Tony shook his head in bemusement. "How does he go from that roaring, enemy-shredding monster to… that?" he asked, pointing at Groot's shy on-screen expression. "It's like two different creatures."
"No," Natasha corrected, a slight frown on her face as she analyzed the scene. "That's not a cute expression. That's the look of a very good boy who wants to be praised for a job well done."
"The little guy is unbelievably strong! You'd never guess it," Rhodes said, reaching out to gently touch the tiny, potted Groot that was part of their own timeline.
Startled from a deep sleep, the little Groot yelped and scrambled backward in his pot, on the verge of tears.
"Hey!" Gamora snapped. "You scared him!"
"Oh! Sorry, sorry!" Rhodes immediately pulled his hand back as if he'd touched a hot stove.
[In the skies of Xandar, the Nova Corps fleet was straining to hold back the Dark Aster, but Ronan had lost his patience.]
[He strode to the front of his bridge, holding the warhammer embedded with the Power Stone. "Xandar! You stand accused!"]
["Your pitiful customs of peace cannot save you now! You will burn in the fires of judgment!"]
[Ronan raised the hammer. The Power Stone pulsed, unleashing a focused beam of pure, violent purple energy that struck the center of the Nova Corps' golden shield-net.]
[Instantly, the entire interlocking shield began to fail. The fleet's energy-synergy technology was designed to distribute damage across all ships, but it was never meant to handle a force of this magnitude. The power was too absolute, too overwhelming for the network to dissipate. When the shield buckled, every ship connected to it suffered a catastrophic overload.]
[The supposedly indestructible barrier shattered like glass. A chain reaction of explosions erupted across the fleet as ship after ship was consumed by fire. The formation, while not completely obliterated, was broken.]
[The violent shockwave rocked the Dark Aster. In the power room, the blast tore a hole in the outer hull, sending Gamora and Nebula flying.]
[On the ground, the Ravagers who were intercepting the Necrocraft were also being overwhelmed. One Kree ship dove kamikaze-style into a Ravager vessel, and the two exploded in a shared fireball. Rocket looked up just in time to see a large piece of debris slam into his cockpit.]
[The reinforced glass spiderwebbed with cracks but held, saving him from being pulped. If it had broken, he would have been next.]
[Though the Nova Corps had not been wiped out, a massive gap had been torn in their defensive line. The fleet, which had been holding the Dark Aster in a stalemate, was now being pushed back by the warship's immense power.]
[Corpsman Saal was pinned in his cockpit, his ship groaning under the strain as the Dark Aster crushed it. In desperation, he put all his hope in one last call. "Rocket!"]
["Hang on, Saal! I'm coming!"]
[Before Rocket could finish, a final, agonized scream came over the comms. Saal's ship, along with the entire central command of the fleet, was completely crushed.]
[Rocket stared, wide-eyed, at the unfolding tragedy in the sky. He was completely stunned.]
[With Saal's sacrifice, the last remnants of the shield-net disintegrated. Ship after ship exploded as the Nova Corps was systematically destroyed.]
[Aboard the Xandarian command center, Nova Prime watched the devastation, her eyes filled with despair.]
["Quill, you have to hurry! The civilian evacuation is complete, but… we are losing."]
Of course. Here is a rewritten version of the dialogue that aligns with the fanfiction timeline, where Ronan did not possess the Power Stone during the main battle over Xandar.
"The raw destructive power… it's just unbelievable," Bruce Banner said quietly, staring at the orb in their own room.
"Yeah. Of all the stones we've encountered, the Power Stone is by far the most direct and devastating," Tony agreed, his mind racing through Jarvis's previous scans.
"A damn shame for those pilots," Rhodes said with a sigh, shaking his head. "Giving their lives to defend their home, only for it to be for nothing."
"Who said they were dead?" Star-Lord asked, frowning.
"What? The screen just showed…" Rhodes began, pointing at the display.
Rocket rolled his eyes. "Pay attention, flyboy! We told you, our timeline is a little different!"
Quill nodded. "Ronan never touched the stone to the planet or wiped out the fleet in our timeline. We boarded the Dark Aster while the Nova Corps kept him busy." He shot a glare at the raccoon. "Then I hit him with what was supposed to be a fatal blow!"
"Hey!" Rocket shot back, instantly defensive. "How was I supposed to know that Kree zealot was tough enough to take a direct hit from a Hadron Enforcer and just walk it off? My masterpiece should have turned him into paste!"
[On the screen, Star-Lord fired his twin blasters, clearing out the last of the Sakaaran soldiers before rushing to the sealed blast door and banging on it.]
["Gamora, what's the hold-up?!"]
[Inside the damaged power room, Gamora and Nebula were still locked in combat. Nebula had combined her two batons into a single long staff.]
[Gamora blocked a powerful swing with her sword, then used her legs to trap the staff and kick Nebula away. But Nebula recovered quickly, knocking Gamora's sword from her hand. Left with no other choice, Gamora grabbed the electrified staff with her bare hands. The shock was so intense her skeleton was visible through her skin for a moment.]
["RAAGH!" Gamora roared through the pain, overpowering her sister and ripping the staff from her grasp. She threw it aside and sent Nebula flying with a powerful kick.]
[Nebula was thrown backward through the hole in the hull, tumbling into empty space. She managed to grab onto a piece of broken steel, saving herself from a fatal fall.]
[Gazing at the city thousands of feet below, she felt a flicker of fear. Then, a voice called out.]
[Gamora, putting aside their conflict, was offering her a hand.]
["Nebula! Sister! Help us fight Ronan! You know he's insane!"]
[Nebula's eyes darted down, spotting the Ravager ships flying below. A desperate, bold idea formed in her mind. For her, taking a wild gamble was infinitely better than accepting her sister's pity.]
["I know you're all insane!" she snarled, before detaching her own cybernetic hand, letting it fall away with Gamora's hope.]
["No!" Gamora screamed in anguish.]
[Nebula fell, landing perfectly on a passing Ravager ship, startling the pilot. She punched straight through the cockpit's windshield.]
["Out!" she commanded.]
[The terrified pilot was unceremoniously thrown from the ship, his screams fading into the distance as Nebula seized the controls and banked away.]