InsaneJournal

Who: Peter, Drax, Carol, Bruce, Scott
What: Chilling by Pluto
When: Today
Where: Outer Space
Rating: green



Peter leaned back in his captain’s chair, a slinky twiddling between his fingers while he watched out the viewport at Scott and Bruce, doing whatever techy thing they had to do. He was sure he probably could have figured it out if he went there, but this was easier. He’d promised both men the opportunity to go to space anyways, and this was his ship after all. And of course, even though he'd meant to get out as soon as possible, life happened (read: sandwich girls) and here it was a few days later. Whatever. Anyways.

He had very important Captain things to do -- like pick the perfect playlist. Obviously Bowie was a must, and he was currently singing “Space Oddity” to himself, his foot tapping on the console in front of him.

Glancing at the blonde, he grinned. “Does it feel like home?” He didn’t know Carol very well, other than she seemed to be stuck in the 90s as much as he was stuck in the 70s and 80s. It wasn’t a bad decade to be in. Neon was cool. “Are you happy to be off of Terra for a bit? I gotta admit, this is my first time out since … well, we all ..poofed.” Twice now he’d been dusted in space. Fuck. He wasn’t eager for a repeat.

Unlike Peter, Carol was making sure that everything was running okay and that they weren’t just twiddling their thumbs. Being actually captain-like. Not that she was going to take away from whatever Peter was actually doing, but at least she had one eye on the controls at all time. She turned her head over to look at him. “Yeah, it does.” Even though she could fly without the ship, she had to admit that being in a craft felt more like being back on Hala. Even if she didn’t really want to be there.

She glanced back at the unit before looking back over again. “Pretty much. Being up here is just.. Freeing. Yeah. That whole thing was a .. “ She didn’t even really have the word for it. “I much prefer being up here with everyone still around.”

Carol reached over and pressed a button. “How’s it going down there guys?” she asked into the comm unit.

Okay. So, Pluto. He was on Pluto, and not in the way Mr. Kaufman used to joke when he was caught not following along in sophomore English. Boy, wouldn’t he be surprised if he knew what Scott was up to these days - he’d just been glad to see that Scott had managed to graduate.

But maybe he should have paid better attention in English, because maybe then he’d have words to describe what he was looking at. You know, other than “space-y.” The others might have had their fair share of exploring the universe, but this was his first time leaving the atmosphere, let alone setting foot on another planet. It was a distinctly different experience than traveling to the quantum realm or being jettisoned into another dimension, and he found himself getting distracted more than once at the sheer nothingness surrounding them.

He might have shrunk for a living, but this was the first time he’d truly felt tiny.

Carol’s voice called him back to the task at hand. “Uh--good. Found the beacon. Doesn’t look broken, we’re bringing it back to get a better look.”

Ninety percent of the time Bruce spent in space was as the Other Guy, so he hadn’t exactly been able to appreciate the experience, though he wasn’t quite as enthralled by it all as Scott seemed to be. Not that he minded the other man’s distraction. Finding the beacon wasn’t a difficult task, though his initial diagnostics proved to be fairly useless so far. Maybe he’d have better luck back on the ship.

“There’s a pattern of some sort,” he said. “I can’t pinpoint what it means though.”

He wished Tony was here because he was a lot better with the tech side than Bruce himself was. Worst case, they took it back to Earth and let him play with it.

Peter slapped Drax’s hand away from the console and gave him a glare before pushing the comm button himself. Drax probably had some weird wisdom to impart and it was best for everyone that he didn’t.

“Don’t we have the schematics on the ship somewhere?” Tony had given it to Peter, now what the fuck did he do with them … “I know we have them. Better to just get inside, let’s not waste oxygen. That shit costs money...oh and Scott, don’t forget to selfie! Those suits are pretty damn cool, you can take pictures with the helmet, did I forget to tell you that? Over and out.”

Letting the line close, Peter turned and looked at Carol. “Do you know where those instructions are?” At first, Peter had been slightly annoyed that Fury demanded the other woman’s presence, but she did seem a million times more organized than he was … she probably had a secret ‘Peter, do not touch’ file. Most people did. It wasn’t something that offended him.

A thought came to him and his eyes widened. “Did Drax eat them? DRAX!”

Drax never got a chance to impart his words of wisdom, since the slap was as long as it took for the words to be lost in other thoughts. Mostly of turning his friend into a bloody pulp. Of course he refrained, since friends who were like family weren't supposed to kill one another. He went right back to eating food out of a silver pouch.

"I am eating the emergency rations, as usual," Drax pointed out, being the super helpful person that he was. "If you were not so slovenly, you would be able to find the schematics with ease."

He stood there, staring out at Bruce and Scott, crunching on what sounded like rock hard space granola.

“Okay guys, just keep me updated if you see anything else.” Carol said into the comm unit, not sure what they would find when she actually saw the beacon. But she thought there might be a decent chance that she would at least be able to tell which kind it was. Something. And the pattern, maybe she could help somehow.

She glanced back over at Peter, trying not to look like she might facepalm. She could tell that he didn’t actually want her there. But she was good to have around. “Instructions to the beacon? Or a part of your ship?” she asked with a small amused look on her face. Maybe she was being sarcastic. Maybe she wasn’t.

“The beacon,” Peter answered, rolling his eyes and trying to ignore Drax again. For a man who claimed to be invisible, Drax was so blatantly there all the time. He was also amazing at not being offended by people who insinuated things about him, so whatever Carol said went over his head.

And then he remembered and widened his eyes. Grinning at Carol, he wagged his finger before getting out of the chair and leaving the cockpit. A few moments later, he came back with a coffee stained manual. “Found it!” A wide, triumphant, smile was firmly on his face. “I knew I had it.” He’d already conveniently forgotten that he’d asked Carol for it.

Truthfully, there wasn't much of “anything else” to see. Sure, there was an immense amount of stars in the sky - a view he was sure to snap a picture of, after Peter reminded him of the camera in his helmet - but the surface itself didn't have all that much to offer besides rocks and dust. And a beacon, but they were hauling that inside already.

Scott helped Bruce set the device onto the table and popped the helmet off of his suit. “Oh, great--are those the instructions?” He motioned to the manual Peter was holding. “Can I see 'em?” Once they’d been surrendered, he moved to the table to lay them out next to the beacon. “Looks like there’s an access panel here. Maybe we can play with the frequency, see if the pattern gets any clearer?”


“It seems to be repeating,” Bruce said, after removing his own helmet. Now that they were inside the ship, it was much easier to hear and the repetition was more obvious. “Almost like some kind of message.”

He listened closer. “This seems to be the beginning.” After the message played through, he nodded. “And that is the end. There’s a pause before it replays.”

The trick now would be decoding it. “It doesn’t sound like any language I’ve heard, so maybe some kind of computer program?” It was a guess since he really had no idea.

Peter shrugged. Although he’d been given a translator implant from a young age, it wasn’t working and he didn’t know what would work.

“Do you think we need to bring in the bigger guns? Any one else have a maybe newer translator chip or something? Space girl?”

“My name is Carol. And yes, I’ve got a translator..” Bring up her arm, Carol started pushing buttons into what looked like some kind of transmitter or communication device that was strapped into her uniform. After that it made some kind of noise and then a moment later, a translation came through..

Or what was supposed to be a translation. It was only making out one thing though, and she had no idea what it was.

“Vor.. Vor.. I don’t know what that is. Anyone have a guess?” It was supposed to translate into something she could understand, but she didn’t know what that was.

"Vormir," Drax said, fist clenching around the packet of space granola so hard that a loud crunch was heard. He looked over at Peter with a grim expression, thinking back of the tragic news that Nebula told them. "It is a planet. One that Thanos knows well."

“Wait, Vormir? Vormir. Like ‘two people enter, one person leaves’ Vormir?” It hadn’t been all that long for him since Natasha’s failure to return from that planet, but it had burned its name into his memory all the same. Scott glanced between Peter and Drax and Bruce, then furrowed his brow at the beacon. “Well that can’t be good.”

Not good was an understatement of epic proportions. That was where they’d lost Natasha. “Okay, we’re officially into territory that we should be staying far away from,” Bruce said. He had no idea what the beacon was trying to tell them, but if it wanted them to go to Vormir, nothing good could come of it.

“We should contact Fury.” Bruce had no doubt that he would put the kibosh on any mission they were supposed to be on when he found out this bit of information.

Peter’s brain -- and heart -- stopped when he heard Vormir.

Vormir.

There was no way they could ignore this. He could feel it in his bones. This was a message from Gamora, and he needed to be there, no matter what. His memories told him that she wasn’t gone, that there was another place she existed and if that was the truth? He had to do everything he could.

It wasn’t until Bruce mentioned Fury that Peter realized FUCK. He had to listen to someone. And he hated that feeling ...but the message was vague, they didn’t know what they were walking to and he had to admit grudgingly that that was the best option.

“Fine. We’ll talk to Fury. See if we can get this message but you guys better strap up -- we’re heading to Vormir. It’ll take us a few days, and I wanna get there as soon as possible.”