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Knowhere [An unknown amount of time after the Chitauri Invasion]
–Jack Sullivan–
Ugh. It felt as if someone was simultaneously poking hundreds of little needles in his head as he slowly stirred back to consciousness.
Consciousness?
His eyes snapped open and then immediately closed due to the unreasonably bright lights it was subjected to. He immediately abandoned that avenue and sought out the sensory input data he usually got from his barriers and immediately frowned as he felt….nothing.
His panic rose as he could not feel anything. Not his barriers, the weird energy that made his barrier, and not even the ever-present, ever-flowing river of dimensional energy he had inside of him. His panic rose several more degrees when he realised that he could not feel his limbs, in fact, no limb could be moved.
"Ah! I see that our newest collection has woken up," A slimy voice spoke up as he hesitantly, cautiously opened his eyes, and upon seeing that it didn't immediately send a spike of jumbled senses up his brain, opened them further.
What he saw was…not inspiring his confidence.
In front of him was Tivan, also known as the Collector in the wider galactic circles, standing just outside his glass cage, looking at him with an appraising eye.
He then looked him straight in the eye and said something to the pink woman standing beside him, wearing a collar, designating her status as a slave. The woman heard his words and then pressed a button on her tablet.
The second that happened, the mask on his face wore off, as he slid out of the glass tube that contained some slimy weird, not-good, liquid that clung to his skin. He was apparently completely submerged in it, considering the stickiness that he could now feel on his face.
"Welcome to the collection, Mr.Jack Z. Sullivan or should I just call you, The Green Guardian of Earth?" Tivan stood there, overlooking his prone form with a mocking smile on his face.
"Take him. Make sure he is dressed properly for the initiation. We wouldn't want my collection to be sullied now, would we?" He spoke to the pink woman standing beside him in a very threatening tone, the consequences of not doing the task to his wishes very evident. All the while his smile and eyesight never left him.
His mind worked furiously, trying to make sense of the hot soup he had just landed himself into.
The last thing he remembered before waking up here was….
"AGH!" He shouted as a sharp lance of pain assaulted his brain, making him see stars for a moment. He couldn't even move his body to do anything about it and his powers refused to work even as two robots of some kind came and lifted him, the pain returning with increased fervor as his neck just hung there limply.
The last thing he saw before darkness overtook his vision was the pitying look on the pink woman's face as she pressed a button on her tablet, closing the doors behind him.
Wait? Pink woman.
That was…C.a.rina
The next time his consciousness returned, he didn't make any movements at all. He stayed absolutely still and was relieved to find that he could feel his body now. He tried accessing his powers….
"Hgnh," He grunted in pain as electricity coursed through his entire body and not regular electricity as well. No, no normal electric current could make his body seize up like that.
"Refrain from trying to make unauthorised movements, Subject TGG," A monotonous voice droned from above him as he watched the ceiling speaker with a generic white ceiling.
He shot up, rubbing his neck only to pause as his hand hit metal instead of the usual skin or even his barrier.
Well, that explained stuff. He was screeewed.
"Hello? Is anybody there?" He tried speaking to the voice in the ceiling and was disappointed to receive no answer. He had tried using his powers and the result did not amuse him. He was no masochist so he did not try again, knowing that the result would be the same.
So, this was the collector's museum then, he thought as he leaned on the glass of his prison, looking at the lines of thousands of different specimens, most of them aliens with an occasional plant mixed in between. It would seem that while the shock collars did stop him from using his powers, passive enhancements that he had received over the years were not blocked or rather, could not be blocked.
That explained his enhanced vision, though his hearing was not working here. It was as if the pod he was in was completely airtight such that no sound came in and out of the pod.
There were no obviously sharp objects to use as a weapon. No obvious door, aside from the glass window in front of him that he was sure was stronger than any door back on Earth. He was also reasonably certain that a being as old as the Collector must-have technology capable of barricading every single pod even if, by a stroke of luck, someone managed to escape.
Well, considering that this place was not in ruins yet meant that Thanos had not yet come here to collect the Reality Stone, assuming that Asgard had indeed handed over the Reality Stone to him.
He had to figure out how he reached here and how much time had crossed since the last time he remembered being on Earth,
Why couldn't he remember anything about what happened on Earth and how he reached this godforsaken place? The last time he tried to do so, he felt pain beyond anything he had ever experienced striking at his mind. Even now, the dull throbbing of that headache discouraged him from going further on that route of inquiry.
Anywho, the only one with the answers who might give him the time of day was Carina, the pink woman who was responsible for the day-to-day administration of Tivan's collections. She was also a slave but one with a significantly longer leash than the other collections of Tivan. He could not find anything that could help him break out from the inside.
Maybe, she could do something from the outside to help him. He only needed a couple of seconds with his powers and he could lay waste to this entire operation. In the movies, Tivan was just old. That's it, no energy manipulation, matter manipulation, cosmic energy, or anything of the sort that was normally afforded to the Elders of the Universe. At least that's how it was in the comics but in the movies, he was just some super-rich ancient dude who had managed to gather resources beyond anyone simply by virtue of being early to the game.
With nothing else to do and not finding any possible way to communicate with anyone, he did what he thought best. He sat down on the bed, a very comfortable bed at that, and began meditating.
Now, he knew that he could not access his powers but the way his powers worked was different from others. Most enhanced people needed to stretch their muscles, and practice with their powers to attain a higher level or a higher level of control. They needed to practice with their barriers in real life, making sure that the amount of power they exerted was imprinted on their physical bodies, allowing them to draw forth the heightened level of power a bit easier the next time.
His powers, on the other hand, were somehow limited only to his strength of imagination and thus, he could train while not even using his powers. Yes, that was somewhat broken, please nerf! But that was what he had and he was not going to sit around, wasting time, while Thanos and the other big bads are out there doing god knows what.
He will have to at least ascertain the timeline and if he was even in the same year or not. Tivan would never give him the time of day because he was now firmly in his collection, someone who can never escape because Tivan's prison, or rather, his collection as he called it, had never been broken into or broken out of.
His best bet was someone under him who had outside knowledge as well and the only person who fit the bill was..
"Um, are you alright?" He was broken out of his meditation as a weirdly garbled voice spoke from the speakers.
He raised an eyebrow and looked at the speakers.
"Ah! I am sorry. Is the translator not working?" He heard shuffling noises before the voice returned, much clearer this time.
"Hello! Who is this? Where am I? Why am I imprisoned?" He stood up from his bed and asked in rapid-fire the most important questions.
"Uh, I am Carina. You are on Knowherer and you are now a part of the best collection in the universe," She answered with what were clearly rehearsed answers.
Well, there was no way she would give out useful information like this. No, that would be too easy now, wouldn't it?
"Why am I held prisoner? Isn't this against the law?" He said in a mad, frantic tone while internally, he tried to make sense of what was happening. Somehow, the Collector had deemed him, a human, worthy of becoming a part of his sick collection. Now, it was not the comics collector who roamed around with his collection on a huge ass ship and also had pods where the aging of the beings inside was essentially halted, but it was the Collector all the same.
All iterations of that fellow had extremely high standards for his collections. It would not be wrong to say that he only collected stuff that there was only one of. He had even read, even though it might have been fanon instead of canon, that the Collector was actually responsible for ending multiple races because he wanted the specimen he had to be the last one or something. Also, he sometimes employed space mercenaries to attack small species and then left only a single one to be delivered as part of the Collector's collection. He was literally obsessed with having stuff that nobody else had.
But that didn't answer the question though– Why him?
He knew for a fact that he was not the sole human and would not be the sole one for a long long time. Long after he was dead, there would still be humans in the universe. They were way too spread around to kill.
So, why?
"Ah, Collector," He heard Carina speak in a panicked tone before there was a shuffling noise before he had to plug his ears with his palms because the voice was so loud in his room. He would have been fine, there would have been no permanent damage due to his enhanced constitution but his enhanced senses were a double-edged sword in situations with overwhelming sensory inputs.
"Greetings! I am the Collector and you are my newest addition to my precious collection. I understand if you are disoriented by your rather rough travels across the galaxy so let me clear up the air for you, as you Earthlings like to say. See, I have been practicing my lingo for you. Haha," He heard Tivan speak as he settled down on the ground, pretending as if the loud noise was disturbing him, even though it was tolerable at best.
"Oh, poor Earthling. Maybe the healing procedure was not thorough enough, Carina?" he heard the man mutter through his enhanced hearing before Carina seemed to grunt in…Pain?
Oh, this bastard!
No, he had to stay calm. He will get his chance. There was no way he could allow scum of his ilk to stay free. But for that to happen, he had to get free, and as powerful as he was, he didn't think that it was possible to get out of the collar before it would zap him into unconsciousness.
His powers usually also worked subconsciously, protecting him from any harm but his powers were not activating even after all the threats.
Maybe something to do with what happened on Earth.
"Ah, I apologise for the short interval. Now, where was I? Ah, I was talking about the rather explosive entry that you made, Mr.Gamma Human," A hologram popped up in front of his bed, right on the largest wall of the pod he was in, projecting the rather smug face of one Taneleer Tivan who was holding on to a golden mic of all things.
His hologram then zoomed out to show his finger pointed straight at him, "You, Mr.Gamma Human are one of a kind. The other Gamma being on your planet is not a human, but a God, and my treaty with the Omnipotence City forbids me from interfering in the matter of Gods which leaves me with just you,"
What? He was a Gamma Human. He was enhanced with the blood of Emil Blonsky who himself was enhanced by the blood of Bruce Banner, so technically, he was a Gamma Human.
But what was this about Bruce being a God?
He was brought out of his thoughts as a small shock of lighting stung at his neck.
"Ow!" He clawed at the collar as he glared at the projection of Tivan who was looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Listen to ME when I am talking to you," Tivan said as he glared at him.
He wisely kept mum as he was in a disadvantaged position at the moment. No resources, no powers, no idea of his location and he didn't even know if anybody was looking for him, and even if they were, aside from Thor, nobody else had the resources to mount a rescue operation for him.
Basically, this sucked major balls.
"Now, where was I?" As if a switch had been flicked, his face went from angry glare to stage face as he continued to drone on about the situation and how he was found by him.
The aspect of supervillains where they droned on and on about their master plan was a godsend (Vishanti-send?) because it allowed heroes(competent ones) to use that against the villains themselves.
So, why were the questions only piling up as Tivan blabbered everything about how they found him?
Apparently, he was found floating in outer space, bathed in energies predating the universe itself. That was odd.
Predating the universe meant the Infinity Stones and aside from a quick glance at the Time Stone when he had visited Kamar Taj ages back, he had not been in close proximity with any Infinity Stone.
Then the bit about the state of his body when the energy storm had subsided had him looking over his body at once. Apparently, everything below his stomach was simply shredded to bits as his heartbeat was slowing down, leaking out precious lifeblood by the second.
Tivan had been curious about the energy storm so he had sent a vessel to investigate and was very surprised to find someone that managed to survive being in that energy storm, however badly it might have gone.
He had then retrieved him and after seeing that he was one of a kind, how he ascertained that he did not know, he was promptly dumped into one of the healing pods that the Collector had handy, probably for similar situations he must have encountered when finding the last pockets of different species.
"Oh, but that did not work. No, Gamma Human, you needed more than mere healing fluid. You needed ...."
Tivan then droned about something called as Primed C-fluid and while that was gross to think about, it was something that surprised him as well. Primed C-fluid was just refined spinal fluid from the Celestial corpse that made up Knowhere. Apparently, that was the ultimate healing fluid for exceptionally strong beings of the universe. Shockingly, Odin too was the recipient of a vat of this fluid that he must have used to heal himself some time ago.
He had been shocked that something like this existed when something that Tivan said entered his mind.
"What did you say?"
"Ah, the human speaks. Since this is the first time, I will forgive it but do remember that I don't like being interrupted,"
He swallowed his indignation at being treated like this. Just let him free and he would show the collector who was the bigger fish in the pond then.
"Yes," He ground out with difficulty, and judging by the self-satisfied smirk on the Collector's face, he knew it too.
"I was talking about the convenient fact that everyone on your planet thinks you're dead. After all, while that Chitauri Invasion was successfully repelled, they did lose you, arguably their best fighter. This works out best for me obviously. Nobody's going to look for you and that saves me a lot of hassle dealing with the stragglers, you know…."
Tivan continued but his mind had been frozen ever since he talked about the Chitauri Invasion.
It was all coming back to him.
The Invasion, Wei, Loki Defeated, the Sceptre skewering him, the absolute burning sensation because of the Tesseract barrier, then saving Stark with his last dash, and then, Natasha closing the portal, and then…nothing.
The last thing he could remember was the dull feeling of the sceptre stabbing deeper before his blurry vision was filled with shades of green, blue, and yellow before he seemingly died.
Only he didn't.
Probably because of the Tesseract's energy, he arrived here, on the other end of the galaxy, right in the domain of one of the galaxy's most evil people, vulnerable and dying.
Ah…Lady Destiny, thy art a heartless bitch.
Huh, bitch, he giggled as he thought of the word.
Hmm….Why is the floor getting closer?
THUD!
Word Count - 3026
If you guys would like to support my writing or just want to read ahead of the public release, you can head on to my P*treon or Ko-fi .
I already have upto 15 extra chapters published there.
A/N - Yikes. Jack survived but he lost some part of his memories. He won't regain them instantly, obviously. The last part about his brain basically going *hehe slooooo* was part of a wider problem influenced by the Mind Stone's energies mixed into the energy storm which then mixed in with his powers and body.
His barriers too will be different from his previous ones.
He won't get out of the prison instantly. You guys will see once his collar is removed.
He will spend a little time which will help him expand his horizons in the wider cosmos instead of being limited to just Earth.
Also, he is strong yes but not OP so him being bound like this is understandable because even Thor and Hulk were bound by the Grandmaster, another Elder of the Universe (it is a thing in the comics, don't know about the MCU)
Speaking of the MCU, what do you guys think of RDJ coming back?
To me it feels like, in Deadpool sensei's words, THEY WILL MAKE HIM WORK TILL HE'S 90.
It just feels like they were failing and scrambling for ideas and went back to the drawing board and found the old one where RDJ's name was written in bright red colour.