The Weight of the Universe | Avengers

29. The Time Heist

"Thank you for the gauntlets, Aurora. They really are better now." Eve thanks her with a little smile after the auburn-haired has shown her and the others how the upgrades on their combat suits work. The Guardian just salutes jokingly at the praise she's getting.

"No problem! Thanks to Tony's tech, it was possible. The activation of the nanotech is connected to your earpiece which is again connected to your brain. In this way, you can turn it on whenever you want." Aurora explains the function with a happy smile. Within a short time, they all put the weapons and combat suits away to focus on the next step of the plan: the Time Heist. All Avengers and Guardians are gathered in the conference room in the early morning to collect information about the Infinity Stones. Oddly enough, everyone has dealt with them in one way or another.

"Okay, so the how works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where." Steve starts the Time Heist project on the screen where each Infinity Stone is shown. "Almost everyone in this room has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."

Tony shrugs casually, glancing through his sunglasses. "Or substitute the word 'encounter' for 'damn near been killed by one of the six Infinity Stones'."

"I haven't." Scott pipes up. "But I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about."

"Regardless, we only have enough Pym particles for one round trip each, and these Stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history." Bruce continues, pacing around like Steve and Tony.

"Our history. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in." Tony adds and Clint thinks it through.

"Which means we have to pick our targets."

Tony nods confirming. "Correct."

Eve leans into her chair next to Natasha. "Well, we know little to nothing about the Reality Stone. That could be our first target."

"Yeah, let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve decides and glances at Thor, everyone following his direction. The God of Thunder sits silently in the chair in the corner, sunglasses covering his eyes and a beer can placed in his hand. He shows no reaction, not even moving an inch.

"Is he asleep?" Natasha asks with a frown and Rhodey scoffs, shaking his head.

"No, pretty sure he's dead."

"Oh, boy. Don't worry, let me take care of it." Aurora groans and takes a muffin from the breakfast table, hurling it with a force at Thor's face. The sunglasses slip off his nose and he awakes, startled by the sudden attack and looking around in confusion. Aurora grimaces when his glance lands on her. "Information about the Aether. Now."

"Right, right." Thor stands up clumsily from his chair and walks to the screen, sighing. He seems pretty hungover, so he takes out his eye drops and uses them for his one eye as he proceeds talking. "Where to start? Uhm... The Aether, first, is not a Stone... Someone's called it a Stone before. Ahem, it's more of an angry sludge, sort of thing. So, someone's gonna need to amend that, and stop saying that. Here's an interesting story though about the Aether. My grandfather, many years ago, had to hide the Stone from the Dark Elves. Scary beings."

"They weren't scary, they were pathetic." Aurora knits a brow and he ignores her, continuing nonetheless.

"Scary beings." Thor repeats firmly again and swipes to a picture of Jane. "So, Jane... Oh, there she is. That's Jane. She's... an old flame of mine. She... 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. We were dating at the time, you see. I got to introduce her to my mother... who's dead and um..."