An Adventure Paved In Silver
Several Months Later
"Pietro, you have to get up, now!" Called Mr Harper over the intercom as Pietro groaned. They were in the V.R.S.R (Virtual Reality Simulation Room) as Pietro was undergoing a simulated boxing match in a virtual arena with a crowd against a virtual opponent that just knocked Pietro down who was lying face down on the mat.
"Do you have to keep making them tougher?" Pietro groaned getting his arms underneath him to push himself up.
"Well, we keep having to raise the speed and difficulty of the V.R.S.R to present you a challenge" Mr Harper replied.
When Pietro stood upright again, he took a deep breath, raised his hands by his face to protect himself and stood back into a southpaw fighting stance, he started stepping forward to meet his opponent half way across the ring. Using his superior speed and with a silver streak following his hands and body along with his movements, he jabbed his opponent in the face twice and follwed up with a left cross to his opponents face before raising his hands and covering up to block his opponents punches in retaliation. Pietro stepped to his right to get out of the way of his opponents punches, unleashed a left cross then a right hook that caught his opponent on the side of the head momentarily stunning him. His opponent tried to fire a hook at his head but Pietro ducked under and came back up with a right uppercut then stepped over to his right and hit his opponent with a left hook to his opponents jaw who fell backwards and landed on the mat hard as the virtual referee stood over him and started the count but the opponent couldn't get back up as he was counted out and the referee waved off the fight and the bell rang signalling the fight was over.
"Training session is complete." Called the female voice of the computer over the intercom in the V.R.S.R as the boxing ring, referee, crowd, opponent and arena faded away leaving Pietro in a large, blank square room.
Pietro who was wearing white boxing gloves and blue boxing shorts, took a few deep breaths, wiped his brow with the back of his arm and started to take off the boxing gloves he was wearing before looking over to a window that led to a room that had Lucy sitting, facing him, giving him a double thumbs up with Mr Harper standing behind her watching as well before he leant over and pressed a button next to Lucy who jumped at his sudden movement almost spilling her coffee.
"Well done Mr Maximoff, your Boxing and MMA training is coming along very nicely, you have improved immensely over the last few months, would you please join us in the viewing room? we have something to discuss with you on the matter" Said Mr Harper taking his hand off the button as Pietro nodded and sped over to the door leading to the viewing room, putting the boxing gloves on a rack that was next to the door before stepping through.
"I feel like I'm getting better, I can feel myself getting faster and stronger everyday" Said Pietro rubbing his face with a towel then putting on a t-shirt and a hoodie before taking his hand wraps off. Lucy walked over to check the slight swelling that was forming over Pietro's left eye.
"We believe you have made a full recovery from you're injuries when you started training and we've been monitoring your progress with your martial arts training, free running and parkour excercises and we feel you have outgrown the V.R.S.R." Said Mr Harper.
"Really?" Asked Pietro as Lucy finished checking on Pietro's eye and offered him a bottle of water which he gratefully accepted, chugging a mouthful down.
"Yes, as I said we have to keep raising the speed and difficulty of your opponents so they can keep up with you but we have kranked the machine and the program to be as hard and as fast as it can go and you're still overcoming the various opponents, obstacle courses and time challenges and now with relative ease. We feel it is time to put your training to the test by putting you out onto the field."
"The field?, to do what?" Asked Pietro taking in another mouthful of water.
"To acquire an artifact for an ally that helped us to help you Mr Maximoff."
"So this is to pay off a debt?"
"Not exactly, this is to show our ally a sign of good faith and that humanity is capable of of getting the job done in the universe."
"Wait, he's not human?"
"No he is not, he is a very powerful being in the galaxy and he is searching for certain artifacts and we will procure one for him to show his continued faith in us as a species is well placed. Take the rest of the day off, rest up cause we will be heading out first thing tomorrow morning. Miss Bellman please see to it that Mr Maximoff is well fed, rested and ready for tomorrow." Said Mr Harper.
"Yes sir" Said Lucy who beckoned Pietro to follow her as they left the viewing room and started walking down the hallway side by side.
"So this is it, I'm starting my first mission tomorrow." Said Pietro.
"Nervous?" Asked Lucy.
"Who me? Of course not." Said Pietro trying to hide a smirk.
"Uh huh is that right?" Said Lucy amused as they continued down the hallway in comfortable silence before stepping into the kitchen.
"Well I for one have faith in you. Mr Harper did not go through all the time and effort of helping you only to fall at the first hurdle." Said Lucy preparing a high protein meal for Pietro.
"I don't intend to fall at all." Replied Pietro.
"Glad to hear it Luke Skywalker." Said Lucy.
"Luke Skywalker?"
"Yeah, you know, from Star Wars." Said Lucy looking at Pietro's blank expression.
"Oh right, amnesia, sorry." Said Lucy.
"It's okay, I'm still hopeful that eventually it will all come back to me eventually." Said Pietro
"Yeah I hope it does but hey at least we know what we're doing tonight." Said Lucy excitedly.
"Whats that?" Asked Pietro.
"With your new found free time, we have plenty of time for a Star Wars marathon, that'll keep your mind off tomorrow." Said Lucy.
"Err... okay sure, I suppose I'll have to if I'm to find out what a Luke Skywalker is." Said Pietro.
"Great I haven't seen the original trilogy in ages this is gonna be fun." Said Lucy excited as she handed Pietro his meal.
"Trilogy?"
"Yeah, come on it'll be fun." Said Lucy as she gently grabbed Pietro by the arm as they walked from the kitchen to Lucy's personal room which had a large screen TV. Pietro sat himself down on the two piece sofa and started eating his meal whilst Lucy went to her large DVD and blu-ray boxsets collection and took a while searching before she finally found what she was looking for and put in the first film as Pietro stared at her collection which almost covered an entire wall then looked back at Lucy as she was sitting down next to him.
"What? we're in a space station in the middle of space, I barely get any time off to go home to Earth. This is the best way to occupy myself." Said Lucy.
"I'm not judging." said Pietro taking a mouthful of food as one side of Lucy's mouth twisted.
"You were." Said Lucy as the film started.
"So what do you think?" Asked Lucy hours later as the credits for Return Of The Jedi rolled.
"It was great I loved it, are there really aliens like that in the Galaxy?" Asked Pietro.
"Some, I'm pretty sure George Lucas must have travelled in space then came back and made the films and put the species he found in it."
"And you really think I'm Luke Skywalker?" Asked Pietro.
"Yeah, you know, you're young, you are about to go on adventures in the galaxy, you have that cocky naivity thing going on and you have superpowers with training so yeah I'd say you are Luke Skywalker." Said Lucy.
"But Han Solo's way cooler, I'm more like him then I am Skywalker."
"Oh please you'd be Jabba the Hutt before you'd be Han Solo. Nope you're Luke Skywalker alright." Said Lucy.
"Well at least I hope I don't have a twin sister that'd kiss me like that." Said Pietro as Lucy giggled.
"I sure hope not." Giggled Lucy as Pietro chuckled with her before they eventually fell to silence.
"Do I though?"
"Do you what?" asked Lucy turning her whole body to face Pietro.
"Have a sister, a brother, mother, father anything? Do I have any family at all?" Asked Pietro.
"I wouldn't know. I was only assigned to aid your recovery, I was only given the basics about you." Lucy sadly replied.
"I asked Mr Harper several times but he always finds a way to either dodge the question or come up with a new way to say "later" it's frustrating." Said Pietro.
"I can only imagine what that must be like. To remember nothing it must be horrible. Well at least we can be sure that you are unique." Said Lucy.
"How do you figure that?"
"Well I'm pretty sure that no one else can go as fast you can if there were more people like you then we'd be aware of them. The speeds you can achieve its so fascinating, I'd love to know how your body can achieve such speed cause the human body shouldn't be able to go that fast and take the amount of force that you do and for your bones to not shatter." Said Lucy.
"Sounds like you want to dissect me."
What? no I didn't mean that. I only meant that your body would be and interesting specimen to study... Wait no thats worse." Lucy held her head embarrassingly as Pietro laughed.
"Why Miss Bellman? All you have to do is ask nicely." Said Pietro bobbing his eyebrows up and down suggestively as Lucy playfully slapped his shoulder.
"Shut up, you know what I meant." Said Lucy.
"Didn't you study my body when I was unconscious?" Asked Pietro.
"Not in depth, like I said I'm only here to aid your recovery nothing more." Said Lucy.
"I see."
"You know, theres a new Star Wars film coming out soon."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah I'm so looking forward to it. When it comes out we'll have to go to Earth and see it."
"I'd like that."
"Cool." Said Lucy as they fell into silence again before Pietro spoke up.
"Do you trust him? Mr Harper I mean." Asked Pietro.
"When it comes to the advancement of the Human race sure it couldn't ask for a better advocate. I realise he's not always a very pleasant man but whatever he does it has humanities best interest in mind."
"What did he do to have you so loyal to him?" Asked Pietro.
"His resources are almost limitless, so when he had the pick of anyone he wanted to help him and he chose me, I felt honoured, I saw what he was trying to accomplish and I wanted to help in anyway I could so he brought me out here into space, he provided me with anything I needed to complete the assignment I was given, he has shown so much confidence in me that he just comes to me with a job and a big cheque book and says "do it" and eventually he gave me the assignment of looking after you. So yeah I've never been given much reason to doubt him and I'd much rather have someone like him represent humanity then say the Avengers." Said Lucy.
"The Avengers?"
"A team of superheroes that fight the big fights that they can't fight alone. They came together during a massive alien attack on New York a few years ago." Explained Lucy.
"Aliens attacked Earth?"
"Yeah a whole army of them and a few individuals fought them off then they took to calling themselves the Avengers."
"I find it hard to believe that a few people could fight off an entire army."
"Well thats why they call themselves 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' together they could beat anybody." Said Lucy.
"If they're so great then why did you say that you'd rather have Mr Harper represent humanity then them?" Asked Pietro.
"Well a few months ago one of them, Tony Stark built an A.I program called Ultron that turned against them and nearly destroyed the World. They stopped it in the end but so many people died in the battle of Sokovia and the entire capital city of Novi Grad was destroyed-."
"Wait, destroyed? I'm from Novi Grad, Sokovia and you're telling me its gone?" said Pietro.
"Yes, it is." said Lucy suddenly realising that this is the first time that Pietro is hearing about it.
"I'm so sorry Pietro but its true." Said Lucy putting her hand on Pietro's arm gently rubbing and squeezing it as Pietro could only look ahead deep in thought.
"So now not only can I not remember who I am or if I have any family but now my home is destroyed too." Said Pietro as Lucy scooted herself to sit closer to Pietro and put an arm around his shoulder and stroke his hair to comfort him.
"I'm afraid so Pietro."
"But why? Why would they do something like that?"
"Arrogance, they tried to build something whilst not fully understanding it and it backfired. That's what happens with people like Tony Stark and the Avengers, because they do some good in the world they think they're entitled to play god with it and the people in it. It may start with good intentions but people will still suffer for it."
"Like me?, is that how I ended up here with amnesia?" Asked Pietro.
"It is, I don't know the specifics of what happened but yes it is how you came to being in our care." Said Lucy as Pietro struggled to think of what to say next.
"As hard as it will be to do, try not to dwell on it right now you have a busy day tomorrow and you need to focus on that."
"Yeah, yeah sure." Pietro sighed.
"Come on cheer up." Lucy gently nudged her shoulder into Pietro. "One more thing, I have a present for you." Said Lucy getting up and walking over to her desk and looking for the drawers.
"A present?"
"Yeah, since you haven't been to Earth that you can remember yet, I thought that I'd get you something from Earth that you could take with you wherever you go." said Lucy as she unveiled an Ipod.
"It already has plenty of music on it, here listen." said Lucy putting the Ipod onto a Dock and turned it to play "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
"This is pretty cool thanks." said Pietro enjoying the music.
"And it's all classics from Earth so at least you have something right?"
"Yeah this is great thank you." As the song finished and Lucy removed it from the Dock then grabbed a pair of headphones and handed them to Pietro.
"Here, you should go and get to bed its an early start tomorrow."
"Yeah okay, I just wish Mr Harper would tell me what the assignment is." said Pietro standing up.
"I know, I do too but don't worry you'll be fine I'm sure of it. Good night Pietro." smiled Lucy as Pietro turned to leave.
"Thank you I won't let you down, thanks for the evening and the Ipod" said Pietro leaving to go back to his room and going straight to bed.
AN: The next few chapters will be Pietro-centric to move the story along. Wanda and the Avengers will show up again later. Please review constructive criticism is always welcome.