Chapter. 2
The inside of Tony’s mansion had technology that was very advanced for it’s age. Nebula had, grudgingly, come to respect the man’s talents in the field. He had accomplished things common on most middle aged planets while his hadn’t even left the stage of babyhood.
She was sitting on a leather bench with Rocket standing on it beside her holding Quill’s music box and funny ‘headphone’ things tightly in his paws.
The rest of the avengers stood around looking angry and glaring at each other. Golden retriever man looked like someone had kicked him, Tony for some reason had his shirt undone (men!) and one man looked like someone had invaded his homeland and killed all his family.
‘It’s been twenty three days since Thanos came to earth.’ Said one man flicking through pictures of people on a screen.
Golden retriever man looked like he was going to cry when they showed two pictures of men around his own age and then again on the next round of photos. The third one was off a woman of about twenty with long red hair and bright grey eyes. She looked to old to be his daughter and to young to be his wife or girlfriend but maybe he had half-adopted her the same way the Tony had done for spider-boy.
‘World governments are in pieces.’ Said another lady. She looked like someone that could be trusted, Nebula thought. Guns by her side and at least three knives in plain sight.
‘Parts that are still working are trying to take a census and it looks like he did…’ she paused. ‘He did exactly what he said he was gonna do.’
‘Of course he did.’ Nebula whispered to Rocket. ‘He always said he was inevitable.’
‘They say you can’t escape justice.’ He whispered back.
‘If anyone could it would be Thanos.’
‘Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures.’ Finished the knife woman.
Another woman stared hopelessly at the pictures of snapped people.
‘Where is he now? Where?’ Asked Tony.
‘We don’t know.’ Said golden retriever man. ‘He just opened a portal and walked through.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Tony asked pointing to destroyed homeland guy.
‘That’s Thor.’ Rocket whispered again.
Nebula blanched. Everyone knew what had happened to Asgard. When they had been forced to flee and when half their population had been slaughtered. She knew he had lost his mother a few years ago and Odin had died recently too. And then Thanos killed his brother.
She had been scarily right in her assumptions.
‘Oh he’s pissed.’ Said Rocket. ‘Thinks he’s failed.’
They all looked concerned.
‘Which of course he did but there’s a lot of that going around, ain’t there?’ He finished.
That was what Nebula liked about Rocket. He did not tell people things that weren’t true, he did not gloss over the evil or over glorify the good. It was…refreshing.
‘Honestly, until this exact second I thought you were a build-a-bear.’ Said Tony.
Nebula felt annoyed. She wasn’t quite sure what a build-a-bear was but judging from the small smiles from the knife lady and the picture man it wasn’t a compliment. It sounded like a genetical mutation that human children performed on helpless bears. It was very rude considering that was exactly what had happened to Rocket. She scowled at him.
‘Maybe I am.’ Rocket replied.
‘We’ve been hunting for Thanos for three weeks now.’ Began golden retriever man. Successfully bringing the conversation back to something important rather that genetically mutated bears and sad Asgardians.
‘Deep space scans and satellites, and we got nothing.’ He continued. ‘Tony you fought him.’
‘Who told you that?’ He said defensively. ‘No, I didn’t fight him. He wiped my face with a planet.’
Nebula rolled her eyes. So did the sad-looking-at-photos-woman. Everyone else looked like they were used to be being this patient.
‘It wasn’t a planet.’ She told Rocket quietly. ‘It was a large rock.’
‘While the Bleecker Street magician gave away the stone.’
What?
‘That’s what happened there was no fight because he not beatable.’
‘That is a lie. Everyone is beatable.’ Nebula whispered to Rocket. ‘And golden retriever man looks like he wants to push someone in the face, probably Tony.’ She added to herself.
‘Did he give you any clues, any coordinates, anything?’
‘Uh…’ He made an undignified spluttering noise.
“He sounds like Groot when he was a baby.’ Muttered Rocket.
Nebula bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.
‘I saw this coming a while back.’ Said Tony.
He was going to talk about a dream wasn’t he.
‘I had a vision…’ he waved his hand around.
Rocket raised one eyebrow and the sad-looking-at-photos-woman rolled her eyes again.
‘I didn’t wanna believe it. Thought I was dreaming.’
‘He was probably on VF5.’ She whispered to Rocket.
He smiled and Nebula smiled back.
Strange…
‘Tony, I’m going to need you to focus.’
‘You tell him golden retriever man.’
‘And I needed you. As in past tense.’
Nebula nearly hit her head on the wall.
‘That trumps what you need.’
‘Not really.’
‘It’s too late, buddy.’ Tony sniffed and said. ‘You know what I need? I need a shave.’
He stood up sharply scattering bottles all over the table. Most people, including Nebula flinched away from the noise.
‘And I believe I remember telling all youse,’
‘Tony, Tony.’ Picture man interrupted.
‘Alive and otherwise that we needed a suit of armour around the world. Whether it impacted our previous freedoms or not.’
Nebula had done a study on earth for her lessons with Thanos. He had wanted to know how easily they would fall. She told him that they might not even need to attack them. She had told him that they killed each other over the gender that they were attracted to, the colour of their skin and what land their ancestors had owned. They might fight each other to death before they had too. It seemed that Tony had never had his ‘precious freedoms’ attacked enough for him to think they mattered. It was at this moment that Nebula decided that she did not like Tony.
‘That’s what we needed.’ He finished.
‘Well, that didn’t work out, did it?’ Said golden retriever man.
‘I said we’d loose. You said ‘we’ll do that together too.’ And guess what, Cap.’ Golden retriever man (newly dubbed ‘cap’) took a shuddering breath. ‘We lost. And you weren’t there.’
‘Obviously not.’ Nebula had spent long hours getting Tony to talk (he did it all too willingly) and she knew that he had a way of contacting ‘Cap’ and didn’t.
‘But that’s what we do right? Our best work after the fact? We’re the ‘Avengers’. We’re the ‘Avengers’ not the ‘Pre-vengers.’
Nebula looked at sad-looking-at-photos-woman for a minute. The first time she’d properly looked at her.
‘Is that Captain Marvel?’ She asked Rocket quietly.
‘Maybe,’ he looked over at her. ‘Yeah, defiantly.’
‘That’s cool.’ She muttered.
Nebula couldn’t help herself. Every girl in the galaxy new about Captain Marvel. She was amazing.
‘We need you.’ Nebula looked away from Captain Marvel’s face to see Tony storming toward her. ‘Bunch of tired old mules. I got nothing for you, Cap.’ She said angrily. ‘No clues, no coordinates, no strategies, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. No trust, lair.’
‘Cap’ looked hurt at that. Nebula thought. ‘His whole family probably just died in the snap.’ She thought. ‘And at least Tony still has that blonde woman and the picture man and all these other people. It seems like ‘Cap’ doesn’t have them even though he’s trying to lead them.’
Tony ripped the blue thing off his chest.
‘Here, take this. You find him you out that on…you hide.’
Tony collapsed to his knees.
Nebula was astonished to see that through all that verbal beating, name calling and basically verbal abuse ‘Cap’ still reached out to Tony.’
Nebula watched in silence as he fell unconscious and was led from the room.