📍TITAN
✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

THE SKY OF the inhabited planet was a shade of orange and yellow, shining down at the dark red grounds that (Y/N) was passing by with the rest of the group and the newest members, who had introduced themselves as the Guardians.

"The hell happened to this planet?" Quill asked as he held one of his gadgets in the air. "It's eight degrees off its axis. Gravitational pull is all over the place."

"Yeah, we got one advantage. He's coming to us," Tony spoke up. "We'll use it. 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 want the gauntlet."

"Are you yawning?" Tony raised his voice with a tone of disbelief when his eyes set on Drax, who was indeed yawning without caring too much.

"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 confessed, his hands on his belt.

"Okay, Mr. Clean is on his own page," Tony pointed at him while his eyes were fixed on Quill.

"See, 'not winging it' isn't really what they do," Quill shrugged it off.

Peter raised a hand and cleared his throat before speaking. "Uh, what exactly is it that they do?"

"Kick names, take ass," Mantis said confidently.

"Yeah, that's right," Drax nodded.

The frustration was evident on Tony's face and (Y/N) couldn't blame him. She pressed a hand against her forehead and heard how Tony let out a heavy sigh with a lowered head before looking back up.

"All right, just get over here, please," he said. "Mr. Lord, can you get your folks to circle up?"

"'Mr. Lord'. Star-Lord is fine," Quill shook his head with a slight hint of embarrassment before he turned back to his teammates and signaled them to come closer.

"We gotta coalesce. 'Cause if all we come at him with is a plucky attitude — "

"Dude, don't call us plucky," Quill interrupted. "We don't know what it means. All right, we're optimistic, yes. I like your plan. Except, it sucks, so let me do the plan and that way it might be really good."

"Tell him about the dance-off to save the universe," Drax told him with a prideful tone.

"What dance-off?"

"It's nothing," Quill stammered his answer.

"Like in Footloose, the movie?" Peter asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Exactly like Footloose." Quill cut in with a dreamy tone, which made (Y/N)'s confusion frown to deepen. "Is it still the greatest movie in history?"

"Sorry to break it to you, but it never was," (Y/N) crossed her arms.

"Don't encourage this, all right?" Tony turned to her and Peter, getting closer to them to mumble out his words. "We're getting no help from Flash Gordon here."

"Flash Gordon? By the way, that's a compliment," Quill said loudly. "Don't forget, I'm half human. So that 50% of me that's stupid, that's 100% you."

"He really thought he did something," (Y/N) nudged Peter's side to catch his attention, making the boy stifle a laugh.

"Your math is blowing my mind," Tony muttered sarcastically.

Mantis, who had been drifting off from the conversation a long time ago, turned back to the others and raised her soft voice to call everyone's attention. "Excuse me. But does your friend often do that?"

"Strange, we all right?"

Stephen had separated from the group and hovered over one of the reddish rocks in the planet, his eyes closed in concentration as his head snapped from side to side with inhuman speed. The Time Stone in his neck was glowing bright green along with his wrists, and the red cape was blowing back from the wind.

He kept on doing this action and didn't respond to the call of his name until he snapped his eyes open and he fell back to the ground with a loud cry. He panted as he caught his breath and everyone came over to him, Tony and (Y/N) taking the lead.

"You're back, Steph," (Y/N) got on her knees besides Tony, using the nickname Kiara had grown to say every time he came to visit.

"Hey, what was that?" Peter asked.

"I went forward in time to view alternate futures," Stephen breathed out, blinking to remove the dots in his vision. "To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."

"How many did you see?" Quill questioned.

"14,000,605," Stephen answered immediately.

"How many did we win?" Tony spoke up, asking what everyone was fearing to do.

He suspiciously avoided (Y/N)'s worried eyes and looked back at Tony, swallowing the lump in his throat and taking his time to answer.

"One."

✧─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.✦ .* :★. ───✧

A CLOUD OF blue and grey smoke appeared from the center of the enormous and abandoned place in Titan, where Thanos came out of it without no one by his side, his left hand wearing the golden gauntlet with four Infinity Stones already placed in it.

"Oh, yeah," Stephen made himself known, sitting on the piece of a broken structure, and the mad titan looked back at him. "You're much more of a Thanos."

"I take it the Maw is dead," Thanos's heavy voice answered. "This day extracts a heavy toll. Still, he accomplished his mission."

"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?"

"Let me guess. Your home?" Stephen replied after taking a look around.

Thanos stopped walking and pressed a foot on a rock in front of him to support his knee. "It was."

He closed the gloved fist and the Reality Stone shone brightly in its place in the gauntlet, a shimmer of red light covering his surroundings like a blanket, alternating the planet to the version he once knew. "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," Stephen guessed.

"But random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike. They called me madman. And when I predicted came to pass," Thanos opened back his fist and the illusion disappeared.

"Congratulations, you're a prophet."

"I'm a survivor."

"Who wants to murder trillions."

"With all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers," Thanos lifted his other hand to signal what he was saying. "They would all cease to exist. I call that mercy."

Stephen rose from the ground and took a step forward. "And then what?"

"I'd finally rest. . .and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe. The hardest choices requiere the strongest wills," Thanos explained as he lowered his head, and some could probably see a hint of emotion in his cold eyes.

Stephen clapped his hands together and reopened them, two identical orange shields forming in his hands.  "I think you'll find out will equal to yours."

"Our?"

An enormous and heavy part of an abandoned structure came falling down above Thanos, which was being pushed by Tony inside his armored suit. The structure crushed him underneath it, lifting up an amount of dust when it happened.

"Piece of cake, Quill." Tony told him.

"Yeah, if your goal was to piss him off," Quill joined him in the air as his mask closed and he held his two guns in his hands.

A cloud of purple light broke through the entire place and Thanos stood up from where he'd been crushed, a yell leaving his throat as he closed his fist once again and the purple light changed to red one, transforming all the broken pieces into a flock of strange birds that attacked Tony instantly.

Peter appeared from his hiding spot and shot a web directly into Thanos's eyes at the same time that Drax rolled in the ground and used one of his knifes to slice through the titan's leg. Stephen formed a portal and came through it, then proceeding to create a sword to strike Thanos with it.

Quill closed in the air as Thanos kicked Drax away and snapped the weapon in Stephen's hands, ripping the web that had been stuck in his eyes. Stephen created more orange shields to support Quill as he approached Thanos and jumped over him, placing a ticking bomb in his back.

The ticking sound grew louder and Quill removed his helmet just in time to flip Thanos off before he fell back into another orange portal. "Boom!"

The bomb exploded and this made Thanos stagger back in the ground, and Stephen used this as an opportunity to turn to the red cape and mutter out an order. "Don't let him close his fist."

The cape followed the command and wrapped itself tightly around Thanos's fist, making it impossible for him to remove it from his grasp as Peter jumped out of a portal and kicked Thanos straight in the face.

"Magic!" he yelled out before disappearing inside a portal and reappearing in the other, repeating the same act over again.

"More magic!"

"Magic with a kick!"

"Magic with a — " Thanos grabbed him by the neck and pinned him in the ground with a thud, making the boy try to break free with useless attempts.

"Insect," Thanos sneered.

Peter was picked off the ground and sent back with Stephen, the two rolling back in the reddish ground as Thanos ripped the red cape off his fist without difficulty. Explosions followed after that, and Tony could be seen flying in between as the fire enveloped around Thanos, trapping him in.

This didn't last long since Thanos absorbed all the fire with the gauntlet and aimed it at Tony, throwing him back to one of the collapsed buildings of the planet. Peter grunted and used a web to tug on the gauntlet, but Thanos was able to pull him along and punch him square in the face.

Thanos stood steady on the ground before an approaching spaceship knocked him back, catching everyone's attention as a woman with robotic features came out of it and immediately charged at Thanos with fury in her eyes.

She was thrown back into the dirt after she was able to aim a couple blows at him, and Stephen hovered in the air and threw several burning ropes at the gloved hand, closing his hand in just as Drax kicked him in the knee to make him kneel. Quill flew back in and shot one of his gadgets to the floor, which pulled on Thanos's other hand to restrain him even further.

Peter wrapped one of his webs across Thanos's chest while Tony grabbed onto the gauntlet when Stephen dropped the ropes that were tightening around it. Thanos let out a strained yell as he tried to break free from his restrains but wasn't able to.

Stephen opened two different portals, one that opened right above Thanos's head to make Mantis jump out and climb safely into the titan's shoulders from behind, closing in her hands on his head. The other appeared in Thanos's back, where (Y/N) came out of it with blue mist already forming on her hands.

Thanos let out a deafening yell as he tried to resist on what Mantis was attempting to do. When she succeeded, she signaled (Y/N) to come forward and do her part of the plan, and the girl took a step closer to Thanos to wave her fingers in his temple, blue mist clouding his eyes and his yells and cries to free himself stopped.

The mad titan Thanos had tears falling down his purple features as he stood on the edge of a cliff, staring down at what seemed to be a green-skinned woman falling down from it. The woman, named Gamora screamed at the top of her lungs, a hand that reached out to the air like she hoped for a miracle to come and save her from her fate. Gamora hit the ground and her cries were quieted, blood oozing from her skull with closed eyes.

(Y/N) blinked back and let out a shaky breath, the blue disappearing out of her irises as she told herself to not loose focus on the plan and restrain him with her powers, but it was hard to do so. She had seen the titan's biggest fear, and it had seemed to come true.

"Did you do it? Is he under? Don't let up."

"Be quick. He is very strong," Mantis said.

"Parker, help! Come over here," Tony called and Peter dropped the web that he was pulling to join his side.  "She can't hold him much longer. Let's go."

"We gotta open his fingers to get it off," Peter advised, his voice strained.

They both tugged on the gauntlet just as Quill lowered himself to the ground and walked towards the group, the mask disappearing from his face.

"I thought you'd be hard to catch. By the record, this was my plan. You're not so strong now, huh?" Quill got close enough to be face to face with him as he seemed to be fighting back tears.

"Where is Gamora?"

Thanos groaned. "My Gamora."

"No, bullshit! Where is she?"

"He is in anguish," Mantis informed, her hands still glued on Thanos's temples. She had noticed the look (Y/N) had on her face when she entered his head, but didn't know what had was the point. All she could do was notice the emotions.

"Good."

Mantis panted and her eyes were red from holding him back for too long. "He. . .he mourns."

"What does this monster have to mourn?" Drax asked in a heavy voice, his body still wrapped around the leg of the titan.

That was the moment it all clicked in (Y/N)'s head. She had seen it with her own eyes, and the description that had been given to her fit what she had seen inside his head. "His daughter."

Quill stopped and looked behind Thanos to see (Y/N), who nearly lost concentration on holding Thanos down when she said it. "What?"

"She's right," the woman from the spaceship, who's name was Nebula, said as she slowly approached the group. "He took her to Vormir. He came back with the Soul Stone. But she didn't."

Tony removed the helmet from his head. "Okay, Quill, you gotta cool it right now. You understand?"

Quill ignored his words and slowly returned his eyes towards Thanos in front of him, a look of anger forming in his features. His face was twisted into so much fury that smoke could pop out of his ears at any moment.

"Don't, don't. Don't engage. We almost got this off!"

"Tell me they're lying," Quill said, his words directly at Thanos, receiving no response. "Asshole, tell me you didn't do it!"

"I had to," Thanos responded, his words slurred out since his eyes were still white.

"No, you didn't," Quill shook his head and his voice was cracking. "No, you didn't."

He leaned back and aimed a punch directly into his head, yelling out a cry as Mantis accidentally removed her hands from Thanos's temples when this happened.

"Quill!" Tony grabbed his arm. "Hey, stop! Hey, stop, stop! Stop!"

Peter was still pulling on the gauntlet and it seemed like they still had a possibility of winning, since he saw how the gauntlet was finally slipping off from the hand. "It's coming, it's coming. I got it, I got it!"

The white disappeared from the mad titan's eyes and he regained all consciousness, removing Mantis's grip on him as he reached out to grab the gauntlet again before throwing her away. Peter jumped after her and Thanos kicked Drax away from his leg, using his left elbow to throw (Y/N) off just as Stephen lost his grip on the ropes of his hand.

Quill, Nebula and Drax tried to charge at him again, but were stopped when Thanos closed his fist and directed a purple blast at them, making all three loose their balance.

(Y/N) rolled back in the ground and blew off the fallen strands of her hair away from her face, her angry glare fixed on Thanos a few feet away. She wasn't going to let him win, not when she had the power to stop it.