Tony Stark came back up a bit less quickly than he’d gone down, but he looked a lot less nervous after he did so.

“All done, Electra-Vogue!” he said with a confident smile, sliding into his seat again. I didn’t look at Pepper, who was going to say something, but she held her tongue.

“So... if you invited me over here to help you crack some of the core Xandaran tech, and that is officially off the table, do I even need to be here anymore?” I asked calmly.

Caught wrong-footed again, he made a dumb expression and noises for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “Well,” he finally coughed, “since I’m not ‘in the loop’, as you put it, can you tell me what is going on?” he asked, only a little defensively.

“Since you asked so nicely, Mr. Clueless. The Hag and the Bear made it known to Xandar that they are on the downside of a rather horrible Augury. The kind of ‘worlds destroyed, people massacred’ Divination that ends planets and civilizations. It’s going to hit Xandar within, oh, two years or so.

“Queen Aurora chose to believe them. She has started a diaspora of the Xandarans, using the acanti as both caravans to widely dispersed worlds across at least a dozen galaxies and potential nomadic homes of themselves, by the last I’ve heard. They’ve put their cloning banks into overdrive, increasing their population to deal with the dispersal, and are also increasing their defenses and Nova Corps recruitment to keep pace.

“One of those colonies is going to be on our moon. They’ve also taken an interest in moving Venus into a counter-orbit to Terra and terraforming it into something inhabitable.”

“What?” Pepper blurted out in shock. “They’re going to... just move an entire planet? Just like that?”

“Yes, Pepper.” She blinked in disbelief, then the dawning realization that they really were an advanced society came down on her. “The Hag already okayed it, they just can’t change the name.

“Technology upgrades will naturally come as a part of this, but the Xandarans have been fully informed as to the chaotic governmental situation on Terra, and want nothing to do with the intraspecies rivalry here. If a nation can’t go out there and deal with them, they aren’t going to come down and deal with the nation.”

“Which is why they’re only talking with Russia,” Tony muttered, sitting back in defeat. The Tribes basically worked closely with Russia as far as a presence in space went. They had back-up space ports and things, but the main extraplanetary forces and development worked out of the lands of the Great Bear. Even Wakanda seconded most of their people there, so as not to waste time, resources, and technology, although they naturally had a secondary force at home as well.

As for the States, they were still using booster rockets. Captured alien tech in the hands of the FF, Euroforce, and the Avengers wasn’t a qualifier.

There were very few Staters working in the true space program in Russia, because most such people trying to get there had the typical Murican goal of trying to steal the technology for the ol’ homeland, not furthering the curve of Terran tech to get into space, and so they never got past the Alignment filters.

After all, there were plenty of people in Briggs’ Russia who grumbled about sharing their technology at all with other nations. They didn’t get far up the authority ladder, either.

“How am I supposed to improve on their technology if I can’t work on it?” he complained. “You even said they’d appreciate someone who could understand their tech!”

I narrowed my eyes. “Stark, I’ll excuse your selective memory because you were horribly sleep-deprived from information overload. I specifically said to get permission from the Xandarans first. You promptly poo-poohed it because you didn’t want to have to join their hopped-up paramilitary force, putting down the Nova Corps, their most valiant and honored, cherished, and supported defenders, who have kept Xandar free of Skrull domination and likely extinction at their hands for thousands of years.”

His face worked again. “Uh, right. Forgot that...” he scratched his head as Pepper gave him A Look.

“You are doing an excellent job of potentially pissing off our friends and helping our enemies there, Mr. Stellar Ambassador. Have the Skrulls offered you something, too?” I asked snarkily.

“No! No, they haven’t!” he replied quickly, looking back and forth between us. “I wouldn’t, I would never...”

I just sat there silently, fingers crossed, looking at him. “Well, then, now you know,” I replied simply. “Anything else?”

“Why didn’t they react to the Hag and the Bear developing their own Nova Core?” he asked me promptly.

“Because it has nothing to do with the Nova Force or Xandaran technology, Stark. It’s exactly like developing our own version of a hyperdrive, getting to the same destination by a different route.” I tilted my head. “And no, if you try to build anything that taps off the Nova Force without permission, I imagine the Hag will sanction you, if the Xandarans do not, and the Skrulls will probably slay and replace Pepper so they can steal the tech from you.”

He looked at her as she went white in shock.

“Oh, come ON, Stark. Nothing you do here is high technology to the Skrulls. You saw that out in space. They can shut down primitive power armor like you use easily; that’s why they don’t wear it, it’s a death trap. But hacking the Nova Force? That’s fresh fish! They’d glass the planet if they thought it would get them the secret. What’s a little replacing all your friends and family, and putting your brain in a jar, compared to drawing on the cosmic force of the Xandarans which has been holding them at bay for millennia?” His lips flapped. “What makes you think Briggs and Sama didn’t consider the same thing, and that’s why their Ultra Cores do NOT draw on the Nova Force?”

“What, what do they draw on, then?” he asked promptly. “That... I’ve done some of the math on forming those things! It’s, it’s beyond math! Profound stuff, spiritual elements that have nothing to do with science...”

“Alchemy?” I filled in for him politely, and he just looked at me, caught off-guard again. “Tony, the Nova Force is the pure spiritual and psionic force of the entirety of the Xandaran Akasha and Afterlife acting upon the living world. What do you think the Ultra Force is?”

“Oh my God,” Pepper blurted out, staring at me. “Humanity’s afterlife?”

“Elements of it. They naturally don’t want to deal with all of it, only those that are united in purpose with them. You know, like the Xandarans are united with their Worldmind.

“It’s one of the reasons they can’t build up an Ultra Corps very fast. The Nova Force is thousands of generations old, massive, and united. The Ultra Force is new, young, and weak, because the human Akasha and afterlife is splintered like shattered glass, riven by conflicting beliefs, different ideologies, and more than a few Divine hands messing around there.

“However, they’ve also got a big burning Cosmic Force that hangs around the planet all too much, who is helping them get started.”

“Holy crap.” He sat back, staring at me. “They’re tapping the Phoenix Force to do this?!”

“No. They are getting the willing aid and approval of the Phoenix Force in helping with establishing a nascent Corps of post-human defenders. There is no Phoenix Force involved in Core establishment, save as a guiding hand. The Phoenix Force is one of creation AND destruction. No Phoenix energy is involved in an Ultra Core. The risk is far too great.”

Tony rubbed his face and took a drink, looking at his glass. “I really need a drink...” he muttered, and was about to get up when I stopped him.

“You need a clear head, Stark.” I sighed as I put my chin on my fingers, and he sat back to face me. “Okay, Stark, I have some tough questions for you. You probably won’t like them, and I don’t care, and I think you’ve enough experience with me correcting you that you know I don’t care.”

“Well, you’re not the most polite about it,” he pointed out. I glanced at Pepper, who rolled her eyes for me. “Well, you’re not!” he doubled down. “You throw it out there for everyone to comment on and see that you can do things better...”

“Thereby proving that you aren’t the only genius in the room, and your special snowflake isn’t so special. Fine, Stark. I’m not going to change. You ready for your tough questions?” I went on flatly.

He sighed the sound of the much put-upon. “Sure, hit me.”

“One, why are you retreading technology ground that has already been invented, when you have the capability not to?”

“I what?”

“Two, why are you messing around with power armor two generations behind what your father is putting out?”

His face twisted in shock. “What?!”

“Three, just how far ahead would your grasp of tech and science advance if you were to second yourself to the Xandarans for five years, give them your best, AND get their permission to bring their tech back home to us?”

“I... whoa...” his voice trailed off.

“Four, are you a Murican, or are you a globalist, a Terran? For your information, your father is a Terran. That’s why he works with the Tribes and Sama, not the States.

“Five, what exactly happened to you that you threw away your family, your heritage, your links with the brightest lights of the whole world, and sent you into the ruts of reinventing wheels other people have already discovered, just to prove you could?”

“Six, when are you going to grow up and realize that this high-tech world you’ve invented and are living in is behind the times and useless to the rest of the world?

“Seven, when are you going to realize that a great genius who lives and dies without contributing to the world may as well have never lived at all?

“Eight, when are you going to realize that without friends, family, and loved ones, your life has no bloody purpose at all?”

He kind of gaped at me as I drove verbal daggers into him, and twisted them around bloodily with all kinds of subvocals.

“Supporting points. You have no idea what is going on in Svartazk, so you have no idea how far behind your tech is.

“Your father is ahead of you. You aren’t out-braining him by any means. His latest design of Crimson Dynamos is at least two generations ahead of you, maybe three or four. He has help, you see.

“Xandaran baseline tech is so far beyond ours that your lifetime is probably not enough to catch up to it working on your own.

“The impact of your father’s genius is wide and far-reaching, and only increasing at the higher levels. Yours is non-existent except for photo shoots of slugfests.

“Your father stopped being a billionaire playboy in World War II. He was younger than you are, and didn’t have anyone to talk to about being so much smarter than everyone, except maybe Doc Bronze’s dad. But he had some very good friends with common sense, and you know what? He listened to them.

“Playboys eventually grow up to be men, or they become even more irrelevant as their lives fade away.

“Being alone and smarter than everyone around you sucks far more than being around good friends and peers and recognizing they are smarter than you in areas you aren’t.

“Family is how the human race continues into the future, and right now, you’ve no future. You don’t even have a bloody apprentice. Howard Stark lost his son somewhere along the way, but you know what? He has literally dozens of apprentices he’s shepherded along who admire and respect him for what he is and what he has done. It is hilarious that the boy who takes after him so damn much isn’t one of them.”

I held up one finger. “You had it all. A direct line to the top of the world. Links to the smartest, most driven people on the planet, with dreams that would utterly daze most of the planet’s population. It was a place you were literally born to thrive in.

“You tossed it away to found Ferrus Technology and to run around in a red and gold tin can, and you’re getting further and further away from it.”