“I can’t do it,” Discord said.
“Bullshit,” Tony replied.
Fluttershy winced at the language, but otherwise stayed silent. She had taken Tony to her home the moment Discord got back, forcing him to promise to stay there until he had met Tony. Both Iron Man and Discord had raised an eyebrow when they saw the other, but both had seen stranger in their life and they quickly moved past it. Then Tony brought up what he was there for and Discord didn’t have the answer he wanted.
“I’m being serious. And trust me, that isn’t a sentence I say often,” Discord replied, now shaped like a lamp. “Can I send you to another dimension? Yeah, it be easy. All I’d have to do is snap my fingers.”
“You snap your fingers at me, I blow your head off,” Tony warned in a dark tone.
“Okay, you don’t like beings that snap. Weird,” Discord muttered. “But back to my point. Yes, I can send you to another dimension. However, I am nearly a hundred percent certain that it wouldn’t be your dimension. Do you know just how many dimensions there are in the infiniverse? Infinite. That’s why it’s called that.”
“I know what the infiniverse is.”
“And I am a god of chaos. If I sent you to another dimension, it wouldn’t be with a target in mind, it would be random. Chance. Chaotic,” Discord continued. “Maybe you’d end up in a world similar to your or maybe you end up in a place with talking monkeys.”
“That world sounds nice,” Fluttershy added.
“The point is, you’d have a one in infinite shot at returning to your own dimension. I’m freaking insane and even I know those are bad odds. And I might not be able to get you back if I did send you away. Maybe you land in a dimension where my magic doesn’t work…you’d be surprised how many of those there are.”
“Hate to say it, but your logic makes sense, and coming from a god of chaos that is terrifying,” Tony muttered, leaning back on the couch. Then an idea came to him and he lifted his metal head once more. “But maybe there’s something else you can help me with. I’m looking for a person. Another human that may have come to Equestria with me. Do you think you could find him?”
“Find another human? Of course, nothing would be easier,” Discord said with a toothy grin. “I am an expert at tracking down things that don’t belong and you humans are certainly that. Give me a day at most and I’ll have your man.”
“Thanks, Discord. But a word of warning. If you do find him, stay clear of him,” Tony said. “This man…is dangerous. One of the most dangerous beings from my world. Do not go up against him, whatever you do.”
“Tony, Iron Man, I appreciate the concern. But I am a god. I can handle a human. Bye.”
Before Tony had a chance to say anything more, Discord vanished with a snap of his fingers. True to his word, Tony had instinctually fired a repulsor blast right where Discord’s head had been a moment earlier, but instead of striking a god, he instead punched a hole through the wall of Fluttershy’s house.
“I can pay for that,” Tony said when he saw the look Fluttershy was giving him.
“That’s alright. Sorry Discord couldn’t be more of a help to you,” Fluttershy said.
“Nah, I was kind of expecting that. Nearly every god I’ve ever met is either egotistical or useless. The other likes to solve his problems by whacking them with a hammer,” Tony said as he stood up, stretching. “Welp, glad that wasn’t my only option.”
“The mirror?”
“The mirror. Time to go fly to Twilight and see just what this other human world is like.”
Tony resisted the urge to throw up in his helmet as the swirling light died down. Twilight had warned him that traveling to the human world would be weird, but she hadn’t warned him it would his make his lunch the second food related threat that wanted to kill him. Yet after a few more moments of nausea, he forced himself to stand and looked around.
‘Cars driving by. Lines of suburban houses. The scent of pollution. Yup, this is the human world,’ Tony noted. He looked behind him to see a large school, a place that Twilight said he could start his search if need be. That wasn’t a bad idea, but he had a better one.
“Tony Stark to Avengers. This is Iron Man calling the Avengers, do you copy?” Tony said into his comms. When all he heard was static, he let out a small sigh. Twilight had been right, there were no Avengers on this world. At least, none that used the same comms as him.
“Hey loser, it’s about five months too early for Halloween!”
Tony turned his head to see a couple of kids on their bicycles near the curb, two of them pointing and laughing at him while the third made a face. “Nice cosplay, moron. How much money did you waste putting that piece of crap together?”
“About the same amount of money you’ll spend in college and still end up flipping burgers,” Tony snapped back. “And too earlier for Halloween? If that’s the case, why are you out here wearing that ugly mask. Oh wait a second, that’s your face. Sorry, it’s just so hideous that I thought for sure it had to be a mask.”
“Why you…” the kid snarled as he and his friends approached Tony. Tony smirked and raised an arm, before firing a repulsor blast right past them. Their eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as the blast exploded behind them, with none of them daring to look. Tony then slowly rose into the air, the arc reactor in his chest starting to hum.
“Oh yeah, about how much money I spent on this? About twenty-five million. And it’s all authentic,” Tony said, raising his hands once more. “Buh-bye.”
The kids let out a scream and pedaled away as fast as they could, leaving Tony to chuckle as he lowered himself to the ground once more.
‘Sir, if I may. It would most likely be best that you lose the suit. It seems that superheroes are a rarity in this world.’
“Alright, alright,” Tony said, collapsing his helmet and feeling the wind across his face. He was just about to fold up the rest of the suit, when he heard the faintest of sounds behind him. Letting out a sigh, Tony turned to see what looked like the school’s track team stopped behind him, having just jogged out from behind the school while practicing. Twenty sets of eyes all stared at him in amazement and Tony did what he did best. Made it worse.
“None of you saw anything, okay?” he told them. “I did not just fire a blast, fly into the air and then chase off a couple of kids. We cool? Yeah, we cool.”
None of the students responded. None of the students moved or said anything at all. A full minute passed and Tony was just about to ask Jarvis to check to make sure they were still alive, before all of the kids erupted at once.
“It’s him!”
Suddenly, Stark was surrounded by twenty kids, all of who were talking, shoving paper and pens at him or admiring his suit with wide eyes.
“It’s Robert Downey Jr!
“What’s he doing here?!”
“What’s he doing in an Iron Man suit that actually works?!”
“Come on, if anybody would buy a fully working Iron Man suit, it would be RDJ!”
“I bawled my eyes out when you died! I am Iron Man!”
“Stop it man, you’ll get me to start crying.”
“I love you three thousand!”
“SIGN MY FACE!”
‘It seems that they have mistaken you for someone else, sir,’ Jarvis said from inside the suit.
“You have a working Jarvis?!”
“Yup, it would seem like it,” Tony said as he took a piece of paper and signed “Iron Man” on it. He did this with everybody else that offered him paper, even taking a few photos. Then a kid raised his hand and snapped his fingers. “Woah there, no snapping! Don’t you know what happens when someone snaps? Half the universe goes!”
To his amazement, the crowd of kids all laughed at this. He shrugged his shoulder and went back to taking photos, before he spied someone he hadn’t expected to see. There was a human version of Twilight Sparkle at the top of the school stairs, motioning for him to join her.
“Alright guys, it’s been fun, but I’ve got to go,” Tony said to them, before waving one last time. “Stealth mode.”
And with that, Tony and the Iron Man suit turned completely invisible, and the students lost their minds even more.
“Another bust?” the pony version of Twilight Sparkle asked.
“Another bust. Your other self is a lot more timid than you, did you know that?” Tony asked.
He was back in Twilight’s castle after a long day of failure, even though he had a lot of fun in the process. So now he just sat in one of Twilight’s crystal thrones, which were uncomfortable as heck, and was throwing a tennis ball back and forth with Spike. His suit was retracted into its backpack form and rested on the table, surely scuffing the crystal.
“I’m sorry. I thought for sure that the other me and her friends would be able to help you. I mean, Sunset Shimmer once tore apart reality. I thought she might have an idea on how to do it again,” Twilight said.
“Good kid, reminds me of someone,” Stark replied. “Also, you were right about other you. She’s smart, but she was way in over her head with the stuff that I brought up. Surprisingly, Pinkie understood all of it and we had a good conversation. She suggested that I collapsed space and time until all dimensions fold into a single one. Then, technically, I’d be home.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It is,” Tony agreed, not telling Twilight he had put the idea in his “maybe” folder. “You know what was really cool about your world? Apparently, the Tony Stark of that world is a movie star and has stared in numerous movies about my life and the lives of the other Avengers. I mean, they got somethings wrong, but it’s still cool.”
“You didn’t watch any, did you?” Twilight asked.
“Of course not, I didn’t have time,” Tony replied, deciding not to tell her that he had downloaded every single one using other Twilight’s account. Highest grossing movie and one of the most beloved actors? Tony won in every reality.
“So what next?” Twilight asked. “We’ve exhausted all of our options.”
“Eh, I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Tony said with a shrug. “I always do. It’s kinda my whole gimmick. Get into danger, think my way out of it. Give it time.”
“If you say so,” Twilight said, before a thought struck her. “Hey Tony, Celestia told me when you first met her you were sent by Tirek. But if you had just gotten to Equestria, how did you know who Tirek was?”
“Oh, I met him not long after I got here. Centaur dude, right? Yeah, he was the one that pointed me in the direction of Canterlot and the princesses. Why, you know him?”
Tony had thrown the ball back to Spike, but the dragon was so stunned by what Tony said that it whacked him in the face. He and Twilight shared a long look, before Twilight decided to take a page out of Tony’s book.
“Shit.”
“Um, Doctor Doom, sir? You’ve been…you’ve been staring for over an hour now. Is something the matter?”
Ashgrove was nervous. He didn’t like how deep underground they were or the large, ruined structures that lined the place. Yet even if he didn’t know where they were, Doom clearly did. He hadn’t been down there for more than ten minutes before he had fallen to his knees, silently staring at the large structures for hours.
“And what about that mare you knocked out? Is she going to be okay?” Ashgrove asked once more, but Doom didn’t respond. Ashgrove sat down next to the doctor and waited, waited for him to say anything.
“It all makes sense now.” Ashgrove turned to look at Doom, whose eyes were shining behind the mask with both sorrow and rage. “Why I couldn’t find it. Why, even with my dimensional scanner being able to scan across the infiniverse, I couldn’t find my home. My dimension.”
“W-why is that, Doctor Doom?” Ashgrove asked.
“Because, my deer friend, this is my dimension. This is my world,” Doom whispered.
“No actually, it’s mine. And if you’re who I think you are, I’m not going to let you take it.”
Doom and Ashgrove both snapped their heads around to see a mix and match creature floating above them, eyes filled with hate and knowledge. And power. Doom could see the power flashing in the god like beings’ eyes.
“Doctor Doom. One of the greatest villains across history,” the being said, before it smiled. “I look forward to erasing you from that history.”