It had been two weeks since our trip to Florida. I had been granted the apartment and was slowly trying to move in with Peter's help. Ever since the my event with Hawkes, I spent my free time finding information on him and his whereabouts while finishing acceptance papers for Midtown School. And I received an email from Coulson requesting me to come back to SHIELD to help his team. In short, my summer was getting really complicated. At the moment, Peter and I were painting what was going to be my room.
"Which blue?" for the third time, holding up two buckets. Praise for the metal arm as it could hold triple the amount of weight I could with my organic one. Peter rubbed his face as he yawned, smearing residue paint on his hand from painting the bathroom all over his face.
"Uh, the lighter one," Peter finally chose, and I set the chosen bucket down. We both grabbed large rolling brushes and began to cover the walls. "Why is painting rooms so hard?"
"I have no clue," I smiled, holding the brush in my metal hand. No pain here. "Just think that this at least exercises your muscles. I just can't wait to get the workout room done."
"You really think you can pin me down?" Peter laughed from the other side of the room. "I've beaten you whenever we go to the gym."
"That's because I'm a lady and I don't want to embarrass you," I pointed out, struggling to paint the area closest to the floor. I felt something wet hit me in the back of my head, which I gingerly touched with my organic hand. I retracted it to find smeared paint dots. "Oh, you are so dead." I turned around to face him, but I got a paint splash to my face. Where was he?
"Really don't think the odds are in your favor, Belle," Peter smirked, his face suddenly appearing upside down in front of me. He had planted himself to the ceiling. I raised a brow at him.
"You're on." With some movement of my fingers, beads of wet paint began to float out of the buckets. Peter's face fell. "Did you forget this is water based?" With a quick snap, the paint flew on to Peter, and he crashed down on an open bucket. My eyes widened as the paint covered me from head to toe, getting in my hair and on my metal arm. Sometimes karma's a bitch.
"Did I win?" Peter grinned sheepishly from the floor. I chuckled as I helped him to his feet.
"You loser."
"But I'm your loser," he said, cocking his head to the side. I shook my head in defeat as I glanced around at the room. Buckets were on the floor, spilling and mixing to create new hues of blue. Peter followed my gaze. "Hey, that one's a nice color."
"We should use that for the living room," I thought out loud. "I'll go out to get some more paint so we can finish." Peter looked around the room, and I thought he was going to say an idea when this spurred out of his mouth:
"Can you get food from Delmar's?" I smacked a hand to my face. I couldn't blame him; I was hungry too. We had been working before the sun had even risen. Still, couldn't he get the food while I got the paint?
"I'm getting the paint, and Delmar is just two floors down and a block away. Can you help a girl out?" Peter put on a thinking face, which I responded with what I think was a puppy dog face. Peter started laughing hard.
"Don't.. do that," he said between breaths. "That face."
"It's that bad?" I said, laughing along with him. "Fine, I won't, just go buy the food. I'll be back before you know it."
It wasn't even an hour later when that became a total lie.
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I was walking down the street back to the apartment, two large paint buckets in hand, when I heard a scream that broke through the mind barrier I created. I carefully set the buckets down warily.
"Hello?" I called out. Another scream came to me, this time a male. Quickly, I pulled out my phone and called Peter.
"Isabel?" he asked. "Everything okay?"
"I don't know," I answered. "I heard a scream, a mental one. I'm going to check things out."
"Let me come with you," Peter said quickly. "What if it's Hawkes?"
"I doubt it," I retorted. "I don't want you to get hurt. Just stay at my place." Before Peter could answer back, I ended the call. I closed my eyes and imagined Apparating to its source. I heard the familiar pop of transportation, and when I opened my eyes I found myself in a field. Surrounded by what looked like a bunch of aliens holding both chained women and men.
"What the living hell?" one of them said in distinct English, but he had an accent I couldn't recognize. Another with dark blue skin growled at me. "Listen Terran, just move along and we'll leave you be."
"Terran?" I repeated. A tall green alien with about six eye and covered in spikes stepped forward to the one addressing me. The woman he was holding by her hair whimpered, and I recognized her as the first scream I had heard.
"Boss, I don't think it's all Terran. Look at it's eyes, that's a Kree."
"Then where is it's blue skin, Grovel?" the leader snapped. "It's obviously Terran." I saw a key poke out of his pocket, and I quickly made a plan.
"If I may," I interrupted, and the green one pointed what I guess is a gun at me. "I just have to say you cosplayers have amazing costumes!" Slowly, I made my way around the aliens and pretended to examine their outfits... which smelled horrible. "Look at this leather!" I exclaimed, quickly stealing the key in his pocket. "What animal is this?"
"Get your hands off me, Terran," the leader growled. I lifted my hands in defense and moved toward the blue alien, who snorted at me.
"Okay, not you," I laughed nervously, and I scooted toward Grovel. "Big guy! You look incredible!" I stepped in front of him and the woman he was holding, pretending to be feeling the quality of his shirt while using my metal hand to unlock the woman's chain.
When I say go, run like hell.
The woman gave me a confused look, and I winked at her before again directing full attention to the alien. "Listen though, I can tell some of this fabric won't last you the rest of the week. Don't wear it every day unless you have one just like it. Plus, try a light brown shirt. You can be Shrek next year." Mumbles went through the alien group, wondering wether to leave me be or let me continue. "Now," I said slowly, trying to find an alien next to the majority of people. "You! What's your name?" The short lilac alien blinked her one eye before realizing I was talking to her.
"Me?" she squeaked. "I'm Gavorb." Okay, who names their kid that?
"Gavorb," I welcomed, moving to her side and placing my organic hand under my chin. "Oh, Gavorb."
"What's wrong?" she asked nervously. I pointed to her neon green frock and orange pants.
"You're going for a 'bad girl' look, I can tell," I told her. I shifted the keys across my body to a man in the back and restated my message to him. "Just those colors clash horribly with your hair. You're wearing that with your shoes?" The poor alien looked frightened. "Don't worry, it's an easy fix! Next time you go clothes shopping, try a navy blue shirt and black jacket. And leather is in fashion right now, so maybe some leather pants. Black of course, you can't go wrong with that."
I don't know how I managed to do it, but soon all of the aliens were asking me for help, which is hilarious because I don't know fashion at all. I literally see something and if I like it, I wear it. I could sometimes see the key being passed around when the people weren't careful, so I had to keep all of the aliens on clothes and not the fact that they had left their captured unattended. I could already feel my strength leaving due to my usage of powers already.
"You're pretty useful," the leader snorted after maybe fifteen minutes of me talking to his crew.
"Why, thank you," I said, not paying attention. All of their to-be slaves were unlocked and waiting for my signal.
"Take her," he ordered his crew, and the aliens stampeded toward me. My eyes widened, and I sent up a water wall between them and the group of people. His crew banged against it while the people looked at it in amazement.
"Go!" I yelled at them. "I don't know how long this will last-" The sound of a taser firing caught my attention, and I turned to see one maybe three times bigger than the noses that I received back at the water prison. It zoomed through my shield and caught me in the chest. I flew backwards and hit hard against the ground, convulsing with the power going through me. "Run!"
The familiar sound of a webslinger came to my ears, and I saw Spider-Man fire webs at the aliens closest to me. How did he know where I was? "Run, now!" he told the people that were still here, and they quickly fled. Peter tried to pick me up, but the electricity flowing through my body sent him flying backwards. "I told you to let me come with you!"
"I had this," I groaned, pulling myself to my feet as I fought against the electricity. What is with these tasers? I've had enough of them for one lifetime. Gavorb ran to grab me, but I punched her in the nose with my metal arm and sent her flying.
"Really?" Peter commented as he webbed up two alien goons at once. "Yeah, totally under control." I rolled my eyes, silently agreeing with him when suddenly the charges doubled. My knees buckled, and I slowly fell to the ground. "Isabel! Look -" There was a thud, and I turned my head to see Peter unconscious on the ground, Grovel above him with a rock in his hand.
"Peter!" I screamed. Grovel chuckled as the leader threw a net on me and picked me up.
"You lost all of our slaves, Terran," the leader growled. "Time to pay the price." I weakly reached out for Peter as Gavorb, bloody nose and all, whacked the back of my head with the butt of a gun.
Okay this chapter is just a little shorter but will make sense for the next one. If you're catching on already you probably see that we're starting the Guardians of the Galaxy part.
Some of you may be thinking, "Author, are you really going into GotG? It doesn't fit in the Atlantis storyline!" Newsflash: IT DOES. It will make SpiderStark so much better, and will help develop Isabel on a lot. If you're excited, please comment! I love reading your feedback!