Ch82. Tony's contingency plan

"Yes, sir. Unfortunately, your chosen energies were a bit out of control at first. As you predicted, your affinity with them was not optimal." JARVIS curtly explained and Tony groaned, mumbling about ridiculously lucky redheads under his nose.

Humans had affinities and the way Tony's ritual worked, it would change his soul to an energy dimension containing whatever energy he had the biggest affinity for.

But Tony had an affinity for metal energy...

Yeah, the second he found out, he scrunched his nose in disgust and decided to flip the coin on fate. He stubbornly set the ritual to change his soul to a dimension producing physical energy instead.

With that, Tony would, through the antithesis rule of this change... a very convenient Alchemical bullshit of this ritual he added into it only to cheese the shit out of it to the limit..., also form a source of spiritual energy.

Therefore, his soul would produce both Physical and Spiritual energies. Two directly opposite energies, coexisting like yin-yang and sharing a dimension of origin in Tony's soul.

The problem with that was simple.

Tony had no idea what his affinity to these two kinds of energies was. Mystic Arts could find out the energy one had the most affinity for, but the spell would not tell the user his other affinities.

That's how Tony found out Natasha's affinity was something extremely special and stopped worrying about it. He simply set the ritual to affect her as it should, changing her soul to a dimension with the energy she had the most affinity for.

It was him who was the problem. Either he would have enough affinity to 'reign' in the physical and spiritual energies... or he would not and they would try to overtake his vessel, deleting him from existence.

Naturally, Tony did not want that so he came up with a contingency plan.

Namely, his two cute Artifacts, JARVIS and FRIDAY.

They formed consciousness and had enough computation power to reign the energy in for him. Hence...

In case Tony would be getting overwhelmed by the physical and spiritual energies, JARVIS and FRIDAY would take over, push their consciousness in by using the ritual as a kind of backdoor, and meld themselves into Tony's soul, becoming a representation of these two energies.

Conceptually and on paper, it worked brilliantly.

But Tony had no idea how it would work in reality and that's why it took him a bit to recognize what happened when they showed in front of him.

This only worked because both JARVIS and FRIDAY came 'from him'. They were created by him and therefore they were 'his'. As such, Tony's soul did not reject them when they tried to gain access to it and meld their consciousness into its new energies.

In a way, they had become a permanent part of Tony. Only something made by him, something with a consciousness of its own, could do that without being invasive and unwelcome.

And yes, he did gain inspiration for this from Bleach, an anime he barely remembered since he only briefly saw a few episodes in his previous life and found it ridiculous. Bite him.

Fortunately, his current reality did not have Bleach anime so there was no way Natasha would realize where he got the idea from. He already checked in hopes to get more ideas but... meh. Bleach didn't exist the same as Harry Potter wasn't a thing.

"Well, I hope you find your new home sufficient." Tony said with a weak smile.

Both JARVIS and FRIDAY agreed to do this for him but he hoped it wouldn't come to this. Now... he could only hope their new state of being was comfortable for them. They were his most successful inventions. Inventions that gained self-awareness and consciousness. He cared for their well-being.

"It's amazing!" Exclaimed FRIDAY with childish giddiness and sparkling eyes.

"It's quite a nice feeling, sir." Said JARVIS calmly, but a bit quicker than his usual tempo of speech, at the same time as FRIDAY. He was visibly also quite content with his new 'home' so a stone fell from Tony's heart.

"Glad to hear that." Tony smiled in relief.

After a moment, however, his eyes gained their usual gleam, "Now, tell me everything about your new situation!" He excitedly exclaimed while seating himself on the chair in his room and fidgeting like an overly excited kid waiting for a Santa Claus.

JARVIS and FRIDAY looked at each other in amusement before FRIDAY giggled and JARVIS fondly sighed. It wouldn't be Tony otherwise...

They sat down on the bed, preparing for a long conversation with their creator in order to sate his curiosity. Just another normal day in their lives.

"We can still access our servers." JARVIS started with the thing he deemed most important. "So while we are a part of your soul now, we still can fulfill the function of A.I. and even control the Iron Man armors. We surprisingly did not lose any of our previous functions."

That made Tony as surprised as he was gleeful. He was afraid of losing JARVIS and FRIDAY's help but apparently, they could still connect to the 'real' world. Tony thought about how it was possible when a lightbulb suddenly went off in his head.

"You are using the energies you now represent to gain access!" He exclaimed, his eyes wide in astonishment at the implications.

First of all, everything in the physical plane of existence had physical energy. That was the whole reason why Tony chose this kind of energy. On top of that, the spiritual plane was mirroring the physical plane so everything in the physical plane also contained spiritual energy by default.

No wonder they could still connect to their servers and act as Artificial Intelligence!

"Yes, sir." JARVIS's lips widened into a smile, "That's exactly it. While we don't have as massive access as you probably think we do, we can connect ourselves to our previous 'body', the servers, quite easily."

"And our calculation capability also immensely increased!" FRIDAY cheerfully pipped in.

"Hmm..." Tony frowned. Maybe he was a bit too excited. Being capable of directly connecting to every computer in the world was expecting a bit too much. Well, they can still hack them but that's a bit different. "Nevermind, then." He grinned, "Let's be happy you can still do everything you could as my Artefacts. Now tell me how does this..." Tony waved his hand around, "feels like to you."

They were now a part of him, yet, they were still different entities altogether, and Tony was really curious about this arrangement.

"Boss," FRIDAY whinily drawled, "You created us to serve you. We were your Artificial Intelligence, then we became your Artifacts, and now we are your energy. It's natural for us! This just makes the connection between us stronger!" She pouted at the knowledge that Tony tried to subtly get the reassurance that they would not 'rebel' against him.

As if they could do that! They were soul bonded to him and existed only because of that. Rebelling would be the death of them! They were happy with the state of their existence as it was!

"FRIDAY, that is standard human behavior, dear. If anything, it just tells us that Tony really fully succeeded in his endeavor. His soul is completely transformed while his physical body is still that of a normal human and his mind was not affected by the change at all despite being moved into the core of his soul." JARVIS jovially summed up before turning towards Tony who looked at him in utter bafflement, "I think congratulations are in order, sir."

"Oh, is that so?" FRIDAY tilted her head before looking at Tony, "In that case, congratulations, boss!"

Tony's flabbergasted gaze slowly went from JARVIS to FRIDAY and back...

'Yeah, whatever. Let's just roll with it.' He inwardly decided. He had many other questions that had to be asked anyway.

Needless to say, their conversation lasted a long time.