I Am Iron-Man

Chapter 71

Tony Stark's POV

"So, what you are saying is that he wants me dead?". Story of my life. Just another regular day for me. There is always someone out there who wants me dead and today's person happens to be Thanos: the very threat who is currently coming to Earth to find the remaining Infinity Stones.

"Exactly", the Reality Stone answered. The Power Stone and Reality Stone contacted me about Thanos, but the other Infinity Stones were not present at this time.

"Well, I can't say that I'm surprised since I am more than certain that he wants to kill me because the former Avengers and I defeated his entire army in the Battle of New York"

"Actually, he thinks that you single-handedly defeated his entire army", the Power Stone stated.

"Just like the Guardians Of The Galaxy?". Seriously, why does everyone think that I defeated that army all by myself? Just because I flew a nuclear missile into a wormhole, which happened to destroy the Chitauri mothership doesn't mean that I defeated them by myself.

"Yeah. By the way, it does kind of mean that you defeated them by yourself. You were the only one who flew that missile into the wormhole"

"Yeah, whether you want to admit it or not, you defeated that entire army by yourself"

"Does it really matter who did what? The main point was that the army was defeated and the former Avengers won the battle. Anyways, back to the current situation, the one thing that I don't understand is why you two willingly let yourself be taken by him while the others escaped and came to Earth. Speaking of which, why did the others come to Earth?"

"Well, to answer the first question, we wanted to help you to defeat Thanos as much as we possibly can, but in order to do that, we needed to be on the inside of his operations"

"So, since Power and I were already in Space and closest to Thanos at the time, we willingly gave ourselves up, so we could spy on him. Also, it would give Soul more time to escape from Vormir"

"I just hate that Thanos felt the need to completely decimate the entire planet and murder the planet's only protection to get to me!"

"I hated that he killed the Collector and completely destroyed his place"

"Wow, I knew that he would be dangerous, but I didn't think that he would be that dangerous"

"Don't underestimate him, Tony. He will stop at nothing until he destroys half of all life in the universe"

"I will keep note of that. So, what about the second question?"

"Well, it is kind of complicated to explain Soul and Space's motives, but we can explain Time and Mind's motives"

"What do you mean?". Motives? What kind of motives could the most powerful stones possibly have?

"It is nothing malicious or evil, I can promise you that. Time and Mind wanted to be closer to their physical states"

"Oh, how come?"

"Well, Tony. As you have already figured out from the beginning, we are sentient beings, but we are able to separate from our physical states and become our astral states, but it makes us weaker when we do that, so in order for us to be as powerful as we possibly can, our physical and astral states have to be connected, meaning that we have to be fully conscious in our physical states"

"That sounds similar to Strange's abilities"

"Exactly! It is kind of like that for us"

"Interesting. So, what about Soul and Space? What happened to them?"