The great Felicia Hardy once proclaimed with absolute conviction:
"When you want to play together, you absolutely need five people!"
So that night, she assembled her strike team: Mary Jane with her infectious enthusiasm, Eunice with her synthezoid endurance, Wanda with her reality-warping stamina, and Charmcaster—the newest and most naive recruit to their little sisterhood.
Five women. One target. Perfect odds.
Or so they thought.
Some observers might count six participants in what followed, but that would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the battlefield dynamics.
Felicia and her coalition of five formed one team. Ben Parker stood alone as the opposing force.
Five against one—comparable in legendary scope to the Five Kage uniting against Madara Uchiha during the Fourth Great Ninja War. The outcome proved equally devastating, and even the tactical progression mirrored that mythical battle with disturbing accuracy.
Charmcaster, the rookie sorceress, proved as ineffective as the Mizukage in her first major engagement. She'd foolishly challenged Ben to honorable single combat despite the agreed-upon team tactics.
Ben responded by transforming into Ditto .
What had been a five-on-one confrontation became twenty-five-on-five in the space between heartbeats.
Charmcaster's mind broke slightly at the revelation.
"Having more people doesn't help when he can just make clones," she gasped later, her voice hoarse, questioning everything the great Felicia had promised about numerical superiority.
"If you don't provoke him, he won't use that particular trick," Felicia said through her own exhaustion, tears of frustration glittering in her silver eyes. "In my extensive experience, he can easily handle five people simultaneously without resorting to duplication."
She'd fought beside and against Ben enough times to understand his patterns. "Each of us only needed to withstand two waves of his attention. We wouldn't have suffered nearly as badly."
The irritation in her voice was palpable.
It was like Thor's battle against Ultron—everything proceeding smoothly until someone had to escalate unnecessarily, and suddenly everyone was paying the price for one person's overconfidence.
"Remember this lesson for next time!" Felicia punctuated her frustration with a sharp slap against Charmcaster's rear.
"Ow! Stop hitting me, it's already swollen!" the young sorceress protested, though without much conviction.
While an epic battle raged on Earth—fierce enough to distort local causality and briefly confuse the fabric of space-time itself—a dilapidated spacecraft drifted through the cosmic void millions of miles away.
The ship resembled a petrel in flight, if that petrel had been through several dozen combat engagements, three major crashes, and had most of its original hull plating replaced with mismatched salvage. Duct tape and improvised welding held together more systems than any responsible engineer would consider safe.
Inside the cockpit, Star-Lord's classic mixtape played through crackling speakers that had seen better decades.
"Hey! What's the matter with your head? Yeah~"
Peter Quill sang along enthusiastically, his voice cracking on the high notes as he executed an elaborate dance move that would have looked much cooler if the artificial gravity hadn't been flickering intermittently.
An elbow jabbed sharply into his ribs, cutting off his performance mid-spin.
"Can you please stop singing?" Rocket Raccoon glared up at him from his position at the engineering station, technical blueprints spread across every available surface. "Your hoarse voice is disturbing my research into Tetramand engine technology."
The genetically enhanced raccoon's ears were flat against his skull—always a bad sign for anyone familiar with his moods.
"I'm the captain! What's wrong with me singing a song?!" Star-Lord immediately shot back, gesturing broadly at their assembled crew. "Look at this whole ship! Raccoons! Alien female insects! Trees! I'm practically running a zoo here!"
Each being he'd indicated looked up in mild confusion. Gamora rolled her eyes from her weapons maintenance station. Mantis's antennae drooped sympathetically. Groot rustled his branches with what might have been plant-based indignation.
Only Drax the Destroyer seemed genuinely amused.
"Hahaha! You're getting fat!" Drax's booming laugh echoed through the cramped cockpit, his massive frame shaking with mirth. He pointed at Star-Lord's midsection with absolutely no tact. "Your waist is almost as thick as your shoulders now! Like a tree stump with legs!"
"Then you're a gorilla with brain damage!" Star-Lord snapped back.
Rocket had long since given up objecting to being called a raccoon. Months of exposure to actual Earth databases had confirmed the unfortunate genetic truth—he really was a heavily modified raccoon, regardless of how much weapons-grade attitude he'd developed to compensate.
"Stop arguing, both of you!" The raccoon's voice carried genuine frustration now. "Can't you idiots just let me study this in peace for five minutes? If I can figure out these blueprints, maybe I can make our piece-of-garbage spaceship go a little faster for once!"
"My spaceship," Star-Lord corrected with possessive emphasis.
He leaned back in the pilot's chair—which groaned ominously under even his modest weight—and waved dismissively. "Why do you keep obsessing over those plans anyway? The Plumbers already upgraded our engine for free at the last station. Just use it and stop complaining."
"What happens when it breaks?" Rocket shot back, his small hands clenching the blueprints hard enough to crumple the edges. "Who's going to fix it when you're flying like a drunk driver on Xandarian whiskey? Crashing into eight hundred asteroids a day?"
The raccoon's tail lashed with agitation. "Without me maintaining this ship, this whole team falls apart! No—we don't just fall apart, we die. Explosively. In the vacuum of space."
Star-Lord opened his mouth to argue, found he had no good counterargument to basic physics and his own piloting record, and finally just turned off the music with an exaggerated sigh. Sullen silence fell over the cockpit.
Rocket returned to studying the engine schematics, his enhanced eyes tracking complex mathematical relationships that would have given most organic engineers splitting headaches. His clawed fingers traced design elements with genuine appreciation.
After several minutes of concentrated analysis, he looked up with something approaching awe in his expression.
"What ingenious design work," he murmured, almost reverently. "I have to admit, there are genuine geniuses scattered across this universe. The efficiency ratios here are insane."
His eyes suddenly gleamed with the particular manic light that preceded his most destructive ideas. "I've already thought of an improvement."
Star-Lord perked up immediately, visions of outrunning Sovereign drones dancing through his head. "Will it make the spaceship faster?"
"No," Rocket said, grinning to show all his sharp teeth. "But it'll redirect the engine's power output into the weapons systems. Triple our firepower, maybe quadruple if I can solve the heat dissipation problem."
Weaponization was Rocket's specialty, after all. Give him any piece of technology, and within an hour he'd figure out how to make it explode, shoot, or preferably both.
"I'll need some rare metals for the conversion," he continued, already mentally cataloging components. "And exotic fuel. The high-grade stuff, not the watered-down garbage you've been buying at discount stations."
Star-Lord immediately became defensive, his hand moving protectively toward his credit chip. "Just so you know, we don't exactly have a habit of saving money. Our account balance is—"
"You don't need to tell me how broke we are," Rocket interrupted, tapping the ship's central display screen twice with practiced efficiency.
Dozens of bounty posters materialized in rapid succession, holographic faces and reward amounts flickering past faster than most humans could track.
"Stop!" Star-Lord shouted, throwing his hand up dramatically.
His eyes had just been momentarily blinded by countless zeros scrolling across one particular bounty. "Go back! Go back to that last one!"
Rocket reversed the display, stopping on a holographic image of a spiky-haired teenager. The subject looked aggressively American in aesthetic—wild orange hair styled into deliberate chaos, black denim jacket covered in metal studs and patches, an expression of permanent contempt etched across sharp features.
The kind of face that screamed "delinquent" in every language across the galaxy.
"This is it!" Star-Lord leaned forward, reading the reward amount with growing excitement. "One hundred million units of refined gold, plus a planet? Who's rich enough to offer that kind of bounty?"
"The Plumbers posted it," Rocket said, his tone carrying a note of caution that Star-Lord was already ignoring. "And look at the conditions—you don't even have to capture this guy. Just provide confirmed location information and immediate notification. That alone gets you the hundred million."
"After we pull off this job, we're retiring!" Star-Lord's eyes had taken on a manic gleam, credits symbols practically visible in his pupils. "Buddy, we'll be rich! We can finally get a ship that doesn't sound like it's dying every time we engage the hyperdrive!"
"Yeah, absolutely," Rocket said dryly. "Permanent retirement. The kind where you're dead and don't need money anymore."
The raccoon was absolutely motivated by greed—his materialistic nature was legendary even among mercenaries—but he also possessed enough survival instinct to recognize suicide missions when he saw them.
"Think about this logically," he continued, gesturing at the bounty poster with one clawed finger. "If the Plumbers can't handle this enemy themselves, what makes you think we'd survive five minutes? We'd be target practice."
"There is no enemy the Plumbers can't defeat," Star-Lord insisted with absolute conviction born of ignorance.
He'd seen enough of the organization's operations to develop an almost religious faith in their capabilities. "Think about it—Ben Parker, their leader—"
"You should call him 'Magistratus,' Peter," Mantis interjected gently from her seat, her empathic abilities picking up on the respect most beings instinctively felt toward the Plumber organization's founder.
"Fine. Magistratus Ben Parker," Star-Lord corrected with theatrical emphasis. "One of his girlfriends—just one—almost beat a literal god into paste. We're talking about someone who backhands Asgardians for fun. And that's just his girlfriend, not even him personally."
He stood, beginning to pace the cramped cockpit with growing enthusiasm. "There's no enemy he can't handle. It's just a question of whether he's willing to personally intervene. The problems the Plumbers post bounties for might not be his problems—they're just issues that the regular field agents can't manage."
"We're no less capable than regular Plumber agents, are we?" Star-Lord spread his hands wide. "I've got Celestial heritage! You're a genius engineer! We've fought Ronan the Accuser and won!"
"You... actually make a compelling point," Rocket admitted reluctantly, his natural greed beginning to overcome his survival instinct as he recalculated their odds.
The raccoon stroked his chin, small claws rasping against fur. "But there's one major problem—where are we supposed to find this guy? Space is big. Really, really big. He could be literally anywhere across thousands of systems."
Star-Lord opened his mouth confidently, then closed it again.
Then opened it again.
Closed it.
The silence stretched awkwardly.
He genuinely hadn't thought that far ahead. Strategic planning had never been his strongest suit—that's what he had Rocket for. But if Rocket was already convinced, then who was supposed to handle the actual logistics?
"I know!" Drax's deep voice boomed suddenly, his massive hand shooting into the air like an overeager student.
"Shut up!" Star-Lord snapped immediately, not even looking in the destroyer's direction. "Don't you dare try telling one of your terrible metaphorical jokes. I swear to all the Celestials I'll—"
"He's not joking," Mantis interrupted softly, her antennae glowing faintly as she sensed Drax's emotional state. "I can feel it. Drax genuinely knows where the target is."
Every head in the cockpit swiveled toward the muscular warrior.
Rocket, Star-Lord, even Groot turned to stare at Drax with expressions ranging from shock to deep suspicion.
Has this idiot finally had a moment of actual intelligence? Star-Lord thought, hope and disbelief warring in his chest.
"How do you know?" Rocket demanded. "Where is he?"
"Right here on our spaceship," Drax said matter-of-factly, as if this were the most obvious thing in the universe.
The silence that followed could have smothered stars.
"WHAT?!"
"How did he get on our spaceship?!" Star-Lord's voice cracked on the last word, shooting up into a register usually reserved for panic.
"I invited him aboard, of course," Drax said with evident pride, his chest swelling. "At the last supply station, I saw he was all muscle and looked like a real warrior! Not soft and weak like you, fat Peter."
He nodded enthusiastically, completely missing the mounting horror on his teammates' faces. "He reminded me of myself in my younger days! So naturally I welcomed him as a brother-in-arms!"
Star-Lord's eye twitched. "He's not like you, you absolute—"
"Exactly!" Drax interrupted, beaming. "He's not like you, you soft fatso! He's a real man with real muscles! I could tell immediately from his posture and—"
"WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT HIS BODY FAT PERCENTAGE?!" Star-Lord roared, already drawing his Element Gun from its holster.
His hands shook slightly—whether from rage, fear, or excitement at the fortune literally sitting on his ship, he couldn't tell.
Over a hundred million credits and an entire planet were somewhere within these cramped corridors. All he had to do was locate the target, put a blast through his skull before the kid could react, and then cruise over to the nearest Plumber station to collect the biggest payday of his life.
He could already taste the success. Could already feel the embrace of those tentacle-limbed Void dancers he'd been fantasizing about for months. His retirement on a private beach was so close he could practically smell the synthetic alcohol.
"Where is he now?" Star-Lord demanded, his Element Gun humming to life with barely contained lethality. "Which section of the ship?"
"I don't know," Drax admitted, his enthusiasm dimming slightly. "He disappeared after boarding. I assumed he was meditating or sharpening weapons in preparation for glorious battle."
Rocket's eyes went very, very wide as a horrible realization crashed through his enhanced brain.
"Wait," the raccoon said slowly, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "If Drax invited someone aboard, and that someone disappeared into the ship, and we've been flying on autopilot for the last three hours while you were dancing and I was studying blueprints..."
Every muscle in his small body went rigid.
"Who's piloting the spaceship right now?"