Ben was a little surprised by the news of Wanda and Eunice, but not overly so. Vision, with his garishly colored skin and bald head, had always been an odd match in his opinion. By comparison, Eunice, in her perfect biological form, was a significant upgrade. Besides, Felicia's account was vague.
She had seen them in a close embrace, fully clothed. It was just as likely they were sensing the compatible energy frequencies between them as anything more intimate. Wanda's chaos magic, though not fully awakened, was still fundamentally tied to the Infinity Stones, so a resonance with the Mind Stone housed within Eunice was logical. In any case, he had no intention of interfering in the personal lives of his people.
After their brief respite, Mary Jane and Felicia showered and departed from Primus. The day's chaos had bled into the evening, and darkness had fallen over New York.
Time on Sakaar, however, did not move in lockstep with Earth. It wasn't that the temporal flow was different—Ben had long since stabilized the wormholes that once twisted it—but the planet's size and orbit around its own star meant its cycle of day and night was entirely its own. Where Tony Stark was, the alien sun was still high in the sky.
He was sprawled on a slab of red rock, his gaze lost in the rust-colored heavens. His body was a tapestry of cuts and bruises, his face caked with a mixture of grime and dried, black blood. His lips were cracked and bleeding from thirst, and his once-immaculate hair was a greasy, matted mess. The suit he'd worn was now little more than rags, and heavy iron chains bound his wrists and ankles, the skin beneath worn raw and black. He looked like a castaway who had been lost for a decade.
It was almost laughable. Only days ago, he thought he'd witnessed a miracle. The wormhole that had appeared from nowhere hadn't crushed him and his tiny vessel to atoms; instead, it had delivered him to a planet teeming with life.
"Heh. A miracle…" he rasped, his mouth twisting into a desperate, ugly smile. The movement tore his split lip anew, and a fresh trickle of blood ran down his chin. He didn't seem to notice, his eyes, clouded with regret, already lost in the memory.
—
Several days ago.
A small wormhole had puckered open high above Sakaar's infamous garbage fields. Tony's escape pod emerged unceremoniously, getting half-stuck in the aperture, dangling nose-down like a stubborn cork in a bottle. Gravity immediately went to work, pulling the blood into his head until his face was flush with a mixture of congestion and sheer, unadulterated excitement.
Through the viewport, he could see the world below. It was a planet! A planet littered with technological artifacts! The mountains of refuse piled high on Sakaar filled his vision. In the planet's past, countless wormholes had dumped the trash of myriad civilizations here, turning Sakaar into a true junkyard world. After Ben's arrival, he had used his power as the Son of Sakaar to revitalize the planet, healing the deep-seated pollution. The existing garbage, however, was not so easily erased.
Though several of Sakaar's moons had been converted into massive recycling and hazardous waste facilities, vast swathes of the planet remained buried under millennia of cosmic junk. The recent influx of Korbinite refugees had spurred the Plumbers to accelerate the cleanup, but progress was slow. Caiera, in her pragmatism, insisted that much of the refuse contained viable technology. After all, any civilization capable of interstellar garbage disposal was bound to have discarded some treasures. It was this vast, metallic wasteland that had allowed Ben to prepare an authentic Sakaaran welcome for Tony.
The moment Tony saw it, he felt not disgust, but a surge of electrifying hope. Where there was garbage, there had to be life. And even if there wasn't, it didn't matter.
As he dangled in the sky, he saw that the mountains of junk contained countless metal objects and damaged high-tech components. With these, he could work. He could create another miracle. For a genius who had forged the Mark I armor in a cave, a harsh environment was no obstacle. The only thing he feared was having nothing to work with at all.
"Even if there's no one on this planet," he thought, his mind racing, "with all that, and by dismantling this coffin of a ship, I can build a new spaceship. One that can actually travel between the stars!"
The thought spurred him into action. He slammed his body against the metal cabin, trying to dislodge the pod and hasten its descent. He didn't know when Ultron would begin its final solution. Thinking of Earth, of the danger, he felt a fresh wave of anxiety, and his breathing grew ragged.
"Don't panic, don't panic, Tony Stark," he muttered, forcing himself to be calm. "The situation isn't that bad. Ultron didn't share its endgame with anyone else. Those two kids, Wanda and Pietro, they were only using it to get to me. If Ultron revealed its true plan, they would have been the first to call for backup."
He reasoned that he still had time, and the anxiety slowly receded. He even allowed himself a moment of fantasy where the Maximoff twins, having gotten their revenge, would alert Ben and the Plumbers. He quickly dismissed the unrealistic hope. Wanda and Pietro were traitors. They wouldn't contact the Plumbers unless they were desperate, and according to Ultron, all off-world communication had been severed anyway.
"Don't put your hopes on others," Tony gritted his teeth and slammed his weight against the wall again.
The small ship shuddered, broke free, and plummeted into the garbage dump below with a deafening crash.
Though mountains of refuse cushioned the fall, Tony's world exploded in a shower of stars. His head smashed against a console, and blood streamed into his eyes. His whole body ached as if it had been struck by a battering ram.
"Agh… knew that rebellious son of a bitch wouldn't be kind enough to install a shock-dampening system," Tony groaned, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he kicked at the cockpit door. He was fairly certain his arm was broken, and he could feel the dull ache of internal bleeding. After a few more kicks and some desperate fumbling, he found the release mechanism. Ultron hadn't welded the hatch shut, likely assuming that Tony would never be rescued. In its cold logic, opening the door in the vacuum of space would have simply been a faster form of suicide.
"Hah!" Tony gasped as he stumbled out.
The air that hit him was not the foul stench he expected. It was fresh, breathable, not even causing discomfort to his terran lungs. He knew he was being reckless. Opening a hatch on a planet with an unknown atmosphere was a gamble that could end in suffocation or poisoning. But being trapped inside was a slow death anyway. What was the difference?
He drank in the oxygen greedily, feeling a wave of dizziness as he scanned his surroundings. The ship had carved a crater in the junk, creating a pit of scrap metal. He looked up. "Fortunately, that wormhole wasn't too high up, or I'd be a pancake."
Using his good arm, he began to climb the mountain of refuse. When he reached the top, the sheer scale of the landscape stole his breath. An endless, undulating ocean of garbage stretched to the horizon. He was a tiny ant in a sea of forgotten technology, with no direction and no end in sight. A wave of powerlessness washed over him, but it was quickly replaced by a familiar, manic excitement.
"There has to be something I need in all this!" he declared to the empty sky. "I can build a communicator first, try to connect to a local network, ask for help… No, can't just rely on them. I need to start building a vehicle, too!"
He quickly formulated a two-pronged plan. "But first, I need to find a way to set my arm. And get something to eat…" He hadn't eaten or had a drop of water in days.
Just as he was about to turn and survey the junk for anything useful, a tremendous roar echoed from the sky. He froze, then looked up like a desert castaway seeing a raincloud. Squinting against the glare, he saw it. A black dot, growing rapidly larger.
Excitement surged through him, a feeling as refreshing as a cool drink after days of thirst. Saved! He couldn't believe his luck. To be thrown into the void by Ultron, only for a rescue to appear so quickly… it was another miracle. He narrowed his eyes and began waving his arms frantically.
The black craft was fast and clearly advanced. Based on the technology strewn about him, Tony judged this planet's tech level to be on par with, if not superior to, Earth's. Normally, he would be more cautious, but he couldn't afford to be. He had to seize any opportunity he could get.
The ship had spotted him—or perhaps it had been heading for him all along. It began to slow its approach. Maybe they detected the wormhole, Tony thought.
The roar of the engines grew deafening. He could finally make out the ship's features. It was a strange design, something out of a schlocky science fiction film—full of advanced tech but also ancient and battered. The hull was so weathered and oxidized that it was difficult to tell its original color. Tony was familiar with this "battlefield chic" aesthetic; it reminded him of the rusty, dust-covered trucks from the terrorists' lair in the Middle East.
A bad feeling began to coil in his gut, but he had no time to dwell on it. The ship was hovering directly above him. Its thrusters swiveled downward, blasting him with scorching heat that felt like it was evaporating the very moisture from his body. Tony shielded his face, lost his footing, and tumbled back down into the garbage pit.
Solid metal slammed into his broken arm, but he barely felt the fresh spike of pain. His mind was consumed with a single, burning desire: get back to Earth and counterattack Ultron. He scrambled back to his feet and crawled toward the descending ship.
The hatch opened, and a group of aliens of varying species and colors, all clad in beggar-like scrap armor, squeezed out. The one in the lead looked like a pirate captain, ferocious and scarred, his right foot replaced by a clanking mechanical prosthetic. Tony's vision was blurry, his eyes still filmed with blood, but he saw the group surround him. The leader looked him over, then turned to the others, shook his head, and muttered something guttural.
Tony didn't understand, but that didn't stop him from pleading. "Do you know the Plumbers?" he shouted, hoping the name held weight. "It's a famous interstellar organization! My friend is one of their senior agents! If you can help me contact them, I will repay you handsomely!"
Earth was likely an unknown backwater, so he cleverly tried to use the Plumbers' authority as a shield.
It seemed to work. After he mentioned the Plumbers, the scavengers' demeanor seemed to soften. The leader even extended a hand, as if to help him up.
Tony breathed a sigh of relief and reached out with his good hand. A loud crackle filled the air, and a heavy, electrified net slammed over him.
"This kid doesn't look like much of a fighter," the leader grunted in a language Tony now somehow understood. "Sell him to the mines!"
"Dammit, what a waste!" another one grumbled. "The credits for selling this scrawny off-worlder won't even be enough for a decent meal! Should've just stewed him!"
The leader's face was a mask of disappointment as he dragged Tony, who was twitching uncontrollably from the electric shock, back toward the ship.
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