Life Dies In The End

Chapter 44

Stark and I rejoined the group after a few more minutes of walking and catching up. It honestly didn't go as bad as I expected. After 3 years and leaving the way I did, I expected to at least be met with anger. Instead Stark seemed pretty chill with it and hopefully it stayed like that.

"What the hell happened to this place?" Quill broke the silence as he looked at one of his gadgets. "It's eight degrees off its axis. Gravitational pull is all over the place."

"Yeah, we got one advantage. He's coming to us. We'll use it." Stark turned to face Quill. "All right, I have a plan. Or at least the beginnings of one. It's pretty simple. We draw him in, pin him down, get what we need. Definitely don't wanna dance with this guy. We just need the gauntlet." Stark paused as he noticed Drax yawning and not paying attention. "Are you yawning? In the middle of this, while I'm breaking it down? Huh? Did you hear what I said?"

"I stopped listening after you said, "We need a plan."" Drax answered as he glanced towards Stark.

"Okay, Mr.Clean is on his own page." Stark turned back to Quill as he muttered under his breath.

"See, "not winging it" isn't really what they do." Quill answered, causing Stark to send me a worried look, to which I only nodded confirming what Quill had said.

"Uh, what exactly do they do?" Peter asked as he joined the conversation.

"Kick names, take ass." Mantis nodded her head with determination, causing a small sigh to leave my mouth, as Drax commended her for the butchered phrase.

Stark looked at me, his face defeated. They were utter idiots, there was no denying that. We had to work with what we had. We had a stone in our possession, courtesy of Doctor Strange, meaning Thanos would be coming for it.

"Alright, just get over here, please." Stark sighed as he turned to Quill. "Mr. Lord, can you get your folks to circle up?"

""Mr. Lord." Star-Lord is fine." Quill motioned to Drax and Mantis, causing them to join the group.

"We gotta coalesce. 'Cause if all we come at him with is a plucky attitude-" Stark started to only be cut off by Quill.

"Dude, don't call us plucky. We don't know what it means." Quill spoke, causing Stark to send a 'Seriously where did you find these people?' look. "Alright, we're optimistic, yes. I like your plan. Except it sucks, so let me do the plans, and that way it might be really good."

"Tell him about the dance-off to save the universe." Drax added, causing a look of disbelief to appear on Stark's face.

"What dance-off?" Stark questioned, looking at Quill.

"It's nothing." Quill brushed it off trying to avoid it.

"Like in Footloose, the movie?" Peter asked, causing Quill to light up.

"Exactly like Footloose." Quill smiled at Peter. "Is it still the greatest movie in history?"

"It never was." Peter answered, getting a look of disappointment from Quill.

"Don't encourage this, all right?" Stark looked to Peter, getting a nod in return. "We're getting no help from Flash Gordon here."

"Flash Gordon? By the way, that's a compliment. Don't forget, I'm half human." Quill pointed to Stark and Peter as he defended himself. " So that 50% of me that's stupid. That's 100% you."

"Your math is blowing my mind." Stark's voice was full of sarcasm as he rolled his eyes.

"Excuse me, but," Mantis cut in, pointing to Doctor Strange. "Does your friend often do that?"

Strange sat cross-legged, floating in the air, with his eyes closed and his hands in a magical gesture. His head jerked back and forth, but no noise came from the man. He had to be using a spell of somesort, but what?

"Strange, you all right?" I called as I stepped towards him, only to get no answer.

Strange only continued to jerk back and forth as his breath hitched. What the hell kind of spell was this? I reached his side, the others not too far behind me. My eyes locked on the time stone, which he was using in his spell. What would he need that for? My eyes quickly snapped back to Strange's face as he came out of the spell, falling to the ground and letting out a cry. I grabbed his arm, stopping him from toppling over.

"You're back. You're all right." I spoke, as I used my powers to heal the small cuts on his forehead, causing Strange to lock eyes with me.

"What was that?" Peter's voice came from behind me, as Strange moved his eyes to look at Peter.

"I went forward in time to view alternate futures." Strange's breaths were heavy as he spoke. "To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."

"How many did you see?" Stark asked, catching on to what Strange had done.

"14,000,605." Strange answered, a look of being defeated coming across his face.

"How many did we win?" My voice was soft as I locked eyes with Strange, already knowing I wasn't going to like the answer.

"One."

~~Hi, Fallen_Angel here. Have a good day and be good people.~~