"Ben!?"
The chorus of surprised voices rose above the space carnage as two figures stepped through the dimensional portal wreathed in flames. The sight of Ben emerging from the rift sent waves of relief and joy through the embattled group, but none more so than Princess Looma.
With a roar of pure delight, Looma channeled her overwhelming emotions into raw physical power, all four arms working in concert to literally punch through Ego's energy tentacles. The constructs that had been slowly crushing her moments before exploded into harmless particles as she broke free and launched herself at Ben with the enthusiasm of a guided missile.
"Ben! I've missed you so much!" she cried, sweeping him up in an embrace that would have liquefied a normal human being. Her four arms wrapped around his significantly smaller frame as she spun him around like a beloved toy, her red eyes bright with tears of joy.
"Wait, Looma, I haven't transformed yet," Ben gasped, patting her massive bicep in a desperate attempt to signal for mercy. "You're about to snap my spine in half!"
An ordinary person would have been reduced to paste within seconds of such an enthusiastic display of affection. Even with his enhanced durability, Ben could feel his ribs creaking ominously under the pressure.
"Oh! Sorry, sorry!" Looma set him down with uncharacteristic gentleness, her fierce features softening with embarrassment. "I'm just so happy to see you! Every time I'm in danger, you appear just in time to save me. You really are my destined soulmate!"
While this reunion was taking place, Yondu Udonta had put his whistle to work with lethal precision. The Yaka arrow danced through the air like a living thing, its mono-molecular edge slicing through Ego's energy constructs with surgical accuracy. Within seconds, all the tentacles binding the other prisoners had been severed, freeing Uncle Ben, Aunt May, and the rest of the group.
"Ben!" Uncle Ben and Aunt May rushed toward their nephew, their faces showing the kind of relief that only family could understand. Despite their enhanced capabilities and growing reputation as "Legendary Plumbers," they were still the people who had raised him, and seeing him safe filled a need they hadn't even realized they'd been carrying.
Rocket, meanwhile, was taking advantage of his newfound freedom to empty his weapons into Ego's massive sky-face. "Take that, you space psychopath!" he cackled, his enhanced reflexes allowing him to dodge the retaliatory energy blasts with contemptuous ease.
"Hey, Quill!" the raccoon called out to Star-Lord. "You mind if I tell your dear old dad to choke on plasma fire?"
"Be my guest," Star-Lord replied with bitter satisfaction. "Tell him it's from his loving son."
"Boy, get over here!" Yondu barked, his gravelly voice cutting through the chaos as he continued directing his arrow to protect the group.
Star-Lord's expression grew complicated as he looked at his former captor. "Yondu? What are you doing here?"
The relationship between them had always been twisted and painful. Yondu had kidnapped Peter from Earth as a child, stolen his chance at a normal life, and subjected him to years of hardship among the Ravager crews. Yet that same act had also saved him from Ego's murderous intentions, even if Yondu's motives at the time had been purely selfish.
Now, seeing the blue-skinned pirate risking his life in this hellscape, Peter found himself wondering if there might be more to their relationship than mutual exploitation.
"Don't get the wrong idea," Yondu growled, not quite meeting Peter's eyes. "I just want those Anulax Batteries you stole. This ain't about sentiment."
Even now, at what might be the end of his life, Yondu couldn't bring himself to admit the truth about his feelings for the boy he'd raised.
"You're such an ass," Star-Lord said, but there was less venom in it than usual.
"Yeah, well, not as big an ass as your actual father," Yondu shot back with a predatory grin.
The arrival of Ben had brought Ego's rampage to an abrupt halt. The massive energy constructs that had been tearing the planet apart froze in mid-attack, their space power suspended like a held breath. Only Ego's titanic face in the sky continued to move, its expression cycling through surprise, calculation, and growing concern.
"King of Sakaar," Ego said, his voice carrying across the devastated landscape with the weight of geological ages. "I know that the Nine Realms and Earth face assault from powerful enemies. In such circumstances, it would be... unwise to needlessly provoke a god."
The false deity's tone carried the carefully modulated notes of someone attempting diplomacy from a position of strength. "Peter Quill is my son. This is a family matter that need not concern the Plumbers. Withdraw your people now, and I will not only allow them to leave unharmed, I will offer my assistance against the Dark Elves threatening your realm."
It was a tempting offer, Ben had to admit. Trading one wayward human for the alliance of a Celestial would seem like sound strategy to most commanders. Ego's power was immense, and his knowledge of space forces could prove invaluable in the coming conflicts.
Unfortunately for the living planet, Ben knew exactly what Ego was planning.
If the Celestial succeeded in draining Star-Lord's inherited power, his capabilities would expand exponentially. The energy boost would allow him to begin his universal assimilation project immediately, transforming every inhabited world, including Earth, into extensions of himself within a matter of hours.
Even if Ego honored his promise to help fight the Dark Elves first, it would only be because he wanted to absorb their power as well.
Besides, the way Ego had attacked Uncle Ben and Aunt May made this personal. You didn't threaten Ben Parker's family and then expect to negotiate.
"Looma," Ben said quietly, "protect them."
Then he pressed the Omnitrix's activation dial.
"Ultimate Gravattack!"
A surge of green light tore through the battlefield like a controlled supernova. When the glow faded, he emerged as a towering figure, not just Gravattack, but something far greater. His form was humanoid yet hewn from living stone, every inch coursing with radiant fissures of molten green energy. The gravitational might of his Galilean DNA merged seamlessly with the spatial awareness of Celestial blood, giving him an aura that bent the air itself. Instead of inflating to planetary proportions, he had compressed that infinite expanse into a compact juggernaut, ten feet tall, dense with power, radiating a weight so immense that the ground groaned and the atmosphere pressed heavy around him.
"Impossible!" Ego's massive face contorted with shock, then wild joy. "You're a living planet! Another true Celestial consciousness! You're even more perfect than that worthless Peter!"
"Hey!" Rocket called out from the sidelines. "Did the space daddy just call Quill worthless? Because I'm pretty sure that's what I heard!"
"Shut up, Rocket," Star-Lord muttered, though he had to admit the insult stung.
Ego's ecstasy was building to manic levels as he contemplated the feast before him. "One Star-Lord could have powered my expansion for millennia, but you, a complete planetary consciousness, you could fuel my ascension to universal dominion! Become nourishment for my destiny, King of Sakaar!"
The planet convulsed as Ego abandoned all pretense of restraint. Energy that had been held in check erupted from every surface, transforming the landscape into a hellscape of grasping tentacles and crushing force. Mountains liquified and reformed as weapons, the very air became weaponized plasma, and the ground beneath their feet began actively trying to digest them.
"This is getting a bit excessive," Rocket observed, his legs trembling as he watched space forces reshape reality around them.
Star-Lord tried to tap into his own inherited power to help, but the moment he attempted to connect with the planet's energy grid, the feedback nearly knocked him unconscious. "I can't... the power differential is too huge."
"Stand back, kid," Ben said calmly.
With a casual wave of his hand, he reached out through gravitational fields and simply turned off Ego's attack. The energy constructs collapsed as their fundamental forces were redirected, their space power flowing harmlessly into the ground like water finding its level.
Then Ben snapped his fingers.
The gravity well of the entire planet inverted.
CRACK!
The sound was like the universe itself breaking. Tectonic plates that had been stable for billions of years suddenly found themselves subject to forces that treated continental drift like a minor inconvenience. The ground split open in massive chasms that revealed the molten core beneath, while chunks of the surface began spinning away into space as if the planet were coming apart like a badly balanced centrifuge.
"You dare!" Ego roared, immediately exerting his own power to counter Ben's gravitational manipulation.
The battle that followed was unlike anything the assembled group had ever witnessed. Two planetary consciousnesses wrestling for control over fundamental forces, their conflict expressed through earthquakes that redefined geography and energy discharges that painted aurora across the sky.
Ben's advantage lay in his pure control over gravity itself, he could manipulate the force that held matter together, giving him leverage over even Ego's body. But the Celestial had raw power accumulated across geological ages, plus the home field advantage of fighting within his own body.
The result was a stalemate that threatened to tear the world apart.
"This isn't a fight we can participate in," Uncle Ben said, struggling to maintain his footing as reality warped around them. Even with his enhanced physiology, the gravitational fluctuations were making him nauseous.
"If you ask me, it's worth dying just to witness a battle like this," Yondu marveled, his experienced eye cataloging displays of power that dwarfed anything in his considerable experience. "No wonder the other three galactic empires bent the knee when Sakaar rose to prominence. With strength like this, even the combined Kree armadas wouldn't pose a threat."
Yondu felt no particular loyalty to the Kree Empire, they'd enslaved him as a child, after all, but he could appreciate the tactical implications of what he was witnessing.
"We need to move!" Mantis cried out, her empathic abilities screaming warnings as she felt Ego's rage building to genocidal levels. "King of Sakaar is powerful, but Ego has been accumulating strength for billions of years! If we don't act soon, everyone will die!"
The truth was stark and terrifying. Despite his enhanced form, Ben was fighting at a disadvantage. The Omnitrix's optimization of Celestial DNA had improved his capabilities, but the fundamental gap in accumulated power remained. Ego had devoured countless worlds and murdered thousands of his own children to fuel his growth. His strength was the product of space-scale genocide.
"The only way to kill Ego permanently is to destroy his core," Mantis continued desperately. "It's deep underground, at the center of his body. If we can reach it..."
Uncle Ben's expression hardened with resolve. "Then that's what we do." He reached into his equipment pack and withdrew several Anulax Batteries, their surfaces crackling with barely contained energy. "The power output from these should be enough to blow his core apart if we can get them close enough."
"Hey, those are mine!" Rocket protested, making a grab for the batteries.
"Not anymore," Uncle Ben said firmly, securing them in his belt. "Looma, get the others to safety. I'm going in."
"Don't be stupid, old-timer," Yondu interrupted, though he had no way of knowing Uncle Ben's actual age. "How are you planning to detonate those things without getting vaporized in the explosion? Leave it to me, I can trigger them from a distance with my arrow."
"Don't trust him!" Star-Lord called out, still suspicious of his former captor's motives. "He only came here for the batteries in the first place! The Sovereign probably offered him a fortune to sell us out!"
"I wouldn't sell you out, you ungrateful brat!" Yondu snapped, his temper finally fraying.
"You literally used to threaten to eat me!"
"That was to keep you in line! You think any of my crew would have respected a captain who went soft over some scrawny Terran kid?" Yondu's voice cracked slightly. "Besides, you were nothing but skin and bones back then. Now you're all fat and muscle, but I still don't eat human flesh, you idiot!"
"Okay, can the father-son argument wait until after we save the universe?" Rocket interjected, physically separating them with his small but determined paws. "Give me five minutes and I can rig a timer for those batteries."
"Fine. Rocket comes with me, and the rest of you evacuate," Uncle Ben decided.
"I'm going too," Mantis said firmly. "I'm the only one who knows exactly where the core is located."
"I'm not leaving you behind, Ben," Aunt May declared with the kind of maternal authority that brooked no argument.
"I am Groot," the tree-being added solemnly, clearly indicating his intention to accompany Rocket regardless of the danger.
"I'd love to run away," Star-Lord said with resigned humor, "but in case you hadn't noticed, our ship is kind of blown up."
Uncle Ben looked around at the determined faces surrounding him and felt a familiar surge of pride. "Then we go together. Mantis, where exactly is this core?"
"Directly beneath us," she replied. "At the very center of the planet."
"Leave that to me!" Princess Looma cracked all four sets of knuckles simultaneously, then raised her fists above her head.
WHAM!
The impact of her strike was like a controlled meteor impact. The ground didn't just crack, it exploded downward in a perfectly circular shaft that revealed the planet's internal structure. Layers of rock and metal peeled away like the pages of a book, exposing a network of crystalline passages that pulsed with bioluminescent energy.
"Showoff," Rocket muttered admiringly.
Looma didn't bother with a gradual descent. She simply leaped into the shaft, using her incredible strength to bound from wall to wall as she plummeted toward the planet's core. The distance was measured in kilometers, but she navigated it like a four-armed spider, her enhanced reflexes allowing her to use the crystal formations as handholds and launching points.
Uncle Ben and Aunt May activated their suits' anti-gravity systems, gliding downward with the practiced ease of experienced Plumbers. Rocket and Star-Lord used their jet packs, while Groot extended his branches to catch Mantis, swinging through the crystalline maze like some space Tarzan.
"Don't even think about it!" Ego's voice echoed through the tunnel system as he became aware of the invasion.
Suddenly, the crystal formations began to move. What had seemed like natural geological structures revealed themselves as dormant defense systems, reshaping into clawed monsters and energy-breathing serpents that pursued the descending team with lethal intent.
"He's sending everything he's got!" Mantis called out in terror.
"Good," Uncle Ben replied grimly, checking his weapons as they fell deeper into Ego's body. "That means we're going the right way."
Above them, the battle between Ben and Ego continued to tear the planet apart, space forces clashing with enough power to crack reality itself. But deep in the darkness below, a small group of determined heroes raced toward the heart of a god, carrying with them the one thing that could end this nightmare forever.
The fate of the universe hung in the balance, measured in meters descended and seconds remaining.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~