Chapter Text
Floor 93, Stark Tower, New York, NY: 01/08/07: 00:09:47 AM
Objective: Determination of delivery and use of package.
Action needed: Situation must be monitored. Action shall only be taken at drastic points.
Definition of drastic shall be determined situationally. Definition of drastic will be defined conservatively.
Status: Ongoing. Monitoring in process. Proceed.
The box arrives on Monday, January eighth of two thousand seven at exactly nine forty-seven in the morning at the very edge of the kitchen counter on the very top floor of the Avengers Tower. No one was around to tell that except the cameras and Tony Stark who, by his own design and creation, was also the cameras.
Or perhaps arrives is the wrong word to use. Arrives implies the box came from somewhere. That it was delivered by an older FedEx employee who would pronounce your name incorrectly or even teleported in by some super villain or socially unaware scientific friend who didn’t find it extremely creepy to send their friends sudden mysterious items and, as Tony Stark and his cameras saw the box arrive, he was already mentally putting money on this being Reed Richards. As far as Tony could tell, the box came from nothing and nowhere. No recognizable particles surrounding it, no evidence that anything had entered the building. It was not there, and then it was.
Luke Cage was the first person to actually find the box and, as a sensible sort of person, when faced with a broken down wooden box in the middle of a counter with a gold latch on the side and intense, black indented scribbles written on nearly every inch, which had, he distinctly remembers, not been on the counter when he had been sitting there ten minutes ago, turned and walked out the door. Jessica Jones, who had followed him into the room, took one look at the box and followed him right back out. “This is going to be some kind of weird Avengers thing, huh.”
“Babe, you think I want to talk about this?”
This was not the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the Avengers tower. It was not even within the top twenty weirdest things and, after a quick and irritated examination from an Emma Frost, Iron Man losing yet another bet against himself, and a more thorough examination by Dr. Reed Richards, the Avengers finally crowded around. Spider-man sent a quick, furtive look around the room. “So, who wants to open this thing? Because, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end super well for the person who opens the box. It doesn’t really end well for the people who around around the person who opens the box either I guess so maybe I’m gonna stand over here. See if MJ wants to catch a movie or something. Friendly neighborhood Spider-man my way around, you know. Not be cursed.”
Peter continued to babble and Steve opened the box. Expectations were low, or high depending on how one looked at it. Low for anything they wanted to deal with and high for danger but what none of them really expected to find at the bottom was seven small rings.
*
Each of them had their favorites. It took a while for any of them to work their way up to trying one on, but eventually, after several days, intensive examination from the Fantastic Four, more scientists, two more psychics, and three magic users, it was eventually determined they would never figure out what the rings did unless they used them. And so they did.
The Avengers decided early on the rings should be communal. Tony locked them up in the Avengers tower, but if anyone wanted one to use, even if they weren’t an Avenger, they only had to ask. This would not be the case for long, but that was then and then it was.
The rings were strange. They weren’t like the Infinity Stones, all full of infinite power if only one could manage to use them, they weren’t like magic, they weren’t like superpowers, and they weren’t even entirely consistent when someone could use one or what they could do.
They were wonderful tools, Tony told the Illuminati, extraordinary, strange, messy, so very tempermental, so hard to quantify, or use.
Green was the most useful, the Avengers decided. Everyone on the team could use green and it all went slightly different for each of them wearing it—Peter found himself flying straight through buildings when swinging, Jessica could suddenly turn invisible, Steve shielded even more in battle, wrapping green light around anyone who might have been hurt, Luke surrounded himself with energy, Sentry could heal himself, and Tony would suddenly have several more hands in the lab that would just create, create, create. Orange was the least. None of them could use orange. Not a single person who touched orange could use it.
Steve loved the blue ring. “It just feels right,” he confided in Sam while they patrolled. “Using it, it’s like you know you’ve done something good. It only works if you feel right. It can make a shield, see? Not everybody can use it, but I bet you could.” And so Sam did and, even without his wings, he began to fly. Peter learned the same trick, flying around the streets with the blue ring under his costume. Peter stuck a note on the safe Tony kept the rings in, “save green or blue for your friendliest Spider-person,” because no matter how hard or long he tried with the others nothing ever happened.
Jessica Drew used the red ring as a tool, switching between it and indigo depending on the day, on the mood. She could use one some days and the other another, never close together. “I’d get vertigo if I tried to go back and forth,” she tried to explain to Carol, “it’s too different, too much.” Steve could use red too, but it left lead in his stomach, left his hands burning, his heart pounding hard in his chest, it was so hard to take off when he put it on, and he couldn’t seem to use it to do anything but hurt. Luke used it to hurt too, but Luke could use it right. Luke could use violet one day, blue the next, green the next, and red the day after that like no one else on the team could switch between them.
The only Avenger who could use the black ring was Sentry, him and Reed Richards who gave a strange nod when putting it on for the first time. Black never felt right and neither did yellow, but weapons were weapons and no one ever needed to like a weapon to use one.
Tony could use yellow, with Extremis, it made him feel strong like green and violet didn’t. Luke loved violet, just like he loved blue and red and green. Violet left Tony sick and jumbled inside, not bad, just a little uncomfortable. But, when he wore it, suddenly Steve’s wounds would disappear during a battle, blasts that would have hit suddenly disintegrated, he could sense danger like Peter, could fly without his suit. He could do so much more with it than almost anything else so Tony kept the violet ring on his finger and ignored the trembling when he used it, every day growing a little more comfortable, growing to admire the feeling, and the stars.
The white ring stayed with Sue Richards nee Storm. None of the Avengers could use it and she certainly could so why not give it to someone who’d find it useful.
And then six hundred children died in Stanford, Connecticut and when Steve Rogers went to retrieve his blue ring before leaving Stark tower, it was already gone.
Objective: Determination of delivery and use of package.
Action needed: N/A
Status: Complete. Objective achieved. Proc—
It’s a report. This is how to file a report.
Yes, I do have to talk this way, Iron—
Disregard previous statements. Objectives achieved. Proceed.