shards - pietro maximoff

chapter twenty-six ; vormir and volition

"Alright, who did this?" Steve crossed his arms over his chest as an image popped up on the holographic screen behind him.

They were currently researching the Infinity Stones, trying to figure out good places in time to drop in to get them, but evidently someone in the room was a bit bored of it. You know, since someone had projected the video of Cap singing in his 1940's Captain America costume onto the screen.

Steve was extremely annoyed at this, but, being the grandpa he was, couldn't figure out how to make it go away.

He tapped the screen roughly, but it did nothing. "Tony, a little help?"

Tony only watched with a smirk, seeing him
mess around and make it even worse, rewinding it and accidentally clicking on a remix that was set to the tune of 'Uptown Funk'.

The room howled with laughter, and Steve looked like he was really wishing that they had never discovered him in the ice at this moment.

Finally, after an embarrassingly long amount of time, Tony took pity on the man and swiped the video away, leaving the images of the six infinity stones on the screen once again.

In a split second, something that most would miss, if they weren't paying careful attention to the scene around them, Pietro winked at Dahlia, and the phone, displaying the very video that was just on the screen, glowed in his hand underneath the countertop.

"Alright, alright, now that we've had a laugh, let's get back to the important stuff," Steve crossed his arms and motioned to a red stone on the screen. "Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?"

Thor was sat in the corner of the room, sunglasses covering his eyes and not moving a muscle.

"Is he asleep?" Natasha looked towards him with confusion.

Rhodey shrugged. "No, I'm pretty sure he's dead."

"Can I be the one to wake him up?" Dahlia grinned, bouncing up and down in her seat. "Pretty please?"

"As much as I'd like to see that, I don't think that's a good idea." Natasha chuckled.

Thor suddenly gasped and sat up in his chair. Grumbling all the while, he got up and walked to the front of the room, pulling off his sunglasses and beginning to speak.

"Where to start? Umm... The Aether, first, is not a stone, someone called it a stone before. It's more of a... an angry sludge thing, so... someone's gonna need to amend that. Here's an interesting story, though. Many years ago, my grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves." He wiggled his fingers dramatically.

"Woooooh, scary beings. So, Jane," A picture of Jane Foster popped up on the screen, which Thor noticed and pointed to. "Oh, there she is. That's Jane. She's... an old flame of mine."

Everyone in the room started to look uncomfortable as he said this, with only Scott looking extremely intrigued.

"She stuck her hand inside a rock this one time, and then The Aether stuck itself inside her. And she became very, very sick. So I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from, and we had to try and fix her."

Scott began smiling and nodding his head animatedly.

Dahlia put on a very serious face, raising her hand and speaking in a reporter voice. "So, Mr. Thor, what you're saying is that this stone, is in fact not a stone, but a gross slime that is comparable to Pietro's face?"