A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger I left you at last time. Also got a new Beta for this chapter, and some fic recommendations that were inspired by this story at the end!
Thank you BlueOwl, Emerald2211, and Abbie Blizzard for helping me edit this chapter!
Turns out the seat belts on the jet weren't really designed to keep someone my size in place. Only reason I didn't go faceplanting onto the floor (and maybe ceiling) was because Bucky kept me firmly in place with one hand.
[Main Menu]
[ ] Quest log
[ ] Stats
[ ] Relationships
[ ] Runscript
[ ] Load Save
I opened the menu just to take a moment to look around in slow-mode.
Bucky was obviously next to me, with his metal hand grabbing one of the handrails hard enough that I could see an indent forming. Steve was next to him, and looked like he was able to grab the seat belt in time to keep from crashing into the other wall of the plane. Might still happen when I take down the menu, but Steve should be fine.
I could barely see Natasha and Clint from where we were, but they were sitting in the cockpit with seatbelts. The main thing was that from the front window, I could see the explosion that was moving way too fast. We were far enough away that the flames wouldn't reach us, but it was still weird to see. Not that I saw a lot of explosions in my past life, but I would watch a few slow mode videos either on myth busters or in chemistry class. Point being that my 'slow mode' due to having the menu open was apparently not as slow as those videos.
Hesitantly, I dropped the menu, and the sudden change in orientation was enough for me to quickly throw it back up.
We were upside down.
I was pretty sure that was due to Clint, but I also failed to see how doing flips in the air was going to help us with sudden increase in pressure caused by the change in temperature thanks to the missile. Then again, it's not like I know anything about flying. At least when I took the menu down again, I was able to hold onto the seatbelt and get a good view of Steve and Bucky headbutt each other.
"Everyone okay back there?" Clint called out once the quinjet got straightened out, no doubt hearing the loud thump that echoed in the chamber.
"We're fine," Steve said, rubbing his forehead a little.
I was a little surprised to see no blood.
"Why is your head so hard?" Bucky complained in a hushed tone, though clearly Steve heard him.
"Like you're one to talk Buck," Steve said with a smile that really didn't belong considering someone just tried to kill us not five minutes ago.
"Steve and Bucky weren't wearing their seatbelts!" I yelled back at Clint and Natasha, hoping that would explain what happened to them.
"Might want to listen to your own advice there Barnes," Clint said before performing another roll when the air got choppy.
After the third time I stopped pulling up my menu to pause. Either Clint really did know what he was doing, or he was showing off after the first time. Though I was starting to think he was doing both.
I was just starting to relax a little when I felt the quinjet decline slowly. Not like Clint trying to pull off a move, but like he was getting ready to land.
[Quest update: Infiltrate Hydra]
[Completed]
"Are we already back?" I asked, since with the quest completed I assumed we are out of danger for the moment.
"Right, last time you were on this plane you were unconscious," Steve said.
I turned to him in confusion before remembering he was talking about when I was shot and passed out. And by remember, I mean my shoulder from said gunshot sent a flash of pain as if to remind me I was still healing.
"It only took us 5 minutes to fly over to you once we figured out where you two went," Clint told us, which is insane to think about.
"Wait, how fast can this thing go?"
"Top speed is a little under mach 2.5, but we've been cruising at around 2. Only reason it's taken so long to get back is because I had to take us up higher than the ideal flying elevation."
"Neat," I said, a little amused by how into this Clint was.
That is pretty fast. Especially since the quinjet isn't all that aerodynamic. Guess the real lift comes from whatever powers it. I somehow really doubted it was anything normal. Might even be related to the tesseract, considering Shield did study it for years since finding it. I could probably ask Tony how it worked...
Then I remembered Tony was currently mad at me.
I almost wanted to reset to fix that, but that wouldn't change the fact I did choose not to tell anyone about our plan. Sure, it worked out ok so far, but I didn't want to do it again.
Camp Lehigh was now a hole in the ground, but we did find some stuff, and most importantly, Zola was dead. I couldn't believe I forgot about him! But it was just a short part of the second cap movie and there just seemed like more relevant Hydra baddies that needed to be outed. However, the quest did say something like 40% of hydra's forces would be cut.
Was Zola that important?
"Fury's waiting for us," Natasha said just as I was able to see the city.
Steve looked to Bucky, who gave a half shrug that Steve nodded to before walking to the front and pressing the com into his ear.
"Stark? Fury wants a meeting as soon as we land."
I couldn't hear what Tony said in response, but I did see him fly past one of the windows.
"What's going to happen now?" I couldn't help but ask Bucky.
This was now the second time the avengers had gotten involved with Hydra. The element of surprise wasn't going to be an option much longer, but it might've still been too soon for them to do a full-on attack. It wasn't like Hydra had failed to take over the world on live TV this time.
"We need to figure out if it's time to expose all of Hydra to the world," Bucky said, staring at the empty seat across from us.
"Is it?"
Before Bucky could tell me, Steve came back to us.
"Lani, I hate to ask, but is there any way you could use your teleporting ability to get back to your room? Apparently Stark decided we should have our meeting on the landing pad."
"Just me?" I asked since it seemed a little silly to keep me from Fury now that...
...that hadn't happened in this timeline. Fury still didn't know about me. I'd never ran into him with Natasha. I still didn't know why everyone wanted to keep Fury in the dark about me, but I could come up with a few reasons why.
"Fine," I agreed, "but let me know if there's anything I can do to help."
I looked to Bucky as well, since I did know he trusted me enough to tell me the truth. I waited for his nod before apparating away.
[Warning: SP Dangerously Low]
"Welcome back, Miss Lani," Jarvis said before I could get used to the sudden change in momentum from teleporting off a moving plane.
Only the quinjet was flying much faster than the Leviathans were, and I got myself thrown into the wall.
"Ow," I groaned, grabbing my nose that felt like it had taken the brunt of the force.
At least it wasn't my head. I could deal with a broken nose if it meant I could reload later if need be.
"Are you alright, Miss Lani? I could call Dr. Banner up now that code Green has ended."
"I'm fine!" I said.
A quick check of my fingers showed I wasn't even bleeding.
"Wait, Bruce isn't the Hulk right now?" I asked, looking up at the ceiling since I had no idea where Jarvis cameras' were.
"Dr. Banner calmed down 10 minutes and 38 seconds ago. I have already informed him that everyone is back."
It was weird that it took Bruce over an hour to change back. Then again, it's not like I knew how long it usually took him. Also, I didn't think I'd ever asked what set Hulk off, since I doubt Bruce let him out on purpose. I suddenly felt guilty for not asking about Bruce last night/tonight.
"How long is everyone going to talk with Fury?" I asked.
"I am not sure. However, considering Sir is refusing to continue the talk in any of the meeting rooms, I believe it will not be more than 15 minutes."
"Can you ask Bruce if I could visit him?" I asked next, after thinking for a moment.
He'd probably already got caught up with what happened, but I still felt like I should give him my first hand account. Having the new team suddenly leave, and then the place they were at blown up would be nerve wrecking for anyone.
"Dr. Banner is located on floor 75."
I took that as Bruce giving me permission to see him, and since I really didn't feel like waiting for something else to go wrong, I headed to the elevator. I just really hoped that now that Zola was dead-dead, Hydra was going to be too distracted to try outing Bucky on air again. But considering last time that didn't happen until the morning, I would have to wait to find out.
"Hello?" I said, walking into the empty looking lab.
It was way nicer than the labs in my university, and not as chaotic as Tony's lab/workshop. There were also a lot of glass walls, so it didn't take long to see Bruce walking over.
"Lani? Are you alright? Jarvis said you all just got back?"
"Everyone is fine. Had a little turbulence on the plane-thing when the fort exploded, but that was it."
"The fort exploded?!"
"The destruction of the computer servers housing Dr. Zola in the fort triggered a missile to be sent. I was able to triangulate where it was sent, and the rest of the Avengers, plus Sergeant Barnes, are planning a mission currently," Jarvis informed us before I could say anything.
I almost asked Bruce why he wasn't going to the meeting, but the look on his face stopped me. I figured Jarvis already let Bruce know about the meeting before I was invited down.
"You didn't get hurt during the attack earlier today did you?" I ended up asking instead.
"Uh, I was shot, but it's healed now."
"Oh. So that's why Hulk came out."
"The other guy comes out when I lose my temper or get in a life threatening situation... not that it was that bad! But that's why I'm still down here."
I nodded like all of that was new information while looking around... Bruce's lab I guess? It was pretty nice, even if this was just a SI lab Tony let Bruce use. The back area that Bruce likely came from might've been what Tony added in for Hulk while fixing up the tower from Loki's attack last week (was that really only a week ago?).
Then I caught sight of the scepter chilling on one of the desks, a few wires connected to parts of it.
Right. Like Hydra wasn't enough of a problem. There was also Loki's scepter.
I put on my best acting face and tilted my head slightly while asking, "What's that?" as innocently as possible.
"That?" Bruce turned to the scepter and back, "That's what Loki was using five days ago. It's safe, but I would not recommend poking it."
Safe. One of the Infinity Stones that could mind control people with a touch was "safe". Also I was pretty sure it had had something to do with Ultron... not like I'd felt the need to watch that movie before dying or anything.
"How do you and Tony know it's safe?" I asked, hoping it was only those two studying it at the very least.
At least now that everyone knew that Shield and Hydra were, at best, two sides of the same coin, no one would just hand over the scepter. From what I could remember from the internet, Ultron was created after a few years of Tony's unresolved trauma from almost dying in space and no one doing anything about the alien army. Assuming I hadn't made that worse, it would still be a few years before Tony was that desperate.
But they also didn't know about the mind stone...
"There are low levels of gamma radiation coming from it. But once Thor took the tesseract, the levels dropped. It seems to be dormant, which was also the case for the tesseract before it activated. If the documents we got from Shield are accurate." Bruce explained.
"Do you know how the mind control part even works?"
Also, wasn't there something about the mind stone being how Wanda and her brother got their powers? Or were they mutants whose father was Magneto?
"We have a few working theories... come look at this," Bruce said, walking to the fancy computer monitor nearest to the scepter.
I shot him a hesitant look, but followed Bruce anyway. On the monitor, which I quickly realized was another holoscreen, because of course it was, was an Energy vs Time graph. Kilo electronvolts versus seconds, to be exact. The peak that had happened 5 seconds ago was only at around 500 kev. Which is about 10^-14 joules, so not a lot of energy.
"This here," Bruce pulled up another graph, one that wasn't updated, "Is when you entered the lab,"
This one averaged at 50 ev range until the moment Bruce pointed at, which jumped to 200.
"Tony made the connection that each spike corresponds to someone talking. We've been testing it for a few days now," he explained.
"It increases in energy whenever someone talks? But why? Can it convert soundwaves into kinetic energy? No, that wouldn't be right..." I mumbled.
"We were wondering that as well, but it's similar to brain activity."
Brain activity?
"Holy shit, is this thing sentient?!" I asked, turning around to look at the scepter once more.
Come to think about it, didn't I see an Age of Ultron spoiler about the mind stone having an AI in it?
"It looks to have some level of awareness, but we are still trying to map out just what."
I looked back at Bruce when he said that, still wondering just what that meant. Did all the infinity stones have a level of sentience in them? Was magic in the marvel universe sentient? Was it just because it was the mind stone that it had a mind?
"Should we be talking to it?" I asked instead of any of my other questions.
Bruce didn't take his eyes off the monitors.
"This lab is already shielded to prevent any form of transmission," He said, "Not to mention the scepter's power output isn't high enough to do anything like that right now."
"Uh, I was more curious about the... scepter understanding us?"
I wasn't even considering the idea that the thing could be an open com to whoever was listening out there. However, at the same time, I was pretty sure I would have seen theories about that floating around the internet if it were true. For all I knew, Ultron's real mind could have been in that stone.
Or Vision's? I wasn't sure how much of Vision was the stone's mind and how much was the leftovers of Jarvis's AI.
But then again, I had thought the stone in Vision's head was yellow, not blue.
"I suppose it's possible," Bruce hedged, "I know Thor says it's magic... it could be some kind of advanced alien technology. Tony seems certain about that one. But to map it out we need to test how it changes with different stimuli."
"Have you tried talking to it to see if that causes a measurable difference compared to just talking around it?"
[Relationship up]
[Bruce Banner friendship 2]
[Bruce wants to nurture your scientific curiosity]
I tried my best to ignore the sudden text since I was in the middle of a conversation.
"We can do a trial right now," Bruce said, looking excited as he pulled out a keyboard and started getting it ready.
"Uh," I looked over to the scepter then back to Bruce who looked like he was waiting for me to do something.
Like he wanted me to do something that would 'nurture my scientific curiosity' or whatever that meant.
Oh, wait. Was he talking about me helping out with the testing?
"You want me to talk to it?" I clarified.
Bruce nodded.
"If you want to. We've been doing tests in 1, 3, 5, and, at one point, 15 minute intervals. That last one was mostly Tony."
"Okaaay," I agreed even though I wasn't sure this was the best idea.
But wasn't not knowing worse than knowing? Trying to figure this out might help. I just needed to make sure not to say anything that maybe Ultron could use against me or anyone else.
"Hi, I'm Lani," I started with, since Bruce already said my name earlier, "and, uh, nice to meet you?"
I looked over to Bruce who nodded at me to keep going.
"You're from space right? Or at least not from Earth. I love it here, but I wouldn't mind going to space someday. I enjoy traveling and seeing new places, and there is a lot of strange stuff...like I read about a planet that might rain diamonds? It's too far to visit with our current technology, and probably inhospitable to human life even with our suits, but maybe one day? We didn't even know aliens were real until a few weeks ago...and yeah."
Bruce held up his hand and I awkwardly ended my short 1 minute speech to a magical space rock that might be evil.
Bruce led us out of the room before talking.
"That was fascinating! We, of course, will have to do more trials. But activity spiked almost by 200%! Also, if it does have some form of sentience, enough to recognize that it's being spoken to directly, we need to figure out if it can communicate in any way."
I nodded because it was really interesting. It looked just like a gemstone. The fact it might have been thinking in some way just didn't make any sense. There was no brain, and it wasn't even organic. But then again, magic was real here.
"The meeting is done and dinner plans are being discussed", Jarvis announced, "Is there anything you wish for me to tell them you want?"
"We can continue this later if you want. I don't think Tony would mind if you joined us for these tests," Bruce told me, and I had a moment to be surprised by the offer before breaking into a smile.
"That would be great!"
That way I had a reason to keep an eye on what they were doing down here. Hopefully that would stop any Ultron related plans from starting.
Also, I kinda missed being in a lab setting.
"I'm not sure what the others like, but there's this nice Indian place in Queens that I haven't been to in years..." Bruce said as we headed up.
Tony went to his workshop as soon as Fury was done with them and plans for a team dinner was made. He could feel the judging look Cap was giving him, but it was better this way. Brucie's suggestion of Indian food was great, but having dinner with the cyborg and the kid was...
It was going to be close to an hour before it was ready and there was still a lot of work Tony should have been doing. New suit ideas, Hydra files to comb through, not to mention whatever they were able to scrap out of the old Hydra/Shield base. Might even take him more than an hour. Especially if they were moving forward with their plan to stop trying to hide and just hit the bases they knew like good old Captain America wanted.
Which was something Tony could get behind since he was already tired of all this spy shit.
Speaking of which...
"Jarvis, bring up the security footage from this morning."
The screen filled up with all of the different cameras in the tower, too small for Tony to really see, but he quickly got rid of the ones that wouldn't be needed. It didn't matter that Fury used today as a way to lure out Hydra members under his command, it still shouldn't have happened. He made this tower to be safer than his home back in Malibu.
"Hey Jar, why is the camera off?" Tony asked as he noticed a black square.
It was black for only a few frames. But considering they were looping through hours of footage, that would have been almost ten minutes.
"Sergeant Barnes asked me to delete his conversation with Lani soon after she awoke this morning."
"You still have a copy in your back-up, right?" Tony asked, pulling up said back-up on another screen.
"That is correct, sir. The black-out today did not interfere with any of my back-ups."
Tony paused for a second, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. He remembered they had shut down Jarvis today. Not even ten hours ago. Finding a safer place for Jarvis' physical servers was just another thing he'd have to do.
Maybe before making the next suit upgrade even.
"You said this was shortly after the kid woke up?" Tony clarified, staring at the timestamp.
It wasn't like Tony forbid anyone from asking Jarvis to stop recording or even to delete footage, but unless Lani had a nightmare Barnes didn't want anyone to know about, it didn't make sense why he would order those ten minutes wiped. Lani didn't strike him as a kid that would go through the trouble since she liked Jarvis.
Then again, I also thought she wouldn't be the type of kid to fake a kidnapping.
"Miss Lani ran to get Sergeant Barnes and asked Steve to leave while they talked."
Tony frowned at that since there was no way Lani would know that Hydra was going to attack the tower that early, and if they were just making plans like she claimed, why today?
"Sir, Miss Lani was very anxious-"
"Run the backup, Jarvis. With audio. In full screen," Tony interrupted.
"Yes sir."
In the video, Lani and Barnes were just standing in the living room, Lani still wearing the PJ's Tony was sure Pepper had bought her a few days after their first meeting.
Bucky opened his mouth, Lani cut him off before he could say a word.
"I had to reset because Hydra is going to attack the tower today, which we were able to stop them from getting you, but then Pierce made a public announcement about the Winter Soldier which is really bad, and before I reloaded the save, you came up with the idea of trying to let them capture you so that we could figure out what base they are using and attack it," recorded Lani said in a rush, almost too fast for him to follow.
Luckily, Tony was an expert of fast talking. Even if most of it made no sense, he didn't need Jarvis to rewind to understand.
Tony wanted to right it off as the ramblings of a half-awake child who'd had a weird dream... But.
"Jarvis, are you able to delete the footage of what Lani just said?"
Barnes was taking this seriously; as if he knew just what Lani was talking about.
The recovered clip wasn't that long. Around ten minutes like he originally estimated. However Tony only had to re-watch it a few more times for it to make a vague kind of sense. Everything Lani was saying sounded like make-believe, and yet Barnes was using it to plan out what they did that day. Not as if they were coming up with a plan if Hydra attacked, but as if Lani was certain that they would and planning for it accordingly.
It was all just… Hm.
"Jarvis stop the loop," Tony said as he broke apart what happened.
Lani had used the words "reset", "save", and "reload". Maybe Tony could pass that off as the kid incorporating video game lingo into her day to day life. But that still didn't explain how Lani seemed to suddenly wake up knowing Hydra was going to attack within the hour. Not to mention how scared she looked trying to explain what she thought had happened? Would happen?
Pierce telling everyone about the Winter Soldier seemed like a risky movie, but so was attacking his tower. Tony could easily see the strategy behind such a move.
But why would the kid know that? How would she know that?!
Unless...
"Jarvis, tell me I'm crazy and this doesn't sound like a bad knock-off of groundhog day." Tony pleaded with Jarvis.
There was a slight pause before the AI responded.
"Comparing the implied context of what Miss Lani said," he started, "It does match up with the time loop plot from the movie Groundhog Day by 68.9% accuracy, Sir."
"But that's..." Tony waved at the paused security footage.
He wanted to say it was impossible, but was it? Tony already knew that Lani could create a localized wormhole that only affected whatever she was touching. Most theories about wormholes had it affect the space-time continuum, and if that was what Lani was doing, it followed that she might be able to influence the 'time' part as well as the 'space' part.
Similarly, Tony could say that Lani was able to teleport by accessing a higher dimension which she could fold space-time through. It was common thought that if you considered space-time to be the fourth dimension, the fifth dimension would be the timeline of a single person reduced to a point.
Only problem with both of those ideas was that it implied Lani was physically going back in time, and there was no evidence of that happening.
It just looked like the kid had woken up from a bad dream.
"Sir? Dinner has been delivered," Jarvis interrupted, "Should I let everyone know you will be joining them or do I need to come up with an excuse for your absence?"
Tony blinked away from the screen, already feeling a headache coming on from staring too long after an already long day. Not like there was any reason for him to puzzle out this mystery when Lani would have no issues explaining herself when asked directly.
"Tell them I'll be up in five."
A/N: A lot has happened since the last time I posted. Wandavision and falcon and the winter soldier came out (and I watched both of them), and this story have 2 new fics inspired by it. You can get the links easily on the ao3 version of this story, but they are "A Stark Made of Sapphires" by CapturedAngelNo19 and "Reload" by Abbie_Blizzard. I've been reading both. "A Stark Made of Sapphires" is great if you love the idea of Bucky adopting a girl who originally came to our world, while "Reload" is an AU of New Game where there is another player character.
Thank you everyone who has favorited/followed or review this story. Even if I don't respond, I do read every review (often more than once).
Until next time, have a good day/night!