Chapter 24: Arc VII Endgame - The Unsnappening
When Eli woke up next, he was lying on a bed in his mother's home. Amora sat next to him and had a hand in his hair, Frigga sat on the other side and looked at Eli with a gentle smile.
Odin sat on a chair and brushed his beard with a faint smile as he regarded his grandson.
"Oh my beautiful boy, finally you are awake," Amora said softly.
"Two days early, too," Frigga nodded.
"How long was I out?" Eli asked, but he kept lying down to enjoy his mother's head-patting.
"Oh, after the blessing? Only two days. But the trial almost took you a year," Frigga explained. Eli furrowed his brows.
"Never mind that, you did great. Even those three stubborn fools recognized your greatness," Amora proudly said.
"I... I don't feel much different, a bit more powerful maybe," Eli said as he looked at his hands.
"That's not surprising, my boy. What we granted you is a seed for your own All-force. All-force is what makes us Allfathers as strong as we are. The very first Buri Ymirson created it out of half of his father's soul before the first Ragnarok cycle started," Odin began explaining. "It is bound to Asgard to its current ruler. However, since you leave this universe soon, we gave you your own All-Force. We didn't know if you would keep the connection to the All-Force of this universe in your travels. Cultivate this power well, and you will be able to move unhindered even in the presence of the celestials."
"Will it be enough, though? Grandmother made it out like I am going to face something big the moment I arrive back with the living."
"Oh, rest assured, little Eli. Right now, only your father and you have access to the original All-force of Asgard. It is weakened greatly because of Ragnarok, but together with your seed of the power and your training these years. You are well prepared," Frigga reassured.
"There's one more blessing you won't feel right now. Each of the Allfathers had prepared a personal boon should you have chosen them. Buri would have given you a part of his divinity, a seed of creation. Bor would have sacrificed a good part of his powers he still retains to boost your All-Force," Odin interjected.
"Oh? What did you give him, you old goat?"
"A seed of a power I call 'cosmic awareness'. With it, you will know of events that would affect the world at a larger scale. Train it, and you increase the range of your awareness, as well as gain more insights on the event," Odin described as he narrowed his eyes at Amora.
"Hmph, not bad. But why not give him the full skill instead, though, you penny-pincher? Got any more grandchildren to bless in your afterlife?" Eli put his hand on Amora's shoulder and implored her to stop being so disrespectful to his grandfather. Seeing that look, she softly grunted and turned back to combing Eli's hair with his fingers.
"The full power would overwhelm his senses. He would need months to get a grip on this power. Instead, I used up my essence to give this seed I bestowed upon Eli the highest potential I could. In time, your awareness will exceed my own, of that I have no doubt," Odin explained as he lost his glare toward Amora and instead regarded Eli.
"Thank you, grandfather. I will use these blessings well," Eli declared, sitting up a little to give his grandfather a respectful nod.
Eli spent this day and the next with his mother and grandmother before he was asked to put on his full armor and go to the bridge he arrived at.
Buri Ymirson, Bor Burison, and Odin Borson stood there waiting for him. Instead of their usual silvery garments, they wore full battle armor with weapons drawn. Odin held a runic construct that looked exactly like his favored spear, Gungnir. Bor held a construct that looked like a gigantic war axe, its head twice the size of Bor's massive torso. Buri held a construct of a broadsword.
"We have taught you everything you need to know. We have shown you the enemy you will need to face to break the cycle. We have blessed you to even the odds. Now it is time to see if you have what it takes," Buri proudly recounted.
"Your blessings may make you invincible to the rest of the world as you see it, but always remember that there are enemies you cannot see. Don't grow conceited," Bor warned.
"Six months. Use this time to reassure our people, reaffirm your bonds, and then start your quest for growth. I look forward to the day I might see what you can become, my boy." Odin gave Eli a firm but short hug.
Frigga was next, though she looked like she always did, no armor or weapons.
"In my passing, I gave Krista some last words. However I spoke them, because I knew... I hoped they would not be the last words I would speak to the living," Frigga said with tears in her eyes. "My son has struggled in your absence. So whenever he is unsure of his lot in life, tell him this; The measure of a person, of a hero... is how well they succeed in being who they are, not of who they are supposed to be," Frigga spoke softly, tears running down her face, and Eli's now, too. He felt like she spoke those words for him, too. After a long hug, Eli turned to the last person on the bridge.
"My love and pride for you will never waver, my precious son. Don't doubt for a second that you are loved," Amora firmly declared, though her eyes were misting over just like Frigga's moments ago. "When you meet the me of different realities and they weren't blessed with you, don't be too hard on them, okay? If they are anything like Lorelei and I... they did not have the nicest upbringing."
Eli and Amora hugged for a few minutes until Odin's voice rang in the air.
"It is time." Eli released his mother from his arms, looked down, and his hands were starting to dissolve into motes of light. He spared one last look to Valhalla and lastly, all his relatives that were gathered here.
"This has been a blessing," Eli said as he looked toward Amora with a loving gaze. She nodded with tears in her eyes.
Eli felt more and more light, but before he was fully whisked away from Valhalla, his mother had one last thing to shout.
"And don't you dare fall in love with an Amora of a different reality! I'm the only Amora you're allowed to love!"
Moments later, Eli stood in the woods outside of Wakanda's capital city. He shook his head at his mother's antics and tried to make sense of his surroundings.
First, Eli noticed that he had gathered here in golden and green particles of light, just like when he was dissolved in Valhalla. He was exactly where he was snapped out of existence, but his wound was gone, and his sword was hanging from his neck and not in his gut.
Next, Eli looked up, and it felt like something broke in his mind. It wasn't painful, but it felt like a little bead holding an extra sense shattered, and his mind was trying its hardest to make... sense of it.
'Cosmic awareness, I was wondering when I would feel a difference,' Eli thought.
He didn't quite feel the seed of his own All-Force before in Valhalla, but now he felt it. A gigantic, inexhaustible well of energy right in the middle of his chest. He tried to connect to it with his mind, but he only felt a blinding light of golden energy inside him.
"Eli?" A voice broke Eli out of his musings.
"Eli? How come your wounds are gone? Wait, where is everybody? Thanos... didn't we lose?" The voice, clearly belonging to Natasha, rang out again.
"Calm down, Nat. We did lose, but our friends just snapped everyone back to life that Thanos wiped out five years ago," Eli calmly responded as he turned toward the redhead.
"Five!? Nonono, no! What happened to Eliza?" Nat screamed.
"Hey hey, she is fine. Don't panic! From what my grandmother told me, Steve adopted her and took care of her for the last four and a half years. Before that she was with Misty. She grew up healthy and cared for," Eli immediately calmed down Nat as best he could. The woman was still hyperventilating in his embrace.
"What of my brother?" Wanda asked with tears streaming down her face. She kept looking to the place that Vision's body was thrown to by Thanos when the titan plucked the mind stone from his head. She was waiting, hoping... wondering if the android would be back too.
"Pietro's alive. Well, he should be. The team went on a time heist to borrow the infinity stones from the past. Pietro went to Morag with Nebula to retrieve the power stone in 2014. It's 2022 now. Oh! Nebula is an alien, by the way. She used to be a daughter of Thanos but tried to kill him on many occasions. Apparently, he's just as bad a father as you would expect from a lunatic who wiped out half of all life in the universe," Eli explained.
More and more people began appearing; Rhodey, Sam, T'Challa... the list went on. On the fields, Eli even noticed Ty and Tandy looking around in confusion amid Wakandan warriors and some widows.
Eli began gathering the people of his faction and spoke of what he knew. He informed several higher ranking Wakandans, too. Like the Dora Milaje general Okoye and T'Challa, who apparently were both snapped, too.
Mid explanation, his golden Sovereign' crafted phone rang. It had survived the battle, and he kept it save in Valhalla, though obviously he had no reception there. He did take a bunch of pictures, though. He wondered if they stayed on the phone or not. Who knew the true rules of the afterlife after all.
"*Shit, it worked! Eli, I can't believe you're finally back! There's so much shit we need to talk about! Did you... did you meet Frigga?*" Misty sounded both overly excited and incredibly sad.
"Yeah, she was waiting for me. Thank you, Misty. My grandmother sends you her best wishes and discourages you from naming your firstborn after her. What's happening on your side?"
"*That sounds like her. Did she tell you her last words? Thor did take that shower as we assembled the new gauntlet, though he was grumbling the entire time. We're all in the Avengers compound, Hulk snapped his fingers like two minutes ago.*"
"What about Eliza?" Nat chimed in when Val finished her sentence.
"*Val took her sightseeing on Warsong. According to her text, they landed in our home in New York half an hour ago. Your daughter is safe and excited to meet you again, Natasha.*" Natasha started crying again. She didn't doubt Eli, but it's still better to hear it from someone who had apparently survived the snap, same as her daughter.
"That's great news. Good job keeping everything together while we're gone. And thanks for bringing us all back. I'm with everyone in Wakanda. Once everything is done here, I'll meet you in New Jersey. Give my best to dad," Eli said before hanging up.
He kept explaining what he knew about the happenings to his friends and T'Challa, who had a grave expression on his face. The state of his country could be anything in the absence of a king in five years. He wanted to quickly go to the palace and talk to the tribe leaders about the happenings of the last years. That's not even considering who was ruling Wakanda in the past years and what they will now do with the throne.
After not even ten minutes of being back to the land of the living, however, Eli's cosmic awareness gave him his first warning and he had to stop all conversations abruptly. He stopped talking, rose to the skies, and looked in the direction of New Jersey. He couldn't see that far, especially because New Jersey was hidden below the horizon even from his current height, but something told him that a formidable enemy had arrived.
"Prepare for battle! Shuri, track my trajectory!" Eli shouted to the crowd below him.
And with that, he shot in the direction of the enemy he perceived, leaving behind a faint trail of golden-green motes of light.
At his fastest speed, Eli reached the compound in two and a half minutes from Central Africa. That's roughly 200 times the speed of sound, beating Eli's fastest speed from before the snap by almost ten times in a straight line. And Eli was now more glad than ever that he had amazing control over his magic to make sure his speed wouldn't burn a hole in the atmosphere or cause drastic natural catastrophes.
When he reached the compound, though, Eli scrunched his brows together in worry. Gone was his excitement over being alive again and his enormous power up. Thanos' gigantic mothership was floating inside the cloud layer above the compound, and the compound was completely destroyed.
He used his magics to scan for life forms in the wreck and got a few more results than he would have liked.
Shrouded in invisibility, he made his way toward the biggest energy source in the wreck. If Thanos was here, they could not allow him to gain the Time Heist's infinity stones under any circumstances.
When he arrived at the energy signature he felt, he saw Pietro running away from the same six-limbed beasts that had attacked Wakanda during the Infinity War. It appeared as if Pietro was right where one of the missiles that destroyed the compound was detonated. His clothes were ripped and burned away. One of his legs was clearly shattered, which meant he was only on one leg. He had cuts and burns all over.
Eli made quick work of the remaining alien beasts and landed next to Pietro.
"You look like shit. If Wanda sees you like this, she's not going to stop crying," Eli said, lifting his invisibility.
"Eli! You're back! That means we did it? We brought everyone back?" Pietro asked as if a heavy burden was lifted from him.
"Yep. Now throw over the gauntlet, and I'll throw in a healing spell for you. Afterward, we got a purple ass to kick," Eli joked with a wink.
"Yeah, take it. This is more trouble than it's worth."
Eli cast a healing spell at full power for Pietro and caught the gauntlet. As he it fell into his hands, one hand touched five infinity stones, all but the time stone at the thumb. Something different happened from the last two times he accidentally touched an infinity stone, though.
His eyes still lit up, but Eli was in full control of his body and mind. He felt enormous amounts of energy flow into his body, but before it could do anything to him, it was redirected to his All-Force seed. A seed that was now blooming.
However, Eli didn't have the time to enjoy a power up now, so he released his grasp on the infinity stones moments later and didn't check the changes to the All-Force. If he did, he would have noticed that the space and reality stone had created a small piece of land no smaller than the original Avengers compound floating inside the golden light, the power and mind stone had increased both the quality and quantity of the All-Force immensely, and the soul stone had used the remains of Odin's seed for the cosmic awareness to create a life inside this new piece of land inside his All-Force.
Combined with Pietro's ridiculous extremis healing factor, Eli's healing spell finished repairing Pietro's broken leg seconds later. With a snap, he also conjured some clothes for him so Pietro wouldn't run around the compound naked.
"You should invest in more durable clothing," Eli quipped.
"How else are the ladies going to get a good look at the goods?" Pietro argued back with a smirk.
"Huh, five years later, and despite all your speed, the ladies are still running away from you?"
"Psh, as if you aren't single," Pietro shot back with a roll of his eyes.
"Want me to date your sister?" Eli asked with a shit-eating grin, fully expecting Pietro to lash out. But he didn't, so Eli looked at Pietro with a frown.
"Want me to say no? Ha! If an actual god is not worthy to date my sister, who is? I want to be cool uncle. Can't do that if she dies alone," Pietro explained with a shrug.
"What makes you think I am actually a god? I only learned about it in the afterlife," Eli asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I hung out with a bunch of Asgardians in New Asgard in the last five years. Alcohol from Earth no longer makes me drunk, I have to drink Asgardian stuff if I want to wash away my sorrows. Anyway, they were really adamant in making sure I know that your royal bloodline is for actual true gods," Pietro explained, once again shrugging.
"Alright, as much as I would love to keep talking with you in this wet ruin that smells like burned feet, how about we go help our other friends out of this ruin and deal with Thanos who somehow got wind of the time heist?"
Agreeing with a nod, Pietro wanted to run ahead but stopped immediately when he ran into Nebula.
"Hey Neb. Glad to see you're okay! Let's go help the others out of the ruins and go kick your daddy's ass," Pietro greeted jovially with a wave of his hand.
Nebula lifted both hands in response and pointed energy pistols at Eli and Pietro.
"Give me the gauntlet, or you're dead," she said in a cold voice.
"Nebula, no! Lower your weapons! You don't have to do this!" Another voice Eli didn't recognize rang out.
"Gamora? Didn't you die? Like, die for real?" Pietro asked with a tilt of his head.
"She has a gun pointed to your head! Stay quiet!" Gamora only shouted in response.
"Do you or shall I?" Pietro asked as he looked back Eli. "Oh, you're already on it."
Eli's eyes were glowing an emerald green, and a moment later, Nebula dropped like a string had been cut.
Gamora's eyes widened, and she pointed her gun at Eli instead.
"What did you do!? I could have talked her out of it!" Gamora shouted.
"No worries, Gamora from 2014. Nebula from 2014 is only asleep. You and Nebula from 2022 can take her somewhere safe, and she will sleep there soundly until I say otherwise. Oh, and hey Nebula from 2022. Not sure your alien physiology supports it, so no guarantees, but maybe Barbara can make extremis for your race so that you can get your body back! As thanks for bringing us all back and stuff," Eli explained, winking toward a shadowy corner where a second Nebula stepped out.
"I already like you better than your father," was the only thing Nebula from 2022 said before she picked up her past self like a sack of potatoes and ran out of the corridor.
Eli conjured a long chain, wrapped it around the gauntlet and bound it to his back as best he could. He looked toward Pietro, nodded and disappeared from both Gamora's and Pietro's senses.
"What is he?" Gamora asked with a frown.
"Nicest god you'll ever meet. Hopefully my future brother-in-law. Haha, imagine I get to be a prince of Asgard! So cool!"
Gamora looked at Pietro as if he was an idiot, shook her head and quickly tried to follow the two Nebulas.
Once Eli was outside, he floated high up in the air. He saw that Thanos had just beaten down Cap and even managed to break his vibranium shield.
However, Eli didn't engage. If he wanted to take down Thanos, first his mothership had to go. Getting bombed by the ship is what lost him and Asgard his first encounter with the mad titan. As he hovered in the air, Eli pointed his destroyer arm toward the mothership and charged the same kind of spell he used to take out those triangular transport ships during the infinity war.
Cap stood back up again. His arm holding the shield was as broken as the shield itself. Thor and Misty were beaten, too, but Eli wasn't in a hurry. They would survive a few more minutes.
Almost done charging the spell, Eli's eyes fell down toward Mjolnir. Since he was now proclaimed worthy, maybe he should use it to empower the spell? Inwardly nodding, he decided that's what he would do.
Hundreds of sling ring portals formed behind Eli, who kept powering up the spell and controlling its outcome, but Eli didn't pay attention.
Cap was reassured now that he was no longer alone in the fight, so he called back Mjolnir, and once most forces that stepped through the portals, he shouted.
"AVENGERS! Assem-"
Cap was interrupted by Mjolnir suddenly flying out of his hand toward the skies. Everybody looked up, even Thanos, to see a figure shrouded in chaotic green energies holding up Mjolnir to gather some lightning.
The next moment, as the figure threw Mjolnir forward, a shockwave followed the hammer, and without sound or an extra lightshow, Thanos' mothership was falling out of the sky, obliterated.
Weekly Power Status
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