- Loren Gray, Queen

“Tell me where the girl is, or I swear to you, I’m gonna French-Fry this little freak.” First dude.

“Let’s do it! You shoot my guy, I blast him! Let’s go!” Papa extends his repulsor to look similar to a shark towards the grey guy’s face. I take the opportunity to extend my own repulsors, particularly towards the guy holding Peter.

“Do it, Quill!” The grey guy yells at the guy holding Peter, who I’m assuming is called Quill. Why he’s called that, I don’t know. “I can take it.”

“No, he can’t take it,” The bug-looking girl says.

“She’s right. He can’t,” Strange agrees.

“Oh yeah?” Quill starts. “You don’t wanna tell me where she is? That’s fine. I’ll kill all four of you and beat it out of Thanos myself. Starting with this dude.”

“Wait, what? Thanos? Alright, let me ask you this one time. What master do you serve?”

“What master do I serve? What am I supposed to say? ‘Jesus’?”

I power down my helmet. “You’re from Earth?”

“I’m not from Earth. I’m from Missouri."

“Yeah, that’s on EARTH, dipshit,” Papa replies irritably. “What are you hassling us for?”

“So, you’re not with Thanos?” Peter asks.

“WITH Thanos?!” Quill bursts out. “No, I’m here to kill Thanos! He took my girl. Wait, who are you?”

“We’re the Avengers, man.” Peter dehelmets, and Quill lets him go.

“Oh.”

“You’re the ones Thor told us about!” Bug-Girl yells.

“You know Thor?” Papa questions in surprise.

“Yeah,” Quill replies simply. “Tall guy, not that good-looking, needed saving.”

“Where is he now?” Strange asks.

Quill ignores him for a hot second, moving his gun between Papa and I. “You two look pretty similar…”

“He’s my dad,” I say absent-mindedly.

--

We’re on the very orange surface of Titan, and Quill is measuring the planet’s tilt. According to him at least.

“The heck happened to this planet? It’s eight degrees off its axis. Gravitational pull all over the place.”

Bug-Girl, who is apparently called Mantis, is jumping around in a low gravity spot.

“Yeah, we got one advantage.” Papa is listing off a plan. “He’s coming to us. We’ll use it. All right, I have a plan. Or at least the beginnings of one. It’s pretty simple. We draw him in, pin him down, get what we need. Definitely don’t wanna dance with this guy. We just want the gauntlet.”

Grey-Guy, now revealed as Drax, yawns. 

“Are you yawning? In the middle of this, while I’m breaking it down? Huh? Did you hear what I said?”

“I stopped listening after you said ‘we need a plan’.”

Papa turns to Quill. “Okay, Mr Clean is on his own page.”

“See, ‘not winging it’ isn’t really what they do.”

“Uh, what exactly is it that they do?” Peter asks.

“Kick names, take ass,” Mantis replies, about as fiercely as an eight-week old kitten.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Drax backs up.

I glance at Peter and mouth to him “What. The. Fuck.”

“Alright, just get over here please,” Papa interrupts. “Mr Lord, can you get your folks to circle up?

“‘Mr Lord’. Star-Lord is fine,” Quill responds.

“We gotta coalesce. Cause if all we come at him with is a plucky attitude…”

“Dude, don’t call us plucky. We don’t know what it means. Alright we’re optimistic, yes. I like your plan. Except it sucks, so let me do the plan, and that way it might be really good.”

“Tell him about the dance-off to save the universe,” Drax says suddenly. 

“What dance-off?” Papa asks.

“It’s not a...it’s not...it’s nothing,” Quill replies, glaring at Drax.

“Like in Footloose, the movie?” Peter questions. I roll my eyes at him.

“Exactly like Footloose. Is it still the greatest movie in history?”

“It never was.”

Quill frowns sadly.

“Don’t encourage this, alright?” Papa tells Peter.

“Okay.”

“The only good thing about Footloose is the song Footloose. Complete classic. But no, the movie is shit.” I quiet down when Papa shoots me a glare.

“We’re getting no help from Flash Gordon here,” Papa sighed.

“Flash Gordon?” Quill huffed. “By the way, that’s a compliment. Don’t forget. I’m half human. So that 50% of me that’s stupid? That’s 100% you.”

“Your math is blowing my mind.”

“That’s literally not how DNA works,” I say quickly, done with this guy’s shit.

“Excuse me,” Mantis disrupts. “But...does your friend often do that?”

We follow her gaze to see Strange floating cross-legged in the air. Patterns surround his wrists, his hands poised in a mystic gesture of some sort. The Eye of Agamotto glows a bright green, with vapour-like energy coming from it. Cape floats behind him as if the Eye is creating a strong breeze. His head jolts around in a blur, his eyes closed.

“Strange!” Papa yells at him. “We alright?” Strange lurches forwards as he snaps out of whatever he was in, letting out a cry. “You’re back. You’re alright.”

“Hey, what was that?” Peter questions. 

“I went forward in time to view alternate futures,” Strange pants. “To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict.”

“How many did you see?” Quill inquires. 

“14, 000, 605.”

“How many did we win?” I ask, not particularly excited for the answer. Strange stares at me and Papa intently. 

“One."