Villain Ronan

Once upon a time, a terrible shadow fell across a planet called Xandar.

The shadow had a name: Ronan the Accuser.

Ronan was a Kree warlord, tall and armoured in deep black, who carried a weapon called the Cosmi-Rod — a great stone hammer that had crushed mountains and cracked the hulls of warships. He was a being of absolute certainty. He believed the universe had wronged his people, and he had decided to answer that wrong with destruction.

And now — worst of all — Ronan had found something that made him nearly unstoppable.

The Power Stone.

One of the six Infinity Stones. This one glowed with a deep, furious purple, and it poured raw, shattering energy into everything it touched. Ronan had set it into his Cosmi-Rod, and he aimed his great black warship — the Dark Aster — straight at Xandar, where millions of people were going about their ordinary lives, not yet knowing what was coming toward them through the stars.

The Guardians knew.

The dashboard of the Milano lit up with alerts. Star-Lord looked at Rocket. Rocket looked at Groot. Drax cracked his knuckles. Gamora checked the charge on her sword.

"We're going," said Star-Lord.

"Obviously we're going," said Rocket.

"I am Groot," said Groot, which meant: let us please go now.

The Milano flew straight at the Dark Aster. Can you imagine it? One small, battered, very determined spacecraft flying straight at a warship the size of a city. The Dark Aster filled the whole sky.

Groot went first.

He pressed his great bark hands against the hull of the Dark Aster and pushed — CRRRRAAASH — and his branches and vines spiraled out into the metal, tearing it apart with a sound like a thunderstorm inside a tin drum. He made a door where there had been no door. And through it came the Guardians.

Inside, Ronan's Sakaaran soldiers filled the corridors. Rocket was firing weapons he had built from spare parts, each one louder and more creative than the last. Star-Lord and Gamora were a blur of motion and purpose. Drax was making more noise than anyone else combined.

And Groot — Groot moved steadily forward through all of it.

They reached the bridge.

And there was Ronan.

He was terrifying. The Power Stone blazed in his Cosmi-Rod, and the energy from it pulsed outward like heat from a furnace. When he swung the hammer — BOOM — the shockwave knocked half the team off their feet.

But Groot got up.

He was knocked into a wall. He got up.

He was cracked at the shoulder, bark splitting, a branch trailing. He got up.

A tree — a real, living, ancient tree — does not stay down when the storm pushes it. It bends. It splinters at the edges. And it comes back, again and again, because its roots go deeper than the storm.

And then came the moment that nobody could have planned.

The Power Stone had to be stopped. And the only way to stop it was to take hold of it — to grab it with bare hands and absorb its terrible energy so that it could not destroy the planet below.

Star-Lord reached out.

Gamora took hold.

Drax put his hand in.

Rocket, gritting his teeth, added his.

And Groot — gently, firmly — wrapped his great bark fingers around the rest.

The energy roared through all five of them at once. It crackled. It blazed. It was like holding a thunderstorm in your hands.

And they held.

FLASH.

When the light cleared, Ronan was gone. The Dark Aster was down in the fields outside the city of Xandar, and the Power Stone was safe, and the Guardians were still standing, every single one.

The Nova Corps arrived — Xandar's own space police force — and when they saw what had happened, the commander walked up to Star-Lord and said, "You are officially allies of the planet Xandar."

Groot stood among the rubble and the dust and the strange golden afternoon light.

He looked down at his feet.

There, in the wreckage of the Dark Aster, growing up through a crack in the metal, was a small flower — a little yellow thing on a crooked green stem, absolutely untroubled by the battle that had raged all around it.

Groot bent down and picked it up. He held it very carefully in his bark fingers and looked at it for a long time.

"I am Groot," he said quietly.

Rocket, out of ammunition and with his left ear ringing, walked over and stood beside him. For a moment they just looked at the little flower together.

"Yeah," said Rocket at last. "We really did."

The twin suns of Xandar moved slowly toward the horizon, painting the sky in amber and rose.

The galaxy was safe — at least for now.

And a gentle giant held a flower and was glad.

Goodnight, little one. Be as sturdy as Groot, and as gentle, too.