Pressure // MARVEL // PETER PARKER

CHAPTER 21: the weak perish

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WARNING

In this chapter, I will include someone dying. If you don't want to read it, that's fine, I'll put a short summary chapter after this one so you didn't miss anything.

Edit: no I won't, I'll probably comment on the last sentence of this chapter. I just have to remind myself that I won't forget it.

Welp, I warned you for heartbreak :)

WARNING

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MORGAN GASPED, SEEING the purple villain for the very first time. He was big and strong, but also clever. The second his weird black and blue cloud disappeared from which he just stepped out of, his eyes subtly moved to see who else was on the planet. The only person he could see, however, was Strange who sat on the steps.

'Oh yeah,' Strange began, not intimidated or scared at all. With just these words, he earned all of Morgan's respect. 'You're much more of a Thanos.'

'I take it the Maw is dead,' Thanos told the man his presumption. Strange nodded. The alien sighed and began walking slowly over to the wizard. 'This day extracts a heavy toll. Still, he accomplished his mission.'

Strange didn't flinch in the slightest, showing absolutely no emotion except for tiredness towards the villain. 'You may regret that. He brought you face-to-face with the Master of the Mystic Arts.'

'And where do you think he brought you?' Thanos asked Strange with a counter-question.

'Let me guess,' Strange told the villain as if he was a mother whose child kept asking her the same exact question. 'Your home?'

Why did bad guys always have to have a tragic backstory? This is why Loki was at least acceptable as a villain.

'It was,' Thanos answered while he stopped walking. He closed his fist and the red stone in his glove lit up, causing for the surroundings to change into a beautiful growing planet. 'And it was beautiful. Titan was like most planets. Too many mouths, not enough to go around. And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution.'

'Genocide.'

Thanos opened his fist and the old, destroyed planet was back again. The gem no longer glowed. 'But random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike. They called me a madman. And what I predicted came to pass.'

'Congratulations,' Strange told the man sarcastically, 'you're a prophet.'

'I'm a survivor,' Thanos didn't share the humor.

No. Morgan knew that that wasn't fully true. A survivor was someone who always got out of life threatening situations. Someone who knew how to save a life, whether it being their own or someone else's. Thanos pretended to be a hero, while he was actually murdering half of humanity. That wasn't surviving. That was straight up killing.

'Who wants to murder trillions,' was what Strange responded.

'With all the six stones, I could simply snap my finger,' Thanos explained, showing it with his left and gauntlet-free hand. 'They would all cease to exist. I call that mercy.'

Boy, that dude had some serious problems.

Strange stood up and even Morgan could tell by the way the wizard walked towards Thanos he was in trouble. 'And then what?