Chapter 1: In Which I Make a Solemn Vow to Never Use Magic Mushrooms
My adventure began with the most mind-boggingly boring day at work ever.
It was a Thursday night and not many people wanted to come to a gas station convenience store, it seemed. I stood behind the counter pouting and tapping my foot restlessly to the (goddamn horrible) country music issuing softly from the speakers in the ceiling. I stared out the window to the dark intersection outside the store.
A minute passed. A few cars pulled up to and turned at the intersection. None of them came into our parking lot.
I groaned.
"Is anyone going to fucking shop here so I can fucking do something?" I groaned loudly and wearily, dragging my hand down my face dramatically.
"It's eight-thirty on a Thursday night at Circle K," my coworker deadpanned. I glanced over to see him unabashedly texting on his phone, regardless of the cameras overhead and the paper note clamped to the counter that warned against using phones on-shift except for emergencies. Anthony Driar, twenty-two years old, stood taller than me by just a hair. He had fair skin like mine but his arms had lots of freckles, his nose was longer, and he looked somewhat like a weasel. He always told people exactly what he thought of them. "No one's coming," he said with a bland expression.
I frowned and chewed at a fingernail for lack of anything else to do. "Who are you texting?"
"My secret mistress whom I sleep with behind my wife's back," Anthony said with a roll of his eyes. I snorted, raising an eyebrow. "My wife. She's pregnant and has been bitchier than usual."
"What's she want?" I wondered. It was more interesting than literally anything else going on at the moment, anyway.
"Hell if I know."
It was my turn to roll my eyes now. "Come on, you don't even know what she's talking about? It's your wife, man. You're supposed to know this shit."
"She's been jumping from one thing to the next," Anthony argued. "Not my fault."
"Whatever, dude." I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the counter. I waited for something else to happen. Outside, a person pulled into the parking lot, but they only stopped at the gas tank and started pumping gas. I groaned, "God, there's literally nothing for us to do."
Anthony rolled his eyes a second time and checked the time on his iPhone. "Why don't you go check the trash outside then?"
"Sure, sure," I sighed, even though I already knew the six cans outside weren't full enough to be taken out. Rolling down the sleeves of my long-sleeved, red work shirt, I grabbed a neon orange safety vest and shrugged it on. Then I stepped across the scuffed-up floor, emerged from behind the counter, and pushed the doors open, heat from my hands transferring to the cold door.
I stepped out into the parking lot. It was semi-lit, the gas pumps being the brightest part, but still relatively safe. We were on the outskirts of town, a short ways away from the railroad tracks, and rarely had any incidents. There was one time that a homeless person had decided the garbage dumpsters would make a good sleeping spot, but that could hardly have been considered dangerous. The most harrowing this Circle K got was when my coworker and an old, bald guy got in a heated debate over the price tags of a Reese's bar.
It was chilly out here, at night during early October in Ohio. I shivered and vaguely wished I'd thought to bring my jacket. Sadly, I'd left that on my floor in my bedroom at home, alongside half of the rest of the clothes I owned. Cursing my lack of foresight, I hugged as much of my own body heat in to myself as I could while I checked the first trash can. As I thought, empty. The second was also empty. The third was, lord of all surprises, empty. The rest sat across the parking lot, with the gas pumps.
I rolled my eyes and sighed.
What a waste of time.
Grumbling to myself, I ran a hand through my chocolate-colored hair which lay neatly parted to the right, and stepped onto the asphalt. I didn't notice the eerie light blue light that sparked around my dark jeans as I did so.
I held back a yawn as I reached the gas pump area. I'd gotten bad sleep the previous night; I hadn't been able to fall asleep until two o'clock thanks to my dog waking up and barking. This was annoying since it meant I'd nearly been late to college classes this morning.
I could be doing literally anything right now, I told myself with a bite of annoyance as I checked the next trash can. Instead, I was boring my ass off at a local gas station near a town in The Middle of Nowhere, Ohio: the most goddamn nothing you've ever seen!
God, how I wished I was back on Exchange to Brazil. Now that, that had been amazing.
I swept away to the next trash can and bent down to peer into it.
I squinted. Was that… blue light?
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Nothing. I frowned. Maybe I was more sleep-deprived than I thought. Had I gone to bed later than two? It had happened before. There'd been days where I'd stayed up past four. Those had been pretty rough. Had I stayed up that late and not realized it?
I yawned again. Man, all this thought about sleep was making me sleepy. How long was my shift again? Shit, ten o'clock, wasn't it? I did some quick mental math. I wouldn't be getting to bed until eleven, granting myself enough time to get home, get dinner, and clean up and everything. And I had an essay due for tomorrow that I still had only gotten half complete.
In other words, fuck my life.
I swear I'm only this negative when I'm bored and tired as hell.
Not bothering to hold back a yawn when I felt it coming this time, I blearily rubbed my eyes and continued to the next trash can. That one had been half-full; I'd have to empty it and change the trash bags. Yaaaay. Something to do.
As my foot started to descend to the asphalt, time seemed to slow down. A buzzing so low I hadn't noticed it before heightened, and I winced and flinched away from the sound. A suspiciously ozone-like smell filled the brisk air. What was going on? I gritted my teeth…
My foot landed on the asphalt, and as I moved to take another step, the parking lot glowed.
A mysterious, invisible force suddenly grabbed hold of my entire body, and before I quite knew what was happening, something yanked me backwards with incredible force. A terrified, confused shout erupted from my throat at the sheer suddenness of everything. The world around me melted into a myriad of color.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" I cried out, incredible speed I moved at forcing tears out of my eyes. Wind buffeted my hair, and I desperately clawed at the space around me, searching for something, anything, to grasp onto to slow my… what could I even call it? I had no idea. What was happening!?
Pain split my back apart and my movement slowed enough for me to see where I was. And what I saw confused me even further. I had apparently crashed into the back of a… humongous tower? That looked nothing like any tower I'd ever seen pictures of and swirled with purple, magical light? The fuck? Eliciting a startled yell from me, the crazy, mysterious force yanked me backwards again, and the world again became color until more pain erupted as I crashed into something new and I slowed down enough to spot what looked like a swamp with… DINOSAURS. Okay seriously, what!? Had someone given me some kind of drug without me realizing it!?
The force yanked me back again. As the world again became a strobe-like flashing of colors, I felt a disgusting, sick sensation fill my throat. I gagged and desperately fought to keep it down. At the same time, electric whispers of pain spread throughout my body. Fear washed over me. I needed someone, anyone, to get me out of this!
"Help!" I croaked as my head bounced off something and spots danced before my eyes. For just a second, I glimpsed an umbrella (which I must've collided with) ripped out of sand on a beach, and me flying over water; then the force pulled me back again.
The pain grew. It was like needles stabbing into me now, into every part of my body. I couldn't help but scream in agony. A skyscraper momentarily filtered into view amidst the constant stream of color; a sand dune in a desert; a red rock in a wasteland with a sickly orange sky; a meteorite in space.
By now I was in sheer agony. Every inch of me felt as though it was being continuously ripped apart and stitched back to the rest. I looked up and suddenly, I had the curious sensation that I was staring directly back at my own terrified face, and then the moment was over and it was back in the endless rainbow river of agony.
"Please!" I gasped weakly, my voice hoarse from screaming. "Somebody!"
My body hummed with agony. I blinked, and felt the strangest sensation of someone beside me, but the next second it was gone again.
"Anybody!"
I tumbled ever backwards, slammed into what appeared to be a brilliant cavern of crystals emitting a mystic glow, then returned to my new torture.
My pain suddenly shot up, and this time it felt like there were three people with me; and then just me.
"HEEEEELP!"
The desperate shout flew away as I flew backwards to an unknown destination.
One thing solidified itself in my head: If I ever survived this and stooped to the point where I'd try drugs, I absolutely was not, under any circumstances, taking any psychedelics.
When a flash of light blue energy lit up the mountainside of the Alps, just beneath an abandoned Nazi base, a man and his daughter who happened to be out gathering wood for their fire in their log cabin paused and stared at it… and consequently, the young man who flew out of the sky. Identical shouts of surprise rose from their throats as the teen, clearly unconscious, tumbled unceremoniously to the mountainside and began rolling down the snow. He was of medium height and appeared American, with windblown chocolate hair and fair skin. Dressed only in a red shirt with a logo reading Circle K, dark blue jeans, and gray tennis shoes, as well as a name tag which had the word Evan on it, he clearly was a stranger to these lands.
Father and daughter's eyes went wide. For several moments, neither of them moved. Evan rolled to a stop. He didn't move.
"Oh my god," the daughter, nineteen years old and blonde, gasped in her native German. "He could be dead!" Unsure of what had just occurred but fearful for the stranger's life, she rushed forward across the snow, dropping a small bundle of wood that had been in her arms.
"Sofia!" her father shouted, jolted out of his stupor by her action. He chased after her, although he kept hold of the wood he'd gathered so far. "Sofia, wait! What if he's something like… the Hulk! Or some super-soldier like Captain America? He came from nowhere! He could be dangerous!"
Sofia had reached Evan by now. She knelt on the ground and checked his pulse. "He's alive," she reported, relieved. It would've been scary to have found a dead person. "But his pulse is… very strange. It's erratic… jumping all over the place. And he seems to be… unconscious." looked up at her father, who had reached her and was slowing to a slop. "We have to get him to a doctor. What if he has bad injuries? Or some health problem?"
Sofia's dad scoffed. "And say what? Some stupid American fell out of the sky in the Alps?"
"Dad! He could die out here!"
"...Fine," her father relented. "But we're taking him home, not to a doctor. No one would believe us if we told them how we found him. Let your mother fix him up."
"Sir! Sir!"
"What is it?"
"We have massive energy readings unlike almost anything we've seen before, a short way away from where Johann Schmidt's old laboratory used to be!"
"...Unlike almost anything?"
"Yes, sir! There have only been a few other instances of energy readings this massive and erratic, and those have been at that same laboratory during Schmidt's experiments with other universes using the Tesseract!"
"Hm. The Dimensional Soldier experiments… Tell Coulson to send Black Widow to Germany. We need information on this."
"But isn't she tracking Bru―"
"Now."
"Yes, Mr. Nick Fury, sir!"
When I woke up, my body still hurt really bad, but not nearly as bad as it had when the sheer pain caused me to black out. I felt hot and sweaty but at the same time, my hands were clammy and shivering. I was also super exhausted. I groaned and rolled around on the soft mattress, wishing I could just fall asleep again.
Someone, a female voice judging from the high-pitched quality, shouted something urgently in German. A door groaned open, and footsteps echoed against what sounded like a wooden floor. I opened my eyes wearily. Where was I that had people who spoke German? I lived in rural Ohio. I only knew a handful of people who even spoke Spanish, who weren't undocumented Guatemalans and Mexicans, anyway. And there were a lot less of them lately since that fucking ICE raided the local ham factory.
The sight of a bedroom in a log cabin, or at least that's what I assumed it to be, with a snowy mountain outside the window on the wall next to me made me go still with shock. What the hell? It was still early October. Not even Ohio with its crazy, messed-up and hormonal weather patterns received snowfall this early.
Oh, and how had I gotten on top of a mountain?
With wide eyes, I hurriedly scanned the room, my heart pounding as I did so. A blonde and who I guessed was her equally blond father watched me with some surprise. The girl, who looked about my age, smiled.
"You're finally awake!" she said in English, her accent thickly German. She was fairly cute, and wore a pale yellow turtleneck sweater that went well with her hair. She also had a pair of blue jeans and thick wool socks. "We were beginning to think you'd never wake up and that we'd have to take you to the nearest hospital." She frowned at the older man. "Which is what we should've done in the first place, papa." She spoke this last word accusingly.
The old man gave a great harrumph and frowned at her. "As I said before, Sofia, who would've believed us if we told them a young man appeared in the sky from nowhere and fell?"
I felt dizzy all of a sudden. Shit, that hadn't been just a dream after all?
"Where am I?" I croaked. My mouth was dry and the roof of my mouth felt rough and sore. "What day is it?"
They exchanged glances. "You're in the Alps, in Germany," the blonde―Sofia―said softly, gently. "It's the second of June."
The second of June!? My eyes widened as big as saucers. "What the hell? That's not possible. Last night was October the fourth. How long was I out!?"
The girl stared with wide eyes, clearly taken aback by statement. "O-only about a day," she stammered. "Look, there's a calendar right there behind you, on the wall―check."
My head swiveled around to look over my shoulder. Sure enough, a calendar hung there flipped to June, the days marked off with red x's until the second. Certain I had to be seeing things, I rechecked the month. Nope, it was definitely Jun… Wait! Aha! It said June 2011!
"You guys need to get a new calendar," I deadpanned. "This is off by seven years."
Her father furrowed his brow. "No it's not," he said equally flatly. He pointed to the year. "It's 2011, just like it says." His English was rougher than his daughter's, but still fairly clear for a foreigner.
"What?" I gave a dry laugh. "Come on, man, you can't expect me to believe that. Don't pull my strings. It's not June or 2011, you're just trying to screw with me. It's definitely at the very least the fifth of October, 2018."
"Twenty eighteen?" Sofia gasped. "Don't be stupid. It's definitely not. Come here, I'll show you the morning newspaper."
I shakily got up from their bed. A checkered blue-and-white blanket and sky blue sheets fell from me as I did so. I followed her to the open door on the far wall of the bedroom, past a desk and bureau. We emerged out into a hall with a railing looking out onto a staircase, to which we walked. After descending it, we found ourselves in the center of a large, cozy living room and kitchen combination.
On the right, one large couch and two love chairs sat around a mahogany coffee table, which in turn sat in front of a crackling fireplace. A Sony TV which played the news sat on a marble ridge above the fireplace. Underneath these was a large black, red, and gold rug with diamond patterns in it. A similarly styled rug, except in dark blue, green, and white, lay on the landing of the staircase. Bookcases with well-used books as well as movies and games lay along the walls when there weren't windows looking out onto the snowy landscape, or framed photos (some of which had Sofia and her father).
Somewhat separated from the living room side by the staircase and the walls on either side of it was the kitchen to the left. It was a clean, orderly kitchen with everything you'd expect to find in one; refrigerator, oven, microwave, counter, sink, a cutting board, cupboards; the works. Above the sink, another window stared out over the mountain. It was the only one in the kitchen save for a small square one to the right of the refrigerator/freezer combo. A low table sat in the kitchen, big enough for about three people but no more. The larger table was located in the living room, behind the couches.
Sofia pointed to a newspaper which lay on the small kitchen table. A cup of coffee sat next to it, and it lay opened; I assumed either Sofia or her father had been reading it prior to me regaining consciousness. "See? Check the date."
I moved to it and checked the date while her father clopped down the stairs behind us.
I choked.
Sure enough, it said June 2nd, 2011.
What the hell?
That was when the newspaper's headline caught my eye: IRON MAN, WAR MACHINE, AND HAPPY HOGAN DESTROY DRONE ARMY. A picture of Robert Downey Jr. standing beside the Iron Man suit was printed right in the top middle.
What the fucking hell?
"Sofia," I said, feeling very, very dizzy, "you guys may need to take me to the hospital after all."
Barely a second after I said this, I toppled backward in a faint from pure shock. After all, it wasn't just June 2nd, 2011.
It was June 2nd, 2011 in the MCU.