"Eric!"
Selvig, who'd been deep in calculations, whipped his head around at the sound of Mario's voice. His neck made an audible crack from the sudden movement after maintaining the same position for too long.
Mario winced. "Easy there. You keep that up, you're gonna twist your head clean off—"
The words died in his throat as he got a proper look at Selvig. The scientist had always been older, sure, but usually he carried himself with energy. Now? His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles so deep they looked like bruises. His skin had the grayish pallor of someone who hadn't slept in days.
"Mario?!" Selvig's voice trembled.
Mario rushed over, asking worriedly, "Mamma Mia... what happened to you?"
Selvig stared at him like he was seeing a ghost. The man who'd vanished through his own accidental teleportation experiment, whose location had been completely unknown, was suddenly standing right in front of him.
He clutched his chest and collapsed.
Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
Mario yanked his resurrection staff from his inventory and pointed it at Selvig's prone form. Thank God it was exhaustion that had killed him, not old age.
"Vacation request denied! You don't get to die on me!"
A pillar of holy light descended from above, enveloping Selvig's body in golden radiance. The gray pallor began to fade from his skin almost immediately.
But Mario wasn't taking chances. He followed up with another spell.
"Font of Vitality!"
Buff icons appeared above Selvig's head: [Life Regeneration +3] and [Damage Absorption +3].
Selvig's eyes snapped open, and the first thing he saw was Mario's face hovering over him. The moment he'd spotted Mario earlier, the tension he'd been carrying for days had finally broken, and all the physical strain from his sleepless nights had hit him at once.
Mario helped him sit up. "How you feeling?"
"Mario... where did you go? How did you get back?"
Typical scientist. More concerned about the mystery than his own near-death experience.
Mario gave him the abbreviated version of events.
"Incredible. So we can't just reach outer space now, we can travel to other universes?"
That "we" made Mario smile. It meant Selvig was fully committed, truly part of the team now.
"Don't worry, I'll take you all over there to see it for yourselves when we have time. Speaking of which, where's Ivan?"
"Ivan? Oh right, Ivan! It's good you're back. These past few days, Ivan's mental state has been unstable. He and Tony have gotten into several arguments. I think you should check on him."
Mario nodded and headed for the wormhole gate that led to their colonized planet. Kaecilius and Skye fell in behind him.
The moment they stepped through the portal, they were greeted by the sight of countless robots in motion, constructing what looked like a cyberpunk city. Everywhere Mario looked, there were structures of steel and reinforced alloys.
Several spacecraft were parked nearby, it looked like a few more had been repaired over the past few days.
"Praise the Omnissiah," he muttered. "Are we building a Machine Cult planet here?"
The only disappointment was that all the power came from massive arc reactors mounted on elevated platforms. No steam pistons, or Industrial Revolution aesthetic. That took some of the charm out of it.
The moment he set foot on the planet, Ivan received an alert through his neural interface. He immediately mounted a flight platform and rocketed toward the portal entrance.
From above, he spotted Mario talking with Skye. Ivan didn't waste time with a gradual descent, he dropped straight down and landed with enough force to crack the platform beneath his boots.
When Mario had first disappeared, Ivan had fallen into a storm of rage and self-recrimination. But after he'd calmed down, his instincts had told him Mario would be fine. So in the days since, Ivan had thrown himself completely into finishing the task Mario had assigned before his disappearance, terraforming this planet.
"You're back!"
Ivan stepped forward and Mario pulled him into a brief hug.
"You've done excellent work."
Mario pulled back and gestured at the steel city. "Though I gotta ask, are you planning to go full Adeptus Mechanicus on me here?"
"Adeptus what?" Ivan frowned at the unfamiliar term. "This planet is habitable, but the mineral resources are extremely limited. Apart from the forests, the only abundant material we have is scrap metal from crashed ships."
He pointed toward the busy construction zones in the distance. "So we're recycling the wrecks to complete the initial phase of development. That area will become the spacecraft research and manufacturing center. In about a month it'll be fully operational. Then we can start producing small spacecraft and personal flyers."
Mario couldn't help but feel proud of his past self for making the trip to Siberia to recruit this brilliant guy.
"Perfect. I'm leaving this planet in your hands. But don't expand the city too much, I prefer a more natural aesthetic when possible."
They spent the next hour catching up, with Mario describing his adventures in the alternate universe and the massive Chitauri army he'd encountered. Ivan listened intently.
---
Twenty-three days passed in the blink of an eye.
Mario lounged on a beach chair in swim trunks and sunglasses, soaking up the sun like he didn't have a care in the world. Which, at the moment, he didn't.
A robot approached, Ivan's voice emanating from its speaker. "A large spacecraft has appeared in orbit. They've dispatched several smaller craft that have already entered the atmosphere. Should we shoot them down?"
"Hold fire."
He pulled a communicator from his inventory. The moment he activated it, a voice came through.
"Captain Yondu, that wizard's communicator still ain't connecting. Damn it, I think we've been weapons-locked."
Throughout the steel city, camouflaged sections of ground split apart to reveal railgun batteries glowing, already tracking the incoming vessels.
He pressed the transmit button. "You made good time. Did you find information about those two planets?"
A brief pause, then Yondu's drawl came through. "Mario? We found it, the planet called Vormir."
---
Aboard the Ravager ship, Mario stood at the observation window at the front of the vessel, looking down at the planet shrouded in dark clouds.
He turned to face Yondu. "Thanks for the assist."
Yondu grinned. "We Ravagers take our reputation seriously."
That might fool his crew, but Mario knew Yondu only cared about two things: money and Star-Lord. In that order.
"You really should clean up this rust bucket sometime. If it weren't for the windows, I'd think we were in a junkyard, not flying through space."
"She ain't pretty, but she gets the job done."
"Let's head down," Mario said. "The sooner we finish this, the sooner you can enjoy spending your money."
The ship descended rapidly, cutting through the thick atmosphere until Vormir's unique landscape came into view.
They circled the planet once before locating their destination.
The ship landed smoothly. Mario stepped out and examined the stonework.
"This really does look like it was designed as a landing pad."
A figure began floating toward them from the direction of the mountain peak.
Mario narrowed his eyes as the figure drew closer.
"Red Skull?"
Beneath the cloak was indeed a crimson skull, the face of Johann Schmidt, the Hydra leader from World War II. Long ago, he'd been rejected by the Space Stone and banished to this desolate place, where he'd ultimately been enslaved by the Soul Stone and transformed into its guardian.
"That was merely a name from a previous life," Red Skull said. "Welcome, travelers."
He turned his attention to Yondu. "Yondu Udonta, former leader of the Ravagers..."
"And you..." he paused, frowning as he focused on Mario. "Who are you? Why can't I see you?"
He pulled back his hood completely and floated swiftly toward Mario, his hollow eyes trying to pierce through whatever was blocking his sight.
Yondu frowned at being called a "former" leader. "You know who I am?"
Red Skull answered automatically, "I know all things. People may lie, but souls never do."
But as he met Mario's amused gaze, his certainty began to waver.
Why can't I see this man's soul? The Soul Stone never mentioned anything like this...
"Enough with the fortune-teller routine," Mario said. "You should know why I'm here, even if you can't see through me. Take me to it."
He had no interest in prolonged conversation. The Red Skull was nothing more than the Soul Stone's puppet now. In essence, he was the Soul Stone, merely wearing Schmidt's memories like a mask.
"You must already know the price that must be paid to obtain the Stone."
"Yeah, I'm aware. Ready when you are."
"Everyone who comes here believes they are ready."
Without another word, Red Skull floated toward the mountain peak. Mario followed, with Yondu bringing up the rear.
"You guys stay here and watch the ship," Yondu ordered his crew. "I'll go take a look."
Several minutes of climbing later, they reached the summit. A magnificent altar stood at the peak.
"One soul for another. Only by sacrificing the one you love most can you obtain the Soul Stone."
Mario looked at Red Skull seriously. "Hypothetically speaking... what if the person I love most is myself?"
Red Skull stared at him in silence.
Are you kidding me? If you sacrifice yourself, who's supposed to receive the Stone?
"You can try it if you wish," Red Skull said flatly. "The choice is yours."
He just wanted these people gone as quickly as possible. He'd already realized that Yondu had no idea what the Soul Stone even was, they'd just provided transportation. But the man before him was a much bigger problem. He couldn't see his soul at all.
"In that case, I'll give it a shot."
Mario ignored Red Skull's expression and pulled a bed from his inventory, placing it on the altar platform.
Then he walked to the cliff's edge, only to pause as he remembered something.
It should work, right? I should have some left… right? Well, shit… I'm confident!
He dug a small pit in the ground, poured lava into it from a bucket, stripped off all his armor and weapons, and calmly stepped into the molten rock. His health bar dropped rapidly, plummeting from full to about twenty points in seconds.
He climbed out, walked back to the cliff edge, and without any hesitation stepped off.
The fall lasted about three seconds.
CRACK.
His body hit the ground. Health: zero.
Red Skull and Yondu both peered over the edge, staring at the broken corpse far below.
Yondu: "..."
Red Skull: "..."
Three seconds later, Mario sat up in the bed he'd placed earlier, and sighed.
Knew it! But I'm getting the feeling that I'm in the critical numbers… maybe less than four?
He looked around, noting the absence of any glowing yellow gem. He called out to Red Skull's retreating form. "Hey! I died once already, doesn't that mean I fulfilled the requirement?"
Red Skull turned. "That doesn't count. Your soul was never here."
"Not my problem," Mario said, standing up and walking toward him. "If the Soul Stone didn't take my soul, that's its issue. I still upheld my end. We should keep things fair, right?"
Red Skull laughed. He said nothing more, but his attitude clearly conveyed: What exactly are you going to do about it?
Mario sighed. This was giving him a headache. The Soul Stone clearly wasn't in the material realm anymore, even if he dug through the entire planet, he wouldn't find it.
Maybe I should bring Kaecilius or Thor here, use the power of the other Stones to locate it?
Now that he knew where the Soul Stone was hidden, Mario wasn't in as much of a rush. But he wasn't ready to give up completely either.
He pulled obsidian blocks from his inventory and began constructing a Nether portal. He'd learned from the Ancient One that building such portals would strengthen the connection between the Minecraft dimension and the Marvel universe, possibly even altering some fundamental laws.
Let's see what happens if I build a hundred portals here. Maybe I can turn this entire planet into a cube.
As soon as he finished constructing the first portal frame and lit it with flint and steel, something unexpected happened. He suddenly felt weight materialize in his palm.
Opening his hand, he found a glowing yellow gem resting there.
He stared at it in silence.
"Well... I'll be damned. That jump wasn't for nothing after all."
Even though he said that, a wide grin spread across his face. He was now one step closer to collecting all the Infinity Stones.
Next up: the Power Stone and the Reality Stone.