Ronan Strikes

Some villains are loud. They shout when things go wrong and wave their arms in fury. Ronan was not that kind.

Ronan the Accuser was quiet. That was, in many ways, far worse.

He wore black armor that had never been polished — polish being the kind of detail people tend to who believe in a future bright enough to need maintaining. He carried an energy war hammer that crackled blue-white, and he moved through his warship, the Dark Aster, the way a winter storm moves through a valley — slowly, and with absolute certainty that it would change everything it touched.

Ronan had been fighting the Kree war with Xandar for his entire life, even after everyone else agreed to stop. The treaty meant nothing to him. Peace meant nothing to him. The only thing that had ever made sense to Ronan was the ancient conviction that Xandar deserved to be destroyed, and he had carried that conviction so long it had stopped being a belief and become simply the shape of who he was.

And now he had the Power Stone.

He pressed it into the head of his hammer carefully, and felt it lock into place, and felt the purple fire pour through him — and something in the Dark Aster shivered, and something in the nearby stars shivered, and on a hundred worlds, people who were sensitive to power felt a chill they couldn't quite explain.

Ronan opened a channel to Thanos.

"I have the Stone," he said. "I no longer need our arrangement. I will destroy Xandar on my own terms. And then I will come for you."

He closed the channel.

Somewhere in the dark, Thanos smiled.

On the Eclector — Yondu Udonta's ship, where the Guardians were being held under loose Ravager guard — Peter found an open receiver and heard the transmission. He listened to the whole thing. Then he walked in and told everyone.

Quiet.

"Ronan is going to Xandar," Peter said. "He's going to destroy the whole planet. Billions of people. The Nova Corps will fight him but they can't stop that hammer alone — not with the Stone inside it. Someone has to board the Dark Aster. Someone has to get to Ronan directly." He looked around the table. "We have to go. Right now."

Rocket said, with complete mathematical sincerity: "Have you looked at those odds?"

"Yes."

"Have you counted the fighter ships on the Dark Aster?"

"I've tried not to."

"I am making the point that these odds are — objectively, measurably — terrible."

"I know," Peter said. "I'm still going." He paused. "They have families on Xandar. Ordinary people going about their ordinary days. They don't have anyone else standing between them and Ronan. And that matters."

He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.

Drax rose from his seat without speaking. He had been waiting for exactly this moment — the chance to stand between Ronan and something that mattered, the way Ronan had never stood between his own family and danger. He had crossed the galaxy toward a fight. Here it was.

Gamora stood. She had walked the corridors of the Dark Aster before, on different terms, for different reasons. She would walk them again.

Groot grew slightly taller, new leaves lifting toward the light, which was his version of straightening up and saying yes.

Rocket was already calculating the intercept course, muttering about the terrible odds the whole time, because Rocket was allowed to know the odds were terrible and go anyway. That was, it turned out, entirely his style.

They flew out to meet the Dark Aster over Xandar. The Nova Corps was already mobilizing — their gold-and-white ships rising in tight formation, brave people flying toward something much larger than themselves. And above them, descending from the dark of space, the Dark Aster was a shadow with weight behind it, a storm wearing iron, Ronan's voice rolling across every open channel with the cold certainty of someone who has never, in his entire life, doubted himself for even one second.

In the Milano, five Guardians flew toward it anyway.

There are moments in a story when you find out what someone is truly made of. Not in the winning, but in the choice to fly forward when the odds are terrible and it matters more than the odds do.

This was that moment for each of them.

Go to sleep now. The bravest part is always the flying toward.