Ch. 188 - Devastation of Xandar

We landed on Xandar, in the plaza outside the Council Building, just as a massive beam of purple energy burst up into the, blanketing the planet and tearing through the surface.

It jetted across the plaza, ripping up tiles like a hurricane of power, and slammed into me, sending me to the floor, skidding back across the plaza steps.

Beside me I heard a wet squelch, as a blood splattered across my flickering forcefield.

Gamora was dead, her neck snapped right off.

Damn.....that was anticlimatic.

But eh, one less burden for me to deal with.

Another wave of energy washed over me, my contacts beeping with alerts.

"Forcefield energy at critical levels. Integrity compromised."

"Nanobots disconnected."

The nanobots I had used to track Thanos suddenly blinked out from my mental map.

And here I thought this would be easy.

He has already destroyed the nanobots in his body.

Though the question to be asked is....did he do it knowingly or was it an accidental side effect? 

After all, his casual grip strength is at a whopping gigaton given how easily he crushed the shell of the Tesseract in the Infinity War.

I wouldn't be surprised if his sheer Power Stone enhanced muscle flex would destroy my nanobots.

Phew! 

I wouldn't want to be the Ant Man crawling into his ass, that's for sure.

I tried to stand back up only for my feet to find no purchase on the surface.

I looked down at the floor, coated with the Power Stone's energy, constantly pushing everything in all directions away from the floor.

He had turned the plaza into a functionally frictionless surface.

Nice!

A new implementation of the Power Stone's ability of force manipulation. 

I should've considered the fact that Thanos is a bonafide genius that could deconstruct time travel tech in under an hour and then fight the Avengers to a standstill the next. 

If I wasn't so overpowered, I'd be crying to OAA to nerf this purple meatball.

My thrusters activated and I pushed off the floor into the skies above, scanning the surface for him when something else shot at me.

A volley of missiles, from space.

My suit reacted automatically, laser beams blinking out from me back blowing up the ship behind me, and along with it, the missiles that had barely left it's ports.

A massive explosion lit up the sky, dyeing it a deep orange and red, debris raining down like meteors from the sky, smattering across the surface below.

Shockwaves rippled out from the explosion, clearing up the sky as they dissipated the clouds above the Capital of Xandar, almost vaporizing the atmosphere.

The environmental impact of that alone will make the city uninhabitable.

A pity. It was a beautiful city, a true megalopolis, spanning miles upon miles in all directions, sleek modern structures tastefully littered with greenery, small pools and lakes, like little oases in the silver grey statuesque landscape.

But that didn't matter to me right now.

All I could see was Thanos, on the roof the Council Chamber, as I zipped through the air towards him.

As soon as I located him, missiles shot out from my suit, targetting his position.

But Thanos was ready for that too.

He swung his axe, sending a wave of energy at the missiles destroying them mid air, crushed under the force of the Power Stone.

He spun the axe in his hands, accumulating a charge of purple energy, before leaping off the building.

He flew through the sky, the axe's might carrying him, climbing into the sky, into a direct confrontation with me.

Magic vs. machine.

I reared back my fist, enchanting it with Destruction and Invulnerable as a bead of golden destructive power gathered at the tip of my fist.

Seconds later we met, colliding mid air above the city.

My suit creaked as we met each other blow for blow. The Power Stone wasn't an infinity stone for nothing. It even overpowered my forcefield for a good second there, sending it offline as the blow rattled me to my core. 

I spat up blood, my bones cracked and ground against one another, as a shockwave burst forth from the impact of my fist meeting his axe, muted purples mixing with luminescent golds swirling in a stormy spiral of power.

It shattered with a blinding glint, the air itself burnt away around us, sublimating to a vacuum.

Everything fell silent, without any medium to carry the sound.

Then, the atmosphere imploded in towards us eager to fill the vacuum, and a blazing ring of power, twisted purple and gold, rippling outwards from the impact as it tore through the sky.

We both came to a standstill for a moment, floating in place as our momentums cancelled out.

I chuckled, the butterflies in my stomach tickling away at me when the gravity pulled me back down.

Then we fell, my suit flickering as the forcefield came back online, the thrusters reactivating.

And for the first time, I felt some respect for Thanos.

It takes courage to face me, the guy that can casually destroy planets and even realities, with naught but an axe, an infinity stone and his wits.

I looked down at him, and took a deep breath as my body finished healing.

Thanos must have realized it too.

His face flashed a look of fear when he saw my hand extending towards him, my razor sharp claws glinting in the midday sun, my disintegration beam at the ready, aiming at him. 

"No!" He mouthed, taking his axe in a white knuckled grip, and began to channel the Power Stone's energy once more, cladding himself in a purple energy cloak as he barreled towards the ground, the winds howling all around us.

I shot the disintegration beam at him, along with a dozen other missiles and lasers, just to be sure.

No kill like overkill after all.

And the Power Stone would be fine.

But Thanos wasn't ready to give up.

He flipped over mid air, sending bursts of energy all around to orient himself, before he raised his axe at me and the beams, swinging his axe, outputting truly overwhelming amounts of power, to the point that his own body began to corrode away with the energy outstripping his capacity to wield it.

He was willing to die here, if it mean t taking me down with him!

Shit!

I turned, and zoomed away, out of the path of the axe, but it was too late.

A massive wave of energy slammed into my flickering forcefield, shattering it completely.

It pummeled at me, pushing me straight into the exosphere.

My suit began burning up in the heat and friction, as my sensors cried out about the forcefield, the Power Stone's energy nearly breaking through my suit.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I instantly targeted the source of the beam, sending a Godslayer bolt at it.

It zipped out of a portal, right at Thanos but I couldn't see the results from the Power Stone's energy blowing out my sensors.

The bolt tore through the planet, sending a wave of devastation rumbling across the planetary surface, decimating the entire city.

I sucked in a cold breath at the destruction, scanning it for the energy signature of the Power Stone.

But as the beam vanished, leaving me a moment of respite and my thrusters coming back online, it was evident that Thanos had survived.

A rainbow colored pillar of energy rose up from the surface, bursting through the cloud cover as it disappeared into space. 

Damnit!

Not again! 

Immediately, I chased after it.

"Activate relativistic channel. Target the Bifrost." I ordered.

My suit shifted subtly, the jagged armaments sliding back into the folds, streamlining my appearance as a wormhole opened up before me, slingshotting me across space towards the Bifrost, as the stars turned into long streaks of light around me.

Minutes later, I spotted the Bifrost stop at a planet, covered in mists.

Niflheim!

I made for the planet, crashing into it sending a shockwave through the atmosphere, carving a crater into the surface miles long with my fall.

The earth beneath my feet shook as an earthquake spread across the planet.

A veritable meteor strike.

Without a thought, the sensors scanned the entire planet and I covered it with my technokinesis, trying to find traces of the Bifrost and the Axe.

There were none.

None? 

No way!

Unless.....

Motherfucker! 

He tricked me! 

He didn't board the Bifrost!

There never was any Thanos in this beam! 

He was still there on Xandar as I left!

Shit! 

I portaled back to Xandar immediately, rushing into the scene as the last flickers of another dozen Bifrost beams vanished into thin air.

I stomped the floor in anger, my kick sending shockwaves across the land, cracking the capital city into eight parts.

Chasms broke open in the planet's crust, as I gripped my fists in rage.

Thanos!

He pulled a classic Rick on me.

Multiple portals to multiple realms. And by the time I investigate them all, he'll already be elsewhere! 

At least I will make sure he's not on Xandar this time.

I scanned the surface once more, every nook and cranny and found no sign of him.

Good.

But the scans showed something else too. 

The true results of my actions, my fight against Thanos.

A spectacle for me. And as I was fighting, I cared not what happened to the planet.

As for the people of Xandar...it was hell.

When gods fight, mortals suffer.

Thanos had already killed half the population. 

And I am not in the mood for any more killing. 

I'm just...sick of it.

I sighed, rubbing my temples.

Looking over the landscape, I could finally see the blood, hear the cries of children trapped in the rubble and a deep guilt filled me. 

The sheer number of them was alone horrifying. Millions. Trapped under rubble. Millions more dead.

For nothing.

Because I decided I wanted to take the fight to Thanos. To them.

The soldiers in Asgard? They were trying to kill me.

They were fair game.

But the Xandarians?

They weren't trying to kill me.

They weren't slavers, whose culture revolved around hollowing out entire worlds like the Muun or war like the Mandalorians.

They were just innocent victims from a peaceful society. It was the same reason I had treated the victims of New York. 

But here...

But here... I rained destruction upon them. estruction upon them. 

Like a natural disaster. 

The realisation set in as I saw a little girl, clawing away at her mother's severed hand, vainly attemting to dig her mother out from the rubble, tears soaking her face.

She looked up at me, in the jagged, menacing armor.

And she ....looked afraid.

In her, I saw Riley's face. Molly's face. Ace even. 

Just a child.

She screamed, and through her tears she said something.

Something I didn't quite understand.

But I got the message.

And I stood there, still as a statue. 

It was then, I knew.

I am the monster.....

The realisation hit me like a truck.

I felt a pit in my stomach grow.

I had done this.

Me.

I had grown so callous in my diregard for life that I ... I became what I feared most.

An uncaring, alien god. 

A Rick. 

My hands shook, as Offee's words rang in my ears.

You promised. 

You promised.

I shook my head.

No. It won't end this way. I won't let it. 

I promised.

I promised I would be better.

I sucked in a cold breath, as I surveyed the destruction and nodded, resolute.

With a thought portals began to open up behind me.

Droids marched out in orderly lines, carrying supplies.

I can't undo the damage that has been done to these people. 

But....I can at least help rebuild what's left of them.

This was, after all, my fault. If I hadn't been so cocky, if I had just killed Thanos back in Asgard.....

Grinding my teeth, I immediately began providing a relief effort to the Xandarian population, as my droids exited the portals and began to pull out the people stuck in the rubble.

Shoggoths were sent out on medic duty and I myself dove into the thick of it.

The injured, I stationed in a floating mass of tents on a hard light platform I had constructed. 

The rest, I teleported to one of their colonies with my teleporation beams, while my bots worked to repair their cities.

I didn't wait for that to finish, however.

After the wounded were treated, I left the rest to the droids.

All I could think was what I had done. And what Thanos would now do, with the Stone in his hand.

I have work to do. I need to gather the rest of the infinity stones, ahead of schedule, now that Thanos is loose in the world and actively hunting them down.

I ran a hand through my hair, wiping away the sweat and opened up a portal back home.

First stop, the Ancient One.

Of all the stones that he can get now, the Time Stone is the one that he absolutely cannot be allowed to get his hands on.

I disappeared into a portal, with a sombre look on my face.

This has been an absolute shitshow.

But maybe, just maybe, I can still salvage this.

So that when I revive Offee, I can look her in the eyes again.