145 C145 Buy One, Get One Free?

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Following the results of the simulation, Peter started his search for the underwater temple on Morag.

Starting his search with the coasts surrounding Morags only current landmass, Peter looked down at this planets dark murky ocean water. Even the smell coming from the water reminded him of a garbage dump.

"That doesn't seem safe..." Peter muttered to himself.

"That's because it isn't." A metallic voice said.

Turning to the side, Peter saw Tony use his suit's thrusters to land beside him. His face mask snapped opened as he exposed his nose to putrid waters, causing him to scrunching his face in disgust.

"While you were studying this solar system's orbit and solving Morags mysteries, I was exploring and taking samples from everything." Tony said haughtily as if he accomplished something amazing. "The water here is almost the exact equivalent to the juice you can find at the bottom of a New York City dumpster. Mix in a little bit of flesh-eating bacteria and you have Morags ocean."

"Eww, I think I'm going to throw up..." Peter says as a strong wind blows the ocean breeze in his direction.

"Feel free to let it out in the ocean. It's not like it'll make a difference." Tony quips as he looks out at the dirty water. "The people that abandoned this planet left it in a disgusting mess. Talk about a bunch of slobs."

"Do you think this was all caused by pollution?" Peter asks curiously.

"Probably." Tony nods as he closed his mask to block the smell.

"Maybe we should work on a fix for that on Earth..." Peter solemnly thought out loud.

"Yeah..." Tony agreed as he pats Peter on the shoulder. "Well, have fun swimming in that mess. I'm heading home. There's nothing left on this planet worth exploring, and since you're not sharing your treasure, exploring the dumpster juice ocean doesn't sound very appealing."

"I just hope that I don't catch anything, here..." Peter says as he waves his hand and opens a portal back to earth. "I'll be back sooner or later."

After saying their goodbyes, Tony left and Peter got to work.

In order to search the ocean floor without catching some sort of alien HIV or COVID, Peter created a bubble of eldritch energy around himself. Thanks to the copious amounts of tedious training and practice, he was able to control the ball of energy to fly or roll, but in this case, it would act as a sort of submarine for his undersea exploration.

Descending into the black poison water, Peter took out his phone and opened the GPS app.

Thanks to the scans that Jarvis took during Tony's exploration, which mapped out the whole planet, and a few makeshift satellites that he built and launched into orbit, Peter could use the ghost phones GPS as if he were traversing on earth.

With this, Peter marked off the areas he had to search, making this whole underwater expedition about a million times easier.

Dropping into the water with a loud splash, Peter couldn't see a damn thing as the water was far too dark. He could only see about 6 feet in front of him, which certainly wasn't enough for his needs.

'Hmm... Let's try that spell.' Peter thought as he waved his hands and two fairly simple spell circles were drawn in front of him.

As the spells finished forming, they began to shrink to the size of a quarter before launching back at Peter and into his eyes.

"Ugh..." Peter grunted in discomfort as he felt a burning sensation on his eyeballs. 'The book didn't say anything about pain...'

Opening his reddening eyes, Peter found that he could see much better than before. Instead of the measly 6 feet, he could see around 150 yards all around him.

Though, with this new enhanced night vision came a constant burning pain in Peter's eyes.

"I'll just have to live with it." Peter thought as his eyes started to water. "For now, at least."

Not wanting to waste any more precious time, Peter looked at his GPS and started his search. Controlling the eldritch bubble with a thought, he swept across the underwater coastline at a swift pace.

Like this, Two days passed and Peter searched the entire coastline, finding nothing but some crumbed ruins.

Of course, that was exactly what Peter was looking for, but these ruins weren't anything special like the temple. They were just a few corroded homes left over from long-forgotten cities and towns.

'I knew that I should have started with the islands...' Peter thought as he traversed through the open ocean and toward the closest underwater island marked on the GPS.

-Time Skip - 3 days-

After five full days of searching the rocky ocean floor of planet Morag, Peter was starting to lose hope that the damn temple even existed in the first place.

'Where the f*ck is this stupid thing...' Peter internally groaned as he continued following the GPS. "Hmm... What's that?"

As he continued his tedious search, Peter caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a toppled-over pillar.

Eager to finally leave this damn ocean, Peter floats the eldritch bubble toward the pillar. As he got closer and closer, his excitement grew as a crumbling decayed building appeared in his sight.

The building looked exactly like the one from the beginning of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It was surrounded by pillars on the outside and covered with some underwater vines, which had to be extremely resilient to survive in this hell of an ocean.

'This has to be it!' Peter felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

Circling the corroded stone temple, Peter looked for a viable entrance. The place was full of holes, but he needed one big enough to fit through with his bubble.

After all, he didn't want to cause this place to collapse. That would only delay him even further.

Finding the front entrance, which was big enough for him to fit, Peter was reminded of Star Lord's entrance in the movie.

'Come and get your love...' Peter sang in his head as he entered the temple and started looking around.

The place was even more dilapidated on the inside than it was on the outside. There was even a very deep ravine that divided the temple in half between front and back.

"If I recall correctly, the vault that held the Orb was on the other side of the ravine..." Peter thought as he floated over to the backside of the temple.

At the back wall of the temple, the only thing that hadn't eroded away was a huge double door, which was locked shut.

Tapping the bubble into the door, Peter hoped the corrosion from the water would have weakened it enough to break, but sadly it didn't.

Inspecting the door for a second, Peter found a circular keyhole in the center, but sadly he didn't know how to pick open an ancient alien door.

'I guess, force is the only option.' Peter thought as he backed up a few yards and began to tweak his mode of transport.

Instantly, a long point appeared at the front of the bubble.

"Hopefully this place doesn't collapse..." Peter thought as he launched the eldritch bubble point first into the door's lock.

*Bang!*

With only a single ram, the point pierced through the door's lock. Expanding the point, the doors began to crack and crumble into pieces, as Peter made his own entrance.

Within seconds, the door was nothing but rubble that floated to the floor, leaving a hole big enough for Peter to float through.

Though, the vault didn't seem to have any water inside, so as soon as an opening was made, water was sucked in like a vacuum, filling the small space in no time at all.

As the water settled, Peter floated inside and found a small room covered in odd glyphs with a pillar in the middle.

This pillar had its own carvings as well but the most attractive part of it was the softball-sized metal Orb that was floating, suspended behind some sort of forcefield that seemed to keep the water at bay.

[Insert picture of the Orb here]

Floating up to the pillar that held his prize, Peter took a moment to admire it.

'Finally, my first Infinity Stone!' Peter thought as a smile bloomed on his face.

After basking in his accomplishment, Peter now had to figure out how to get the thing out, as it was locked behind the forcefield.

'Didn't Star-Lord use some sort of overpowered magnet to pull it out?' Peter thought as he tried to remember the movie.

"Eh, let's give it a try." Peter muttered as he waved his hand and a spell circle wrote itself onto the outside of the bubble he was in. 'If this doesn't work, I'll go with the forceful approach. After all, it hasn't failed me yet.'

As the spell finished its formation, Peter moved closer to the pillar as it activated.

Immediately, the orb jerked toward Peter as it strained against the forcefield. Only seconds later, it broke through multiple barriers and smacked into Peter's bubble, sticking to the magnetic spell on its surface.

"Haha!" Peter laughed as he eagerly exited the temple and returned to the surface.

Breaking through the oceans surface and back into the open air, Peter morphed the bubble into a platform to stand on as he deactivated the magnetic spell.

As the spell disappeared, the metal Orb fell into Peter's waiting hand.

'I have it...' Peter smiled as he grips the Orb tightly.

Sadly, his moment of accomplishment is ruined by the toxic perfume of Morags ocean breeze.

'I never want to come back to this planet again...' Peter thought as he opened a portal to his bedroom and left Morag for, hopefully, the last time.

Standing in his bedroom with the Orb in hand, Peter couldn't escape the dirty ocean smell that clung to his body.

"Maybe a shower is in order?" Peter muttered, as his phone started to go off.

*Ring ring ring...*

'Is it the Ancient One?' Peter thought as he expected an earful from her about messing with her timeline.

"Hello?" Peter answers without looking at the caller ID.

"I found the cube." A familiar female voice replies.

Looking at his phone, Peter confirmed who he was talking to.

'Two stones in one day?'

A/N 1748 words :)

[DONT FORGET MY STONES! Pls&thnx🥺]