The Valiant (The Seventh Avenger)

Chapter 92

https://youtu.be/vmrf_dBIhQI

"I can't believe it worked," I mumble under my breath, we all crowd around a table in the conference room. Hologram displays of the six Infinity cover the screen in front of us. Tony, Steve, and Bruce pace in front of us.

"Okay, so the 'how' works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where. Almost all of us has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones." Steve begins. I cross my arms and allow my knee to rest on Loki's who sits next to me.

"Well, I'd substitute the word encounter for damn well near been killed by one of the six Infinity Stones." Tony takes a sip of his coffee before gesturing it to me, "or have the capabilities of one but no one asked for a show-off." He winks at me before moving to the corner.

"I haven't, I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about," Lang expresses, looking between all of us. I smile at Pietro who won't stop looking at me and shift a little closer to Loki, him hopefully understanding the hint.

"Regardless, we only have enough Pym Particles for one round trip each, and these stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history." Banner goes on. I look around at our team, it's nice to finally see everyone back together and have more with us. Well, not everyone...

"Our history. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in." Tony finishes, setting his coffee down.

"Which means we have to pick our targets?" I question, looking at the stones' information on the hologram.

"Correct."

"Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve pushes his hands in his pockets and stares at the Lord of Thunder in the corner. His sunglasses on and beer in hand, it looks like he is really relaxed. Maybe even asleep, none of us can really tell.

"Is he asleep?" Nat questions.

"No, no." Rhodey begins, "I think he's dead."

After finally waking Thor up, he steps up to the front of the room and takes off his glasses. He blinks at the light and taps the glasses on the screen.

"Where to start? Umm... The Aether, first, is not a stone, someone called it a stone before. It's more of a... an angry sludge thing, so... someone's gonna need to amend that." He points at Steve, and we all scrunch up our eyebrows. This is going to be entertaining. "Here's an interesting story though, many years ago. My grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves." He wiggles his fingers, "Wooooh, scary beings. So Jane. Oh, there she is. That's Jane. She's an old flame of mine..." He smiles at the screen, everyone looks at Thor with the same expression. They have no idea what the hell is going on, "She-she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time and then the Aether stuck itself inside her. And, she became very, very sick. So I had to take her to Asgard, which is where we're from." He gestures to Loki who shares a smile with me, he's about to reach his hand out to place on my leg but makes a fist and places it on the table instead. I wish I could just take his hand now but it would be inappropriate. We need to stay on task.

"And we had to try and fix her. We were dating at the time, you see." Scott smiles assuringly at Thor which seems to encourage him to keep going, "I got to introduce her to my Mother... who's dead," Loki quickly gets up to comfort his broken brother, but Thor pushes him away, "and oh you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, these things happen though you know, nothing lasts forever," Bruce sends him a signal to not go there and Tony was now trying to push him back into the chair. I share a look with Rhodey and Clint as Thor continues, "I'm not done yet, the only thing permanent in life is impermanence."

"Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?" Tony questions, slapping him on the back.

"I'd like a Bloody Mary," Thor responds and smiles at the rest of us.