Dawn on Ego's Planet
"There is definitely something wrong here!"
The artificial sunrise painted Ego's manufactured paradise in deceptively warm hues, but Mantis felt nothing but cold dread in her chest. She'd spent the entire night pacing the boundaries of her small chamber, her empathic abilities churning with the emotional turmoil she'd absorbed from her guests. The contrast between Uncle Ben and Aunt May's genuine warmth and Ego's space indifference had finally shattered her years of conditioning.
She found them in the pavilion where they'd been housed, Uncle Ben already awake and quietly checking his equipment while Aunt May prepared a simple breakfast from their travel rations. Both looked up expectantly as Mantis approached, their natural kindness making her confession both easier and more painful.
"Ego plans to kill Star-Lord," she whispered, the words tumbling out in a rush. "Just like he killed all the others. There are thousands of them, buried beneath our feet. His children, all dead because they couldn't give him what he wanted."
What Mantis didn't fully understand was that Ego's current plan for Peter Quill was actually more complex than simple murder. Unlike his previous offspring, Star-Lord had inherited genuine Celestial power. Ego hoped to convince his son to join his space mission willingly, to help him assimilate every planet in the universe, transforming all life into extensions of himself.
But if Star-Lord refused, his fate would be the same as all the others.
"I never thought there could be such a father in this world," Aunt May said, her voice tight with barely controlled anger. Years of raising difficult teenagers had given her insight into twisted family dynamics, but this transcended anything she'd ever encountered.
"We can't stand by and watch that child die," Uncle Ben agreed, his jaw set with the kind of determination that had made him legendary among the Plumbers. "May, wake up Looma. I'll get Rocket and Groot. Since we can't contact Ben, we're going to have to handle this ourselves."
They moved with the quiet efficiency of people accustomed to crisis. Aunt May slipped into Looma's chamber, where she found the mighty Tetramand princess sleeping with surprising delicacy. All four of her powerful arms were folded peacefully across her chest, her red eyes closed, her fierce expression softened into something almost vulnerable.
"Looma, dear, it's time to wake up," Aunt May said gently, taking one of the princess's hands in both of hers.
"Ben..." Looma murmured sleepily, her eyes fluttering half-open, a dreamy smile crossing her features.
This girl is completely hopeless, Aunt May thought with fond exasperation. She's still calling his name in her dreams.
Despite the complexity of the situation, Aunt May found herself genuinely fond of Princess Looma. The Tetramand's devotion to Ben was obvious and pure, much like Felicia Hardy's more complicated affection or Mary Jane Watson's long-standing friendship. All three young women brought something valuable to Ben's life, even if the romantic entanglements sometimes made family dinners awkward.
"Aunt May?" Looma's eyes snapped fully open, and her expression immediately shifted to alert anticipation. She wasn't merely muscle and aggression, her tactical mind had already grasped why she was being awakened in secret.
The princess had been waiting for this moment. Her previous defeat at Ego's hands had rankled more than she'd admitted. The Celestial had overwhelmed her through sheer energy output rather than skill, giving her little opportunity to demonstrate her true capabilities. But now they were standing on Ego's actual body, where she could strike directly at his core.
"I've been wanting to have a proper fight for hours!" Looma declared, her four fists clenching with audible pops as her knuckles cracked.
Meanwhile, Uncle Ben was rousing Rocket and Groot from their own quarters. The cybernetically enhanced raccoon listened to the explanation with growing fury, his artificially enhanced intelligence quickly grasping the full horror of Ego's crimes.
"So we gotta save that brain-dead orphan Quill," Rocket snarled, his mechanical implants whirring as his anger spiked. "Fine by me. Let's show this fake god what happens when you mess with kids. Groot, you ready to shove some branches where the sun don't shine?"
"I am Groot," his partner agreed with unusual vehemence.
"Language!" Uncle Ben said automatically, delivering gentle but firm taps to both their heads. Decades of parenting had ingrained certain reflexes.
Then the three of them gathered their weapons and headed out into the false dawn, where destiny waited.
The Palace of Lies
In the center of Ego's grand palace, a structure that seemed to grow directly from the planet's surface like some space flower, the false god was preparing to reveal his true nature to his son. He'd brought Star-Lord to the heart of his domain, where holographic displays showed the "great work" he'd accomplished across the eons.
"I am like a sailor," Ego said, his voice carrying the practiced cadence of someone who'd given this speech before. "Though I loved your mother dearly, the sea will always be my true home. For the greater purpose, everything else must be secondary."
Star-Lord stood amid the swirling displays of space conquest, his expression skeptical. "And that includes my mom?"
"Your mother..." Ego's avatar face softened with what appeared to be genuine nostalgia. "Meredith Quill was the only woman I have ever truly loved. I returned to Earth twice to see her. Only twice, because I knew that a third visit would have broken my resolve entirely. I would have abandoned my space purpose and remained on that small planet forever, content to live and die as a mortal."
Quill's defensive posture relaxed slightly. Despite everything, he still craved some connection to the mother he'd lost so young. The idea that she'd inspired such devotion in a space entity was oddly comforting.
Unfortunately, Ego's fundamental inability to understand mortal emotions led him to overshare.
"So I gave her cancer," he said matter-of-factly.
The words hit Quill like a physical blow. "What?"
"Yes, the brain tumor that killed her was my doing," Ego continued, apparently oblivious to the rage building in his son's eyes. In his space perspective, this had been a profound sacrifice, proof of his love rather than evidence of his cruelty.
For a mortal to inspire such difficult choices in a god should have been seen as an honor!
"You killed my mother!" Quill roared, drawing his element guns in one fluid motion.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The plasma bolts tore through Ego's humanoid form, reducing half his torso to scattered energy particles. But the damage was purely cosmetic, the avatar reformed almost immediately, and Ego stared at his son with genuine confusion.
"What are you doing?" he asked, as if Quill's reaction was completely incomprehensible.
Quill didn't waste breath on explanations. He emptied both weapons into his father's form, watching with savage satisfaction as the energy construct struggled to maintain cohesion under the assault. But his ammunition was limited, and Ego's patience was not.
"ENOUGH!"
The palace floor exploded upward as Ego abandoned his humanoid pretense. Massive tentacles of living energy erupted from every surface, the beautiful illusions dissolving to reveal the planet's true nature, a dead, rocky wasteland that served as the shell for something far more terrible.
"You ungrateful child!" Ego's voice now came from everywhere at once, carried by the very air itself. "I offered you partnership in reshaping the universe! Instead, you can serve as my battery for the next thousand years!"
Energy tentacles thick as subway cars wrapped around Star-Lord, lifting him into the air as they began draining his inherited Celestial power. His skin took on an eerie blue-white glow as his life force was siphoned away.
"Don't think so!"
Uncle Ben burst through the collapsing palace wall, his enhanced reflexes allowing him to dodge falling debris as he opened fire with a Plumber-issued plasma rifle. The precisely aimed shots severed the energy bonds holding Star-Lord, dropping the young man back to solid ground.
Rocket followed close behind, his own weapons chattering as he laid down covering fire. "Quill, you dumb-ass! What did you think was gonna happen when you started shooting your space daddy? But I gotta admit, he's even more of a bastard than you are!"
"For once, we're in complete agreement," Star-Lord gasped, accepting his guns back from Groot's extended vines.
"You insects dare, "
WHAM!
Princess Looma descended like a crimson meteor, all four fists leading as she drove Ego's avatar form into the ground with pile-driver force. The impact crater she created was immediately filled with scattered energy particles as the Celestial's construct disintegrated.
"Now that's what I call making an entrance!" Rocket whooped, his cybernetic tail twitching with excitement. "Remind me never to get on her bad side, Star-Lord. And you, " he pointed at Quill, ", keep your hormone-addled brain focused on survival instead of staring at the scary princess!"
"I wasn't staring!" Quill protested, though he did take a cautious step back from where Looma was cracking her knuckles.
Uncle Ben surveyed the destruction with satisfaction. "Well, that was easier than, "
"No!" Mantis cried out, her empathic abilities screaming warnings. "That was just an avatar! Ego will return, and he'll be furious! We need to reach your ship immediately!"
As if summoned by her words, the very sky began to shift and writhe. Clouds of energy coalesced into a massive face that dwarfed mountains, cycling through countless expressions and appearances as Ego drew upon eons of accumulated forms.
"NONE OF YOU WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE!"
The planet itself became their enemy. The ground split open like a mouth, revealing molten energy that pulsed with the rhythm of an enormous heart. Beautiful gardens withered in seconds, their false paradise dissolving to show the barren wasteland beneath. Tentacles of pure force erupted from every crevice, turning the landscape into a nightmare of grasping appendages and crushing power.
"This was all fake!" Star-Lord stared around in horrified realization. The paradise his father had shown him, the promise of a shared space destiny, all lies built on the bones of murdered children.
"It could have been real!" Ego's voice shook the planet's core. "You chose to cling to your inferior human nature! Now you'll all pay for that decision!"
Energy blasts rained down like artillery fire, each one capable of vaporizing a city block. Uncle Ben rolled and weaved between the attacks, his enhanced reflexes and Plumber training keeping him alive through sheer skill. Aunt May moved with surprising grace for someone her apparent age, the Super Soldier Serum granting her capabilities that would have seemed impossible just months earlier.
But they were hopelessly outgunned. Ego wasn't just fighting them, he was the entire battlefield, and his power was growing with each passing second.
"I told you, there is no escape!" Ego's laughter was the sound of tectonic plates grinding together.
The assault intensified. Energy constructs rose from the ground like mountains, their surfaces crackling with enough power to split moons. Several of the party were caught in grasping tentacles that began crushing them with geological force.
Star-Lord screamed as Ego resumed draining his power, his inherited Celestial abilities being torn from his body in ribbons of blue-white energy. His skin began to crack and glow as his very essence was consumed.
"You brought this on yourself, Peter!" Ego's voice carried the cold satisfaction of absolute victory. "No one can save you now!"
The energy reached critical mass, building toward an explosion that would reduce them all to component atoms,
"Want to bet?"
Flames erupted across the battlefield as reality tore open like fabric. Ben Parker stepped through the dimensional portal, his expression calm despite the space horror surrounding him. The Omnitrix on his wrist pulsed with readiness as he surveyed the scene with the practiced eye of someone who'd faced down universal threats before.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, pressing the watch's activation dial with casual confidence. "Traffic was murder."
The transformation began, and Ego's confidence finally wavered as he recognized the kind of power he was truly facing.
"Hero time."