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Operation: Time Heist. That was the name of this specific mission, the one in charge of bringing the snapped ones back to life. Now that the testing part was over, it was time to brainstorm and come up with a solid plan to get all stones in one single trip. The images of the six Infinity stones were projected in a hologram behind Steve, who took the lead in the session like he rightfully had.
"Okay, so the how works. Now, we gotta figure out the when and the where," he started. "Almost everyone in this room has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."
"Or substitute the word 'encounter' for 'dam near been killed' by one of the six Infinity Stones."
(Y/N) felt like she mostly agreed with Tony's substitution. He had three cups of coffee in his hand, one for him, one for her and the other for Natasha. Everyone sat around a conference table with notepads and books scattered all over.
"Well, I haven't," Scott confessed with an innocent tone. "but I don't even know what the hell you're all even talking about."
"Regardless, we only have enough Pym Particles for one round-trip each." Bruce explained as he walked from one corner of the room to the other. "And these stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history."
"Our history," Tony corrected. "So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?"
"Which means we have to pick our targets."
"Correct."
"So, let's start with the Aether," Steve announced, eyes falling onto a specific person in the room. "Thor, what do you know?"
(Y/N) turned around in her chair to find Thor sitting in a chair in the farthest corner in the room. He had sunglasses over his eyes and a beer can still gripped tightly in his hand.
"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked out loud.
"No, no," Rhodey shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he's dead."
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Thor now took the lead, standing in front of the screens with the Reality Stone displayed on them. He used his sunglasses as a pointer, his movements sluggish and weak from all the alcohol in his system. Almost everyone was sat down on the chairs paying close attention, besides Tony, Nebula and Steve.
"Uh, where to start? Um. . ." he pointed toward the screen. "The Aether, firstly, is not a stone. Someone called it a stone before."
He gestured to Steve with his sunglasses, who frowned at the subtle call out from him.
"Um, it's more of an angry sludge sort of a 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." He wiggled his fingers for effect. "Ooh. Scary beings."
"So, Jane, actually. . .Oh, there she is." he became distracted by her picture, but then snapped out of it. "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 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, and I got to introduce her to my mother. . .who's dead and, um. . .Oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, so. . ."
Bruce made a gesture with hand over his throat, signaling Thor to stop talking or for someone to stop him.
"Nothing lasts forever. The only thing that. . ."
Tony took the hint and stepped forward, cutting him off. "Why don't you come sit down?"
"I'm not done yet." He pushed Tony off him.
Clint and Rhodey exchanged another look between themselves in disbelief. Scott seemed to be the only one who was truly fascinated with Thor's storytelling, as if he was familiar with it.
"The only thing that is permanent in life is impermanence."
Tony clapped to conclude his part of the session. "Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?"
"No. I'd like a Bloody Mary."
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After that, they moved onto the Power Stone. Rocket was the one who had the most experience and knew more about this particular stone, so he took charge. He started explaining his part while everyone else dug into their respective food they had ordered from a small Chinese restaurant, gathered around the table.
"Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag."
"Is that a person?" Bruce spoke with a mouthful of ice cream:
"No, Morag's a planet," Rocket corrected him. "Quill was a person."
"Like a planet?" Scott questioned in shock, eating his box of noodles. "Like in outer space?"
"Oh, look. It's like a little puppy, all happy and everything," Rocket began scratching Scott's head mockingly. "Do you wanna go to space? You wanna go to space, puppy? I'll take you to space."
(Y/N) ate peacefully watching the whole exchange, but her peace was suddenly disturbed when she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. She rapidly stood up from her chair, alarming almost everyone by her sudden movements. Tony frowned at her state and almost stood up to follow after her when Natasha won over him. She was the one sitting right next to (Y/N), and noticed the indifferent look behind her eyes.
(Y/N) ran to the nearest bathroom in the compound, almost not making it in time before she doubled over and spilled her food over the toilet. A few tears fell down her cheeks out of embarrassment and the headaches, knelt down in the cold tiles of the bathroom.
Natasha opened the door a few minutes after, eyes widening at her state. She knelt down beside her, rubbing a hand up and down her arms. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," (Y/N) raised her head, wiping her tears away.
"You don't seem fine."
(Y/N) grabbed toilet paper to clean herself up. "It was probably the Chinese food."
"That didn't look a lot like food poisoning to me," Natasha brushed the strands of hair out of her friend's face. "Are you sure it's not something else?"
"Positive," she nodded. "A simple Advil would calm this down."
"If you say so."
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After (Y/N) composed herself, all eyes were on her when she returned to the table. Tony rushed to her side and asked what was wrong, which she immediately brushed off with a simple 'Im fine'. She diverted the topic to focusing back on the task in hand, where Rocket continued his explanation of the Power Stone and his history with it.
Time passed and Steve began his part of the Space Stone, covering the parts he knew about. From the way Johann Schmidt, former Hydra leader, got it and the way it was used during the war. Scott, one again, played close attention to the captain's words, writing almost everything up. In just a few minutes, Steve gestured for (Y/N) to take the floor, since the two of them had divided the information between themselves.
"That's it?" she asked, placing her pencil down. "I thought you knew more."
Steve shook his head. "Unfortunately, no."
(Y/N) sighed and left her notepad in the table. Tony handed her his old blue-lenses glasses, which she took them from him and placed them on to add some sort of dramatic effect for her part of the presentation. She felt like she was back in school expositions, or like her father, who used to be a professor. Natasha and Clint shared a look, as if they were resisting their usual snarky comments directed at her.
"Okay," she clasped her hands together. "Thank you, Cap, for that very short recap of info. Now, comes the good part."
"After Steve went down on that plane, Howard Stark launched an expedition in search for, you know, Steve, but all he found was the Tesseract down in the ocean," she moved her hands as she explained, being backed up by the images popping up from the screen. "With the Tesseract in their possession, the Starks from that time, decided it would be a good idea to conserve it and try to revolutionize their military technology with it. And that's how Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was created."
"Pegasus? Like the winged horse?"
"Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/United States," (Y/N) recited out of pure muscle memory, even she was impressed.
"My mom loved acronyms," Tony cleared doubts out.
(Y/N) smiled before continuing. "Now, in the early 1980's, Mar-Vell, a Kree, disguised herself as Doctor Wendy Lawson and joined the project."
"What's a Kree?"
"Questions until the end of the lecture, please."
A laugh erupted from Tony's lips. Rhodey shot him a look because his question was shut down.
"Mar-Vell discovered the injustices the Kree were doing against the Skrulls and her plan was to create a light-speed engine powered by the Tesseract to get them in a new planet far away from the Kree Empire," she continued. "Danvers. . .Rambeau, and I were the test pilots for the engine, since the Air Force didn't allow women fly in combat missions in that time."
"Once Mar-Vell decided that the engine was completed, Danvers and I volunteered to help fly the prototype. And well. . . you know how that went."
"I don't," Scott raised his hand obliviously. Her original team shot him looks, even Thor, who had been busy with his drink the entire time.
(Y/N) smiled at him, brushing his question off as if it wasn't a big deal. Scott seemed to appreciate that and still shrunk back into his seat by the looks he had received.
"Anyway, Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was shut down because of this, covering the incident," she summarized almost a decade of information in just a simple sentence. "It wasn't until our Asgardian friend here came to Earth that it restarted under the World Security Council with Dr. Erik Selvig."
"All that happened when I was under the ice?"
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"That Time Stone guy."
"Doctor Strange."
"Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?"
Natasha, Tony and (Y/N) were laying on top of the table, covered in books and discarded notes. Bruce laid on the ground beside the table, his own notepad in his enormous hands. Their cups of coffee were also forgotten, all their minds focusing on the Time Stone. The only people that knew about this were Tony, Bruce and (Y/N), but Natasha wanted to know everything she could about the last stone to cover up.
Tony laid with his head on one side of the table, meanwhile Natasha laid the opposite way. (Y/N) placed herself across from them, her head resting against Natasha's legs while her own almost dangled off the table.
"Ear-nose-throat meets rabbit-from-hat," Tony spoke up as he placed an arm over his eyes.
Bruce looked up from his notepad. "Nice place in the Village, though."
"Yeah, on Sullivan Street?"
"No, Bleecker Street," (Y/N) corrected Tony.
"Wait, he lived in New York?" Natasha frowned at the new information being set for her.
"No, he lived in Toronto."
"Uh, yeah, on Bleecker and Sullivan."
"Have you been listening to anything?"
Natasha rolled her eyes at the three different remarks she received by her simple question. Her left hand moved in the air as she spoke, while the other stroked (Y/N)'s hair.
"Guys, if you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York."
Realization hit them all at the same time.
"Shut the front door," Bruce sat up from the floor.
(Y/N) lifted her head from her friend's legs to stare at her. "We'd be dead without you, Nat."
Now, with all information gathered from everyone in the team, they planned out the destinations. Three stones in New York, one in Asgard, and two in two different outer planets. Six stones, three teams, but one only shot.