Martin arrived soon after. The Ancestor God from his universe could not cross over, but the Marvel Universe apparently had Ancestor Gods as well. He set up an altar outside and spent ages summoning, only to actually call one forth.
There were currently no Mexican students at Kamar-Taj Magic Academy, so no one had ever summoned a god of the Aztec Pantheon. Martin was the first.
The magical rules of this universe were far clearer than DC's, without all that murky, obscure complexity. Ancestor Gods like the Egyptian gods and the Aztec Pantheon did not ask for much. They did not demand your organs or soul before granting you power; most merely required offerings.
"The pantheons here are much more intact than the ones over there," Martin said. "The Feathered Serpent God was very interested in this place, so I made a contract with him first. But according to him, I can apparently make contracts with other gods too. Still, having him alone is enough for now."
Before long, someone arrived who had not been within Stark's expectations, yet was hardly surprising: Shang-Chi.
He looked travel-worn and utterly exhausted, like a college student who had pulled several all-nighters to meet a deadline.
"How is the space station cooperation project going?" Schiller asked.
"Not bad, but those Indians are way too hard to deal with. They speak English, and I can't understand them." Shang-Chi was clearly full of complaints, but he swallowed them in the end and merely said, "Technical cooperation between China and the United States has been going fairly smoothly. There are still several longstanding patent issues we can't settle, but more than a dozen joint projects have made breakthroughs."
"Is he a mage too?" Pamela asked.
"Oh, hello, miss. I'm not." Shang-Chi was exceptionally modest and polite. "You