Infinity War

Once upon a time, a signal came through the dark like a cry for help.

It was faint at first — just a thread of distress code bouncing between the stars — and then the Guardians found the source: a single figure drifting in the cold, surrounded by wreckage. His name was Thor. He was an Asgardian warrior, large and golden-haired and battered in a way that said the fight he had just come from was not a small one. The Guardians pulled him aboard the Milano, and he told them about Thanos.

The name fell into the cabin like a stone into still water.

Thanos was a titan — enormous, ancient, grey-purple — who had decided that the universe would be better with half its life removed. He had spent years hunting the six Infinity Stones: Space, Reality, Power, Mind, Soul, Time — each one ancient and impossible and full of tremendous force. And he had built the Infinity Gauntlet: a glove with sockets for all six, which when complete would make him the most powerful being in existence. He already had two.

The Guardians looked at each other across the cabin of the Milano. The air felt different after that sentence.

They split into two groups. Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, and Mantis flew toward Knowhere, hoping to intercept the Reality Stone before Thanos could reach it. Rocket, Teen Groot, and Thor set course for Nidavellir.

Nidavellir was built in rings around a dying star — not near a star, but around one. The star's heat and energy were channeled through those rings to work a metal called Uru, one of the hardest and most enchantment-receptive substances in the universe. Nidavellir's craftsman was Eitri, who had made Thor's first hammer there — the famous Mjolnir — and weapons of terrible power for Asgard across generations.

When they arrived, the forge was dark and silent. Thanos had come here first. He had taken what the forge had stored and then, to make certain nothing new could threaten him, had crushed Eitri's enormous hands inside metal casings, leaving the great craftsman sitting in the cold unable to work.

Rocket stood at the entrance to the forge and looked at the ring mechanism for a long moment.

Then he went to work. He studied how the rings were meant to turn, the sequence in which they channeled the star's output, and he fixed what was fixable. His hands moved in that fast and certain way — the way they moved when the problem was fully understood and only the work remained. The forge could operate. Barely. For just long enough.

But someone had to stand in the ring and hold it open against the dying star's full output — energy that would destroy almost any living being.

Thor stepped forward without hesitation.

He braced himself in the opening and the beam hit him like a wall. He held it. The forge blazed back to life. Eitri's hands, wrapped and heavy, moved with the deep memory of someone who had shaped things like this before. The Uru flowed. Stormbreaker took shape — a battle-axe, broad and ancient in design.

Teen Groot stepped forward quietly, extended his arm, and grew his living wood into the handle, completing it. His face was calm. Rocket watched him and felt a particular kind of pride that he did not have a name for.

They flew toward Wakanda with everything the Milano had. Below them the final battle was already happening. The Avengers and the armies of Wakanda were there. Thanos walked through the fighting toward Vision — toward the last Stone.

They were not in time.

The snap came.

It was a quiet sound. And then the ash, soft grey, began to fall — people dissolving upward into nothing, first one and then dozens. Teen Groot looked at Rocket just before it took him.

"I am Groot," he said. Softly. Not afraid. Just saying it.

Then he was ash.

The grass of Wakanda was very quiet. Rocket stood among what remained and felt the silence settle into him, heavy and absolute. He had survived every fight he had ever been in — not by luck, but by being stubborn and clever and never accepting that a problem could not be solved.

He needed to find the solution to this one.

He was still standing. That meant he still had time. He started thinking.