followed me quietly.

*Creak* Opening the door without hesitation I saw the woman that was responsible for my visit here.

“You certainly kept me waiting Mr Henswick.” The ancient one told me as she sat drinking tea.

“I never approached you for magic nor interfered with your society. Then why did you interfere with my life?” I asked her as I walked in.

“Tea?” She asked to which I shook my head.

“I don’t like to drink tea, coffee or milk,” I stated as I placed my bag and sat in front of her. She nodded as she took the tea for herself.

I wasn’t too worried about her attempting for my life. She would find to her worst horror what would happen if she transported me to another world or tries to kill me.

I waited patiently until she finished drinking the tea. “Do you want to learn the mystic arts?” Her question would have caused me to open my mouth wide if not for calm mind.

I was genuinely surprised she would offer me that choice. “Why?” I asked her.

“Which why?” She asked back.

“Why as in why you are giving me this offer and why you interfered with Bruce and my life?” I made my questions clear.

She looked towards Daniel behind me, who nodded and left.

As soon as Daniel left she motioned her hand up and an orange barrier surrounded both of us. If not for my calm mind I would have attacked her, out of panic thinking she was trying to kill me.

“Are you not worried I will kill you?” She asked me.

“I have contingency plans prepared for you and others who might want to do so for the greater good.” My reply made her smile.

“You do realise that I can still stop your artificial viral outbreak and the nuclear meltdown of several countries?” I shrugged my shoulders hearing she knew about part of my back up plans to be used against her and many other good two shoes.

“You can but there will still be casualties of at least 1,000,000 before you can stop it. So, it comes to the choice of whether you want to kill 1 million people to try and kill me or simply not kill me.”

“What about your girlfriend and family?” An illusion of my parent and Nat on a ventilator appeared in front of me.

“They won’t be affected, I ensured step to make sure about that.” The illusions conjured by magic disappeared.

“But what if they will be affected no matter what?” If her strategy were to taunt me, it won’t really work when I had calm mind on.

“Then I can do nothing. If I died then there won’t really be a reason for me to worry about them anymore. However, if I come out of it alive I have several ways to bring them back to life, 1 of them namely involving collecting several stones of raw power. But you do realise the cost of that don't you?” My reply froze her smile and caused her to frown.

“You never answered my question of why.” I pointed out.

She was quiet for a while before she sighed. “I can’t see your future.” Her reply made me frown this time. She had the all-encompassing time stone. One can control time itself with that stone to the point seeing into the limitless future possibilities was one of the basic abilities of the stone. No one can escape the grasp of its sight other than the death of the user.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“Everything was going smoothly until a few years ago…” She began and I listened.

“…I saw that the future was becoming very cloudy and harder for me to see. Of course, such an occurrence have never happened before, so I tracked the origin of such an event.” Her eyes bore into mine, but I was unfazed by it.

“The origin of most of the fog began the moment someone offered Bruce an option he was never meant to have. That was the moment which triggered a chain of events casting a massive veil over the entire future.” A small portal appeared in the mid-air and the ancient one dipped her hand in.

As soon as she withdrew her hand I noticed the Eye of Agamotto which housed the time stone. “The look on your face says that you really do know what this is.” She held out the Eye of Agamotto in a way I could easily grab it.

However, I didn’t since I really didn’t need to along with knowing she could possibly have traps set on it. I could very much easily develop a machine that can predict the future with all the data in the world I had access to. ‘Maybe I should after I am done here.’ I told myself as I watched a smile sitting upon the Ancient One’s face.

The Ancient One took the amulet and wore it. Slowly the eye in the amulet opened to reveal the green glow of the time stone.

Suddenly an image appeared in front of me like a hologram. It was a very familiar scene to me, of me going to see Bruce in Costa Rica, seen from a bird’s eye view.

The strange thing was I wasn’t in that scene at all, instead, there was a thin white fog that moved wherever I went. There was nothing that could be seen through the fog, it was as if I wasn’t there at all.

The moment I approached Bruce he too was shrouded in fog partially, but unlike me, I could see his silhouette.

“At first I thought it was Dr Banner simply going mad and talking to the air. But then I noticed how he easily passed through the airport checking without being captured along with walking in the streets of New York.”

The Ancient One waved her hand. Suddenly the events began speeding up of him coming with the ‘fog’ to the airport and then to New York. However, I could see that the longer Bruce was with me the further the fog started spreading and getting thicker around him to the point it was hard to see him.

“I knew at that moment that there was someone else with Dr Banner. Someone who could even hide from the eyes of the time stone itself.” The image disappeared to see the face of the Ancient One.

“Naturally, I didn’t stop there and went to check up on the airport camera’s amongst other things to find the person travelling with Bruce.” She smiled as images of my birth certificate to passport appeared in the air.

“I do have to say you were very perfect in covering up your tracks as the Jack of All Trades. It took even me a solid while with the time stone to get everything there is about you. I have to say you seemed like a very paranoid person the way you secured your identity without leaving a trace behind.” Images of me moving with my super speed in Afghanistan appeared.

“Thank you, I take that as a compliment,” I replied back causing her to chuckle. I really did take that as a compliment, if even a wielder of one of the 6 infinity stones had trouble tracking me down.

“Naturally, I was curious about the person who could escape the sight of the time stone. So, I did what every person did.” An image of grey fog appeared in front of me.

“What’s that?” I asked her seeing her remain quiet.

“That is your future…” The image flickered before the image of fog stabilised again.

“…and this is the future of the universe in 10 years.” I looked at the image curiously as several theories ran through my head seeing the grey fog.

“You are the most knowledgeable person in the whole world right?” She asked me to which I nodded without showing any humbleness.

What she said was the truth, and I had no reason to be humble about it. However, at the same time, I had no reason to be prideful about it because I knew it wasn’t because of my capabilities that I became the most knowledgeable person in the world.

“Tell me what do you do when there is a blockage in a pipe that stops the flow of water?” I stared at her blankly for a moment before giving her the answer.

“Remove the blockage.” All this build-up to ask me the most simplest of question.

“So, what do you do when there is a being who remains as a blockage to the sight of the future?” My eyes narrowed towards her.

“Remove the being from the equation,” I answered logically to which she smiled as she stared at me.

I was sure if I didn’t have calm mind I would be sweating bucket now, due to being tensed for a fight against one of the greatest sorcerers in the universe.