In the end, Thanos chose to withdraw.
His Black Order was vast, but with his most capable children dead, the number of truly effective commanders he had at his disposal was dangerously low. If he forced a full-scale war with Earth now, he held no real advantage. Against an evenly matched foe, Thanos would have no fear, but the wild card was Asgard. Considering the potential for the All-Father's intervention, Thanos was not optimistic about the outcome.
So, he chose to bow his head. For now.
The Asgardians will have their Ragnarok sooner or later, he thought. I will use this time to regroup. When their doom comes, I will return to this world. For a being with a lifespan as long as his, patience was a weapon. He could afford to wait.
On the other side, Ben did not press the attack. The massive battleship, built with the combined effort of a refugee species, was an intimidating sight, but it was a bluff. In a direct confrontation with Thanos's fleet, the ship, designed primarily for escape, would be torn to shreds.
Inside the ship's bridge, Korg's rocky jaw was practically on the floor. "Just let him go, man," he pleaded to anyone who would listen. "One good volley from that big ship and we're all space dust…" He was promptly shushed by several others and gently dragged away. Everyone knew their battleship was mostly for show, but at a time like this, one must never show weakness.
Not only that, but Ben and Looma were in no condition for another fight. Looma had been through a brutal, exhausting battle, and she had been seriously injured by Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight before Ben's arrival. Ben himself, though he had rescued her, had taken some damage. He had underestimated the Black Order duo, largely because of their lackluster performance in the movies he remembered. He hadn't known that Corvus Glaive's soul was bound to his weapon, not his body. After smashing the general's physical form, he was taken by surprise by the sentient blade, and then by the sheer power of Proxima's spear.
Ben now genuinely wondered how Captain America had managed to catch that thing. Ultimately, Ben's enhanced Four Arms form, channeling the Old Power, had overwhelmed the two of them, but not before a protracted and draining fight that was immediately followed by a brawl with Jotunheim's Frost Giants. So, while he looked mighty at the moment, his reserves were dangerously low. This was the real reason he allowed Thanos to leave, rather than adopting Tony's "fight to the death" stance.
As Thanos turned to depart, Supergiant moved to follow. But Looma took a single, heavy step forward, her towering body blocking the telepath's path.
Ben's gaze, cold and hard, fell upon her. "No one said you could leave." His voice was low, but it carried across the ruined street. "Thanos attacked Earth for the Infinity Stones. He lost. It is only natural that he leave one behind as a spoil of war." He took a step closer. "And you. As one of the primary invaders in this war, did you truly think you could just walk away?"
Letting Thanos go was a necessary, pragmatic move. But letting Supergiant leave with the Mind Stone would be sheer folly. It wasn't just the stone; Supergiant herself was a threat. She was the only other being besides Loki who knew how to use the resonance between the stones to bypass their planetary shield—knowledge she had ripped from Loki's mind. If she escaped, Thanos would only need to acquire one more stone before he could launch another, more insidious attack from within.
And so, the war for Earth ended. Thanos retreated, the Chitauri vanguard was annihilated, and the Black Order was no more. Supergiant was captured, and the Mind Stone fell into Ben's hands.
The price of victory was the near-total destruction of Manhattan and the scrapping of a large number of Primus's Iron Guard robots. Miraculously, human casualties were almost non-existent. The Winter Soldier's prosthetic arm was broken, but T'Challa had already promised him a significant vibranium upgrade.
Now, a group of weary heroes sat amongst the ruins. Above, the warship remained, a silent guardian. Beta Ray Bill descended, followed by a contingent of his people, all coming to meet the King of Sakaar. Without Ben, they knew they would have likely ended up as exhibits in the Collector's menagerie. Ben, still in his towering Four Arms form, welcomed Bill and the Korbinites into the Plumbers.
"The number of Korbinites is not large," Ben mused. "Sakaar is vast, with plenty of wilderness to settle. Loki, take us there."
Ben's primary reason for the immediate departure was to get Looma the medical attention she desperately needed. But his most important, unspoken reason was the need to put several light-years between Looma and Felicia. With both of them on the same screen, he felt a catastrophic confrontation brewing. Felicia might be fine—after dealing with Mary Jane's affections, her tolerance for romantic complications was probably quite high.
It was Looma he was worried about. Ben could vividly picture her slamming her warhammer down in front of Felicia and declaring: "You wish to be Ben's mate? Defeat me first!" What Looma cared about most was strength. She would have no objection to powerful women like Brunnhilde or Caiera; in fact, for her, the more the merrier. A few sparring partners to fight when things got dull? What could be better?
"No problem," Loki said with a flourish. He produced the Tesseract, and with a surge of power, tore open a massive space-time portal large enough for the Korbinite warship to pass through. The power a gem could exert was directly related to its user, and this Loki was a far cry from the one who had needed a machine to open a ten-meter-wide door.
With his task complete, he handed the cube back to Ben, then struck a pose, showing off his new armor. "Well? Am I not magnificent in my new attire?" He wasn't asking about the clothes; he was fishing for a compliment.
"It suits you very well, Loki," Ben nodded, playing along. "When is the coronation?"
"Perhaps I shall pick a fine day for it," Loki said proudly. "I will not be joining you on Sakaar. I must first deliver a certain unqualified lout back to Asgard." He was, of course, referring to the still-frozen Thor.
And so, the groups separated. Felicia, realizing how long she had been in the "bathroom," rushed back to Primus Tower before Mary Jane could get suspicious, narrowly averting a disaster of a different kind.
Our attention returns to the planet Sakaar.
In the vast wilderness, the massive portal opened. Before the astonished eyes of the Sakaaran people, the colossal warship slowly emerged. Caiera, having been informed in advance, was there to greet them with the reorganized Sakaar Royal Guard, and no attack was launched.
Today, Sakaar was a world transformed. The garbage-strewn wilderness had been cleared. The Old Power that Ben had unleashed—the crimson lightning of the King of Sakaar—had swept across the planet, bringing life back to the dry, red desert. Forests were beginning to take root. The planet itself was healing.
"Caiera, what is the situation here?" Ben asked as he disembarked.
"No problems. The army Thanos sent could only contain our forces. They have since been eliminated."
"Good," Ben nodded.
Caiera then looked past him at the warship, her eyes wide with awe. "Is this the Korbinite ship Bill spoke of?" From a distance, it looked large. Up close, the sense of scale was overwhelming. A three-meter-tall person was as tiny as an ant in comparison. The ship was the size of a small island, easily capable of housing hundreds of thousands of Korbinites.
"Give the Korbinites a province of their own," Ben decided. There were many alien races on Sakaar, but integrating hundreds of thousands of newcomers at once was a recipe for conflict. "Bill, I'll leave their integration into Sakaaran society to you."
"It is my duty," Bill said, placing a hand over his chest and bowing to his king. As the guardian of his people, his purpose had always been to lead them to a new home.
Ben then saw the rest of the Korbinites for the first time. Unlike Bill's distinctive, horse-like features, the average Korbinite was more humanoid. They had brown skin the color of loess, were tall and hairless, and their facial features were somewhat indistinct. To Ben, they all looked vaguely the same, a bit like a brown-skinned Red Skull.
After settling these matters, Ben and Caiera returned to the Plumbers headquarters. Along the way, Sakaarans fell to their knees at the sight of him, raising their hands and cheering with tears in their eyes. They thanked their king for bringing new life to their planet and their destiny.
Ben was not pleased by this. "I've told them before, there is no need to kneel to me," he said, his voice heavy. "I did not free them from one man's slavery only to make them slaves to another."
"But the people truly respect you, from the bottom of their hearts," Caiera said with a gentle smile.
A short while later, they arrived at the rebuilt Totem Tower, now the heart of the Plumbers' operations on Sakaar.