Magic and Science || phoebe

[Tony Stark]

Ever since the rifts started up, Tony Stark had been working on a way of getting rid of them. He got sort of distracted by that whole business with Aldrich Killian and Extremis. Thankfully, that was over and done with and Tony was ready to get back into the swing of... being Iron Man and everything. Well, at least he was getting ready to do that before he remembered how he wanted to actually do something about the rifts. So, he'd started looking into them and, eventually, he realized something. The rifts were basically out of his control - he couldn't do it alone. Turning to SHIELD definitely wasn't the answer, since SHIELD was basically the skeeviest thing ever. He could turn to Bruce, but he wasn't really... sure where Bruce was.

The other Avengers weren't really science people, or magic people for that matter. Speaking of which, Tony had realized that the rifts definitely weren't just scientific in nature. So, he was going to need someone with magic to help him out... and probably a few more scientists and sorcerers. If he wanted to do anything at all with the rifts, he was going to need help big time. So, after looking through a few files, mostly hacked SHIELD stuff with a little bit of other organizations thrown in, Tony picked Phoebe Halliwell to be his co-leader of the little team he was going to start up. Hopefully, he wasn't going to have to make any calls and people would just kind of... start showing up to help them out.

Tony had called Phoebe up and invited her to Stark Tower. He'd even sent a plane over to San Francisco to make sure she got there comfortably. Tony really wasn't the type to ask someone to fly down to New York and just not pay their ticket. People might describe him as an "asshole", but he wasn't that much of one. At any rate, Tony was pretty much just waiting around for her, poking at his own research into the rifts. He had a massive hologram pulled up, displaying the closest look into a rift he could get. They were hard to keep track of and even harder to look at. The only pictures out there were ridiculously blurry.

At least JARVIS had managed to get a decent-looking hologram of one. It was mostly for show, since all of the actual research was just sort of floating around the "rift", also in hologram form. It was so much easier that way. Tony had JARVIS clean the room up, so it looked at least somewhat official. Sure, Tony liked to make himself look good in public, but he didn't exactly have the same showiness in his home. The room now looked totally presentable - clean, even. Tony took hold of a particularly important bit of research and opened it up. He started reading through it, but he wasn't really trying to pay attention or anything. He was just waiting.

[Phoebe Halliwell]

Phoebe initially hadn't thought much of the rift the destruction of the Nexus seemed to have caused - except that it had saved the lives of her and her sisters, of course. That was pretty great - and she hadn't questioned the 'hows' and the 'whys' too much, mainly because...well. It'd been an explosion of magical and spiritual energy. Tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time seemed like a pretty legitimate side effect. What she hadn't realized, at first, was that this rift was hardly the first or last of its kind. Others, created by other means, were popping up all over the place. At this point, this world was pretty much a hodgepodge of different universes. And while the possibilities of that were certainly exciting, Phoebe wasn't entirely convinced that it meant good things for the indigenous residents of this world. For one thing, the forced collisions of so many different cultures, species, realities...expecting it to be peaceful was a little naive. But more importantly, there were now so many rifts that it was something of a miracle that this world hadn't collapsed in on itself. At the very best, this place was now incredibly unstable. It was clear, to anyone with actual sense at least, that all of this needed to be stopped before things got even worse.

The answer hadn't been evident, at first. The Halliwell sisters may have been incredibly powerful when they were together, but their abilities couldn't heal tears in space and time - not without tapping into a source of overwhelming spiritual energy like the Nexus, which was essentially suicide. So Phoebe had begun to look into other options, researching those who might possess some sort of expertise on the subject. This was how she'd come into contact with Tony Stark, a well-known billionaire and a rather impressive engineer, if his Iron Man suit was anything to go by. If there was anyone who had a shot at finding some answers from a scientific perspective, it was him. And as luck would have it, he seemed rather interested in her abilities as well. Different as they might have been, Phoebe was certain that combining their skills would have to yield at least some results. If they were lucky, they'd be able to recruit others of magical or scientific prowess in this little venture they were leading - but for now, they needed to get the basics settled.

Leaving her sisters back in San Francisco (though they'd agreed to help out if needed), she'd flown to New York free courtesy of Mr. Stark, and had arrived that afternoon eager to get down to business to defeat the huns. She'd considered what supplies to bring with her - the Book of Shadows, as a rule, did not leave the Halliwell manor - but she'd copied down a few of the more useful spells from it, and also packed a few basic spell-casting ingredients (candles, incense, and the like - if she needed more, she was certain New York would have something available). As she was led to the room Tony had prepared, she glanced around the tower with keen interest. She was pretty sure she could honestly say she'd never seen anything like this before. And she had to admit, it was pretty cool. Upon entering the room, her attention was immediately drawn to the hologram set up - a hologram of what she could only assume was one of the rifts. The attention to detail was impressive, and she stared curiously for a moment before remembering that she wasn't alone.

Her attention shifted to Tony, and she offered a bright smile as she crossed the room. "Tony Stark?" It was essentially a rhetorical question - she knew who she was talking to. "I'm Phoebe Halliwell - it's great to finally meet you." She held out a hand for him to shake, and then took another glance around the room. "Pretty impressive tech, I have to admit. You live up to your reputation."