The next few days Rocket, Bruce, Tony, Nebula and Arden worked on building their time machine nonstop. Arden took whatever chance she could get to avoid Steve, making Rocket promise her to save her when they saw him coming towards them, making up some project for her to do instead.
"How's it going Ratchet?" Tony asked aloud.
"It's Rocket. And you're only a genius on Earth, buddy." Rocket replied, hanging upside down with a hammer.
"He's not wrong." Arden agreed, patting Tony on the back before checking on Nebula with the time travel suits.
"Nice ink." Arden teased Clint, walking into the room as he dressed in the suit.
"Hey, kid." He greeted her.
"You still call me kid, but you know I'm like way older than you right?" Arden smirked.
"Yeah, but you'll always be that punk I met in Tokyo." Clint teased back.
"Wait a second. Let me ask you something. If we can do this, you know, go back in time. Why don't we just find baby Thanos? You know and..." Rhodey spoke up, acting out tying a rope and strangling.
"First of all that's terrible." Bruce denied, as Arden pursed her lips. "And secondly, time travel doesn't work that way. Changing the past doesn't change the future."
"We go back and get the stones before Thanos, and that way he never gets them. Problem solved." Scott jumps in.
"Bingo." Clint agrees.
"That's not how it works." Nebula mutters.
Rhodey and Scott start naming time travel movies that they think the rules go by, but then Bruce tries to explain the best he can to them, but they still don't understand. Once Nebula finished suiting up Clint, they did the test run on him. They sent Clint off for about 2 seconds before Clint reappeared on the ground, shouting. They ran up to him, Nat picking him up, making sure he was okay.
"It worked." Clint announced, tossing a baseball glove to Tony. They all smiled, heading to the conference room to finalize their plans.
"Okay, so the how works. Now, we gotta figure out the when and where. Everyone in this room has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones." Steve started the meeting.
"Or substitute the word 'encounter' for 'damn near been killed' by one of the six Infinity Stones." Tony corrected.
"Well, we haven't." Scott spoke up, waving his finger between him and Arden.
"Speak for yourself, Lang." She commented, patting his shoulder. Tony and Steve looked at Arden confused.
"I may or may not have had one in my possession once upon a time." Arden mysteriously explained.
"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 mentioned.
"Our history. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?" Tony reminded them all.
"Which means we have to pick our targets." Clint added.
"So, let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve asked.
Everyone looked to the corner of the room, where Thor sat with his sunglasses on with one hand slightly tucked into his pants, exposing the bottom part of his large stomach quietly.
"Is he asleep?" Nat asked.
"No, I'm pretty sure he's dead." Rhodey answered sarcastically.
Arden sighed, picking up a water bottle from the table and obliterating her brother with it, abruptly waking him up.
"You're embarrassing me." She said through her teeth to him.
He stood up, clearing his throat, walking up to the screen with the Reality Stone, taking off his sunglasses.
"Uh, where to start? Um... The Aether, firstly, is not a stone. Someone called it a stone before." Thor started, pointing at Steve, who furrowed his eyebrows back at him.
"Um, it's more of an angry sludge sort of thing... so someone's gonna need to amend that and stop saying that." Thor added, continuing to put eyedrops in his eyes.
Arden dropped her head, embarrassed at the sight and sound of her once great brother, the God of Thunder.
"Here's an interesting story, though, about the Aether. My grandfather, sorry, our grandfather, many years ago had to hide the stone from the Dark Elves. Ou... Scary beings." He chuckled.
"So Jane, actually, oh there she is." He smiled as a picture of his ex-girlfriend appeared on the screen.
"Yeah, so Jane was an old flame of mine. You know, she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time and then the Aether stuck itself inside her, and she became very, very sick. And so I had to bring her to Asgard, where I'm from. Sorry, from we're from, and we had to try and fix her." Thor continued, looking at his sister.
She shook her head, looking over to see if anyone was following along the story when she noticed Scott nodding along, somehow very intrigued.
"We were dating at the time, see, and I got to introduce her to our mother... who's dead, and um... Oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, so... But these things happen you know. Nothing lasts forever, right sister? Good luck, we have." Thor chuckled, hiding his sadness.
"Okay!" Arden stood up, walking over to her brother to get him to stop. "How about we get you some breakfast? Soak up that alcohol. Eggs, bacon?"
"No, I want a Bloody Mary." Thor insisted.
"Go sit in the corner and Tony will get you a Bloody Mary." Arden proceeded to drag Thor, and Tony shook his head at her, but she sternly widened her eyes at him, making him throw up his hands walking to the kitchen.
Once Tony shoved a Bloody Mary in Thor's hand, Rocket went on with his information on the Power Stone while they had lunch. Then, Nebula carried on about the Soul Stone and her sister Gamora on Vormir. Informing them that it was where Thanos killed Gamora. Most of them grew tired of talking about the stones, leaving Tony, Arden, Nat and Bruce talking about the Time Stone while laying down where they could. Whether it was on the conference table or the floor.
"Okay, so the Time Stone." Nat started.
"Doctor Strange." Tony confirmed.
"What kind of doctor was he?" Nat asked.
"Neurologist, I think." Arden sighed, rubbing her temples.
"Nice place in the Village, though." Bruce complimented.
"Yeah, on Sullivan Street?" Tony was unsure.
"Bleeker Street." Bruce corrected.
"No, he lived in Toronto." Tony tried to convince them.
"Guys, if you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York." Arden cut the boys off from arguing about the right street.
They all stayed silent, sitting up, looking at Arden.
"Shut the front door." Bruce exclaimed.
"I'm serious. From what you guys told me, the stones are in New York at the same time in the same year." Arden pleaded.
"Holy shit, she's right." Nat agreed.
After regrouping and informing everyone about their discovery, they pulled up the plans on the screens by the stones.
"All right, we have a plan. Six stones, three teams, one shot." Steve announced, looking at the screen.
"We go in the morning." Tony confirmed.
Everyone agreed, taking the rest of the day to get everything in order and to rest up. It felt nostalgic to be in her old room, looking around at how not much had changed besides some upgraded technology, when she heard a knock on her door. She waved her fingers, opening the door, taking a seat as Steve took a step in.
"Can we talk now?" He pleaded.
"Well, shut the door behind you unless you want everyone listening." She answered, and he walked in further, shutting the door behind him, staying near the door.
"I miss you." He started.
"As a friend?" She countered, and he pursed his lips.
"Relax, I'm kidding." She comforted him. "Kinda."
He chuckled, taking a seat next to her.
"I just want us to be okay before..."
"Before we travel in time with the possibility something could go wrong?" She finished for him, and he sighed nodding.
"We're okay, Steve. Really, I was just giving you a hard time. It's been a long time since I've seen you." Arden reassured, and it was the truth. She hasn't seen him this much in a while, actually not remembering the last decent conversation they had.
"4 years and 56 days." Steve informed her.
The count of days surprised her, like he really did miss her. Thought about her even.
"I really do think you should go with us tomorrow." Steve insisted.
"No, I should go and help Rocket keep my brother in check. He's kind of a wild card right now." Arden denied.
"Yeah, you're probably right." He laughed, getting up from the bed.
"Goodnight, Arden." He added, opening the door.
"Night, Cap."