Join now :- patreon. com/TranslationGod
20+ early chapters at just 20$
Siberian wasteland.
The blizzard screamed across the frozen nothing like a white animal. Visibility: five meters. Temperature: something that made thermometers give up.
Steve Rogers supported Bucky — one arm gone, blood loss critical — as they pushed through the snow. Both were super-soldiers. Neither was built for this.
"Steve..." Bucky's voice was fading. "Leave me. You won't make it carrying dead weight."
Steve stopped. Exhaled a cloud of white. "I'm not leaving you again, Bucky. Not if we have to walk to the end of Hell."
"Hell? The air quality's terrible — smells like sulfur. Wouldn't recommend it."
A voice cut through the storm. Ahead, a green light materialized in the void, pushing back the cold like a warm hand parting a curtain.
Jake walked out with Gwen, hands in his pockets, not a single snowflake touching either of them.
"Lost already, you centenarian duo?"
"Jake." Steve managed a tired smile. "Thought you went back."
"Back to listen to General Ross lecture? I'd rather freeze." Jake raised his wrist. The Omnitrix glowed warm green in the blizzard. "I said — if Earth has no room for us, we go somewhere Ross couldn't find in his wildest nightmares."
"Where?" Bucky rasped. "Wakanda?"
"Higher. And further."
Jake's fingers swept across the dial. A holographic star map unfolded, rotating through coordinates, and locked onto a gray-white sphere.
"The Omnitrix just unlocked Galvan architectural blueprints. Since Earth's governments want us gone—"
He pointed at the sky hidden behind the storm.
"—we're going to the dark side of the Moon."
"What?" Steve was certain he'd misheard.
"Deep breath. Hold on."
HUM!
Silver-white teleportation light swallowed all four of them.
[Pressure equalization — complete. Gravity simulation — calibrated.]
When Steve opened his eyes, the wind was gone. The cold was gone. Replaced by a slight pressure in his eardrums and a view that stopped his heart.
He stood inside a massive transparent dome corridor. Silver metal floor beneath his boots. Above his head — the deep, endless black of space.
And hanging in that black, filling the viewport, glowing soft blue—
Earth.
"My God..."
Steve walked to the nano-glass and pressed his palm against it. His reflection stared back at him, superimposed over the planet he'd spent a century trying to protect.
"Are we... really up here?"
"Welcome to Plumbers Headquarters — the Watcher Station."
Jake stood beside him, pointing at the desolate craters visible below their feet.
"Sea of Tranquility. Dark side. Holographic camouflage blocks every telescope and radar on Earth. To General Ross, this is barren lunar soil."
"But to us—"
Snap.
The lights came on. Across the station, precision mechanical arms activated — maintaining systems, calibrating atmospheric controls, running diagnostics. In the distance, sleek spacecraft sat in anti-gravity docks. The station hummed with the quiet efficiency of something built by a civilization five thousand years ahead of humanity.
"Unlimited fusion power. Advanced medical pods. And the best coffee machine in the known universe."
The airlock hissed. Wanda, Sam, and Clint walked through. Behind them, Scott Lang had his face pressed against a floor-to-ceiling viewport, nose flattened against the glass.
"Is that the Pacific Ocean?! I can see my house! Hey — CASSIE! DADDY'S ON THE MOON!" Scott shouted at the planet below, apparently believing sound traveled through vacuum.
"Everyone's here." Sam clapped Steve on the shoulder. "Captain, this place is incredible. The oxygen auto-regulates — you could run a marathon without getting winded."
Steve looked at his team. The weight he'd been carrying since the airport — since the bunker — since the shield hit the floor — finally eased.
Then he noticed Scott's expression shifting.
"Scott? What's wrong?"
Scott turned from the window, looking conflicted. "Jake — this is amazing. But... I have a daughter. Cassie. She's at home. If I'm living on the Moon, do I never see her again? The FBI might harass her—"
"What if I told you that you could go home for dinner every night?"
Jake led everyone to the station's central hub and pointed at a row of archways humming with blue energy.
"Quantum portals. I've already locked coordinates to each of your safe houses. Every night — bedtime story for Cassie, then portal back to the Moon for the morning shift. Your commute is a wormhole."
"Seriously?" Scott's eyes went wide. "Super commuting?"
"Exactly."
"I'M IN!" Both hands in the air. "As long as I see my daughter, I'll fight aliens, Kree, whatever!"
With the team settled, Jake called up a holographic display.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is buried in political infighting. The Avengers are handcuffed by the Accords. And this universe is far more dangerous than any of them realize."
He looked around the room.
"The Plumbers don't take orders from any government. We do one thing: when the threat gets too big for Earth to handle alone — we step up."
"Steve." Jake met his eyes. "You're the Commander."
Steve looked at the blue planet through the viewport. The planet he'd fought for since 1943. The planet that had just tried to arrest him.
"Watching over all living things. Guarding the world." A quiet repetition. Then a smile — the first real one in weeks. "No salary. No benefits. But it's the right thing to do."
Their hands clasped.
[Plumbers Earth Branch (Moon Base) — established!]
[Rewards: Interstellar Communication Array unlocked. Omnitrix DNA Repair Function unlocked.]
"DNA repair?"
Jake looked at Bucky — one-armed, hollow-eyed, sitting apart from the group with the particular stillness of a man who didn't trust his own brain.
"Sergeant Barnes. You still have HYDRA's trigger words in your head, don't you?"
Bucky nodded. "As long as someone says those words — I'm a weapon."
"In Wakanda, it would take months. I can do it in minutes."
Jake turned the dial. Stopped on a large-headed icon with crab claws and an exposed brain.
Green flash.
Brainstorm. Cerebrocrustacean. An alien whose IQ was measured in the billions and whose personality was measured in insufferability.
"Ahem. Let me see."
The voice was arrogant, British-accented, and carried the particular disdain of a genius examining amateur work. Two claws waved, and a golden holographic projection of Bucky's neural architecture unfolded — a blue network tangled with dozens of red, snake-like knots.
"Look at this crude craftsmanship! HYDRA's neural programming? Ha! A primitive scratching random lines on a precision chip! Crude! Simple! Completely devoid of aesthetic!"
Brainstorm's skull plates opened, revealing the pulsing pink brain beneath. Golden bio-electric currents flowed outward — precise, surgical, operating at frequencies that human neuroscience wouldn't discover for centuries.
"This low-level psychological conditioning — for a genius of my caliber — requires merely a slight... nudge."
ZZZT—
In the holographic display, everyone watched as the red knots — HYDRA's trigger-word programming, seventy years of brainwashing — disintegrated under the golden current. One by one. Methodically. Each corrupted circuit dissolved and reorganized into healthy blue pathways.
"Done. A perfect masterpiece. You're welcome."
Three minutes. Start to finish.
Green light faded. Jake, human again.
"Try it," he told Steve. "Say the word."
Steve took a breath. "...Soldier?"
Bucky opened his eyes.
The emptiness was gone. The coldness was gone. The flat, mechanical compliance that seventy years of programming had burned into his neural pathways — gone.
What remained was clarity. Warmth. The eyes of a kid from Brooklyn who'd once followed Steve Rogers into a war because that's what friends did.
He touched his head. Looked at Steve. And smiled — the first genuine smile since 1945.
"I'm not called Soldier."
"My name is Bucky."
Earth. Avengers Compound.
In the empty lab, Tony Stark held the chip with the hourglass symbol between two fingers. Turning it. Studying it.
"Boss, Secretary Ross is requesting a video call," FRIDAY said. "He wants to know about the hijacked Quinjet."
Tony looked at the chip.
He walked to the armor display, opened a lead-lined box at the very back, placed the chip inside with the care of a man handling something he might need someday, and closed the lid. Three layers of encrypted locks.
"Tell Ross I'm looking for them too."
He turned. His eyes had their edge back.
"But I can't find them. Maybe they fell in the ocean."
A pause.
"Also — get me that kid from Queens. His suit needs an upgrade."
Show Some By Powerstones
Next BONUS CHAPTER at 200 powerstones