Chapter 10
After managing to get into Galactic Authority airspace, Quill, Rocket, and Nebula quickly set to work setting their path for Sakaar yet also trying to evade all of the security measures that the Authority had in place throughout their airspaces. Tony, feeling relatively useless and anxious, leaned back in his seat, playing with his hands in his lap. Thoughts were running through his head at a million miles per hour – what if we die here and Pep is alone, what if we can’t find Peter, what if we can’t find the arena, what if, what if, what if –
What if Peter is dead.
That last thought bounced around his brain like a loaded gun, threatening to shoot off at any time and send Tony into a total system shutdown. He’d been worried about this even before Peter was kidnapped by aliens.
And if you died, I feel like that’s on me.
He’d told the kid that, two years ago when the boy was fifteen. When he ignored the warning signs, ignored everything the kid told him. He knew Peter was smart, but at that point, he didn’t realize the level of intelligence and willpower the kid held. Tony had come to realize that there was more to Peter than meets the eye – everyone that had a run-in with either Peter Parker or Spider-Man had the same realization – but that thought never strayed from Tony’s mind. No matter how intelligent the kid was, how many times he’d keep getting back up… if he died, Tony knew it would be his fault.
Especially now. He could’ve picked the kid up from school, he could’ve implemented more security measures – there were so many things Tony could’ve done to prevent this.
Only he didn’t.
And now the kid was existing months ahead of Tony, if he even existed anymore at all.
Nebula was working on patching through the encryption on the Authority’s communication waves in space around them to try to get any more information on the progress of the games, but it was tough. She couldn’t seem to find anything. Or maybe she did, and she was withholding it from Tony to prevent a panic attack and a rampage that the team would have to deal with.
“...security? Our clearance code can only go so far. We’re supposed to be on…” Quill glanced at his pilot’s screen, “...Zyloph Prime. That’s at the edge of the system.”
Tony drew his attention back to the trio in front of him. They were planning something else. Tony needed to be a part of this. He may not have been able to protect the kid in the past, but he heard Pepper’s voice in his head saying You can still do something to save him, Tony. So do what you do best, and save him.
“What’s the problem?” Tony inquired, forcing his body to move from where it had been frozen in anxiety. He leaned forward and poked his head into the group.
“Sakaar is the capital of the Galactic Authority, meaning it has the highest security measures that they have to offer,” Nebula recapped. Tony nodded.
“Nothing we can do to sneak by? Even if it’s only for a little bit?” Tony inquired. Rocket let out a short, dry bark.
“I’m surprised that Star-Loser over here was even able to get us past the first round of security, nevermind the highest level of it.”
Tony furrowed his brows. He was out of his element here, he knew that much. “FRI, can you tell Cap and the others to get up here?”
Nebula shared a quizzical glance with Tony, and Tony shrugged. “We might have to fight our way through this one. Think we can manage?”
“No,” Nebula said, curt and harsh. As Tony heard most of the team file into the cockpit behind him, he looked to the raccoon. He was the most daring of the bunch, and the most willing to concoct dangerous plans, it seemed. That meant that the grimace on the raccoon’s face was not a good sign.
“I hate to say it, and this is the only time you’ll hear this, but she’s right,” Rocket said just in time for the rest of the group to hear.
“So you’re telling me you dragged us this far without a plan?” Nat said, crossing her arms and frowning. She sounded highly skeptical of the Guardians and very irritated. An irritated Black Widow was never a good thing; Tony knew that much.
“The plan was making a plan!” Quill defended himself, throwing his hands into the air. Nebula looked over to him.
“You told me the Ravagers had a battle plan they gave you to get through Sakaar,” Nebula said incredulously. Peter grimaced and shrugged.
“Okay, so maybe their battle plan was to get here and wait until all hell breaks loose,” Peter sheepishly told them, lifting his hand to scratch the back of his head.
“You’re telling me you based this entire operation off of people who have an entire fleet to fight with?! And we only have twelve people?!” Rocket said, jumping out of his chair and onto the arm of it, elevating himself high up above Peter’s head. The group began to barrage Peter with insults, concerns, and exasperated comments before Tony saw red.
“GUYS!” Everyone silenced at the sound of Steve’s voice behind Tony. Steve shared a curt nod with Tony before looking over the rest of the group. “Regardless of what happened, we’re here now. We made it past the Authority, but now we need a plan to get through Sakaar’s defenses. Sitting here arguing isn’t going to get us to Peter any faster. Any brilliant ideas?”
Everyone was silent for a bit while they chewed Cap’s words. He was right; their goal was to save Peter, and they all needed to put their heads together again and figure out a way to do that.
“We could try using a cloaking device to hide our ship’s signature. It might help us slip in undetected,” Nebula offered, breaking the steely sheet of silence that had settled over the group.
“Oh, great idea, Nebula. Because nothing says invisible like a gigantic spaceship trying to blend in. Smooth move,” Rocket sarcastically responded, crossing his arms and allowing himself to fall back into his chair.
“I am Groot.”
“No!” Rocket shouted. Tony could see his hands flail up in frustration. “Covering the ship in your branches isn’t any less suspicious! When’s the last time you’ve seen a giant ball of floating branches, nimrod!”
“Fear not, Rocket. With my lightning, I can create a diversion that will draw their attention away from our ship,” Thor chimed in. He straightened his posture a bit and puffed out his chest. “Besides, the people of the planet quite like me. Perhaps they will think I am coming back to visit!”
“Didn’t you escape and break out of there, and kill a bunch of people in the process?” Bucky said, raising an eyebrow. Thor frowned.
“Well, yes, but-”
“Thor’s right.” Tony cut the god off. “We need to cause a distraction – maybe not something so obvious – but something big enough to disrupt their defenses momentarily. God knows how many times that’s been used against us.”
“What if we disguise our ship as a garbage scow? We can play into Sakaar’s junkyard theme and go under the radar,” Clint suggested.
“Wow, at least one person here has done their homework,” Nebula muttered under her breath. Clint looked pleased with himself. Quill nodded.
“Good thinking. We’ll just look like a bunch of scavengers until we’re close enough to make our move. We can still combine the disguise with Thor’s diversion for some extra chaos. It’s risky, but it might just work,” Peter added. He seemed proud of himself even though it wasn’t his plan – Nebula and Rocket didn’t seem to forget that, rolling their eyes at his plan even though they were accepting it.
“Wow, Quill, you’re a regular genius. Who knew a bunch of junk and a little spark would be the key to breaking into this place?” Rocket sarcastically jabbed.
“Fear not, rabbit. My lightning is much more than a little spark. It will shake their defenses to the core.”
“Right, because thunder and lightning always solve everything.”
Immediately, Peter recruited Tony to help transform the ship into a convincing garbage scow. “You have enough scrap in here to fund the Avengers for years,” Tony commented as Quill led him into the storage hull of their ship.
“We come across a lotta wreckages,” Quill said, grunting as he began to sift through all the junk and pull out larger pieces of scrap metal and debris into a pile to attach to the exterior of the ship. “I knew this stuff was gonna be valuable one day.”
After Quill and Tony had gathered a modest amount of debris and scrap, they both donned their masks and exited the ship through the airlock in the storage hull. Rocket had slowed the ship to a stop in the middle of deep space within the Authority’s territory, figuring that this was too far out for any patrols to come through. He was currently working with Nebula on adjusting the ship’s systems to emit the characteristic hum and flickering lights that were typically associated with shitty junkyard vessels.
Disguising the ship was a painstaking process, but between Quill and Tony, it didn’t take long. After welding an appropriate amount of debris and scrap metal onto the exterior of the ship, both Quill and Tony flew a little further away to check out the integrity of the disguise. “Could look better,” Tony commented.
“The point of it is to look bad. Gotta make this baby look like a piece of junk instead of the beautiful lady she is,” Quill corrected. Tony sighed in his suit. He couldn’t believe he was on a rescue mission with these idiots. Still, the disguise seemed adequate, and they re-boarded the ship. Nat helped Groot find the cloaking device Quill had stolen from a Sovereign ship and brought it to Rocket to install into the control planet in the cockpit. Once the disguise was complete, they were in a fully functional battleship that looked like a typical run-of-the-mill garbage scow. Thor confirmed that it would fit right into the junkyards outside of the larger cities of Sakaar. That part didn’t really matter. They just needed to get in and avoid detection until they found the arena, at least.
Before Tony got back into the cockpit, Quill got there first and glanced at Nebula over his shoulder. He scanned the room to make sure Tony or any of the Avengers were in there before he spoke. “Hey, Neb. I heard about the whole time thing going on here – are we sure that this kid is even going to be alive? I mean, even if he is, if the games are over, how are we going to get him out of the city?”
Nebula barely moved her head, but she responded to Quill in a low voice. “When we get to Sakaar, the entirety of the live stream of the games will be uploaded into my memory banks. I’ll know if he’s alive or…” her voice faded off for a few moments. “If he’s still in the arena, it shouldn’t be hard to find by detecting the power signatures of the force field used for the arena. If he’s in the capital somewhere, we may need to lay lower and send lowkey teams into the city to get him.”
“And if he’s dead?”
“Then we get the hell out of there.”
“Alright, team, going through the final jump point in T minus one. Strap in, this might be a rough entry,” Quill informed the team through the comms they all had fitted into their respective masks and suits. Trepidation swirled through everyone’s stomachs. It was only a matter of time until they’d figure out if their disguise was going to work, or if they were going to be blown out of the sky. Tony couldn’t figure out if he was excited or terrified. Excited for the possibility he might get his kid back, terrified of the other possibility.
Thor had reached the jump point a few minutes before them. His plan was to race around the atmosphere with his lightning, pretending he was making a grand re-entrance to Sakaar and stunning the cities. Thor was confident that the public still loved him too much for the navy to just try to shoot him down right away.
Rocket’s hands worked deftly on the controls of the ship as it approached the final jump point to Sakaar that materialized in front of them only because they had the correct coordinates input into their computers. The ship hummed due to Rocket and Nebula’s tinkering, and they could hear light banging on the outside of their ship as the scrap metal and debris to disguise their battleship lightly clanged against the side. Tony’s hands gripped the arms of his seat so hard that his knuckles began to turn white. “Three,” Rocket counted down, his hands guiding the ship towards the center of the jump point.
“Two.”
The kid was laying on the floor, blood streaming from his eyes and ears and mouth, his skin so, so cold —
“One.”
Everyone’s stomachs rose and fell as the ship made it through the jump point. Before Tony was the most bizarre planet he’d ever seen before (not that he’d had the pleasure of seeing a lot of planets). If the situation was different, he’d probably be amazed. He may even never want to leave the place. Purple and black wormholes swirled throughout the planet’s atmosphere. They were spewing… dust? No. That couldn’t be it. Tony narrowed his eyes. They were spewing junk and debris. This is what he’d read. This is why they needed to disguise themselves as a junker.
The planet was covered in mountains upon mountains of things that were vomited out by the second from space. Tony could see small specks roaming over the mountains, looking for anything of value. Dotted in between the landscape of trash were large, gleaming cities that were a conglomerate of architecture and designs that Tony had never seen before. The cities were surrounded by giant, gleaming walls that protected the civilization from the trash surrounding them.
The biggest concern, though, was the stations in orbit around the planet and the ships patrolling the atmosphere. They moved like a well-oiled machine. Ships patrolled to watch out towards space, and Tony saw that each and every wormhole had stations on either side, most likely watching everything that was vomited out to identify any serious threats or breaches of security. Far above the planet was a massive, rotating funnel cloud the size of New York City. The center of the funnel cloud emanated a bright red glow that was almost too bright for Tony to look at, even from this far. There were small black dots surrounding the funnel cloud; Tony presumed it was now well-guarded due to Bruce’s outline of the way he, Thor, and Valkyrie escaped through the unmanned wormhole. Fortunately for them, as long as they could get out of the atmosphere of Sakaar without being shot to shreds, Rocket insisted that they wouldn’t struggle too much to get out of Galactic Authority space. “Now that is definitely a wormhole worth of the name Devil’s Anus,” Rocket chuckled.
While everyone inspected the planet they’d worked so hard to get to in front of them, a large burst of white light far in the atmosphere to their right hit all of their eyes. Thor was blasting around the planet, making a spectacular light show. Behind him was a trail of at least thirty different navy ships, but Thor’s prediction seemed right. They were simply trailing and not firing any shots. Thor concentrated his show above several cities that were clustered very closely together. Tony prayed to whoever was listening that the navy would be too distracted by the god’s spectacle to put too much thought into a random junker getting onto the planet.
“Rocket, heads up,” Nebula said. Through the front viewport of the ship, everyone in the cockpit could see two patrol ships swivel around and begin to head towards their ship. Quill was designated to, yet again, be the spokesperson for the group. They glided towards the patrol ships, Rocket slowing down the ship as the patrol ships got closer.
The comm light blinked green, and the patrol ship’s captain’s voice crackled to life through the comms.
“Attention unidentified vessel. This is the Galactic Authority Navy. You are in restricted airspace. Stand down immediately and prepare for inspection.”
“Alright, stay calm. We stick to the plan. We’re just a group of harmless junkers. I’ll handle this,” Peter whispered to the rest of the inhabitants of the cockpit. He turned back to face the comms. “This is a junk scow hailing from Stellar Salvagers. We’re just a bunch of junkers who came from a different in-system planet directed here by our superiors. Just looking for some scrap material, you know how it is.”
“We’ve been informed that your ship’s identification doesn’t match any registered scrapping company, and there’s no record of a Captain John Travolta working for them. Explain yourselves.”
In a heartbeat, Rocket, Nebula, and Tony’s hearts sank as they realized that their cover had been blown. Immediately, nanobots crawled over Tony’s body and covered him in his Mark 85 suit. It seemed they’d underestimated the thoroughness of their security measures.
“Uh, you must have some outdated records or something. Look, it’s just a misunderstanding. We’re harmless junkers, I swear.
“Insufficient explanation. You are to be detained for further investigation.”
Before the captain of the Authority vessel could finish his sentence, Rocket was firing up all engines and warming up the guns. Tony was talking through the comms. “Hey Thunder Biceps, we have a problem. We need you back over here.”
“Thunder Biceps? Is that the best you can do?” Thor’s voice crackled back throughout the entire team’s comms, hazy and distant as it was overshadowed by the loud cracks of lightning surrounding the god. Tony’s voice in the comms made the entire team’s heads snap up in attention. Outside of the cockpit, Tony could see a blinding white stream of light heading directly for their ship.
“Well, you know me, always striving for perfection. But hey, Thunder Biceps has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
With that, all hell broke lose.
With a singular motion, Thor crashed through the roof of the first naval ship with Stormbreaker, lightning bursting through the ship and turning it into a ball of flames that began to get pulled down by the gravity of the planet. As Thor burst out of the bottom of the first ship, a new bolt of energy rendered the second ship useless.
Tony, already racing out of the cockpit towards the airlock in the armory, almost ran into Sam who was making for the same exact exit. Sam gave Tony a deft nod, and Groot, who had already reached the back of the ship, opened the airlock. Sam and Tony both jumped out of the ship, Sam’s wings carving through the air and Tony’s thrusters firing up with a whirr. They both peeled apart and soared alongside the ship with precision, creating an aerial spectacle to distract the ships further as well as protect their team. Patrol ships all throughout the atmosphere began to turn towards the spectacle; Thor was doing his best work to keep the area clear, while Tony took potshots at the ships from a distance.
Meanwhile, inside the ship, Nat and Bruce joined Peter, Nebula and Rocket in the cockpit. Clint and Bucky sat near the open airlock, Bucky with a giant gun resting on his shoulder and Clint with an explosive arrow nocked and at the ready. Cap stood on the other side of Bucky, shield braced but with no way to do any damage from a distance. Groot stood just behind the three, curling tendrils of wood around their ankles so they didn’t fly out of the airlock in the case of any sudden turns or rolls.
“Rocket, I’m accessing the planet’s network. I can find the coordinates for the arena from the metadata within the stream, but it’s going to take me some time. Quill, keep those patrol ships off our back,” Nebula ordered. She reached for a wire from a nearby screen and immediately plugged it into one of the plates on her head before going to work on the screen.
“Oh, I’m on it,” Quill said with a mischievous grin. He gave full control of the ship over to Rocket while he accessed the guns of the ship, immediately firing into the throng of naval ships heading towards them. As the guns began firing, Thor was taking out the larger ships that approached, which seemed to keep the rest at bay. Tony fired repulsion blasts at the ships who looped around to pursue the team, skillfully dipping and dodging to evade their return fire. Sam, on the other side of the ship, weaved through the chaotic airspace, using a combination of missiles and deflecting with his vibranium wings to keep shots away from the more sensitive parts of the ship. Whenever ships came close enough to the team, Bucky and Clint shot. They at least deterred pilots from getting too close.
Back in the cockpit, Nebula hacked into Sakaar’s network, fingers rapidly tapping on the screen. “Rocket, I got it! The arena is in the northeastern sector of the planet. Coordinates are locked into your nav-system.”
“Plotting a course!” Rocket shouted back, just as Peter let out a devious laugh as the combination of his fire and Thor’s lightning took out a row of ships.
“This is your last attempt to stand down. Surrender, or face death.”
“Kiss. My. Ass!” Quill shouted, slamming his hand down on the ship’s comms and permanently turning them off for the time being.
“Alright, team, time to really test this distraction. Sam, Tony, keep those patrol ships occupied with Thor. We’re heading to the arena. Everyone else, buckle up!” Quill shouted through the comms. Sam, who was within eyesight of the cockpit, saluted while he peeled off the side of the ship. Iron Man followed Falcon and they dove into the throng of ships being brutalized by Thor.
With a burst of speed, the ship accelerated and dove towards Sakaar’s surface in a tight nose spin. Groot’s grip around the trios’ ankles tightened, keeping them from blowing out of the back of the ship. “I feel pretty useless right now!” Bucky shouted over the wind, giving Groot a grateful nod.
“How do you think I feel always fighting off world-ending threats with a bow and arrow?” Clint reciprocated with a weary grin on his face. The ship corrected its course as it leveled out, flying low and fast over Sakaar’s surface. Rocket expertly weaved the ship throughout the mountains of trash. A few junkers here and there attempted to take their ship down at the chance of getting some sort of bounty, but the combination of Quill, Bucky, and Clint kept anyone from trying too hard. Sam and Tony continued their tactics, a couple hundred of feet in the air above the ship, diverting the attention away from the escaping vessel.
As the ship approached the northeastern sector, the team braced themselves for the fight ahead. They knew the true challenge lay in trying to get into the arena, but they were determined to succeed at this point.
Through the front of the cockpit, Rocket continued to navigate through the course he’d plotted while Quill worked on keeping their path clear. Above them, lightning crackled through the atmosphere, tearing through the fleet that seemed to never end. Missiles began to knock down towers of trash into their path, but Quill made sure to shoot any debris out of their way. As they made their way through the planet, Quill glanced back at Nebula. “Are we getting any closer?” He sounded concerned.
“It should be coming up within the next click,” Nebula said, narrowing her eyes and continuing to watch out of the front of the cockpit.
“How will we know what it is?” Nat asked, strapped into one of the seats behind Quill.
“Oh, you’ll know,” Bruce answered. “It’s going to seem pretty out of place.”
Suddenly, as if Bruce talking about it spawned the arena into existence, a sprawling dome appeared just as Quill blasted another mound of debris out of their way. “Holy shit,” Nat whispered, neck craning up to see the full extent of the arena. It extended to each side as far as she could see, absolutely and positively huge. The outside of the arena was built from a silver material, and the glow of a force field surrounded it. There was a ring of ground reinforcements surrounding the arena that turned their focus to the approaching ship.
“Well, shit,” Peter said as they started to fire. He began to blast at them, but it wasn’t enough.
“We need to clear out the ground defenses before we can get in there,” Nebula said, frowning. “Each of those power stations they’re guarding must power the force field — if they’re taken out, we’ll be able to get into the arena.”
“Hear that, everyone?” Tony’s voice rang through the comms. He grunted as he narrowly avoided a missile. “Let’s take down those power stations.”
From the front of the cockpit, Nat watched two figures moving so fast they were blurry, taking out the power stations with a combination of missiles and blasts from Iron Man’s repulsors.
Meanwhile, in the back of the ship, Clint glanced between Groot and the wall of weapons. “Hey, Sap-maker, which one of these will keep me attached to the ship?”
Groot gave Clint a knowing look before a branch snaked up the wall and gripped a small, metal disc. “I am Groot.” The branch grabbed the disc and snaked towards Clint’s foot before snapping the disc onto Clint’s boot.
“Clint, are you sure about this?” Cap asked, straightening his stance. Clint shrugged.
“We are in a space planet surrounded by… Devil’s anuses. Is it possible to be sure of anything right now?”
The disc emanated a purple glow around Clint’s feet, and with that, he ran out of the airlock around the edge of the ship. The purple glow allowed his boots to stick to the surface of the ship somehow, but now wasn’t the time for Clint to ask questions. He wasn’t a science guy, anyways. He was pretty much just a “point-here-and-shoot” kinda guy.
Clint made his way to the top of the ship, planted his feet, and began to shoot arrow after arrow at each power station. It took a few minutes, but eventually, the ground defenses began to thin. With all the trash around them to navigate, the team came to the silent conclusion that it would take a while for ground reinforcements to come.
“Got the last one!” Sam’s voice rang through the comms.
With that, Rocket pushed the ship into a spinning ascent, heading for the top of the arena. Clint crouched on the top of the ship, face paling as they quickly left the ground. His boots were still stuck to the surface of the ship, but he was still terrified.
“Alright, team, approaching our entry point. Let’s get ready for our grand entrance. Nebula, keep an eye on the scanners for ground reinforcements. If they get the shields back up while we’re in there, we’re toast,” Rocket ordered.
“Copy that,” Nebula said.
“Naval reinforcements are still coming steady — Thor, Tony, we’ve gotta keep ‘em covered from up here,” Sam’s voice rang out.
“No-can-do, bird, I’ve got a kid I have to get to,” Tony said.
“Tony, we need you in the air. We can take it from here. The best way to keep Pete safe is by protecting him from above,” Cap added. Nat and Bruce shared a glance. It went without saying that Cap probably just didn’t want Tony to scour the arena just to find no Peter, which meant a… which meant a dead Peter.
“Quill, get us through that arena,” Rocket said as the ship came to a stop, hovering just above the metal dome. Peter clenched his jaw and pressed down on the ship’s heavy-duty missiles that he had been saving just in case. The ship let forth a blaze of fury as Peter let go of every missile the ship had. They hit the tough, silvery metal with a giant, constant explosion of bright white light. The barrage lasted for fifteen seconds before the last of the missile reserves were empty.
As the smoke and fire slowly dissipated, Quill watched as a jagged circle ever so slowly began to break off from the steel, and then…
It fell down into the arena.
Past the metal, all Quill could see was white.
“Go, now!” Bruce urged. He could feel traces of Hulk peeling back at his mind, threatening to come out in defense of the boy. Not now, Bruce told Hulk. Please not now.
Rocket gently descended through the hole made in the arena.
Clint, still on top of the ship, had an explosive arrow nocked in his bow. However, as the ship descended into the arena, his breath was knocked out of him by a wave of absolutely frigid air. A chill immediately ran through his body. From the open airlock, Cap, Groot, and Bucky were all hit with a similar wave of icy air.
Through the cockpit, as everyone’s eyes adjusted, they glanced around the space around them. The walls of the arena were covered with some sort of screen — everyone in the ship knew that they were surrounded by miles upon miles of space junk, but to their eyes, the walls of the arena made it seem like snow mountains capped in ice were surrounding the arena. “Wow,” Bruce said under his breath, looking all around him. The arena itself was filled with several different icy landscapes: there was a vast swath of frozen forests. A frozen river ran throughout the length of the arena. On the furthest side from them, after the forest ended, there was a landscape with a plethora of tall, twisted, icy spires and formations spurting from the ground creating their own “ice-forest” in a sense. To the right, there was an open field of snowy hills. Below them, a faint red glow emanated from the top of a particularly tall hill. There seemed to be pools of lava deep within the hill, sending steam up into the air. In the center of the dome, a large structure shaped like a cornucopia, covered with ice, stood tall and reflected the artificial light in the arena. Snowflakes fell all around them. Immediately, Clint started to become covered with snowflakes. He shivered, lowering his bow and beginning to rub his arms to stay warm. His breath was visible in front of him.
“Everyone alright down there?” Sam asked through the comms.
“Yea,” Cap responded, but he, too, was in a slight state of shock due to the 180 the environment around them had done. He couldn’t quite understand how they could manipulate the weather of such an enormous, closed area like this. “We’re in.”
As the ship overlooked the massive, icy arena, an air of silence settled over all the members of the team in and on the ship. Something eerie and ominous filled their body, making everyone’s skin crawl — there was grief, there was anger, but most of all, they could feel an air of profound sadness. Not only were they forcing kids to kill one another, but they had to do it in sub-zero degree weather. They could feel death hanging over this place, palpable in the air all around them. There was misery, there was hatred, there was a longing to be in a different place.
“The games are almost over,” Nebula said so quietly, her voice almost whispering.
“How do you know?” Nat asked, glancing over to the blue woman. Nebula’s eyes fell to the ground.
“Our scanners are only detecting two life-form signatures from the ground.”
Nat looked back out of the cockpit window. With a few taps of her fingers, Nebula transmitted the exact location that the scanners were detecting — both of the life forms were with one another. Whether it was through luck or divine fate, they’d managed to arrive just at the finale of the games. Nobody spoke. Nat would’ve thought by the time they got this close, victory within their grasp, everyone’s nerves would be alight with adrenalin, their will to move forward rearing like a horse — but it wasn’t. The team had never been quieter. In Clint’s ears, all he could hear was the whistling of the wind while the ship moved through the arena like a doctor in a morgue.
Peter could already be long-dead. They had no idea who they were going to find.
“No matter who we find, we have to save them,” Quill murmured under his breath. Rocket gave a grim nod; even the light-hearted raccoon couldn’t find a joke to lighten the mood here. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Tony that the person they saved wasn’t Peter. In fact, he didn’t even want to be in the same galaxy once Tony and the rest of the Avengers found out.
The coordinates were guiding the ship over the still, icy arena towards the opposite end where the twisted spires and pillars of ice reached into the air. Through the limited visibility they had through the snowfall, everyone watched the arena pass by below them. Trees were knocked down with scorch marks and craters were carved deep into the earth; the frozen river, in parts, was flowing a little bit with large chunks of ice clogging up the current. Clint looked to the right, where there was an empty, hilly plain of snow and ice. On the other side of the plan there seemed to be a labyrinth of towering, icy walls; flowing from over the top of one of the walls was a flowing waterfall. The bottom of the waterfall wasn’t frozen, and the first little bit of the river was also thawed; the further down it got, more chunks of ice were gathering and bunching up against one another. “This place is a death trap,” Clint murmured into the comms. Looking out of the back of the ship, Cap silently agreed.
The ship glided through the arena like a ghost, and all too fast they approached the ground where the signatures were reading.
“Quill?” Nebula said, leaning forward.
“Yea?”
“There’s… there’s only one signature left. The second one just faded out.”
Everyone in the cockpit’s stomach twisted when they heard Nebula’s voice.
Rocket gently guided the ship down as close as he could get, but they couldn’t see much past the icy spires that lifted high into the air. “I can’t get any closer. Can anyone see anything?” Rocket asked into the comms.
“On it,” Clint said. He carefully put his explosive arrow back into his sheath and slipped his bow back onto his back. Holding out his arm, he pressed a button and a grappling hook attached itself to the edge of the ship. Clint grabbed the long cord that was wrapped within the hook and rappelled down the side of the ship before he began to sink down in between the icy spires. The spires seemed to swallow him up, and he quickly realized that the formations blocked out a lot of the light from the sky. Fortunately, they also seemed to provide decent shelter from the snowfall. Clint looked down at the ground, eyes scanning for any clue to who was down here —
There.
He saw a trail of blood leading between the spires.
Fueled by adrenaline, Clint dropped down from the cord when it was still around four feet from the ground and hit the snow with ease. He immediately set into a sprint, following the trail of blood.
“Cap? Bucky? I’m going to need one of you down here.”
Glancing at each other, both of the supersoldiers moved to jump out of the hovering spaceship. Cap put a hand on Bucky’s chest, and their eyes met. Cap gave him an almost imperceptible shake of his head, communicating everything he needed to without having to use any words. Bucky took a small step forwards while Groot moved forward with Cap. Before Cap reached the edge of the airlock, Groot already started growing a root down into the air below, stretching and growing towards the ground. Cap gripped the wood and half-slid, half-climbed down Groot’s limb, barreling towards the snow as fast as he could.
Cap jumped to the ground when he was still thirty-feet up, and landed in a crouch.
He saw Clint just past one of the icy spires, kneeling on the ground next to a figure.
Cap’s heart clenched. It wasn’t often he got frazzled at the side of a bloodied body, but now was one of those times. Racing forward, Cap’s heart was beating so hard he thought it might burst out of his chest entirely. When he reached Clint, an involuntary gasp escaped his mouth.
“Peter?”
The kid was laying on the ground, chest moving in and out faster than it should be. His breaths were shallow, and his eyes were swollen shut with blood leaking out from behind his eyelids. The entirety of his skin was an unnatural blue color with green and purple bruises dotting all throughout his skin. The jacket he’d been wearing was singed and smoking. Frost and ice clung to every piece of hair on the kid’s body. Steve couldn’t even look at what Clint was holding in with his hand. The archer was sprawled across the kids body, applying pressure with his entire chest. Blood leaked from the kid’s midsection onto the ground. Steve looked at the kid’s hands and bare feet— rubber was melted into the sole’s of the kids feet, twisted and blending with the bubbling, burned skin. His hands were a mess — they were swollen with red, puffy blisters that were oozing blood and a conglomeration of ooze and pus and everything awful. One of Pete’s legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, and through a torn pant-leg, Steve could see a wound with twisting black and green veins leading away and up into his leg to where Steve couldn’t see.
“Oh my god,” Steve whispered under his breath.
“We have to get him to the ship,” Clint moaned, his body stressed as he tried to apply pressure to Pete’s body. The second he moved, Pete’s innards would start to spill from his midsection again.
Peter’s lips, an unnatural shade of sapphire blue, opened to try to say something between the rapid breaths. Blood bubbled at his lips as he tried to form words. “Pete? It’s going to be okay,” Cap said, kneeling down next to the kid’s face. He almost didn’t recognize him. He shouldn’t even be alive with the way his body looked.
Blood bubbled at Peter’s lips as he tried to talk again.
“Peter — I can’t understand you. Save your energy. You’re safe now.”
Even Cap was unsure at this point.
“Bre-“ Peter burbled, his voice strained and coming out barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“Bre-“ Peter took a deep breath - “hu.”
Steve watched as Peter’s hand violently shook and slowly, painfully clenched itself into a fist. A singular finger outstretched and pointed somewhere — Steve could just barely make out a foot behind another spire.
“Team, we’ve got another kid out here. I just… I have to make sure, okay?” Cap said through the comms. Nobody answered, too scared to know what was going down on the ground. Cap sprinted over to the foot, and as he rounded the corner of the spire, saw a young-looking girl with sea-foam green skin and… tentacles? For hair lying on the snow. Blood stained the snow below here. Sighing, Cap kneeled down next to her and placed two fingers on her neck.
Nothing. She was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Cap whispered. He took his hand and shut her eyes. He desperately wished there was something he could do — but most important right now was Peter and escaping this hellhole of a planet.
He raced back to Clint and Peter.
“Peter, we’re going to have to move you, okay?”
No response.
“Cap, we’ve gotta go. He’s fading,” Clint said in a panic. Steve nodded.
“Get back to the ship, get the medbay ready.”
Clint nodded, and reluctantly got up from the boy’s midsection. The archer raced over to his cord and with a push of a button, began to get pulled up by the grappling hook he’d planted on the ship. When Clint stood up, Steve almost puked.
A large swathe of Pete’s midsection was freshly cut open, leaking blood everywhere. When Cap caught a glimpse of organs, he had to look away and concentrate solely on the kid’s almost unrecognizable face.
“Pete, I… I have to lift you, okay? I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.”
Cap slid his hands underneath the boys body. Cap expected some groans, maybe a pained scream. He expected begging to make the pain stop, maybe he’d ask Cap to leave him and just save himself.
The worst part was, none of that happened.
Pete’s chest just continued to rise and fall softly. His limbs were limp, and his body was pure dead weight. Cap grimaced; this wasn’t looking good. “Groot, I’m ready.”
“I am Groot.”
Cap, his body curled around the hypothermic kid’s body, felt Groot’s branches twist and reach around his body. Him and Pete were lifted off of the ground as quickly as the tree could. In the embrace of Groot, Steve stared at Pete’s face. It took a tear falling onto the kid’s skin for Cap to realize he was crying. Not just a few tears, but a lot. He’d never seen anyone in this bad of shape and still alive, no less a kid. He didn’t even want to imagine how it got to this point and the things that the kid had to do to survive. Cap prided himself on his sense of honor, but Peter Parker was the only person who even Cap admired for having such a sense of what was the right thing to do. He knew Peter hated killing, and knew that no matter how bad the exterior of his body looked, whatever was going on in his head was surely worse.
He didn’t even want to know what Tony would do.
There were two possibilities: he would either pass out due to his heart faltering for a few moments, or he’d swear destruction on this planet. Or both, which was equally as likely. And Cap had to deal with all of it.
He couldn’t let the kid die. They were too close to success.
As Groot set Cap and Peter down on the ship, he saw that everyone aside from Rocket was there. And just like Cap, dread filled everyone’s faces.