A Rumble of Frost chapter 18

February 15th 2001, 177A Bleeker st. 11:00 AM EDT

I  took a long sip of the chamomile tea in my cup, savoring the taste, my  eyes closed in appreciation. Opening them, I found my teammates staring  at me dumbstruck. We'd removed our masks, since Strange would have been  able to identify us with magic if he really wanted anyway, but I  suspected the shock was more the image of my giant ass gingerly sipping  tea. I noticed my pinky was out and quickly tucked it away, forcing  myself not to flush. My gods damned mother and her fucking etiquette  lessons.

"This is...good tea." I said lamely. And glared  at Pete as he desperately tried not to dissolve into a fit of giggles.  My menace was apparently ineffective, but he was at least polite enough  to turn away and disguise his laughter as a cough. I sipped my tea again  with dignity and looked back at strange, above such childish antics.

"Thank  you." he said with a smile. "I have a private garden where I grow  German Chamomile, as well as several other useful plants. I find taking  care of living things relaxing, provided those things don't break into  my house or try to sell me car insurance." This was said with zero heat  or accusation, which made it even more bitchy somehow. I extended  another finger when I sipped my tea this time. It wasn't my pinky.

Strange  smiled slightly at the display. "To business then, I suppose. What  exactly do you need my help with? I would guess, but requests tend to  run the gamut from saving the world to helping people find their keys,  so I'm not inclined to go over every possibility."

I  shrugged. "Ironically, I think this particular query would count as  both. We ARE here for help with a key. It's called the Zodiac Key. We  aren't sure what the fuck it does, but we know Kingpin was trying to get  his hands on it, and SOMEONE blew up the warehouse he had it shipped to  with my team inside. They got out, but a bit worse for wear, and I  absolutely refuse to let some punk bitch get away with trying to off my  crew."

Strange sipped his own tea with an understanding  nod. "A fair response. Let's see." He closed his eyes, humming in  concentration. "Zodiac Key. Ah, yes. Extradimensional artifact, spent a  few decades under the control of the Zodiac Cartel, from whence it got  its name. Mystery is only exceeded by its power, blah, blah, blah. Ah!  Right. Psionic blasts and flight, I'd say it was nothing worth killing  over, but the Zodiac are...ornery. If it's one of them trying to reclaim  their property they wouldn't hesitate."

That was  so...banal. "Are you sure it's one of them? It IS a key, doesn't  it...open something?" If my team almost got wasted over a magic jetpack I  was going to be so pissed.

His brow furrowed as he delved  deeper into his memories. "Maybe. I did hear a rumor once. About the  key having other properties. Nothing concrete you understand, but an old  friend of my father mentioned it in passing at a family function some  years ago. Nick Fury told me a story about how it healed his brother  after he was mortally wounded. I was young though, he might have just  been entertaining me."

Eyes snapping open, he stared off  into the distance uncertainly. "Hold on." He stood up from where he was  sitting cross legged in midair and turned to float across the room to a  bookshelf. He started digging through a series of old notebooks. "My  father was interested in the subject and I think he might have dug  deeper into it. I'll just need to search through his notes."

He  started flipping through the volumes, speaking as he did. "Apologies, I  took over this office only a few years ago. Sorcerer Supremes usually  have decades of training. My father was the least prepared of the last  dozen and he left me even less so when he vanished." His up to now calm  voice was bitter as he flipped pages. "Luckily he kept copious notes, or  I doubt I'd have managed to fill the position even as well as I have."

I  raised an eyebrow because I was here for information on a magic whatsit  and not cape guy's life story, but I figured if I was bitchy he might  make us leave so I just smiled and said comfortingly. "Hey, you must be  doing something right. We heard about you. Plus you chased off that  Xandu guy." He stopped flipping and turned to stare at me blandly and I  just shrugged. "Ok, maybe not a huge accomplishment, but still, you  clearly aren't incompetent."

He rolled his eyes. "Your  transparent attempt at pandering aside, I appreciate the vote of  confidence, large thuggish teenager whose name I learned ten minutes  ago."

"You know." I said archly. "You might be the  mouthiest search engine I've ever worked with." That brought a smile to  Strange's lips, though he tried to hide it.

"Not me."  Chimed in Peter. "You'd be shocked at how contrary some of the search  engines on the dark web can be." We all looked at him and he just  shrugged. "What, it's a thing. Lots of finnicky AI's that don't like to  listen when they're told something."

Strange stopped  flipping and shouted. "Hah!" Causing all of us to jump as he floated  back over to where we were sitting. "Found it. I'm just lucky I remember  the year we had that party. It was the year my mother made me take  violin lessons, I remember because they had stuffed peppers at the party  and the oil kept getting under my bandages." He shook his head to clear  it. "Regardless, this is the information you needed. My father DID look  into the origins of the device, and managed to find several oddities."

He  passed me to the book, snapping his fingers and causing a bright light  to surround a few of the paragraphs, like a magical highlighter, and I  set my cup down on the table as I took it. Felicia leaned over the arm  of my chair, trying to see the book, and I eventually rolled my eyes and  shoved her away. "You don't have to commit so hard to the Cat motif you  know. I could do without you getting in my way when I'm trying to read  stuff."

Felicia glared at me before reaching down to put a  finger on my cup. Looking me dead in the eye she started to push it  slowly towards the edge of the table, and I grabbed her wrist and pulled  it away, laughing at her nonsense. "Oh fine." I yanked her into my lap  so we could both read, ignoring the sub audible purr as she settled in  (which I did NOT think was on purpose), and the two of us started poring  over the book.

Strange's dad had gone to quite a bit of  trouble searching for any sort of information on the key after he heard  Fury's story, but he hadn't been able to dig up anything concrete.  Before the Zodiac Cartel had gotten their hands on it, the thing had  floated around Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, never staying  in one place for long. It seemed to thrive on conflict, appearing in  areas of turmoil and causing everything to get worse.

Strange  senior noted that he wasn't sure if the thing CAUSED conflict, FED on  conflict, or possibly both, but whenever it appeared shit usually got  bloody real quick. The Zodiac Cartel had seemingly had some way to  suppress that, though Strange theorized the suppression might not have  worked as well as they might have thought, since members of that  organization died and got replaced A LOT.

He hadn't been  able to find an origin point, though he had found what he was pretty  sure was the earliest noted location, and after digging through a shit  ton of records and secondhand accounts, had found out that Gilgamesh had  probably had it at one point, and actually got rid of it on purpose  from all accounts. Strange theorized the ancient king had probably had  some other related artifact and wanted to separate them, but he hadn't  been able to find out WHAT, despite trying for apparently years based on  the notes.

"Fuck." I said succinctly. "I don't suppose  you have the personal journals of Gilgamesh on the reading rack next to  your toilet?" I had no clue where we would even begin to get in touch  with one of the oldest mythical figures I'd ever heard of, and thought I  was doing pretty well processing the fact that GILGAMESH was somehow  still alive as of the time this notebook was written less than thirty  years ago, at least according to Strange senior.

He shook  his head. "I do not. But I may be able to help narrow things down a bit.  My father was an excellent researcher, but I have been contributing to  the collection during my years in the office. I've amassed a treasure  trove of knowledge, and I may be able to cross reference the time frame  with some other texts I have on Gilgamesh's movements."

He  turned back to the bookshelves, albeit without actually moving from  where he was floating in the air, and began to murmur nonsense words  that I was pretty sure were supposed to be magic. Sounded like gibberish  to me, but his hands and eyes started to glow, so I guessed giving him  the benefit of the doubt was only fair. A bright yellow light  illuminated the top shelf of one of the bookcases, and then proceeded to  skim over the surface of all the books running up and down the various  shelves until coming to a stop on one.

Once it landed on  one of the shelves the glow began to narrow, contracting until it  illuminated the spine of one specific book, and Strange flicked a  finger, summoning the book off the shelf and catching it as it flew  across the room to land artfully between his unusually long fingers.  Seriously, looking at his hands was like watching ET about to phone  home. Probably the gloves.

He cracked the book and started  flipping, glowing eyes skimming pages until he stopped with a  triumphant smirk. "Ah, here we are. That's unusually convenient. I was  worried I might only be able to narrow down a region, but apparently he  was extremely busy in one spot during a large swathe of the early 19th  century. Looks like he was working at the British Royal Museum."

I  stared at him. "Ok...and that helps us...how?" I glanced at Peter, our  resident brain guy, and he just shrugged. I wasn't sure what we could do  with that information.

Strange rolled his eyes. "If  Gilgamesh possessed both the key and an object RELATED to the key, and  then got rid of the key but was stationary in the museum for that period  of time, the logical assumption to make would be that he left whatever  that second artifact was in the museum for safekeeping, seeing as the  museum is a place where one might leave such an item for protection."

Despite  his condescending tone, I had to nod my agreement. That made sense to  me. "So, we have to search the entire British Royal Museum? Because  there's bound to be a ton of stuff there. And that's assuming that the  people who took the key aren't just after the jetpack magic and WANT the  mysterious second doohickey that does...presumably something with the  key."

He shrugged. "You came to me for information, and I  gave it. As for what he was doing..." He flipped through the book a few  pages before snapping it shut. "Apparently he was helping them translate  the Rosetta Stone. Maybe start your search near there."

Tossing  the book back across the room he turned to raise an eyebrow at us.  "Now, as I mentioned, I'm very busy, and I gave you a few minutes of my  valuable time. Once could say I went above and beyond in fact, so insist  you all vacate my property as you were not invited in the first place."

I  opened my mouth to argue with him, but his weirdly long fingers flicked  again and a fucking PORTAL opened up beneath all three of our chairs,  dropping us through the air and depositing us outside the front door  none too gently. I was already pretty heavy, and the momentum didn't  help, the fucking chair legs snapped as I landed sending me smashing  down on my ass on the sidewalk, though admittedly with more cushioning  than I might have had otherwise.

Standing up, I turned to  glare at the door of the mansion as the chair remnants dissolved into  wafting smoke. "Asshole." I muttered, turning to check on the others.  They'd stood up before the chairs dissolved, so they were fine, though  also looking annoyed. I just brushed it off. I had no desire to play  break and enter with Strange again as an actual antagonist. He'd clearly  been treating us with kid gloves just then. I just flipped off his door  again and turned to the others.

"Alright." I said  shortly. "So we have a plan. We need to go to London. If we assume the  person who blew the warehouse wanted the key for mysterious magic  reasons and not just to be able to fly, which given the number of other  things that can do that is probably, then we need to visit the museum  and see if we can find whatever the other item is before they do, or at  the very least be waiting when they get there."

Peter, who  was covered up enough that his costume wasn't showing thankfully (he'd  taken his mask off for tea too) nodded. "That seems like a decent plan,  but there's one problem. The people who attacked us had tons of  resources, there's no way they can't travel quickly. Granted, they don't  necessarily have our sources on where the other piece is, but even if  they don't know they can find out, and we need to move fast to beat them  there. Do you know any teleporters? Because I don't."

I  sighed deeply at his comment, my head drooping as I faced up to an  unfortunate truth I hadn't wanted to acknowledge. "No." I said  disconsolately. "But I do have an uncle who lives near here with a VERY  fast jet." The two of them looked pretty flabbergasted, but I ignored  them. I walked to the side of the road and held out a hand to flag down a  cab, the other two jogging over to catch up. When the cabbie stopped  and rolled down the window I leaned in and handed him a hundred,  gesturing for the other two to get in. Once I climbed in after them I  looked at the cabbie in the rearview mirror, informing him of our  destination. "Xavier's school for gifted youngsters." Uncle Chuck wasn't  going to let me live this down.