Chapter Text
Tony didn’t know what to think at first when Happy called him talking about some Alien threat in Texas, to be honest, he was surprised because all the weird shit normally comes straight to New York in their backyard. Which, Tony doesn't mind, because at least this time he won’t have to worry about skyscrapers falling and killing everyone within a half-mile radius.
Still doesn’t mean he wants to travel to Texas either.
With a sigh, he leaves his lab to head to the Avenger’s level. FRIDAY going over his schedule as he tries to figure out when he needs to cancel and go to just to see what the hell the threat in Texas is. He saw a news cast that even talked about a minor meteor that hit Earth earlier in the morning out in the desert.
There has to be a connection there, Tony knows it.
It wouldn’t make sense for them to be two different things. Alien language? Predicted minor meteor crash landing without days notice into the desert? Somethings up, and he’s going to figure it out.
The elevator dings quietly and the doors open smoothly. Tony steps out with confidence, glancing around the common room where the Avengers have already gathered. He probably has FRIDAY to thank for that.
“Well, looks like we’re going to Texas. So, other than Point Break or Brucie-Bear, who wants to come?” Tony asks pleasantly, eyeing everyone in the room. To be honest, he doesn’t want either Clint or Sam coming. They have been pissing him off for weeks with their inconvenient-timing pranks.
“I think Steve and Thor go. Most known icons, right? I think that’ll help. Thor knows the most about Alien languages, and Steve’s the second strongest here…and, no offense Bruce, I just don’t think we need a Code Green just yet.” Sam says casually, looking at his nails as if he actually cares about him.
Tony has never felt so much relief in his system then at this moment. Him, Thor, and Steve? At least Steve can be tolerable when it comes to missions, so Tony will take what he can get.
“Alright, then. Point Break, Cap, let’s get it rolling.” Tony spins around on his heel not bothering to watch the both of them get up.
They’ll follow.
***
Peter picks at the skin of his fingernails anxiously. He had no idea what the nice-looking, but very irritated, lady said. The only thing he managed to catch was a name.
Thor .
Like. Thor. The Reigning King of Asgard?
Thor was mentioned. Was he here? On Midgard? What happened? Did Thanos get his planet too?
They haven’t heard of respondents to their sister planet in a while but… was that coincidental or was it because they’ve been wiped too?
Last thing he heard was that either Thor or his brother, Loki, had one of the other stones. Other than that Peter hasn’t heard a thing.
That’s good. If he doesn’t know. If not a soul tells…
Thanos doesn’t know either.
But he will try and find the stone that he killed everyone on Rolipra for. He’ll hunt Peter down as soon as he knows. He’ll slaughter and hurt anyone he gets close to—
Is it worth waiting for Thor? If Thor has a stone, would it be smart to be near him with another? So close? So noticeable?
Wouldn’t it be better with little unnoticeable Peter? Wouldn’t it be better if he disappears, hides away in the deepest parts of this Earth till he can figure out a way to leave? To fight Thanos?
Ha, there’s no way weak little Peter Parker could fight off a being such as Thanos with his army.
God he’s such a dreamer.
But he has to try.
He can’t wait for Thor or these… Aehngears? Avehnger? Whatever the hell the woman said in that Midgardian Language.
Peter has to leave. To protect the stone. To protect May’s wish. To prevent it being too close to a known power: Thor.
He needs to leave.
Peter bites his lip, glancing around the room where the lady was pointedly ignoring him. But there's no one else.
Taking a deep breath, Peter decides that he needs to make a break for it. He needs to go out, go on the run, hide away this stone and himself along with it. No one cares for him, there’s no one left to.
Why squander that?
Bolting up from his seat, Peter makes a mad dash for the doors. Pushing his arms out in front of him–he forgets himself. They shatter into millions of pieces. Metal bar being launched out into the lot-looking thing, the noise reverberating loudly. He barely feels it past the panic of oh shit he’s going to be in so much trouble.
The scraping of chairs, the clicking of weapons, shouting, yelling, lights, and alarms make his head start to pound. His eyes go foggy and he feels disoriented. But he starts running. The large gray-black pathway stretches out for only a few minutes away before it’s completely swallowed by large buildings.
Peter can lose them there.
He has to protect the stone.
Ignoring the prickling of his danger-sense, Peter runs. He’s never ran faster in his life. He can feel his legs pumping, those carts that go crazy fast blurring in his vision as he just runs .
Loud shots can be heard behind him, and Peter can only that’s the Midgardian guns that Uncle Ben used to talk about. His danger-sense spikes, twists, and sharply stabs him over and over again until the danger finally hits him.
Literally.
A bullet tears through his left thigh and Peter’s never felt so much pain before in his life. The white-hot fire licking his muscles, the adrenaline trying to mask it because Peter can’t stop to help himself. He needs to run.
He needs to get somewhere safe.
Sirens ring out behind him as he hears the sound of blasters not far off from his location. It sounds dangerous. Foreign. He can’t chance it.
Ducking into a dead-end looking hall between buildings, Peter looks behind himself. No one is there but he can hear the heavy footsteps, the sounds of barking animals, and Peter looks up. The building isn’t too tall, and he could probably scale it quickly even in his current state. But will he be fast enough?
Peter has to try.
Another rush of anxiety sweeps through his being, choking him and making his hands shaky as he jumps up on his right leg, getting a grip with both hands. He sticks perfectly fine, thank the goddess, and he starts to scale it. Peter barely makes it over the lip at the top before animals come racing into the hall below him.
He watches wearily as the people search around with bright lights, muttering and yelling to each other. Yellow-tape being hung up everywhere near the puddle of blood that his leg left just for them.
There's no blood on the side of the building other than where Peter just tugged himself up from, but he doubts they’ll actually look upwards to spot it.
Backing away from the edge, Peter shuffles his way over to a small awning next to a door and sits under it. Glancing at his leg, he can see the beginning stages of the wound healing over, and just by prodding the back of his leg, he can tell it's a clean-through shot.
Thank fuck. It sucks digging shit out.
The blood leaks on the roofing, but Peter doesn’t pay it any mind as he leans his head on the concrete behind himself. It grates against the back of his arms, digs through his ripped shirt, stabs his wounded head. But it's a place to rest.
It will be enough, even if Peter feels like he’s fading.
It has to be.
***
Tony steps off the quinjet to a scene of chaos. Alarms are ringing, glass is shattered across the parking lot and one of the door handles is lodged into the side of a police car. There are officers surrounding the doors, dogs barking, cop cars skittering out the lot.
All Tony can think is that it looks like a guaranteed shitshow.
This is so not what he signed up for.
A man walks over to him. Gray hair, aged eyes with one that looks half-faded. Must be partially blind.
“Ah, Ironman! What a pleasure it is to have you at our station!” The man greets with a stilted smile. Tony raises a brow. “Is it? You seem to have your hands quite…filled. With this situation.”
The officer’s smile wanes a bit. “Yes, well, that boy we called you about? Up and bolted as soon as we got off the phone. We don’t know why. Some of the younger troops went out after him, but they lost the boy’s trail to one of the cities’ dead-end allies. It’s like he just disappeared.”
Tony nods, glancing back to Thor and Steve. “Did you attempt to see if he just escaped the ally? Climbed a wall? You did say he was a potential alien, right? Well, he probably has some type of powers we can’t begin to fathom. Why didn’t you put him in a holding cell? Interrogation room? Some place he couldn’t just run from?”
The man gulps, tugging at his collar. “Well, uh, Mr. Stark. It was a delicate situation we coul–”
Tony raises his hand. “So, you’re telling me we flew all the way out here, in record time may I add, just for you to lose the boy?”
Nodding glumly, the officer gives a sigh. “Yes, Sir.”
Tony runs a hand through his hair, aggravated. “Well, I guess our work here is done. Thank you for wasting our ti–”
“Sirs!” A woman yells, racing over. Her eyes were wide as cucumbers, her facial expression befitting someone who found something interesting. “We located the spacecraft– the rumored meteor– just a few miles away from here. It crashed and burned in the desert, so far we weren’t able to hear it.”
Turning towards Tony herself, he raised a brow. She has tenacity, he’ll give her that much. “And what does that have to do with us?”
Puffing her chest out, face stern, she looks both him and Steve in the eye.
“It’s an alien spacecraft. A boy, whom we consider foreign, the one we brought you here for, shows up only a bit later? It has to be connected, sirs. I think you would like to study it, Mr. Stark, seeing as this is your area of expertise and figuring out what we are working with.”
Thor coughs into his fist, Tony guesses he’s a little annoyed at being called an alien if only indirectly by this woman and speaks. “Thank you, Daughter of Falice! Will you take us to this craft?”
The booming voice of his friend makes Tony want to bury himself in the sand, curl up, and die. Because that's the last thing he wanted to do. Be in the blistering heat to inspect a craft that’s most likely so burned he’ll get nothing from it.
Fucking fantastic.
The woman nods. “Of course, if you three would follow me?”
Steve pushes his shoulder, blue eyes piercing. “Just play along, Tony. It’ll be over before you know it.”
Tony purses his lips, following the woman to one of the cop cars near them. “I hope you’re right, Cap. I hate playing the long game.”
The desert, Tony decided, is not his thing as he stands in front of the blown-up spaceship. Its metal ripped to pieces, a cushion chair a few years away from the entire thing. The controls of the entire thing seems to have combusted, and worst still it’s all extremely smokey and blistering hot to the touch.
Though, as Tony moves closer, there is one major thing that clues him in that this isn’t just any space craft. The exterior, no matter how ripped on the outermost layer, the second one isn’t touched.
It looks like–
“Vibranium.” Steve comes up next to him. “Has to be, Stark. Look at how it didn’t even scratch as the fragile metals on the outside curled and melted.”
Tony nodded. “I agree. But can’t you only get Vibranium from Wakanda?”
Thor comes up to Tony’s other side as the woman officer goes off and starts talking into her radio again. “Yes, Man of America! My planet, Asgard, has traded with them for decades for such a metal. It’s one of few that does not break easily from our strength. Though, they have been known to trade with our sister planets lately for their ores that they need.”
Steve nods with a pinched look on his face. “So how many is that? Is this an Asgardian ship?”
Thor shakes his head. “No. This is closer to what Erang or Rolipra would make. Disjencher trades most frequently with Asgard, so similar styles have been made.”
Tony hums, bending down to poke gently at the control panels. They seemed smooth, no dents, no indications other than a pad of buttons of different colors to the side. Other than that, Tony can assume it works best with holograms and electrical boards mostly.
“So, Point Break, is there any type of chip? SD card?” Tony stands up, brushing off the non-existent sand from his jeans. God he hates the desert.
Thor furrows his brows, then shakes his head slowly. “Our ships do not work that way, Man of Iron. They erase everything once it crashes.”
With an annoyed sigh, Tony kicks at the side of it. “Then what's the point of being here if we can’t get anything from it.”
Looking back at both Steve and Thor, Tony feels his hackles rise as he sees the God of Thunder’s face. “What’s up?”
Thor looks at the both of them, a serious look on his face. “This ship crash landed, correct, Man of Iron?” Tony raises a brow. “Well, yeah, look at it. Of course, it did.” Thor doesn’t look assured with that, if anything, he looks more concerned. “Erang and Rolipra are planets that do not travel or associate themselves little with most others in our solar system. For one of their ships to crash here, in all places, there is cause for it to be worrying.”
Tony stares at him, dread bubbling in his stomach. That’s not good. That’s so not good.
Steve tightens his hold on his shield, turning to face himself more to Thor than to the craft. “So, you’re saying there's something going on with your sister planets that you don’t know about? If there was something so major, wouldn’t you know?”
Thor shrugs wearily, eyes scanning the desert with a keen look. He looks more alert now, too. “Yes. My planet is known for quick communication and for nothing to be said to me, and the time it would take for this pod to get here…” Thor trails off, a grimace gracing his features. “Something must’ve happened in my absence, the Stone of Time has been handed off to Man of Strangeness. With that task complete, I fear I shall have to take my leave to learn what has become of our sister planet.”
The woman comes back over, her big eyes watching them intently. “A team should be here soon to assist with taking the craft back to your jet, should you want to take it.”
Tony nods with an award-winning smile at her, despite his festering worry that something big was coming.
Something bad.
“Thank you, Sweetheart. Could we hitch a ride back, if you don’t mind?” Tony lays the sweet-talk extra thick, just for assurance that she would.
She flushes prettily, nodding, before whipping her ponytail around and walking across the sand awkwardly back to the car a distance away.
“How soon do you think you’ll be back, Thor?” Steve asks as they follow behind the officer. The God gives a shrug, “At least three weeks or more. It takes a while to get to and from Asgard to Midgard.”
Tony pats Thor on the shoulder, opening the car door to the passenger side with a flourish. “Don’t worry, Big Guy, Earth will be covered. Do what you need to.”
Thor hunches into the backseat, nodding. “Thank you, Man of Iron.”
As he slides into the front seat, Tony feels anticipation build up in his gut. Whatever Thor finds, whatever Tony himself will uncover, he has the distinct feeling none of it will be good.
Tony’s not sure he’s prepared.
None of them are.