Miss Martian

Groot knew enough from experience with various bipedal sentients across the galaxy that there were some postures, some gestures and expressions which truly could be considered primal. The width and gleam of the being’s eyes – he was now discerning characteristics most considered to belong to females – suggested a great deal of trepidation, of anxiety about his approach. It was a typical response to his presence among those who did not understand him or his origins, but so far she seemed to be making no moves to aggressively defend herself from his encroachment.

Her reply was surprising on two levels. The first was the facility with which she returned his vocal greeting, an utterance that was oddly similar and even more strangely fluent in nuance. This was a sentient that had a gift for languages, clearly. But she was not simply mimicking his vocal tones; she was adding her own inflection as well. It sounded a little stilted, but less so than the attempts of most others, and it bore with it the range he was not accustomed to hearing from mammals.

“I… am Groot.” «Hello, M'gann… I am known by many names and terms, but most often people call me Groot, as when I speak aloud, most are only capable of discerning a phrase which sounds to them like a self-introduction. You do not intrude – this is not my world; like you, I am a visitor, and not territorial.»

As he spoke, he became aware, too, that though her speech had been unusually precise in its conveyance, it had not in fact shared every nuance of thought which had made it to him. Instead, her feelings and emotions had transmitted to him in a far more direct manner than on the air. Telepathy? Yes, that would be the likely answer. She would not be the first he’d ever met with the gift, but it seemed so rare in the galaxy that he was grateful for the perk – it made communication so much easier, and a lilt of relief flooded through him.

But he tilted his head as she winced her way through her diplomatic overtures. She was inhaling harshly through her nasal passages. Clearly there was something wrong. “I am Groot?” «Forgive me, but from what I understand of most bipedal sentients, your posture and expression suggest you are in some form of physical distress, perhaps battling illness. Do you perhaps require medical attention?»

She forced herself to smile as she sank to the base of the tree. Her breathing slowed as she sat there, leaning back. M’gann calmed herself somewhat more easily now, trusting that Groot was not going to attack her. “You are welcome to join me under this great tree, if you like, Groot.” She looked up into the canopy and admired the remains of the day streaming through the leaves. “It is certainly a beautiful place.” 

Ah, it felt better to relax. Even the parasite seemed to fade into background noise the deeper she breathed. Suddenly concerned, she double checked that it was not eating through the stomach she’d made for it. It was not. She relaxed again, then tensed as Groot pointed out her signs of distress.

“Yes, you’re correct,” M’gann answered, drawing a hand to the second stomach as she thought and spoke to him. “I’m looking for the herb, R. Lincera.” She held her palm open and allowed the herb to unfurl like a fern. “This is what it looks like. It is the only image I have, and I only have an image or I would be able to track it myself.” 

M’gann gasped as the parasite moved. Maintaining her form was a struggle, but letting go meant the parasite could have enough room to… She shuddered. She didn’t want to imagine it. 

“My friends and I… We’re suffering from a parasite. As a shifter I’ve isolated a single specimen to keep alive as proof positive that the herb I find is R. Lincera. It should kill it. H’ronmeer,” she breathed through her teeth. “I hope it kills it. If I kill it myself, I’ll never know that I have the correct plant. And if I shift it away from my own body,” a thought which brought her no small amount of comfort, “it will shrivel and die before I ever know if the medicine will work for my colleagues. Humans, mostly.”

Passive scans of the approaching alien vessel had been taken by Groot’s ship upon its approach, and as he climbed into the cockpit to consult the readouts, he made a point of updating his wrist-computer with the latest translation matrices. In the event the occupants of that vessel decided to make contact with him, it might behoove him to have a means of communicating with them. Most species that heard him speak could only discern a singular phrase from his wooden approximation of tongue and vocal cords, and it was a phrase he almost never truly uttered, if they could just understand.

Occupant, he belatedly amended to himself, as there seemed to be only one biological signature aboard the ship. It was sleeker and more purposeful than his own ship, admittedly a hodgepodge of parts by comparison; the other ship seemed to be some sort of scout or perhaps interceptor. The pilot was presenting as bipedal, but the computer was having a difficult time getting a read on its genetic structure – not quite mammalian, certainly not floral. There was fluctuation in its biological readings that suggested a morphogenic matrix.

A shapeshifter. He’d met his share. Most were not very trusting (the Skrulls came most readily to mind), and some species were aggressive (as with the Klyntar). But, this one was isolated, and already beginning to emerge from its spacecraft, perhaps to examine the resources of this world.

It was at least worth a few moments to find out what the other being wanted.

He stepped back out of his ship and made his way towards the other vessel’s landing site. It wasn’t a vast distance separating the two, and he could see across the expanse the individual moving away from its vessel and moving from tree to tree. It looked… not quite stable on its feet. He saw humanoid features – hair the color of the sunset, skin a shade of green to match the moss that often adorned his body – but he also saw swaying and hesitation in its pace.

He made a point of making his approach known. He did not want the being to be surprised or frightened by his presence, and so he simply lumbered at a lax pace in the alien’s direction, until he was perhaps ten meters from the being’s position as it leaned against yet another tree trunk.

His mouth opened to greet her. And as always, the only sound that emerged was the creaking of his pseudo-voice, lending itself to a single assemblage of noises.

“I am Groot.” «Greetings, fellow traveler.»

When the other sentient being began to approach her, though slowly, even relaxedly, M’gann’s followed her flight instinct and pushed into the treeline. This was dangerous territory. She was far too weak to protect herself from an unknown opponent, potentially a powerful one. Certainly, she was reluctant to face a species whose telepathic signature she did not recognize off the bat.

She knew that he was male. That he seemed kind. There was no particular air of maliciousness surrounding him. He was a complex alien with many similarities to plantlife. And, on the subject of plantlife, he was absolutely covered in it. Plants of all different species seemed to be growing on him. Attached to him. And quite happy about it. M’gann had sensed nothing like it since studying the ecosystem growing on the sloths of Earth.  

M’gann peered out from her hiding spot with great, fearful eyes. 

And then such a greeting! It sounded to her human ears as one phrase, but to her Martian mind it seemed another entirely. She sniffled, tugging at her hood. “Greetings, fellow traveler,” she said tentatively in Groot’s language, though she knew not its name, as that was what her telepathic translation allowed her. “I’m M’gann. It is fortunate and unusual, indeed, to find another soul out so far from a major hub. I do hope I am not intruding upon your territory.” 

She grabbed at her side, let out a hiss of breath, and slumped against the tree a bit more. “Apologies. And I do hope that your intentions are good.” As a telepath, and one specializing in empathic connection at that, it was never a bad thing to ask. It helped to root out trouble early if there was the shadow of a lie or the sharp line of maliciousness.

“I’ll admit I know less about cruise ship history than I do about medical accessibility thereto,” Stephen replied, “but that is an interesting tidbit. I’ll hang onto it.”

Her remark about the dawn drew his eyes to the horizon for a moment. That, too, was as lovely as the immediate environs, and fairly convincing. If he didn’t know it was a dream, he would have hesitated to say it was something other than reality. It was all too vivid to feel like standard fare through one’s own mind. He looked back to her, and though his smile was polite, it was a touch sardonic at her offer. “Thanks, but I think if I eat something here, my body will get jealous of me. Trying to stay fit and cruise liners are known for lavish selections. I can only imagine what dream-carbs would do to me.”

He leaned forward, placing his arms on the table and lacing his fingers in front of him. At her invitation, he glanced down at his garb, then up again and popped his thumbs upward. “I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve worn these, I’m getting some nostalgia over them, so I think I’ll stick with them for the moment.”

He had opened his mouth to answer her inquiry about astral projection when she interrupted her own train of thought by asking probably the more pertinent question, and he gave a conciliatory nod. “I was alerted by a colleague to a psychic projection of considerable power and recognizably practiced focus. My colleague also indicated the projection carried human and non-human hallmarks. As one of Earth’s most powerful telepaths, he would have greeted you himself, but world politics is playing its part in making that meeting complicated. Think of it as rudimentary first contact protocol. But I operate under a slightly different set of rules, and I’ve met all manner of extraterrestrials and extradimensional entities… so I’ve got equivalent qualification. Basically, I’m here to greet you on behalf of the metahuman community, and to find out if you come in peace – but given the level of detail in what I’m seeing here, looks like you’ve been amidst Earth culture a good long while already.” He tilted his head. “And you spoke of a feeling of emptiness, and having no one to share your dreams with. So I think I’ll move to a different question… why such a powerful projection now? Were you meaning to reach out to us?”

She held back a little laugh at the very idea of ‘dream-carbs,’ something a Martian such as herself never really had to worry about, and listened. “Good. As long as you’re comfortable, I’m happy, Doctor Strange. This dream should be a pleasant one. I rarely make them any other way.” 

M’gann had more than a little regret that she’d felt the need to interrupt her own question, and not only because it seemed impolite. A psychic projection of considerable power. Recognizably practiced focus. Human and non-human hallmarks. He’d hit some bullseyes there. “I’d be delighted to meet your colleague, sometime,” she said, suddenly concerned that she might be in some sort of trouble despite the welcome. Despite the fact that she wasn’t doing any harm by dreamscaping in her own mind. 

“That’s very kind of you. I can assure you that I do come in peace. I’m a member of the Justice League. Miss Martian,” she explained, unsure that someone as lofty as a dreamwalking, world-politicking sorcerer, would be familiar with her bygone television show or her Obie Award or her work as a public superhero, an ambassador for both Earth-Mars relations as well as human-hero relations. Heck, he might not even know her uncle. 

“Well, you’re welcome to keep ‘em coming. I’m a sponge for knowledge.” He let a small smile work its way onto his face, letting the lines in his cheeks show. “And let’s start with Doctor, since that’s what I came here as. Stephen is a name I hold in reserve for good friends. Which, I’ll be honest, I’d very much prefer to be, if given the option.”

He followed along as M'gann expounded on the qualities of the dream around them. The realism was startling, but there were still some indicators to his perception that it was a dream and not an alternate plane of existence; for example, anything he tried to read seemed to be a garble of letters. And he didn’t sense the application of any magical potential as she nodded to a space behind them and he took notice of the amenities there which clearly had not been only moments before.

At her invitation, he moved to one of the chairs and sat down. The tea she offered him was dark and thin, perhaps a product of British or American ware rather than Nepalese; the scent was piercing and sweet. He smiled and it nearly became a smirk as he tentatively sipped at it. It tasted like true Southern sweet tea, and probably would threaten to melt the enamel off his teeth if it were real. It had been a long time since he’d indulged in that particular delicacy, a hallmark of American southern hospitality.

“If this was a little thicker, maybe I’d pour it over a stack of pancakes,” he chuckled. “Well done. That takes me back.” Then he brought his gaze back to her, belatedly addressing her inquiry. “I’ll confess, dreaming isn’t something I do very much. I’ll let my body sleep but I prefer to study using astral projection. Which is how I got here. And most of the time my astral form reflects my true appearance, but I thought maybe scrubs might make me look a little more down-to-Earth than sorcerer’s robes.”

He shifted in his seat. “Why a necessity?” he asked. “If you’re not typically accustomed to visitors, what makes it important enough to refine and perfect? Is it for the personal challenge… or is it for the eventual wayward contact, like myself?”

“Well, were you aware that the first modern cruise ship, the Prinzessin Victoria Luise of the Hamburg-America Line, only operated for six years, from 1900 to 1906, when she climbed the rocks off Plumb Point, Jamaica, in an accidental grounding?” M’gann looked out the wide window as if to be sure they weren’t headed toward land. “Thankfully, no one was harmed. Dr. Strange it is, then.” 

There were certain details M’gann had yet to finish. Filling the books and menus with proper text, for instance, but this was the late stage of a craft and few people would be observant enough to notice such fine detail unless they believed they were in a dream in the first place.

“That can be arranged,” she said with a slight smirk. “Are you hungry for breakfast? The sun is rising.” It was, indeed. There were hints of dawn on the horizon. “I’ve never met a sorcerer in one of my dreamscapes before. I rather like your scrubs, but please. Make yourself comfortable. I’m here every night working on something or other. But, it sounds as though you, too, are using the time well. Astral projection. Indeed, how does that work? ” She leaned forward, practically humming with interest. Then she paused abruptly. “I must ask,” M’gann tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brow just a little bit out of curiosity. “If you didn’t simply wander in here and you find dreamwalking to be a taboo, what, exactly, are you doing here, Dr. Strange?” 

The young woman’s little smirk and quick laugh as she spoke of a plank were enough to let Stephen know that he wasn’t dealing with someone intending to be malicious. If she’d really wanted to draw him off the ship, she’d simply have done it by now. This was her world, after all, and he was just visiting it. He had no particular interest in exercising his will to the point that he would use force to keep himself here. Then it really would be a violation.

The vessel’s name seemed a bit on the nose, but he wasn’t about to argue it to its operator. Her crisp white dress uniform made her pale skin look sun-kissed by comparison, even more so when one considered the smattering of freckles across her face. Stephen made a point of absorbing her features. She certainly appeared human, even though Xavier’s instrumentation was not known for making mistakes on the order of species. But then again, they were both in a decidedly Earthbound mental simulation; it would make sense that she’d want to be part of it by blending in. Besides, for all he knew, she was simply near-human in presentation. He knew from experience that some natives of Xandar could easily pass for Terran.

Her apology was a bit of a surprise to him, but more so was her proffered hand. Both gestures, incredibly human to him. The PA system’s announcement threatened to ruin the moment, but it did draw out a slightly wry smile from him as he extended his right hand to clasp hers. Within the mindscape, his palms and fingers didn’t quiver, but because he’d already lived with the injuries for so long, they’d become incorporated into his mental avatar – a symbol of acceptance, he supposed, that his hands at this point were no longer meant for precision neurosurgical procedures – and so the fingers that wrapped about her palm were lined with a menagerie of scars extending from every fingertip all the way up to his wrist.

“I’m Doctor Stephen Strange,” he responded in greeting. “So yeah, I’m one of the rare ones that knows about the morgue thing. And I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. Dreamwalking isn’t a habit for me. It’s actually kind of taboo for sorcerers. Most people think it’s rude and would probably put me on that plank of yours.” He glanced about again. “Gotta say… the realism here is impressive. Right down to the PA interrupting at an inconvenient time. This comes off as way more than just a lucid dream. But you’re saying you don’t normally host guests – so this recreation, is it some sort of hobby? Artistic project?”

The tone of his voice was polite, but it also spoke to the intensity of his curiosity surrounding her efforts.

Those scars momentarily drew M’gann’s attention. Like a moth to a flame. As ever, she was attracted to detail. Birthmarks. Freckles. Wrinkles. Tattoos. The flecks of light and dark in the round of an iris. The parting of someone’s hair. Even the way their cuticles grew out, if they were allowed to grow unmanicured. His scars, like many before them, were something she wished she were permitted to study at length. Collecting every channel and groove and immortalizing them, in a sense, with her Martian memory.

Of course, M’gann said nothing of the sort. She shook his hand gently and looked at his eyes instead. They were just as fascinating. 

“Drat. There goes my trivia for the night.” She snapped her fingers in mock dismay. Thankfully, her mind was absolutely overflowing with facts about ships, sea, sand, and the fact that Salvador Dali once took his pet ocelot, Babou, on a cruise aboard the S.S. France. Somehow, she doubted that this poor man wanted to be subjected to her fun facts, however. 

“You’re forgiven, Doctor Strange. Would you prefer Stephen?” It was an innocent question. After all, she hadn’t even offered her own last name. “Yes, I’m well aware of the taboo of dreamwalking here. In my youth, before I’d so much as stepped a toe out of line, I received a stern talking to about expectations. Believe me, I have followed those expectations. Personally, I appreciate the company.”

“Thank you,” M’gann answered softly. She ran her hand over the varnished mahogany railing that trailed around the room to give passengers a handhold as they enjoyed the view of the observation deck. It looked and felt as solidly real as anything outside of the realm of imagination. “Years of private study, I suppose. You’re right. It’s not a lucid dream. Although,” she nodded at the empty room behind him and two chairs plus a little table with a carafe of iced tea and fresh cut fruit appeared before he even had the chance to turn around. “It wouldn’t be a very good dream of any kind without a snack.” 

Stephen was not the sort of man who voluntarily intruded on the dreams of others. His exploits through dimensions and universes – and even just trying to cross Bleecker Street – had given him ample opportunity to realize just what an intrusion it was to peek into the subconscious and unconscious thoughts of others, and it was never a skill he’d cultivated. Not every culture out there in the cosmos felt the same way about it, especially not those for whom telepathy and empathic projection were normative… and a great many of them accepted, even welcomed, others to share dreams and mental experiences with them. But for humanity, whose biology was still notoriously unstable and not yet adapted to conscious mind-to-mind contact, it was considered intolerably rude at best – and a deeply traumatic violation at worst.

So he’d learned to be careful in his pursuit of unconscious experience.

When Charles Xavier had mentioned that Cerebro was detecting faint traces of complex beta-wave patterns, Stephen had not been terribly interested at first. It had sounded like the professor had the matter in hand, since his machinery was specifically calibrated to detect human mutants, and that was the determined wheelhouse of the X-Men. But it became considerably more complicated when Xavier said that the origins were decidedly not human, calibration notwithstanding, and that the X-Men had done quite enough of representing Earth interests in recent years. Politics being what they were, a number of regional powers were less than comfortable permitting a small and disparate group of trained warriors stand before an intragalactic power and negotiate on behalf of the world.

Whereas Stephen, as both a member of the Avengers – itself a band of disparate warriors but sanctioned by the World Council – and Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, might be ideally suited for contact with such a being.

He’d thought that his intrusion might be less noticed… or at least, less threatening… if he appeared in the interloper’s dream in a far less assuming guise than that of his material self. He’d recalled to form a reflection of himself as he’d once been – a medical doctor, complete with dark blue scrubs and sneakers. He’d not quite stricken away the mustache and goatee that had become a part of him in the years since that career, but it made more sense to keep them, should he and the interloper actually meet.

Whatever he’d expected upon entering the buffeting telepathic waves, this hadn’t been anything close to it. A cruise ship? Populated by a complete crew and decorated with all manner of amenities one would actually find aboard one in the material world? This was someone already familiar with such things. This was no mere visiting lurker amidst the shadows – clearly they had firsthand experience.

He’d explored the various levels of the ship for several minutes before exiting out onto the Observation Deck, feeling no small amount of admiration for the realism of the waterscape before him and the ship beneath him, when her knock and voice alerted him that she was aware of his presence. He turned about and found himself face-to-face with a pale-skinned redhead wearing a guarded smile.

He offered a smile of his own and raised both hands, palms open, to his sides, a gesture of helplessness. “Guilty as charged,” he admitted, “and I’m hoping your first inclination isn’t to toss me overboard, though I can’t say I’d blame you if it was.” He cast his gaze about the sweeping lines of the vessel around them. “Fine ship you have here. All the amenities, none of the seasickness or food poisoning. You must charge a fortune.”

Years had passed since M’gann had detected a stowaway aboard one of her dreamscapes. 

She occasionally, though not regularly, had visitors in, but more often than not they had her visit their own psyches to try and organize thoughts, remove plaque, and generally keep good company. Still, it was the custom of her species to build these connected worlds. In the hopes that someone would, indeed, share in them, M’gann built. She built farmhouses and islets. Museums and interplanetary zoos. Anything she could imagine, she studied and visited and read about and built, lest she suffer from the gnawing, itching sensation of a night spent in the darkness of an empty dream. 

Somehow, finding a doctor aboard was more disconcerting to M’gann than finding a fellow superhero. Not that this man couldn’t easily be both. His telepathic signature was practically brewing with a storm of magical energy. She tilted her head to the side trying to take in the full picture of him. Human. Male. Older than he appeared, somehow. Lonely. Brimming with curiosity. 

His telepathic signature revealed little more than that and M’gann did not push any further. If more were to reveal itself in time, so be it. If not? Then that was the way it was meant to be.

“Never fear. No informal toss-overs here. We have a plank for that,” M’gann said with a short laugh. “Usually, it’s ceremonial, but who knows?” Hopefully this stranger in scrubs would be able to tell that she was joking. “Thank you, and, uh, don’t worry,” she added, just in case he couldn’t tell. “You’re welcome aboard the Dreamboat.”

“And no food poisoning, but there is a young man vomiting over the side of the Baha Deck. Bit too much to drink at karaoke night. And we do have a morgue. All cruise ships have one. Did you know that?” M’gann prattled on a bit, trying to figure out what she wanted to say. “Great-grandma Fawcett is enjoying her final nights in this dream, I’m afraid. Please don’t tell her.”

She mirrored him in raising both of her hands before she stepped forward and offered one. “I’m M’gann.” Her smile softened. “I’m sorry for going on. I just,” she shook her head and shrugged, “I haven’t had an unexpected guest in a long time.” She corrected herself. “I haven’t had a guest in a long time.”

[Closed RP with @redplanetblueplanet​ ]

It was a delightful world. Lush with flora and middling with fauna, it had yet to bear children to the galaxy in the form of sentient species. That meant there had yet to be an environmentally catastrophic industrial age… or even, really, the invention of the wheel. It was perhaps an oddity that a planet so rich in life was also so lacking in interest from outside parties, because there wasn’t even so much as a low-tech prison colony here – no sentience whatsoever.

According to galactic records, the planet had no designation that was cute, themed, or in any other way apropos. But as Groot considered it, that may not have been quite the clerical oversight it seemed… because some of the vegetation that existed here was genetically identical to that of other worlds – worlds, plural – he’d visited. This suggested to him that perhaps someone had seeded this planet with a variety of plant species… though why, exactly, one would do this was anybody’s guess. Not giving the planet a name, and leaving it instead as a serial number, would undoubtedly help its anonymity. But even that could only last so long.

He was eager to plumb its mysteries.

He’d spent the last three days lumbering through a forest on one of the southern continents, collecting modest samples from vegetation that clearly had not originated here, as well as samples from multi-generational hybrids. For each sample he’d collected to bring back to his ship, he’d consumed at least an equal amount. His body had produced a variety of interesting colors, shapes, and effects – not to mention affects. He’d already examined the shape of his head and the resilience of his bark for nearly a day straight.

But his excursion was cut short by the sound of his wrist communicator bleeping at him. When he pulled it up, he was morbidly fascinated to see that his ship was tracking another vessel descending from high altitude – and that it appeared to be on a landing vector which would bring it near his own vessel.

He harrumphed and began to head back to his landing site. His ship was locked, but there was no need to leave it unguarded. Some people – not many, just some – were really good – better than him! – at picking locks.

M’gann’s stomach growled again. She’d been attempting to keep the parasite under wraps with telepathy, but she was finding that such a creature could not be reasoned with for long when the very thing it wanted most in all the universe was a taste of her. Although delicate shifting had allowed her to isolate the creatures in a secondary, fortified stomach, the parasite continued to fight and scrap. 

She wished, for the thousandth time this journey, that she could simply take the stomach out of herself, throw it up into the air, blast it to pieces with the last of her strength, and let that be the end of it. Unfortunately, she needed to keep it dizzyingly alive to see what would safely kill it for the benefit of the rest of her team. 

Hal and Guy had still been arguing about which one of them had brought it back when she’d set off to find a cure. Almost any other day she’d have pinned Guy for lying, but everything he said, other than a few choice words flung at Hal, was truthful. M’gann and her uncle were apparently the only ones to notice Ted Kord grimacing quietly in the corner.

He was a strange duck, M’gann thought. Strange duck? Special duck? Odd duck. Ted Kord was an odd duck. 

Though kind, compassionate, and courageous to a fault, Ted was not a favorite among League leadership. He made mistakes. Goofed off with his best friend so often that it wouldn’t be entirely incorrect to say that he caused more trouble than he solved. If he was in for a lecture, M’gann would have been all for it. However, the Trinity had spoken of grounding Ted before for reasons M’gann could not entirely understand. Not without becoming more invasive than she was comfortable with. 

She wasn’t about to let them drum Blue Beetle out of the Justice League over an accidental stomach bug. Although, she thought bitterly as she hurtled, weakened and in pain, through space, perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Just as J’onn was about to point Ted out, M’gann gave him a mental elbow. J’onn glared at her. Ted hadn’t been his favorite person, either. But he’d remained agreeably silent. 

J’onn and M’gann had chosen their own assignments in the shuffle to find R. Lincera, the herb that Booster Gold, conveniently, discovered to be the key element in healing the afflicted Leaguers. 

While the Lanterns went to known planets to barter, J’onn told M’gann of the great Martian botanist S’iff S’lown. They settled on two minor planets she may have encountered in her travels and parted ways.

By the time M’gann touched down, she couldn’t afford to have much notice for the lone sentient telepathic signature on the planet. She eyed the yellow ship and warned her bioship to be ready for anything as she crept off and thought of the sample Booster had photographed in his future. If only it had been a genuine sample, she could have sensed its plant signature and tracked it like a bloodhound. 

Earlier, she had finished the swimming pool area, complete with an attached hot tub, waterslide, real palm trees, a nautical refreshment stand, and lines of comfortable, reclining wicker beach chairs. She had created a crew for most of the decks. Each crewmember receiving their own names and backstories. Their own hopes and dreams. Most of them she gave the common sense not to go on about their own hopes and dreams too, too much while on the job.

One crew member passed her by with a clipboard and a smile as she created a shuffleboard station on the Lido Deck. M’gann placed two more wicker chairs with dark blue cushions in the perfect place to observe any players. She was just assigning a family of guests, the Darren’s, to the shuffleboard area when she sensed a newcomer onboard.

M’gann brewed some more tea. She was hardly able to stomach it. 

On the fourth day, she lay down on that cool floor and closed her eyes. She had known that the medicine was going to make her feel worse before she felt better, but her team needed her. Her team needed the medicine just as badly as she did. 

The bioship thrummed in concern. H’ronmeer. Part of her wished she could have stayed with Groot until the side effects wore off. But if she didn’t make it back to Earth with the medicine, her friends would only grow more ill. At this point, though, M’gann felt so weak that she wasn’t sure she was going to make it back to Earth. At least not on her own. 

“Absolutely not,” Bucky muttered, indeed blushing, and totally oblivious to the effect his words had had on his friend. (After all, why would he ever have so much as entertained the thought that a pretty young girl from outer space could be interested in an old basket case like him?) 

He watched curiously as the shapes in her palms shifted, eyeing the little symbiote and the man in the obscenely tight green suit curiously. “I never did get any info on why the sample gor brought back. To study?” he asked, meeting her eyes again with a spark of curiosity. “And how does that work, by the way? Bringing back a part of it. Is the little blob… sentient?” Wild thought. Christ, he hoped not. 

“Absolutely yes,” she teased, but she moved on quickly. 

Pam blinked very slowly. She hadn’t expected the honey-snatching thief to be a tiny, English-speaking redhead who looked like a second-grade teacher; she was much more used to shoving shoulders with deceptively strong frown-faced old women. 

She blinked again as the apology went on, slowly easing the honey off the shelf and easing it into her cart. Then she blew out a sigh, deflating, and reached up to rub at her temple. 

“It’s fine,” she muttered, almost-apologetic but not quite. “No harm done.” Then she caught sight of the ridiculous assortment of fruit that seemed to accompany her apparently not-nemesis, and her brows raised. “Are you throwing a fruit salad party? Or baking twenty fruitcakes?” she asked, before realizing the girl was probably an aid worker. Damn it, the woods were making her brain slow. How as that even possible?

M’gann blinked back at her, smiling peaceably and adjusting the right cuff of her striped sweater as she waited for the other woman to take the honey. “I feel like with this amount of fruit, I could through three or four fruit salad parties and still have enough left over for a tart.” She held up her hands and laughed. “A fruit tart!” 

That was the thing about these superhero types—so many of them were so earnest. Angelo almost, almost felt the tiniest flicker of shame at the clear disappointment in M’gann’s pinched little face, then let the feeling flutter away into the wind. “Why do we do anything we do, Miss M’orzz?” he asked unhelpfully, then focused on her questions instead. “Myself, objects, and other people, yes. Though personally I prefer to just teleport long distances and play with angles instead. I find that my capers are much more fun that way.” 

Sisters? Now, that was interesting. He listened attentively to the redhead across from him, sipping his water. “She is an easy person to miss,” he offered, not liking the way her voice got quieter, smaller. Curse his dislike of upsetting ladies. “I’m sure you two will meet soon. She is… not having the easiest time coming to terms with the past seven years, if it helps.” More so than she revealed to him, he’d wager. “I doubt you would either if you’d been named Stacey Hinkley. Horrifying.” He nudged the conversation somewhere gentler, curious again. “I imagine you were very young when you met the Amazons? The way you talk about your past together. What does Earth look like to a young Martian, I wonder?”

“Why indeed?” M’gann thought for a long time. Why did she do what she did while Angelo did, well, what he did? “I suppose part of me does it to pass the time,” she said honestly, though she left out just how much time she had to pass. “Part of me does it because I want the world to be a little bit better for other people. And part of me wants to leave my mark and be remembered when my time comes.” As it inevitably would. “To at least have my good deeds remembered.” 

“Could you teleport a human heart in a cooler from one hospital to another?” she asked softly. “Transport people out of burning buildings and sinking ships? Could you teleport a bomb out of a crowded bus terminal before it had the chance to explode?” They were all real, genuine questions. Not one of them sarcastic or mean-spirited. They were simply wondering about Angelo’s ability in a different light. 

“It doesn’t help,” M’gann laughed uncomfortably. “I want so badly to be there to help her along.” She pressed her hands against her forehead. “Stacey… Hinkley…?” It was quiet for a moment, then she let out a little, unladylike snort and picked herself up again. “It’s worse than I thought. With a name like that…” 

M’gann allowed herself to be steered towards a different subject. “I was only a child. Diana took me under her wing the first day we ever met. The first hour. I had been having a hard time on Earth. I could hear the thoughts of everyone around me, though I wanted nothing more than to silence all of them so that I could have some peace. Diana allowed me to escape into her mind as my kind is meant to, and,” she smiled sweetly at their waiter. “Could I have another water, please?” 

All of M’gann’s questions—they only made an uncomfortable feeling squirm through Diana’s belly, the reminder of how long they had been apart. Or, rather—how short their separation had been, yet how much could change in such a little period of time. She’d spoken without thinking, her mind feeling overheavy like a bowl overflowing, and had failed to ease them into the subjects at hand. Diana pulled M’gann closer, closing her warm, calloused palm over the pale little hand on her arm. 

“Our Donna,” she confirmed quietly, brows furrowed. “I tried to send the message along, but—” It wasn’t easy to communicate across such a distance, and perhaps such a conversation would be better had face-to-face anyway. “In April, Steve recognized her. She’s… She’s been alive, somehow, all this time. Leading a life as someone else, false memories implanted in her mind. I… Still haven’t completely wrapped my mind around it, to be honest.” She squeezed M’gann’s hand, then… Swallowed a sigh at the next subject. 

“Scarlet Witch just about lost her mind after being possessed by the creature Cthlon. She created babies out of thin air that turned out to be chaos demons, and—” Gods. Sometimes Diana wished their lives were simpler. “After it was revealed they weren’t real, she let herself be possessed. She was barely stopped by a legion of Nomads. We thought she’d stay with us, which was why I sent such urgent word for you—I’m sorry about that—but the Sorcerer Supreme has taken her under his supervision, so…” Diana leaned tiredly back against the edge of a countertop. Simpler, indeed.

But. It was difficult to feel too tired when M’gann was gazing up at her with those kind eyes. Diana managed a smile, touching fingertips under her chin before smoothing a hand over her hair. “You’re one to talk of selflessness, little one,” she teased, before her smile faded a touch. “Steve encountered something in the woods that lined his body with puncture wounds and somehow stole his memories of his past three lives, including the current one. I… am unsure what could have done such a thing. The creature in the woods leaves little if any physical tracks, and it has never stolen memories that we know, only caused other mental afflictions…”

M’gann swallowed, tilted her head to the side, and quieted, easily sensing that Diana was uncomfortable. Perhaps overwhelmed, even. It was a strange feeling to receive from Diana, of all people, but she felt her understanding of it growing even as the moments passed. She had been gone only three and a half months with Hal and in that time, everything had changed. 

“False memories,” she whispered. “Poor, poor Donna.” It was such a horrifying thought that M’gann practically shivered against Diana’s hand. Who would implant false memories in her, and why? To what end did this mysterious figure wish to keep Donna from her life and family for so long. Yet, she limited her question to something she hoped would be useful. “Does she need help sorting out the false memories?”

“Poor Wanda,” M’gann said, still horrified at all that had occurred in her absence. Rather than leaning on the counter, she let herself slowly sink to the cool stone floor. She didn’t really want to think of just how she would have been expected to help. “I’m grateful that the good doctor made his appearance, then. Perhaps I’ll write him a ‘thank you’ card. When things settle down.”

She watched Diana’s smile fade. 

It wasn’t that they were keeping it a secret. It wasn’t that Bucky was embarrassed. But old habits died hard, and no matter how much more acceptable it was for two men to be together in modern times, he still felt a frisson of discomfort at the thought of people knowing. (In no small part because, honestly, Steve could do better.) But M’gann looked so hopeful, and she sounded a little tired around the eyes, despite her pretty smiles. So he swallowed down his usual secretive ways and replied, “Well, if you could use the cheer,” weighing the words on his tongue. “It’s, uh. Steve. Turns out he’s, uh. Carried a torch for me since we were kids. So. That’s swell, since.” Ah, Christ. He might’ve been turning red. Bucky cleared his throat, though he was smiling.

But space. Space was something he could focus on. He leaned in to observe the little diorama in M’gann’s hands, no less charmed by it than he’d been the first time she’d done that trick. “That’s…” He frowned at the question, something pinging in his mind, which flicked a few levels down in the castle, as well as a few thousand miles east. “Yeah. Like Venom? Mostly I was just briefed on how to set one on fire if it gets out, I haven’t actually seen one in action, non-blobby, in person.”

“It’s how it feeds.” That was instinct, but Steve said it like he was testing the words, that same hesitancy he used whenever he didn’t fully understand something. “Gets its strength.” And if that were true, it made the monster all the more dangerous. There was sinister intentions and then survival; another instinct, nothing left to lose, desperate. 

Steve went from awe to panic and then back to awe, all in a manner of moments. Diana wouldn’t have sent him to a demon, not one she didn’t trust, and anyway, M’gann had managed to do the one thing he couldn’t - scare it away. 

“Nice trick.” Steve bit back the urge to ask if it was teachable, following what any good soldier would take as an order. And War was everywhere,  endless miles of smoke and blood, death and destruction, always the same that it would be hard to say what or who he had lost. Life couldn’t grow here, leaving little pollen, and yet the landscape was loitered with more of those craters that they had just left behind in France - some just as new; most older, burnt out and hollow. They stuck to the fringes,  Steve’s role as a spy keeping him out of the trenches where he was mostly tasked with observe and report. Until he didn’t, doing something stupid like steal a notebook, leaving them to flee, soldiers and the monster in pursuit through the thickening fog that even M’gann’s handy dandy lights didn’t seem to be a match for. 

A jolt and a stutter and smoke billowed from the engine. Something had gotten them and Steve did his best, pushing the plane as fast as it could go, until night turned to day and they were flying over the most brilliant blue. In the distance, another Steve crashed into the water while he made a bumpy landing on the beach. Nothing followed, everything had gone quiet and Steve just knew. “We’ll be safe here.”

M’gann glanced around them as he spoke. Something that needed to feed on strength and memory to survive, she realized just how fortunate and extremely dangerous for her to be here. Her memory, like Steve’s, she surmised could go on forever in the worlds she’d cast in her mindscape and the projected length of her life. And, like Steve, she appeared susceptible to it. If it managed to work her psychic barriers down, an extremely unlikely, though not impossible, premise, they would be in real trouble. 

“It’s a gift. I can try and teach you when we clean this mess up,” she said as quietly as she could over the roar of the plane’s engine. In his own mind, with enough willpower, he very well might be able to create landscape changes. “No, I didn’t read your mind.” A clarification she often had to make. “Sometimes, you can just tell.”

There wasn’t very much pollen in the sooty air around them. It seemed even Poison Ivy’s beloved seeds couldn’t survive here. M’gann watched the atmosphere grow darker and thicker until it became uncomfortable to even breathe. She pressed her hands together and formed bubbles around their heads. Air pockets that kept them from choking but required her attention to keep clean until she had the bright idea of adding wipers.