And the Snap Echoes

Soul World

He woke up so suddenly, it was almost as if someone had shocked him.

How long had it been? He had no idea. Minutes? Days? Years? He had no clue.

His thoughts rushed back to fighting Thanos. Struggling to hold him down. Being punched in the face. Finally succeeding in the process, but being unsuccessful eventually thanks to Mr. Star Lord. Evading the moon thrown on them. Webbing up everyone to ensure that they survived. Watching helplessly as Doc Strange and Mr. Stark were mercilessly beaten around by Thanos. Not feeling so good soon after, struggling to remain alive, watching Mr. Stark's face and feeling horribly guilty. One thought in his head – "And if you died, then that's on me. I don't need that on my conscience." That one last hug from Mr. Stark, before fading away.

That's all he remembered.

He sat up and looked around. He was alone, at least it seemed like that. The entire place was tinted orange, the exact shade of orange, he remembered, as one of the stones which had been on Thanos' Gauntlet. Nebula had called it the soul stone, and someone had apparently died for it. Wherever he looked, the orange clouds seemed to go on and on. He was sitting in ankle high-water, which explained why his feet felt weird. He didn't seem to be in immediate danger.

He got to his feet but still could see nothing around him. For once, his gut feeling did not tell him to choose a particular direction, so he just started walking wherever his feet took him. Alternating between jogging and walking for the next hour, he trudged on. There was no change in scenery, which reminded him of this movie he had seen, "Interstellar", especially the part where they were on the water planet and there had been nothing but water for miles and miles around him; the only difference being that in this case, there was an overdose of orange.

He had continued walking for another hour before he came across the first change in scenery – a stone archway. Even then, it was heavily crumbled and looked as if it would collapse any second. Nonetheless, it was progress compared to the bare scenery.

Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks. He was sure that he had heard movement, most probably coming from behind the archway. Putting his mask back on, he slowly advanced towards where he thought he had heard the noise.

SPLASH!!

A green figure pounced on him, coming out of nowhere. Taken by surprise, he fell under her weight, and she landed on top of him. When he looked up, there was a knife at his throat.

"Who are you?" she asked in a composed tone, but it sounded as if it were on the verge of breaking any time.

"Whoa! You can't just go around pouncing on people like that! You might take someone's eye out!  And just so you know, I let my guard down; usually, I'm not surprised so easily"

"I ASKED WHO ARE YOU!!!!"

"I'm pretty sure Mr. Stark will not appreciate me revealing who I am to a green woman who I met like a minute ago and whose first action was to attack me with a knife. Now, why don't you put away that knife, and we may be able to reach a consensus. We may even be able to talk peacefully."

Saying that he just thought about grabbing the knife in his attacker's hands, and before he knew it, it was in one of his waldoes.

"What the-? How did you-?"

"What can I say? I'm just too awesome. Now, where were we? Ah, introductions. I'm gonna ask you this one time. Who are you? And I would be really thankful if you got off me"

"The name's Gamora."

"Spider-Man"

"Okay, hold up. I'm Gamora."

"Yahh, I heard you the first time."

"Aren't you like, gonna hate me? Nothing at all?"

"Why would I hate you? Apart from the whole pinning a knife to my throat?"

"Because I'm Thanos' daughter. I've killed so many people, spread so much destruction."

"You're Thanos' daughter? But then what're you doing here? I thought he would've spared his family, at least."

"What do you mean, spare?"

"He obtained all of the infinity stones and seemingly snapped his fingers. Half of the universe faded away, blah blah blah. I faded away. Doctor Strange faded away. Mr. Star Lord faded away- "

"You know Star-Lord? Star-Lord as in Peter Quill"

"Yupp, we fought together against Thanos, but then he messed up just because someone was brought up. HOLY SHIT! You're Mr. Star Lord's girlfriend. The person for whom he strayed from the plan. When he heard that you'd died, he kinda lost it. Started punching Thanos on the face who then kicked our asses badly. He took the Time Stone from Doc Strange and teleported away. Next thing we know, Mantis fades away, followed by Drax, Doc, and your boyfriend. I get pulled along."

"Ugggghhhh! That idiot! I told him to not let his emotions control him. Look what he's done now."

Saying this, she brought out the knife and stabbed it into the archway. As Spider-Man had expected, it crumbled into dust, eerily reminding him of something visually similar. His thoughts fluttered back to Mr. Stark, who would now be alone on Titan with just Nebula for company. His heart ached to be with him, but instead, here he was, stuck in Orange World, not even knowing whether he was alive or not.

"We need to move. I know of a safe house some distance from here." Gamora's voice brought him back to his senses.

"Where are we anyways?"

"It's called the Soul World. Its apparently this place inside the soul stone, you know, the orange one."

"So, we're literally on Thanos' hand? And am I alive or dead? If I wanna get out of here, how do I?

"Spidey, calm down. I'm sorry, but I don't have answers to any of your questions. I've just been here for the past two weeks, and the only thing I've found out is that this place is borderless. I somehow came across the safehouse when I was roaming around. I've been getting people there ever since.

"Wait, so you mean there are more people here?"

"Of course. As of now, I think there are over 400 people at the place."

"Well, let's hope that someone out of the 400 is someone I know. It'd get terribly boring if not so... okay, I take that back. I hope there's no one I know, I don't want them dead just because we failed to stop Thanos. Does that mean that I'm a murderer now? My actions resulted in the death of half of the universe. I don't need that on my conscience."

"Spidey, calm down. It's not on you. I'm sure that you tried your best. You can't blame yourself for everything which has gone wrong in your life. Learn to brush it off sometimes. If there's one thing that I learned while being a hero, it's that you are not always the person responsible. Are you getting what I want to say?"

"Yahh, kinda. But if you are a hero, you must know that doing what you just told me to do is not always easy. As my uncle once said, "With great power comes great responsibility". You have the power to prevent any of this, and when you don't, it's all on you."

"Spidey, I don't think I will be able to convince you anytime soon. Just keep in mind, you are not alone in this whole superhero business. There's a reason there is not just a single peace-keeping force. It helps spread out the burden. If you take all of the pressure, you're bound to crack someday or the other."

"Thanks, Gamora. I really appreciate you trying to help, even when you met me like an hour ago. I'll try to stop it, but I won't guarantee that I'll completely stop thinking about it."

"We're almost here, you know. You can help me as an organizer. It'll help take your mind off things. We have a couple of other heroes here, who I guess you may know. But neither Peter nor any of the other Guardians have turned up yet. I just hope they turn up soon. I'm itching to slap the shit out of Quill."

Soon enough, multiple tents appeared out of the fog, and Gamora and Spider-Man headed for the biggest one. Upon stepping inside, Peter looked around. There was a wide variety of all kinds of weapons lying, almost as if they were stocked for some reason.

"Peter?"