Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics Chapter 5800 - 4823: Home Alone (Part 3)

"Shiller, I came to you because I have—" Stark hadn’t even finished his sentence when he saw the figure sitting behind the desk. He gave him a once‑over, clearly trying to figure out which Shiller this was.

"Ahem." Stark coughed, his tone full of implication, but Arrogant acted like he didn’t hear it. Stark was a bit helpless, so he could only step in and say, "I’ve got something I want to ask you to do."

"What is it?" Greed asked.

"Little Morgan wants to visit the set." Stark said. "You know her, she’s always been really into Magic, I can’t stop her. And it’d be great to have her pester Strange for a while—no way he gets to stay out of this."

"No problem," Greed agreed immediately. "But it’s not very safe for her to go alone. Are you going to take her?"

"I don’t have the time." Stark sighed. "Of course I’d love to go with her, see the look of surprise on her face, but those damn Iron Men have already started construction, I can’t fall behind them! Pepper’s a bit busy lately too, she’s setting up the Stark Interstellar Security Contract Company. I’ll have Helen take her, or Loki?"

Greed nodded and said, "You want her to play a role too?"

"A role? What role could she possibly play?" Stark said, a little puzzled. "Aren’t those kid actors all almost ten already? Little Morgan’s way too young, isn’t she?"

"Oh, I forgot." Greed had only just remembered, because Little Morgan behaved so smartly that he always forgot this little thing was actually still in kindergarten. A kid this young really couldn’t come to Ilvermorny to study, and it was pretty much impossible for her to be one of the Protagonist group’s classmates.

"I don’t really want her involved in the acting anyway," Stark said. "I’m afraid she’ll break something and delay the schedule, and then I’ll have to go apologize again!"

Stark’s tone was clearly a bit on edge. Before he became a father, he had such a hard mouth—getting one apology out of him was like pulling teeth; after becoming a dad, he’s basically apologizing to people from morning till night, and he and his wife even have to go apologize together.

The problem was, Little Morgan might be very smart, but she was still too young. She didn’t have any social experience, and the trouble she caused was never intentional. Stark couldn’t really scold her for it, he even had to coax her.

Stark had never been keen on Little Morgan learning Magic. It wasn’t that he particularly hated Magic, he was just genuinely worried that she’d cause trouble in Kamar-Taj or Ilvermorny, and then he’d have to go apologize to Strange. With Strange’s mouth, Stark was afraid he might just lose it.

"All right then." Greed didn’t push it. He nodded and said, "We’ll just have her visit before they start shooting. The second movie happens to be filming the Christmas scenes, the Great Hall will be decorated really festively, she’ll love it."

After they’d finished talking business, Stark turned to look at Arrogant next to him. He’d just opened his mouth to say something when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the property report on the desk. Stark picked it up and glanced at it. Of course it wasn’t that string of zeros that shocked him—it was the fact that Shiller was house‑hunting.

"You’re buying a house?" Stark said, a bit stunned.

"Yeah, what about it?" Greed leaned back in his chair again. "I’ve got some friends from other universes to host, I can’t just have them stay in the sanatorium with me."

"Oh, nothing." Stark shook his head. "You really should buy a place, though; living in a sanatorium long‑term is ridiculous. But I don’t think your real‑estate agent is any good. These picks... I don’t see you liking any of them. Let me introduce you to my property team."

"They’ll have better options?" Greed asked.

"Of course," Stark said, his pride coming back. "A lot of real estate and properties never hit the market. They only circulate among a very small number of people in a certain circle. I’ve got some of those resources in my hand. I think you should take a look."

"Then thanks," Greed said. "I really do want to choose carefully."

"If that’s all, I’ll get going." Stark nodded and headed out. He hadn’t even left the sanatorium grounds before he pulled out his phone and started hammering out messages, clearly not assigning tasks to subordinates, but chatting with people.

At the same time, screens on a whole bunch of phones lit up. Their owners picked them up, and the moment they saw the messages, they all showed the same wide‑eyed, shocked expression.

"I’d bet the news that I’m buying a house has already gone around the whole world," Greed said, less than thirty seconds after Stark left. "Everyone I know definitely knows by now."

"So you’re not planning to take action to prove him right?"

Both of their gazes fell on the property report at the same time.

One and a half hours later, at the gate of a mansion in a Long Island villa district. The real‑estate agent was enthusiastically introducing the house in great detail. Arrogant and Greed stood at the door, and Greed pulled his scarf tighter. "This place isn’t one of the expensive ones on the list. Try to restrain yourself later."

Arrogant said nothing, pushed the door open, and walked in. He hadn’t even taken a full step before he saw the raspberries planted in the garden next to him. The agent, seemingly noticing where he was looking, launched into another passionate round of introductions.

"This house has a very beautiful front garden. Besides the roses that everyone loves, there are also lots of pretty wild berry shrubs. Just imagine, you’re sitting at a table in the front yard entertaining friends and family, and you can treat them with berries you picked yourself..."

"You know, transplanting berry bushes in winter makes their branches take on a different look. On the side that doesn’t get sun, you’ll see some white marks." Arrogant looked at that raspberry bush and said, "This shrub probably got here only a little earlier than we did, right?"

The realtor’s face froze. He said, "Uh, yes, this one was just transplanted, but that’s so it can bear fruit next season..."

Even Greed couldn’t listen to it anymore. "Who transplants berry bushes in winter and expects them to live? Is this your first day in New York?"

Winters on the East Coast are actually pretty cold. Normally, nobody chooses to transplant outdoor plants in winter, because they have to adapt to new soil and to the cold at the same time—it’s a bit too much to ask of those shrubs. If you really have to transplant them, you do it in the fall or early spring. There are experts who dare to challenge winter transplants, but if the job is done right, the branches won’t have marks like these.

This situation can only mean that the yard of this house hasn’t been maintained for years, and the realtor, wanting the place to look at least decent and the garden to be a selling point, hurriedly hauled in a batch of shrubs and stuck them in the ground. In reality, these plants are never going to survive the winter.

"Let’s go." Arrogant seemed to have run out of patience.

Greed had more or less expected this outcome, but hadn’t thought the guy would dare to be this sloppy. After getting in the car, Arrogant exhaled a puff of frosty breath and said, "We really ought to have Miss Isley teach them a lesson."

Greed seemed to think of something; he laughed and said, "Do those things she makes still hit people?"

"How could they not?" Arrogant said helplessly. "And Brainiac just had to get her researching giant crops—there aren’t many who can beat them now."

"When Halloween rolls around next year, make sure you send me a few giant man-eating pumpkins. I’ve been sick of those dinosaurs Nick keeps for a long time."

They drove back to the sanatorium. Greed glanced over a few property reports, then said, "These ones were dropped off by another consultant. Think this batch will be any more reliable?"

Arrogant took them and skimmed through. On the surface nothing looked wrong, so they decided to give it another try. At first everything seemed fine; this consultant looked more professional than the last one, and way more polite.

Not until the car had been heading north for ages, almost all the way to Massachusetts, did Greed sigh and say, "If this keeps up, I can just head to the film set ahead of schedule. Ma’am, what exactly is it you don’t like about the current administrative borders of ’New York’?"

In fact, the car was no longer in New York State by then, and was about to leave the Greater New York Area altogether. The two of them didn’t even make it to the house the consultant wanted to show them before they turned around and drove back.

After all, Greed had no interest in spending five hours commuting every day—and that’s assuming he was riding a Flying Shuttle.

Then they found yet another consultant, this time confirming that the places were within New York City limits. The house itself was in original condition, no emergency patch-up jobs, and on all fronts it looked decent. But when they got there, they discovered the listed price was just the deposit; the actual number was terrifying, and on top of that they wanted payment in cryptocurrency. Greed had no choice but to walk away again.

After three duds in a row, Greed and Arrogant had to admit that to buy a place in New York, you need connections and channels, and not just any kind—the really high-end kind. Even the ones Matt, a lawyer, had referred them to were pretty unreliable.

There was no way this was Matt deliberately screwing him over. More likely, these consultants really were considered top-tier at Matt’s level. But at best, Matt counted as an elite middle-class type; the places they bought were basically standard small villas in middle-class neighborhoods, whereas what Shiller wanted was one of those mansions in a luxury villa district.

These people didn’t have access to that kind of inventory, but they also didn’t want to let a big client slip away, so they scraped together a bunch of bizarre, fringe assets that anyone who knew what they were doing would never touch.

They actually weren’t too worried the client would see through it, because people who really belong to that stratum have their own channels. The kind who’d buy these houses yet still come to this bunch of consultants are either people with money they can’t show on the books, desperate to park it in respectable physical assets, or clueless upstarts, who are even easier to fleece with a clear conscience.

"That should about do it," Arrogant said. "At the very least, these consultants are definitely going to go complain to Matt that you’re too picky."

"You’re the one who’s too picky," Greed said. "Those consultants were about to cry from the tongue-lashing you gave them. I told you to tone it down."

"I did tone it down. At least they didn’t drive the car into the river on the way back."

Greed laughed. These little outings were never really about finding the perfect house; they were just to get the word out. By now, the rumor Stark started—that he was buying a house—must have been confirmed.

And just as he’d expected, Shiller running in and out in such a hurry fully convinced everyone who’d still been skeptical of Stark’s claim. What Greed hadn’t expected was that this bit of news would trigger an emergency assembly of The Avengers.

And not just The Avengers—S.H.I.E.L.D., Mutants, Asgard, Kamar-Taj, and even the interstellar council all mobilized.