-Broadcast-
Star-Lord sprinted across the broken terrain, his boots kicking up dust with each step. He raised his quad blasters and fired a concentrated burst of energy directly at Thanos's back, the crimson bolts striking the Titan between the shoulder blades.
The impact made Thanos stumble forward, his concentration broken. He turned his head sharply, rage flashing in his eyes, and raised the Infinity Gauntlet toward this new annoyance.
Doctor Strange saw the danger immediately. His hands moved in rapid circular motions, orange light trailing his fingers. A Tao Mandala shield materialized directly beneath Star-Lord's feet just as purple energy erupted from the Power Stone.
The beam struck the shield and Star-Lord used it as a springboard, launching himself over the deadly attack. He sailed through the air in a graceful arc, closing the distance to Thanos in seconds. At the apex of his jump, Star-Lord pulled the gravity mine from his belt and slapped it directly onto Thanos's back.
The bomb adhered with a magnetic click. Mission accomplished, Star-Lord's mask retracted into his collar, revealing his face. He made direct eye contact with Thanos, grinned, and raised his middle finger in a decidedly Earth gesture of defiance. Then he let himself fall backward.
An orange portal opened perfectly behind him, and Star-Lord tumbled through to safety.
Before Thanos could reach back to remove the device, it detonated. The gravity mine created a localized singularity, compressing space itself into a crushing sphere of force. The explosion drove Thanos to one knee, the ground cratering beneath him from the gravitational pressure.
Doctor Strange watched the dust settle, seeing Thanos already beginning to rise. The bomb hadn't been enough. They'd need to press the advantage before Thanos could use the stones again. Strange's voice rang out with absolute authority: "Don't let him close his fist!"
The Cloak of Levitation immediately detached from Strange's shoulders, becoming a crimson blur as it shot toward the recovering Titan.
Thanos took approximately two seconds to shake off the effects of the gravity bomb. As he pushed himself back to his feet, the sentient cloak wrapped itself around his left hand and the Infinity Gauntlet, the fabric winding between his fingers and preventing them from closing.
Thanos reached up with his right hand to tear the annoying cloth away—
An orange portal materialized directly in front of his face.
"Magic!" Spider-Man's enthusiastic voice preceded his fist as Peter Parker emerged from the portal and punched Thanos square in the jaw with enhanced strength. The impact snapped the Titan's head to the side.
Before Peter could land, a new portal opened directly beneath him, swallowing him mid-fall.
Another portal materialized on Thanos's left side. "Magic with a—" Spider-Man grabbed Thanos's head with both hands, using the momentum of his portal-assisted velocity to drive his knee into Thanos's lower abdomen with devastating force. The breath left Thanos's lungs in a violent exhale. Peter immediately disengaged, dropping through yet another portal before Thanos could grab him.
"—kick!" Spider-Man appeared above and behind, planting both feet in Thanos's face in a perfectly executed dropkick. The force of the blow actually moved the Titan's head backward.
Thanos's patience evaporated. Enough of this insect and his parlor tricks. He stopped trying to remove the cloak and instead focused entirely on the portals, tracking the pattern, predicting the next appearance point.
"Magic—" Spider-Man emerged from the portal directly in front of Thanos, arm cocked back for another punch.
Thanos's hand shot out with serpent-strike speed. His massive fingers closed around Spider-Man's throat, cutting off the young hero's words mid-sentence. With a roar of fury, Thanos slammed Peter into the ground with enough force to spider-web the stone beneath them.
Spider-Man struggled, his enhanced strength allowing him to pry at Thanos's fingers, but it was like trying to bend steel bars. He couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't call for help.
"Insect!" Thanos snarled, disgusted by this persistent pest. He lifted Spider-Man by the throat and hurled him across the battlefield. Peter's body tumbled through the air and crashed directly into Doctor Strange, both of them going down in a tangle of limbs and cloak.
Finally free of Spider-Man's interference, Thanos turned his full attention to the cloak. He grabbed it with his right hand and pulled with overwhelming strength. The Cloak of Levitation, ancient and powerful though it was, couldn't withstand the raw physical power. Its fabric began to tear. Recognizing defeat, the cloak released Thanos's gauntlet and flew back toward Strange.
Thanos raised his newly freed hand, fingers spreading, the Infinity Stones beginning to glow—
An explosion engulfed him from the side, a missile striking with pinpoint accuracy.
Tony Stark, having finally fought free of the transmuted bird-constructs, swooped back into the fight. He'd seen Spider-Man thrown like a rag doll, seen the kid hit the ground. Fury propelled him forward. His armor's weapons systems were fully armed and ready.
Tony unleashed everything. Micro-missiles erupted from launchers in his shoulders, arms, and legs. Repulsor beams lanced from his palms. Every weapon system fired simultaneously, creating a storm of explosive force that hammered Thanos's position.
The barrage created a massive fireball, flames and smoke rising into Titan's thin atmosphere. For just a moment, it seemed like it might have worked.
Then the flames began moving—flowing backward, defying physics. They were being absorbed into the Power Stone, drawn into its purple depths like water down a drain. The stone blazed brighter and brighter as it consumed the energy Tony had unleashed.
"Oh, that's not—" Tony started to say.
Thanos thrust the Infinity Gauntlet forward, and all the absorbed energy erupted back toward Iron Man in a concentrated beam of purple destruction.
The blast caught Tony full-on, overloading his armor's defensive systems. He was blown backward through the air, smashing through the remains of a building. The impact destabilized a massive piece of Titan's ancient infrastructure—a city-sized engine component. It began to fall, groaning as metal tore.
While Thanos was focused on Tony's position, watching the engine fall, Spider-Man swung in from behind. Web-lines shot out, sticking to the Infinity Gauntlet. Peter planted his feet and pulled with everything he had, trying to wrench the gauntlet free from Thanos's hand.
For a brief, hopeful moment, the gauntlet shifted slightly.
Then Thanos's left arm flexed. The muscles tensed, and he yanked the web-lines forward, pulling Spider-Man toward him like a fish on a hook.
As Peter flew forward helplessly, Thanos cocked back his right fist and unleashed a devastating haymaker. The punch caught Spider-Man in the chest, his armor denting with the impact. Peter was sent tumbling head over heels through the air before crashing headfirst into the rubble.
He lay still, his body smoking from the impact, barely conscious.
Thanos reached down and casually tore the webbing from his gauntlet, preparing to use the stones to end this annoyance once and for all—
The screaming of engines filled the air. Thanos looked up just in time to see a spacecraft—a small personal craft—diving directly at him at full thrust.
The ship struck him at high velocity, the impact driving him backward. The spacecraft plowed a trench through the ground, Thanos caught beneath its hull, scraping across broken stone for dozens of meters. The ship finally disintegrated from the stress, breaking apart into flaming debris.
Thanos shoved aside a section of hull plating, irritated but unharmed. His skin wasn't even scratched. He began to stand—
A figure rushed at him through the settling dust. A fist connected with his jaw—not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to get his attention. He turned to see who dared.
Nebula stood before him, her cybernetic body sparking from the crash landing. She pulled her electrified baton from her hip, activating it. The weapon crackled with energy.
Thanos's expression shifted to something between contempt and amusement. "My favorite daughter."
"You should have killed me!" Nebula's voice was raw with years of suppressed rage and pain.
"It would have been a waste of parts," Thanos said dismissively, his tone making clear he considered her nothing more than a failed experiment in his quest for perfection.
The casual cruelty of those words snapped whatever restraint Nebula had left. With a scream of fury, she lunged forward and swung her baton at Thanos's face.
He blocked the first strike with his forearm, the electricity dancing across his skin but failing to penetrate deep enough to cause real damage. Nebula struck again and again, each blow fueled by years of torture, modification, and humiliation at this monster's hands.
Thanos blocked two more strikes, his movements economical and precise. Nebula spun, bringing the baton around in a wide arc toward the back of his head. She caught it mid-spin with her other hand and struck forward at his face.
Thanos tilted his head slightly. The baton passed within millimeters of his cheek, missing entirely. His expression showed only mild irritation, as if being attacked by a particularly persistent insect.
After her flurry of attacks yielded nothing, Nebula's tactical programming kicked in past her rage. The real question—the one that mattered—forced its way out. "Where is Gamora?!"
Thanos's face shifted. Something like regret crossed his features, there and gone in an instant.
He didn't answer. Instead, he backhanded Nebula casually, as one might swat away a fly. The blow sent her sailing through the air, her cybernetic body tumbling end over end before crashing to the ground more than ten meters away. She lay still, systems rebooting, unable to rise.
-Real World-
Captain America watched Thanos shrug off attack after attack, his expression growing increasingly grim. "This guy is incredibly tough. I'm not sure we could defeat him even without the Infinity Gauntlet."
"Yeah," Tony agreed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Look at how many solid hits he's taken—attacks that would've killed a normal person ten times over. And he acts like they're mosquito bites. He only even uses the gauntlet to counterattack, not to defend himself."
Tony had known intellectually that Thanos defeated the Hulk in hand-to-hand combat, which spoke volumes about his physical capabilities. But seeing this extended barrage of attacks fail to even slow him down? That was sobering. The Titan's physiology was on a completely different level.
"It doesn't matter," Star-Lord said confidently, blue-white energy crackling around his hands. The light pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. "No matter how powerful he is, I'll be able to handle him next time we meet."
As time went by, he could feel the energy he could draw growing stronger. Given time, defeating Thanos would be well within his capabilities.
Thor glanced at Star-Lord from the corner of his eye, his expression unreadable. As a training partner—or more accurately, as a punching bag—Star-Lord was proving remarkably effective. Although Thor carefully controlled his lightning strikes and physical blows to avoid actually killing the half-Celestial, there was no denying that Star-Lord was growing stronger at a visible rate.
The blue-white divine energy—so similar to Thor's own lightning but somehow fundamentally different—had reached the point where it could envelop Star-Lord's entire body, providing a protective barrier.
When Star-Lord first discovered this capability, he'd enthusiastically attempted to form the energy into proper armor, something with shape and structure. The attempt had failed spectacularly due to insufficient control precision, creating what could only be described as a pixelated mess—energy fragments arranged in a blocky, mosaic pattern.
But even that crude construct provided protection. It could already withstand roughly twenty percent of Thor's punch force. Star-Lord would still be knocked backward, sent flying across the training area, but he wouldn't be injured. That rate of improvement was, frankly, absurd.