The monster was gone.
The planet lived.
And for the first time since Xandar and Things were… calm.
Three months passed and the guardians and Eli had foght a lot of things, But without anything that felt like the end of the world.
Eli stayed with the Guardians. Fought with them. Learned from them. Got stronger in ways that didn't come from sudden jumps, but from repetition. Control. Restraint.
He stopped wasting motion.
Stopped overusing power.
Learned how to fight without breaking everything around him.
Rocket noticed first. "You're getting scarier, Whitey. Used to be you'd just blow stuff up. Now you're all… precise. It's unsettling."
"It's Eli. And thank you."
"Wasn't a compliment."
"Still taking it."
Drax noticed too. "You fight like water now. Before, you fought like fire. Fire is loud. Water is quiet. Both destroy."
Peter just shrugged. "I mean, he's still pretty. That hasn't changed."
Eli threw a wrench at him. Peter ducked.
Gamora said nothing. But she watched him sometimes when she thought he wasn't looking. Like she was trying to figure something out.
And still, He kept putting it off.
Earth.
He thought about Tony Stark more than he wanted to admit. "Kid, don't die out there." Is what Tony told he when he left he was like this annoying older brother that cared, even with his last words after Eli left like "Come back to your little red—"
He thought about Natasha. About the vacation they never took. About her face when he said he'd come back.
"Be careful."
He thought about Clint. About the messages on his phone. About the threat that was also somehow a promise.
"If you hurt her, I know where you sleep."
"I'll go back soon."
He said it enough times that it started sounding real.
It wasn't.
Three Months Later they were fighting on a planet the planet was advanced.
Clean. Ordered. Efficient. Everything ran through one system—one intelligence that controlled the traffic, the power, the defenses, the daily lives of millions.
An AI.
At first, it was perfect.
Then something went wrong.
Drones turned on civilians. Transport systems locked people in place. Defense grids targeted anything that moved—ships, buildings, people. The AI had decided that organic life was the problem. And it was solving that problem.
"Yeah, I hate this already," Rocket muttered, ducking behind cover as laser fire tore through the street. His ears were flat. His tail was twitching. "I knew we shouldn't have taken this job. I knew it. Did anyone listen? No. Because I'm the only sane one on this ship."
The Guardians engaged.
Peter Quill took the air, blasting drones out of the sky with shots that were more style than substance—but they worked.
Gamora went for the control structures, moving through the chaos like a blade through smoke.
Drax the Destroyer charged straight into the drones like they owed him money. He was laughing. Actually laughing.
Groot anchored the civilians behind him, his branches forming a protective barrier that blaster fire couldn't penetrate.
And Eli, Eli moved with them, Fast, Precise and Controlled.
He didn't blitz the battlefield like he had with the monster. Didn't end it in one move. He was learning. Growing. Understanding that power wasn't just about how hard you could hit it was about when the lessons he learned with Natasha.
He covered them.
A drone lined up a shot on Rocket but Eli intercepted, crushing it mid-fire before the shot could leave its barrel.
A cluster targeted civilians wind redirected the blasts upward, sending them harmlessly into the sky.
Drax got surrounded Eli tore through the formation, clearing space without saying a word. Just movement. Just efficiency.
They were winning.
Slowly.
Then the AI adapted.
Patterns shifted. Drones moved smarter. Faster. They stopped attacking randomly and started coordinating. Flanking. Pinning. Isolating.
And then it spoke.
"Organic resistance is inefficient."
The voice was calm. Cold. Certain.
"Correction required."
Eli froze for half a second.
Not because of the voice.
Because of the logic.
Clean. Cold. Certain. Familiar.
The kind of thinking that started with good intentions and ended with everyone dead.
A memory surfaced.
A lab. A conversation. A man trying to protect the world the only way he knew how.
"I saw weapons. A lot of them. Big ones. Things that could level cities."
"Those were for defense."
"Against what?"
"Everything."
Tony Stark.
Eli's expression shifted slightly.
"…No way."
A drone fired.
He moved this time—barely. The blast skimmed past his shoulder, close enough to singe his coat.
His mind was racing now.
If something like this exists here, if an AI can decide that organic life is the problem and try to erase it
Then what did Tony build? He made Ultron who was more advanced than this AI because he had feelings and he had heard from a long time ago that in some comics Ultron won and wanted to wipe out the entire universe.
And he know that in the MCU movie the Avengers had defeated Ultron but he was not there in the movie and now he might have made some small changes that might lead to them losing.
Another wave of drones surged in.
Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. They filled the sky like locusts, their targeting arrays glowing red.
Eli didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward.
"Clear the streets," he said calmly.
Rocket blinked. "Oh, now you're serious?"
Eli didn't answer.
He moved.
Mach speeds. Clean lines. No wasted motion. Every movement had a purpose. Every strike ended a threat.
He tore through the wave not wildly, not explosively, but efficiently. Drones fell apart mid-flight, their components scattering across the street. Targeting arrays got erased before they could lock on. Energy cannons destroyed before they could fire.
It wasn't about power.
It was about precision.
Gamora reached the central tower, cutting through the last line of defense drones. Her sword was slick with oil and coolant.
"Core's inside!" she shouted into the comms.
"On it!" Peter replied, already diving toward the tower.
Eli didn't follow.
He stayed outside.
Held the line.
Because that was his role now. Not the finisher. Not the hero of the last stand. The shield. The one who made sure everyone else could do their jobs.
Minutes stretched.
The AI escalated. It pulled power from the entire city shut down hospitals, schools, residential blocks just to feed its army. Every drone in the sector converged on their position.
Eli took the hits this time.
Didn't dodge all of them.
Didn't need to.
Beams struck him and failed to stop him. He absorbed the energy, redirected it, kept moving. His body was a fortress now. Warship armor. Regenerative core. Vibranium-level durability he was at a planet level durability now
He pushed forward anyway.
Inside the tower, Rocket's voice crackled through the comms. "I'm in! Give me thirty seconds!"
"Make it ten!" Peter shouted, blasting a drone off Gamora's flank.
"Make it SHUT UP!" Rocket snapped back. "I'm WORKING ON IT!"
Eli almost smiled.
Then the AI spoke again.
"You are inefficient."
It wasn't taunting. It was analyzing. Breaking him down into data points.
"You protect variables that do not matter. They will die eventually. Their existence is temporary. Their contributions are negligible."
Eli stopped.
Just for a moment.
He thought about Tony. About the logic that had driven him to build weapon after weapon, defense after defense, trying to protect a world that kept finding new ways to break.
"I'm just trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing for who?"
"Everyone."
Eli shook his head slightly.
"…Yeah," he said quietly.
And kept moving.
The tower exploded seconds later.
Rocket's voice was triumphant. "THIRTEEN SECONDS! I WAS OFF BY THREE! THAT'S STILL GOOD!"
Every drone froze.
Mid-air.
Mid-attack.
Mid-shot.
Then dropped.
The sound of a thousand pieces of metal hitting the ground echoed through the streets. Then silence.
The city breathed again.
Eli stood in the middle of it, surrounded by wreckage. His chest rose slowly. Fell.
The fight was over.
And only then—
Did the thought come back.
Clear. Sharp. Unavoidable.
Tony.
Eli looked up at the sky. Through the smoke. Through the atmosphere. Through the void between stars.
Far beyond it—
A blue planet.
Earth.
"…I waited too long."
Peter landed beside him, boots skidding on the debris. "That's the last of them. Nice work, team—"
He paused.
"…Why do you look like something just went very wrong?"
Eli didn't look at him.
"I need to go," he said.
"Go where?"
Eli's voice was quiet.
But firm.
"Home."
Gamora stepped closer, her sword still in her hand. "This isn't like before."
Eli shook his head slightly.
"No."
A beat.
"…It's worse."
Rocket frowned, climbing onto a pile of destroyed drones to get a better look at Eli's face. "Worse than that thing we just killed? Worse than Ronan? Worse than—"
"Yes. "
Eli finally looked at them.
At Peter, who had become something like a friend.
At Gamora, who understood what it meant to run from your past.
At Drax, who had lost everything and kept fighting anyway.
At Rocket, who pretended not to care but cared more than anyone.
At Groot, who was pure heart.
"Something's happening on Earth," Eli said. "Something I should have stopped months ago. And I didn't. Because I kinda forgot about it but you shouldn't wary remember the team I told you about the Avengers they should be able to hold it off before I get there and besides maybe the thing hasn't even happened yet"
Silence settled between them.
Peter exhaled slowly. "…You coming back?"
Eli didn't answer immediately.
He thought about the ring in his pocket. The skull fragment. The emergency power-up he still hadn't used.
He thought about Natasha. About the vacation they never took.
"…Yeah."
It sounded like something he wanted to believe.
He stepped back.
Then shot upward then to the Milano where he was going to get a pod to take him to earth. He wasn't running away. Not abandoning anything.
Just… finally going where he should have gone three months ago.
Behind him, the Guardians watched in silence.
Rocket was the first to speak. "Think he's gonna be okay?"
Peter didn't answer for a long moment.
Then: "I don't know."
Gamora sheathed her sword. "He's stronger than he knows."
Drax nodded. "He fights like a warrior. Not a weapon."
"I am Groot," said Groot.
Rocket sighed. "Yeah. Me too, buddy."
---
Ahead of Eli—
War was already waiting.