Socializing

The last couple of days Valerie tended to her bistro, her business was taking off, slowly but surely more customers were coming. The new week's special: the burger was a big hit. Tony already taste-tested it, without knowing that he was used to sample the burger quality. As quickly as the burger vanished she knew the food was to Tony's liking.

On another note, her bistro already had a few regulars. And Pepper was one of them. She has been eating in here three times already, once she even brought Tony's bodyguard and driver Happy with her.

So Vali's business had a pretty good start, which was why she was completely blindsided by what happened next.

A woman with no hair and what seemed to be a long white monk's cowl entered the bistro. She sat down on a barstool and ordered a coffee and a banana muffin. Eating the muffin she left the coffee after tasting it once.

"Is everything alright?"

"No, I am thoroughly disappointed with your coffee."

"Are you f... kidding me?"

"No, I am not `kidding` you. I don't understand how you could make such excellent coffee and don't have tea in your assortment."

"There is no tea that tastes as good as coffee."

The strange woman was staring at Vali as if she wanted to start lecturing her.

The woman looked around the shop and noticed the other costumers sitting in the room, looking back at Valerie she waved with her hand in a complex pattern.

The reality in front of Vali cracked and shattered. Suddenly she was being pulled, it felt like someone was trying to squeeze her through a hole that was too small for her. With her space magic she could tell the woman in front of her wanted to drag her into her own little dimension she was just creating. Vali would have been able to resist the tug easily but her curiosity won.

"Interesting. You pulled me to your own dimension and it looks the same as outside. My senses tell me it must be something like a replica dimension. I presume you build those so you don't damage the world around while fighting. So should I be afraid? I will give you one minute to explain yourself if it doesn't satisfy me I will kill you."

Valerie didn't like threatening someone, but she felt she didn't have a choice as it was evident that the woman knew she was not a normal human being, that meant she had observed her undetected and that scared her.

"Child, mind your manners. I thought you would be happy to meet someone like you. "

"No, you are not like me. I was born with my power. On the other hand, you don't have a spark of power, not even a tiny bit. The magic I can feel seems like it doesn't belong to you like it is borrowed."

"Highly accurate. We from Kamar-taj borrow our power from other dimensions. You don't? ... Interesting. So you are definitely not from our dimension. I am only here to check if you are a threat to earth."

"And? What did you find out? Am I a threat? "

"You are definitely powerful. But the whole time we observed you, you didn't do anything, so I decided to introduce myself to you. I think, first, introductions are in order. People call me the ancient one. I am this earth 's sorceress supreme."

Disbelieving Valerie asked:

"The ancient one? Do you have a normal name?"

"I am old, so old that my name has already been forgotten."

Not knowing if she should believe this so-called ancient one, Vali decided to ignore her statement:

"My name is Valerie Valdera. Can you tell me how you were able to find me? I searched for someone or something magical all around the world and didn't find anything. But now I know that I made a miscalculation. I searched for magical beings everywhere but not for humans who found a way to harness magical powers. Is the fact you were able to find me related to your necklace? I can feel some weird and yet strangely familiar energy from it."

"Nice to meet you, Valerie. You are correct, the necklace houses a stone called the Eye of Agamotto, it alerted me to your arrival. I wanted to introduce you to the wonders of tea. I can't believe you aren't selling any."

After saying that the ancient one waved her hand and two chairs and a table winked into existence, simultaneously Vali was made to sit in one of those chairs. Suddenly she could feel a tea mug in her hand. Taking a cautious sip she noticed the mug refilling itself.

"Oh, that's nice. I want one of those automated refilling mugs too."

Answering, the ancient one was shaking her head.

"I give you the best tea I can offer you and you only notice the mug. Such uncivilized behavior."

"Hey, it is not coffee. Coffee is the drink of gods. Nothing can compare with it."

"I see I need to work harder to impress you. I really would like it if you could sell some tea in your bistro as I would like to become a frequent guest."

"I will think about it but can we go back to the fact that there is more magic on earth than I thought."

"Ah yes I can see how this information would interest you. We at Kamar-taj teach people how to connect and harness the power of other dimensions. I can see you are a little overwhelmed. I will come again and then we can talk more. It was nice to meet you."

Waving her hands the dimension shattered and the ancient one disappeared.

"What just happened?"

Valerie was standing in her bistro, with a hand stretched out to stop the woman from leaving. Her patrons were looking at her as if she lost her mind. Some time ago she researched modern technologies and finding out about GPS and this little gadget called a spy bug, she tried to recreate something similar with her magic. Successfully inventing a spell that behaved like a bug, she made use of her new invention and stuck a little bit of her mana on the ancient one. Now she was relatively certain the monklike woman didn't notice her little bit of magic, and if that was correct she will soon know where this Kamar-Taj was.

Feeling satisfied with herself she closed her eatery after the last guest went out and ported to Stark to see what he was up to. Yesterday he had a visit from Rhodes, where she triumphantly pranked him. For hours she was in a good mood because of all the funny faces he made.

Arriving in the living room, she slowly, invisible and silently went downstairs to his workspace. Teleporting through the glass door into his lab, she first thought he wasn't there. She took a quick look around and found a seemingly unconscious Tony Stark lying on the floor.