Wong absorbed Jordan's generous assessment of his qualifications with the expression of a man who has encountered a new type of social maneuver and is still categorizing it.
"Wait. The current Sorcerer Supreme is—"
"Doctor Strange." Jordan's voice shifted, the easy warmth settling into something more subdued. He released Wong's hand. "I know. And unfortunately, I think he's most likely gone."
The silence that followed had weight.
How does he know something we haven't confirmed?
"We haven't been able to reach Strange," Wong said carefully. "That's accurate. But even if the former Sorcerer Supreme has—even in that scenario, the title of Sorcerer Supreme requires a full succession assessment. There are protocols. The position doesn't simply pass by default to—"
"You know," Jordan said, "in my world, the library archivist and the unsung administrator who keeps an entire institution running—those are synonymous with genuine authority." His expression was sincere. Clear-eyed. The kind of look that was either entirely honest or extremely well-practiced. "With your qualifications and reputation, wouldn't the next Sorcerer Supreme be a foregone conclusion?"
Wong opened his mouth. Closed it.
Why— he thought, —do I find that slightly flattering? That's not a normal response to blatant flattery. I should not be finding that slightly flattering.
He composed himself and said nothing for a moment.
Elsewhere in the universe, Tony Stark had been stranded on Titan for days and was having a significantly worse time.
The sorcerer was gone. The young boy who'd come along was gone. The Guardians of the Galaxy—most of them—were gone, ash on a dead planet's wind. The sole survivor besides Tony was Thanos's adopted daughter, Nebula: half mechanical, entirely sharp-edged, not what anyone would call comfortable company, but alive, and present, and apparently willing to cooperate with a Terran she'd only just met on the grounds that they had no other options.
The good news, such as it was: the Guardians had left a ship.
The bad news: the space-jump drive had taken damage in the battle, the fuel reserves were critically low, and the vessel was operating somewhere below acceptable margins on every system that mattered.
Tony had studied the propulsion schematic in about four minutes. The engineering was a thousand years ahead of anything on Earth, which for most people would be an insurmountable obstacle and for Tony Stark was a mildly interesting puzzle. Nebula, who had grown up around Thanos's technology, filled in the gaps. Together they'd patched the energy system, locked in coordinates, and pointed the ship toward a star system that contained, somewhere, a small blue planet they both needed to reach.
Days later, the ship was slower than projected, hungrier than projected, and losing power in ways that weren't fully diagnosed. They repaired something every morning. Something else degraded by evening. The oxygen reserves declined on schedule whether or not they fixed anything else.
Tony could still smile for Nebula's benefit. He was good at that.
He also knew how to count.
Back on Earth, approximately ten days after a blond young man named Jordan had arrived at the New York Sanctum, Wong had a peculiar observation: his magical practice had improved.
It was difficult to explain. The man asked good questions. He paid close attention. He had the quality of a student who already knew the answer to most things but was genuinely curious about the form behind them—how the mechanics assembled, what the principles were underneath the technique. There was something almost refreshing about it, even if it occasionally felt like being evaluated from a higher floor.
The Avengers liaison arrangement had taken shape quickly. Wong had contacted Captain Rogers, confirmed that Jordan's account of himself was consistent with what the Avengers knew, and the two organizations had reached a working agreement—informal, verbal, functional. Jordan stayed at the Sanctum as the communication bridge. Intelligence moved in both directions. The cooperation held.
The other purpose Jordan was quietly serving, Wong suspected, was his own.
[Internal channel, F-boy to Jordan:]
F-boy: Element Pickup cooldown status: complete. Reporting for duty.
Jordan: Finally. Stand by. Everyone move back—
F-boy: Copy Ninja Kakashi mode, requesting to deploy!
Jordan: I said stand by—
The plant-type hero Green from Z-City's A-Class roster was not, by any objective measure, a particularly impressive specimen of superpowered ability. His plant manipulation worked. It was functional. It was also, compared to the genuinely terrifying things Jordan had catalogued in the Hero Association's S-Class files, approximately the ability level of a mildly ambitious houseplant.
However: weak had its advantages.
The Element Pickup cooldown after copying Green's ability had been just over an hour—because Green's powers and the Plant Manipulation card Jordan already held were close enough in category that the system treated the acquisition as a minor incremental update rather than a new ability entirely. Less power to process meant less recovery time.
And that meant Jordan had been operating at full capacity since approximately six hours into his time in the MCU.
He found Wong in the middle of the afternoon, moving between the Sanctum's study rooms with the efficiently frantic energy of a man running an institution that had lost most of its staff.
"Wong."
Wong stopped. "What is it?"
Jordan straightened slightly, his expression taking on a quality of humble, slightly theatrical earnestness. "I want to learn magic."
The silence stretched.
"...You," Wong said, carefully, "personally dismantled the spatial folding on the exterior of this building."
"The basics, yes. But that's entirely self-taught." Jordan's tone was entirely serious. "There's no substitute for formal instruction from a proper lineage. I have enormous respect for what Kamar-Taj represents." He paused. Then, to demonstrate good faith, conjured a miniature Great Fireball in his open palm—clean, controlled, contained—let it sit there for a moment, and dismissed it. "In my understanding, all serious magical tradition on this Earth traces back to Kamar-Taj. To visit and study there, even briefly, would be—"
"Jordan." Wong had heard his own thought read back to him through the Mind Network and was choosing to ignore this. "Why exactly do you need me to teach you magic when you can already do that."
"Because," Jordan said, meeting his eyes with clear and genuine sincerity, "the great Sorcerer Supreme Wong would never deny a sincere student the opportunity to learn." He gripped Wong's shoulder lightly. "Would he?"
Wong's expression held. Held. Held.
He coughed once.
"...Kamar-Taj," he said, with the deliberate dignity of a man reclaiming the high ground, "has always welcomed those who sincerely pursue the arcane arts." He straightened, folded his hands, arranged his bearing into something appropriately magisterial. "I won't make a special exception for you, Jordan. However—there is a standard assessment."
"Of course! Please, tell me everything."
You shameless— Wong thought. If you're going to flatter someone, at least be subtle about it.
He reached into his pocket and produced a small ring, its band set with a distinctive geometric design. "This is a Sling Ring. It allows the user to open a Dimensional Gate—a portal between locations. It's also the simplest diagnostic tool we use to assess whether someone has an affinity for the arcane. If they can operate it intuitively, that tells us something." He extended it toward Jordan. "I suspect in your case this won't be an issue."
Jordan accepted the Sling Ring with both hands and the solemnity of someone receiving a sacred object.
Wong noted that the hand speed involved in this transaction was genuinely impressive.
"Come," he said, rallying. "I'll explain the operating principles—"
"Please, Teacher. I'm ready to learn."
That word is going to become a habit, Wong thought, with a faint internal sense that some kind of threshold had been crossed.
He began explaining.
While listening with apparent reverence, Jordan sent a short message down the F-boy connection:
Go.