Villain Thanos
Once upon a time, in the farthest reach of the known galaxy, there was a villain so powerful that entire worlds dimmed their lights when his ships appeared on the horizon.
His name was Thanos.
He was called the Mad Titan, and he came from a cold planet and carried a cold plan in his chest: to collect all six Infinity Stones — six gems of impossible power, each one a different colour, each one able to do something no other force in the universe could do — and use them to reshape everything.
Thanos did not shout. He did not stomp. He walked slowly, as if time itself was in no hurry for him, and wherever he walked, his generals walked beside him: Corvus Glaive, with his long terrible blade; Proxima Midnight, quick as a lightning strike; and Ebony Maw, who whispered and wheedled and was frightening in a different, quieter way.
When reports came to the Milano's dashboard — worlds gone silent, space stations dark — Star-Lord pulled up the nav chart and said, "We have to go."
And so the Guardians went.
They flew toward a place called Knowhere.
Knowhere was not like any other place in the galaxy. It had been carved, long ago, from the enormous skull of a creature called a Celestial — a being so vast that the skull itself was the size of a small moon. The miners and traders who lived there went about their business in curving bone corridors and echoing chambers, never quite getting used to the fact that their whole city was a giant head.
Groot moved through those corridors with unusual quiet. His roots gripped the metal-and-bone floor. His bark absorbed the shudder of each explosion outside, the way an old tree absorbs the push of the wind.
He was listening.
Thanos's forces poured through the entry tunnels — blasterfire flashing in the dark, the Black Order generals spreading out in different directions. And deep in a narrow side passage, Proxima Midnight had found Gamora.
Groot heard the voices. He heard the tension.
And then he moved.
CRRRASH — he went straight through the wall, his massive arms spreading wide like the arms of an oak in a winter gale, and Proxima Midnight went spinning sideways with a tremendous THUD.
Groot stepped over her, put himself between Gamora and the passage, and said — "I am Groot" — in the most calm and certain voice imaginable, as if he were saying: I've got you. Don't worry. I've got you.
Rocket swung down from Groot's shoulder, fired both overcharged blasters into the ceiling with a BOOM-BOOM, and sealed the tunnel behind them. Dust rained. The echoes rolled away through the bone chambers of Knowhere.
They ran. They fought through two more intersections, covered each other in the hangar, and tumbled onto the Milano in a mess of bark chips and boot prints and breathless arguments about whose fault the whole situation was.
The Milano punched back into open space.
For a long moment, no one said anything.
Thanos was still out there. He was too powerful to defeat that day — too many ships, too many generals, too much terrible certainty in every step he took. The Guardians had not won the war.
But they had found each other in the dark tunnels of a giant's skull, and they had come home together. Every single one.
Groot settled into the back corner of the ship — the big, quiet corner where he always sat when the fighting was done — and began, slowly, to grow back the branches that had cracked and broken in the battle. Little green shoots, tender and bright, uncurling from his bark like new leaves in spring.
He was not sad. He was not frightened.
He was simply — tending to himself, the way a tree tends to itself after a hard storm.
Rocket sat down next to him. Did not say anything for a while. Then said, "Good wall-breaking in there."
"I am Groot," said Groot.
"Yeah," said Rocket. "I know. Me too."
Close your eyes now. The stars are streaming past the porthole windows. The Milano hums. Groot is growing, and Rocket is watching, and the Guardians are all still together.
The galaxy is big and sometimes frightening, but it has friends in it.
Good friends.
Goodnight.