The first thing I noticed when I woke up... was that I was falling. Like, full-on plummeting-from-the-sky falling.
Before I could even try to turn my arms into wings, I went SPLAT — right into the ground next to some dirty, ragged-looking guy covered in sand.
I groaned, face-first in sand, and peeked up at him… only to realize I had just crash-landed next to Tony freaking Stark. He was staring at me like I'd just dropped out of the sky.
…Oh wait.
I did.
Oops. Silly me.
Tony Stark's POV
I wasn't sure what I expected to come crashing out of the sky.
Maybe a missile. Maybe another cave-in. Maybe death, finally showing up to collect.
What I didn't expect… was her.
No — him, apparently.
The person lying in the dirt next to me looked like they'd stepped off the cover of some gothic vampire romance novel — and then directly face planted into the Earth.
Long black hair, so dark it shimmered blue in the sunlight. Skin pale like moonlight on marble. And those eyes — pitch black, bottomless, like they weren't just looking at you, they were trying to pull you in and study you under a microscope.
Way too pretty to be real.
So of course, they blinked up at me, totally calm despite the crater they just made, and said:
"Oops. Silly me."
Right. Because that's normal. I just kept staring at him. Her. Him — whatever.
"Okay," I said slowly, "ground rule number one don't fall out of the sky at me. That's kinda my thing."
He didn't even flinch. Just sat up and started dusting himself off like falling from orbit was a minor inconvenience. Which, apparently, for him, it was.
"Sorry," he said, voice smooth and weirdly calm for someone who just ate dirt. "First time using a body. Kinda rusty on the landing part."
First time using a-
Nope. Not unpacking that right now.
"And you are?" I asked, mostly so I didn't start asking about the interdimensional haircare routine.
"Blair."
"That's it?"
He shrugged. "Pretty sure I haven't earned a last name in this world yet."
Oh cool. Vague and dramatic. Just what I needed.
"Well, Blair," I said, still trying to decide if I was hallucinating or if God just liked messing with me personally, "you got a license to be that theatrical or is it just instinctual?"
Blair smiled. Not cocky. Not innocent either. Just... like he already knew he was weird and didn't really care if I had a problem with it.
"Not sure," he said. "You're the first person I've met since I got here."
Perfect.
"So I'm your first impression of Earth?" I asked, dragging a hand down my face. "We are so, so screwed."
Blair tilted his head, those freaky black hole eyes of his studying me like I was the anomaly here.
"Are you always like this?" he asked. "Or is the sarcasm a defense mechanism?"
"Yes," I said flatly. "Welcome to the apocalypse, kid."
Blair's POV
Okay, so in hindsight… maybe landing face-first wasn't the best first impression.
But hey, I didn't die again, so that's already a step up from last time.
I figured choppers would be coming soon to pick Tony up - this was the Marvel universe, after all so I decided to stick with him. We wandered the desert together, both of us looking like opposite ends of a very weird before-and-after ad.
Every now and then, he'd ask me a question. I'd answer. Sometimes vaguely. Sometimes honestly. Sometimes both. He didn't seem to know what to do with me, which was fair, because neither did I.
While we walked, I started messing around with my powers — the Phoenix Fruit abilities. Simple stuff at first: focusing, breathing, trying to will the transformation.
Eventually, I managed to shift my arms into long, burning wings of blue fire and golden feathers. The wind shifted. Heat shimmered.
Tony just stopped walking and stared.
"Okay," he said, squinting at me like I'd turned into a tax audit. "That's... new."
I grinned. "Told you I was rusty."