"Incredible," Tony murmured, carefully placing the Cosmic Orb onto a diagnostic scanner. "He actually held the Power Stone with his bare hand."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park," Peter Quill said, a slight tremor in his voice as the memory surfaced. "The power… it nearly tore me apart. That was not an experience I'd recommend."
"You what?!"
At Quill's admission, every head in the room snapped toward him.
He blinked, looking around at their stunned faces. "What's with the looks? I told you guys I used it to waste Ronan."
"You said you used the stone, not that you held it like a baseball!" Steve Rogers exclaimed, looking completely bewildered. "I assumed you used some kind of containment weapon! Quill… what exactly are you?"
Steve wasn't the only one having a crisis of belief. Tony's initial scan confirmed his suspicions: the raw energy radiating from the Power Stone, even while contained, was immense. A normal human couldn't even get close, let alone touch it. The energy leakage alone, a value he could barely quantify as Eleak≫1012 joules per second, would be instantly fatal.
Looking around the room, Tony ran a quick mental calculation. Banner, as the Hulk, could probably withstand the direct power for a short time, but for how long was anyone's guess. Thor, with his Asgardian physiology, stood a better chance. As for Captain Marvel, she could likely absorb some of the energy, but holding the raw, untamed stone itself? Unlikely. It would be like trying to drink from a firehose connected to a star.
Yet, this revelation sparked an idea. Tony hadn't forgotten the warnings they'd received about future threats. He had been quietly working on an armor capable of channeling immense, almost unthinkable, amounts of energy. The problem had always been a lack of suitable materials and a fundamental understanding of the power source he was designing for.
But now… now he had access to that priceless Uru metal from Asgard. If he could create an alloy, combining Uru with Vibranium… he might just be able to build a suit capable of harnessing the power of an Infinity Stone.
[Ronan clenched his fists, withstood the final erosion of the Power Stone, looked at Thanos and yelled: "How dare you call me a child! I want you to see how Xandar was judged by the Kree! How it suffered a thousand years of damage!"]
["Then! Thanos! I'll come back to take care of you!" After saying this, Ronan cut off the communication with Thanos.]
[Nebula looked at Ronan, "After destroying Xandar, will you kill my father?"]
[Ronan thought Nebula was going to dissuade him, "Do you dare to stop me?"]
["Look at what he has done to me! If you kill him, I will do my best to help you destroy a thousand planets!"]
"Heh. Talk about a model daughter," Rocket cackled. "Thanos really knows how to pick 'em. Both his girls turned on him!"
Gamora shot the raccoon a sideways glance but said nothing. A knot of worry tightened in her gut. She knew her sister. She also knew her father. If Nebula was still with Thanos's forces after this, the punishment would be severe.
In her own seat, the Nebula of this timeline watched the screen, her expression unreadable. But inside, a cold dread was spreading through her circuits. Seeing Ronan openly defy Thanos was one thing, but seeing her on-screen counterpart pledge her allegiance to the Kree fanatic without a flicker of hesitation… that changed everything.
This was bad. Her cover was blown. She couldn't just sit here and wait for the inevitable summons, the interrogation, the agonizing "recalibration." As long as Thanos drew breath, she needed to be alive to see him fall. She had to escape. Now.
Without a word to the Chitauri soldiers flanking her command chair, Nebula acted. In a blur of motion, she drew her blades, silencing them with swift, brutal efficiency. Alarms blared as she seized the controls of her strike craft, ripping it from its docking clamps and blasting away from the main fleet, which hung menacingly in the void near Knowhere.
Her escape did not go unnoticed. At that very moment, a fleet of golden, drone-like ships emerged from a jump point nearby. It was the Sovereign, led by the High Priestess Ayesha herself.
Nebula spotted them instantly. Friend or foe, it didn't matter. They were an opportunity. Without a moment's hesitation, she opened fire, loosing a volley of plasma bolts at the lead Sovereign ship before swerving hard, using the bulk of Thanos's fleet as cover.
Blindsided by the unprovoked attack, Ayesha's golden features contorted in rage. Possessed of a pride as vast as her empire, she didn't bother with hails or questions. Her scanners identified the source of the attack as originating from the dark, imposing fleet before her. The conclusion was simple. The retaliation was immediate.
On Ayesha's command, the entire Sovereign fleet unleashed its devastating firepower on the unsuspecting ships of the Black Order.
The Mad Titan's forces, who had been mobilizing to pursue the traitorous Nebula, were thrown into chaos. Caught completely off guard, they scrambled to return fire. Within seconds, the silent void outside Knowhere erupted into a maelstrom of explosions and energy beams as the two fleets tore into each other.
It was the perfect distraction. Yet, even amidst the chaos she had created, Nebula's position was precarious. Her small ship was caught in the crossfire, rocked by shockwaves from both sides. She dodged and weaved, pushing the craft to its limits, but her luck ran out. A stray blast from a Sovereign drone clipped her engine. Trailing black smoke and fire, her ship went into a death spiral, plummeting toward the massive, hollowed-out celestial head below.
Down in the lawless mining colony of Knowhere, Carina was desperately trying to pilot a small cargo ship to safety. She and a few other former servants of the Collector had managed to escape the destruction. Just as she thought they were clear, the battle raging in the sky above delivered one last piece of misfortune right to her doorstep.
She barely had time to scream before Nebula's crippled ship smashed into hers.
Carina cursed her lack of piloting skills, bracing for an impact that would surely kill them all. The crash was violent, a horrific screech of metal on metal, but miraculously, her sturdy little ship held together.
The same couldn't be said for Nebula. She was thrown against the cockpit wall with enough force to shatter bone. Her torso was bent at an unnatural angle, but with a sickening crunch of metal and wiring, her cybernetic spine forcibly realigned itself. Shaking off the last of the system errors, she kicked open her canopy and stormed into the ship she had crashed into.
Carina and her companion, a young Krylorian woman, stared in terror as the blue-skinned cyborg advanced on them. Before they could react, Nebula had Carina by the collar, pressing the cold edge of her blade against her throat. Nebula's optical sensors scanned the woman's face, and a flicker of recognition registered. This was the pink-skinned servant who had dared to grab the Power Stone.
"Take me somewhere he can't find me," Nebula commanded, her voice a low, chilling rasp. "Do it now."
"Okay… okay!" the Krylorian woman cried out, her hands raised in surrender. "We'll take you! Just please… don't hurt her!"
[Aboard Yondu's ship, the Blood Eagle]
["You betray me?! Steal my orb?!"]
[Several Ravagers pinned Star-Lord's arms back as Yondu, his face twisted with fury, drove his fist into Peter's stomach again and again.]
["Stop! Stop hitting him!" Gamora, also captured, shouted from across the hold.]
[Yondu paid her no mind, his cold cybernetic eye fixed on the gasping man he held. "I picked you up when you was a kid! These boys of mine, they wanted to eat you! They ain't never tasted Terran before!"]
["I saved your life!"]
[Hearing the familiar speech, Star-Lord finally found his voice, spitting out the words between ragged breaths. "Oh, will you shut up about that! God!"]
["For twenty years, you've been throwing that in my face! Like not eating me was some great blessing! Normal people don't go around wanting to eat other people!"]
["You abducted me, man! You stole me from my home! From my family!"]