[Inside the cave, Gamora and Nebula rested for a while and started to think of a way to leave this place. The cavern walls glistened with an otherworldly luminescence, casting eerie shadows that danced across their faces.]
[As they walked deeper into the cave system, their footsteps echoing in the hollow space, they found a bright light ahead. The light seemed to pulse with an organic rhythm, unlike any artificial illumination they had encountered. Gamora squinted against the brightness and asked in confusion, "What is that?"]
[The two walked cautiously towards the light, weapons ready, neither trusting what they might find on Ego's planet.]
[On the other side of the planet, Ego brought Star-Lord to the magnificent hall, talking as they walked. The walls were adorned with celestial patterns that seemed to move and shift like living constellations.]
["Now! You have to readjust the way you look at life! Everything around us, including that girl..." Ego gestured dismissively, his voice carrying the weight of eons, "everything is temporary! We are eternal! You and I, Peter, we are gods among mortals!"]
[Star-Lord followed him, his expression troubled as he processed his father's words, "Won't eternity be boring?"]
["Not if you have a goal! Peter! You came here to find a goal! I told you!" Ego's eyes gleamed with an ancient hunger, "Many years ago, I had an undying urge to find life! To seed the universe with purpose!"]
[Ego brought Star-Lord to the previous egg-shaped screen, which flickered to life and showed the scene of Ego meeting the first little girl - a small, innocent creature with large, trusting eyes.]
["But what I didn't tell you is that when I finally found it…it was so…disappointing!" Ego's voice carried bitter disappointment, his celestial features contorting with disgust, "These beings, these mortals, they lack vision! They lack the divine spark!"]
[Star-Lord gave him a puzzled look, his brow furrowing as he tried to understand why his father seemed so embittered, not understanding why he was disappointed with the discovery of life itself.]
[At the same time, Gamora and Nebula emerged from the tunnel and came to the glowing hole. They peered down into the cavern below, and the situation inside shocked them to their very cores!]
["It was then that I…had a profound epiphany. The desire within me to seek out other lives! It wasn't for me to wander among those lives! Peter…I found the meaning!" Ego's voice rose with messianic fervor, "I am meant to reshape the universe in my image! To replace all inferior life with extensions of myself!"]
[Ego circled around Star-Lord like a predator, his movements fluid and hypnotic, and looked at him with eyes that burned with cosmic fire, then reached out and gently tapped his forehead with a finger that glowed with celestial energy.]
[Star-Lord tilted his head back slightly, a brilliant light flashed in his eyes, and then his eyeballs began to turn blue-green, with stars and galaxies swirling inside, as if there was a mysterious universe contained within his pupils.]
[Star-Lord opened his eyes and mouth wide, his consciousness expanding beyond mortal comprehension, as if he had seen something incredible - the very fabric of reality laid bare before him.]
["I…I saw it! Eternity!" Star-Lord gasped, his voice filled with awe and terror at the cosmic visions flooding his mind.]
["Oh! My God!!!" Gamora's voice cracked with horror as she looked at the scene in front of her, and a chill rose from her tailbone to her forehead, making her entire body shudder uncontrollably.]
[What they saw before them were countless piles of bones, bleached white by time and stacked like cordwood. This massive collection of skeletal remains had been arranged into small mountains of death, creating a gruesome landscape that had a devastatingly strong visual impact.]
[There were bones from all kinds of creatures - humanoid skeletons mixed with alien forms, tiny child-sized ribcages crushed beneath larger frames. Some skulls still bore traces of the fear their owners must have felt in their final moments. This was the final fate of all the children who had been transported to this planet over the millennia!]
[Even the normally murderous and emotionally distant Nebula felt genuine fear creeping into her cybernetic heart, "We have to leave this planet! Now!"]
"Oh my God! What on earth did Ego do?!" Quill widened his eyes in horror. He originally had some doubts about what Mantis had said, but now the undeniable facts were before him, painted in bone and death.
"These are all Ego's children! He will mate with every race across the galaxy!" Doctor Strange explained grimly, his hands unconsciously forming protective gestures. "Because he can change his body form at will, there will be no reproductive isolation with any race! He's been doing this for thousands of years!"
"As I said before, he wanted to find a child who inherited his celestial genes, but he never succeeded until Quill showed up!" Mantis glanced at everyone in the viewing area, her antennae drooping with the weight of this terrible knowledge.
"What a scene that angers God and the people! This monster deserves to die!" Although Captain America had fought his way through countless battlefields soaked in blood and corpses, the sheer number of dead bodies he was witnessing here was probably less than one percent of what lay in that cavern! The scale of the genocide was beyond anything he had encountered in World War II.
"These are just children," Natasha whispered, her usually steady voice trembling slightly. "Innocent children who trusted their father."
Tony Stark's jaw clenched tight, his arc reactor flickering brighter as his emotions spiked. "I've seen a lot of monsters in my time, but this..." He shook his head, unable to finish the sentence.
From the 1st generation universe, the older Peter Parker felt sick to his stomach. "How could a parent do this to their own children? It goes against every natural instinct."
[At this time, Rocket and the others were still on their way through multiple space jumps. They were seen flashing wildly through the cosmos, their ship becoming a streak of light that kept shuttling through wormholes at breakneck speed.]
["Ahhh!" The more times they jumped through the unstable wormholes, the more exaggerated the distortion of Yondu and the others' faces became, their features stretching and warping as space-time bent around them.]
[On a certain desert planet populated by tall, thin humanoids, they suddenly appeared from one wormhole and then quickly entered another. The gravitational forces from their rapid passage kicked up massive sandstorms.]
[Several curious natives on the planet had been surrounding a crashed astronaut in a strange suit. The sudden appearance of Rocket's ship temporarily attracted their attention, causing them to look up at the strange light show. After Rocket and company disappeared into the next jump, the familiar old man in the space suit spoke to his audience.]
["Oh! man! Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted by that light show, I was saying… I was a FedEx delivery guy! And let me tell you about the time I got stranded..."]
[After seven hundred bone-jarring jumps through space, Rocket and the others finally arrived in orbit outside of Ego's living planet, their ship smoking and sparking from the strain.]
[Rocket's small body tilted and he collapsed to the deck, completely drained. Yondu also dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. Baby Groot seemed relatively fine, but he opened his mouth and projectile-vomited a stream of green juice across the floor.]
[Yondu yelled at Rocket through gritted teeth: "What are you doing, you maniac!!!"]
[Rocket struggled to his feet and explained, his voice hoarse: "From the way you talked about him, I can tell that this Ego is not a good person!!! We have to save Quill before it's too late!"]
[Yondu looked annoyed, wiping sweat from his brow, "For what? Huh? Honor? Love? Some misguided sense of heroism?"]
["No! I don't care about any of that sentimental garbage! I want to save Quill to prove that I'm better than him! I can use this to mock him for the rest of his life!" Rocket crossed his arms defiantly.]
["Hahaha!" Yondu threw back his head and laughed heartily after hearing this obvious lie.]
[Rocket looked genuinely puzzled, his ears twitching, "Why are you laughing at me?"]
[Yondu stood up slowly, his joints creaking, and walked toward the ship's controls, "Oh! You can fool yourself and everyone else on this ship, but you can't fool me! I know exactly who you are!"]
[Rocket got anxious and immediately jumped up, his fur bristling as he shouted: "You don't understand me! Loser!"]
[Yondu turned around and fixed him with a knowing stare, his red eyes boring into Rocket's soul, "I know everything about you, you little furry fraud! I know you pretend to be the worst and cruelest person in any room! But you are actually the most cowardly, scared little creature in the galaxy!"]
[Rocket bared his sharp teeth menacingly and snarled, "Shut up!"]
[Yondu continued relentlessly, his voice growing softer but more cutting: "I know you steal batteries that you don't need, just to have something to obsess over. You push away everyone who is willing to tolerate your attitude! Because even a little bit of genuine love will remind you how deep and empty that hole in your chest really is!!!"]
["I told you to shut up!"]
["I know that those twisted scientists who created you, who cut you up and put you back together, never gave a damn about you at all!" Yondu's voice carried the pain of shared experience.]
[Rocket clenched his small fists, his voice breaking slightly, "I'm serious! Man!"]
["Just like my parents, who sold me! Their own flesh and blood son as a slave when I was barely old enough to walk. I know you very well, boy! Because you are me!" Yondu's confession hung heavy in the recycled air.]
[Rocket stared at Yondu with eyes wide open, his defensive posture crumbling. Yondu's words had struck directly at the memories buried deepest in Rocket's heart - memories he was most reluctant to recall: his fellow test subjects, All of them had been taken away, one by one, leaving him alone.]
[Because he was terrified that Star-Lord and the Guardians would abandon him like his first friends had been taken, Rocket never dared to completely accept Star-Lord and the others into his heart. Instead, he kept making trouble and maintaining emotional distance because he was afraid that if their relationships became too real, too meaningful, he would have to face losing them too!]
[Rocket took two shaky deep breaths, his voice barely above a whisper, "What kind of people are we?"]
[Yondu looked directly into his eyes and nodded slightly, a grim smile playing at his lips, "Probably just a pair of idiots about to go up against a living planet and try not to die in the process!"]
["All right! Okay! Good! Very good... Wait! Against what?!!" Rocket didn't process the full meaning at first, but then his brain caught up and he looked at Yondu in complete confusion and growing panic.]
[Yondu did not answer his question directly, instead turning back to the ship's controls and pushing the engine lever forward with grim determination, setting their course for the planet's surface.]