"Just keep walking, and don't stop no matter what happens. Once the decoy is clear and Thanos is preoccupied with trying to reach it, we can sneak the real one out and away from here. While hopefully retrieving the other Infinity Stones in the process." Captain America reminded Peter and I who stood just a few feet apart from each other. Bruce still crouched over Dan trying to console him even though his situation seemed to be pretty bleak.
"Got it." Peter and I said automatically though neither of our faces seemed to show much hope in this plan.
"Now, the trick is to make sure Thanos is watching when the change transpires." Wong said lowly, throwing a glance over towards the Avengers' attempts at continuing to hold the Mad Titan's attention. The blonde woman, Natasha – Bruce had briefly explained to us who everyone was – once more had latched herself onto the huge villain's back and seemed to be stabbing her gloved fists into the tendons of his neck. Thanos seemed to buck and jerk wildly as volts of electricity shot through him from the woman's fists in addition to Thor's concentrated bolt of lightning shooting from the only window in the room straight into Thanos' legs, keeping him immobile for the time being.
"So as soon as Nat and Thor let him loose, that's the moment we need to act. Because he'll definitely be angry." Cap finished quickly, making sure that both me and Peter were taking things seriously.
"Who wouldn't be?" The raccoon said sarcastically, having finally picked himself up off the ground by the double doors. I spared him only an uncertain glance before Cap clapped a hand on my shoulder.
"Now, just focus on the Time Stone. You know where the real one's really going to be, but we need to have the focus on the decoy."
"Right." I said, suddenly feeling impatient to hurry and get the plan in motion and over with as soon as possible. I looked down once more at Dan who was watching me through his eyes glazed with pain.
"Focus on Peter, Alex." Wong instructed me gently. I flicked my gaze back to Peter who gave me a knowing glance before his face disappeared behind his Spiderman mask. I continued to stare at him levelly for a moment, feeling the Time Stone burn in my pocket. I closed my eyes and focused on the steadily building heat of the pendant by my side, picturing that the burn was ebbing away and floating through the air to Peter who still stood motionless in front of me.
"Okay." I muttered quietly, opening my eyes to see that a dim green glow had drifted across the few feet of space between me and Peter. The faint glow had landed on Peter's chest where the small insignia of a spider rested, and Peter hesitantly reached a gloved hand up to his chest to tap the small button that was designed into the spider's body. The glow was almost immediately absorbed into the spider and Peter let out the breath he had been holding in relief, glancing back up to me and Wong with wide eyes expressed in his mask.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Cap glance up to Natasha who was waiting for his signal. Several things then happened at once. The buzzing of electricity ceased from both Thor and Natasha and there was a clatter as the woman was seemingly thrown from Thanos' shoulders and into the refrigerator door behind him. Thor swung with his axe before the villain could turn to finish his attack on Natasha and Bruce stood up quickly from Dan's side to allow me and Peter to move and pick my friend up from the floor. Dan had his jaw clenched shut but his protesting cries of pain started up again as we hurriedly pulled him up into our arms, causing Thanos to pause and look our way.
"Ready?" I muttered to both Dan and Peter. After a few seconds they both nodded and Dan's pained protests slowed to unsteady gasps as Peter and I supported him fully between the two of us.
"We're going to move him out of the way before this thing gets any messier." I said loudly, keeping my gaze away from Thanos who I noticed turned in my direction suspiciously. I looked from my friend's pained face to Peter's wide-eyed mask across from me.
"He won't let us leave –" Peter said, following my lead on keeping my voice loud enough to hear from across the room.
"He will if he knows what's good for him." Wong said as he walked by us and past the woman who still steadily held her shield up between our small group and Thanos with the few Avengers by him.
"I'm not one for sympathy." Thanos said lowly, stepping closer to Wong who stopped just in front of the woman's shield, clearly exposed.
"Neither am I." Thor intoned, heaving his axe up with a strained grunt at the weapon's weight.
"Okay…they've got him occupied for the moment…we're going to get you out of here now, okay Dan?" I said gently, shifting my friend slightly to jostle him and keep him still semi-conscious. His eyes rolled open wearily and he drooped his head forward in response.
"Watch it!" Peter's huge white eyes in the mask widened quickly as he darted forward with his other arm to catch Dan from falling limply forward. I did the same and for a moment there was a dizzying sensation as Peter and I collided together. We both had a hand on each of Dan's shoulders, and though we both remained motionless and attempted to keep Dan supported between ourselves, it felt as if I were moving closer and closer to Peter.
"Here boys, let me help." Bruce said in my ear suddenly. I could feel that Dan's sagging weight was pulled back slightly from me and relented to release my hold on his shoulders. Peter's hands, covered by his red Spiderman suit, were the ones that moved under my will. I blinked quickly and could see the hands that were originally mine moved a few seconds later.
I turned curiously and in a blur to see if the swap had really worked. When I turned to my left, it was like looking in a very strange mirror. After a millisecond of staring at the body next to me, I recognized my own familiar features. Having not looked in a mirror for the past day or so, I was a little alarmed by seeing my foreign appearance. Dark circles rimmed my eyes from lack of sleep and my dark hair was a mess of waves around my forehead. The reddish robes looked entirely too big on the body in front of me and as I continued to stare at myself, he blinked.
"…Peter?" I murmured uncertainly as he, in my body shifted oddly on his feet.
"Don't give us away…" He muttered quietly, moving to help Bruce situate Dan between me and the scientist. He slipped the Sling Ring off of his fingers and handed it to me discreetly so that Thanos wouldn't see. I nodded in hasty agreement, noticing that my vision through Peter's mask was as clear as if I wasn't even wearing it. I narrowed my eyes towards Thanos who was still watching us carefully, acting as if he'd missed our swap as I'd intended.
"I've got this." Peter said with my voice, stepping away from me and Bruce. He hesitantly moved to follow Wong around the shield lady's glowing mandala and Bruce met my frazzled gaze as I looked back down to Dan who also was watching Peter walk away with my body.
"This is so weird…" I muttered, hearing Peter's voice come out of my mouth. Dan gave me his usual side smirk and nodded wearily toward the double doors.
"The…the plan…" He murmured, barely opening his mouth to speak. His adrenaline was mostly spent and he was very likely on the verge of passing out at any second.
"Alex –" Bruce called after Peter worriedly. Peter turned around and pointed to the doorway at the front of the kitchen. He turned briskly back to Thanos who stood just a few yards away from where he and Wong stood side by side.
"You let them get my friend out of here and then we'll talk." He ordered Thanos gruffly. I watched as the huge purple man chuckled darkly and shook his head.
"I already told you, boy…you have no room to negotiate with me." He growled. Peter stared demandingly up at Thanos, and I recognized the glint of edgy fear in the eyes that were previously mine. After a moment, Thanos' shoulder relaxed only a tiny bit and Peter gestured for me and Bruce to move across the room.
As the two of us carefully dragged Dan across the dining room and connected kitchen, Natasha, Thor, Rhodey, Cap, Groot and the metal-armed assassin guy all stepped forward to move themselves between us and Thanos. I forced myself to keep my masked gaze away from the alien villain, but finally realized that he wouldn't recognize my face since I was now wearing Peter's anyway. The raccoon trailed after me and Bruce as backup in case things went sour, the raccoon wielding his oversized gun once more in his paws. When we'd reached the destroyed countertop, Dan's pained gasps slowed almost completely as he lost consciousness.
"Hey…come on man, we're almost there…" I hissed in my friend's ear, my heartbeat quickening even faster with worry. Bruce shifted his grip around Dan's back and nudged me to signal that I had to keep us moving out of the kitchen and to the hall outside away from the battle about to be picked back up.
"Alright, Alexander. Let's talk." Thanos said, figuring that me, Bruce and Dan were close enough to the kitchen door to be considered out of the way. I turned my head worriedly to see that Wong had conjured up his shields over both Peter and himself. Thanos held up his multicolored fist and I noticed that the whole thing seemed to flash purple as he prepared to use it. Bruce elbowed me again, bringing me back to earth.
"Alex, stick to the plan." Bruce muttered, still trying to move Dan while I had stopped.
"Kid, what's going on? We're almost there!" The raccoon spoke up from behind us. I looked to Dan's unconscious expression, taking in the beads of sweat and the ashen color of his face. I tried to put the feeling of his deadweight sagging between me and Bruce out of my head as I grudgingly continued dragging him out of the kitchen. Once we'd entered the destruction of the hallway outside, Bruce gestured to the training room right next door.
"In there…we'll get Dan out of the way and we'll call for backup. We can get some medical personnel in here asap for him." Bruce said breathlessly. Apparently without the Hulk, the super smart scientist had little to no strength of his own. "Then, you have to lead Thanos away. I'll stay with Dan until help arrives, don't worry."
I nodded through Peter's mask hurriedly, hearing the rumble that signified the use of one of the Infinity Stones followed by what sounded like a wall falling in on itself. Thor's thunder shook what remained of the Sanctum as he wound up for his retaliation and I heard a few other crashes as the fight next door resumed. Bruce and I carefully set Dan down against the wall just inside the training room and when Bruce stood up, I stayed crouched by my best friend's side.
"Hang on," I murmured to them both. Bruce looked at me uncertainly with his hand reaching for his pocket where I knew his cellphone probably waited. I flicked my head back and the mask covering my face automatically retracted back into the suit mechanically. Dan's breathing was slow and ragged as his body tried to figure out what to do to repair itself. Bruce seemed to read my hesitation and he moved closer to me and set a hand on my shoulder carefully.
"Alex, it's going to be alright. I've seen people come away from things much worse than this before." He said levelly. I shook my head slowly and looked back over to the raccoon who was shooting his large gun into the kitchen from the doorway just behind us.
"Hey, Raccoon!" I called with Peter's shaky voice. The furry creature turned in my direction a few seconds later, a gruff expression disfiguring his animal face.
"It's Rocket, kid." He growled, though I knew he wanted to call me something worse.
"Rocket…" I corrected myself slowly. I swallowed past the nervous lump in my throat and continued. "What's going on in there?"
"What do you think is going on in there?! We're all getting murdered trying to keep him preoccupied – just look at your friend! The plan seems to be working though…he's trying to come this way, thinking you have the Stone! Now hurry up and do what you're gonna do, or I'm gonna do it for ya!" Rocket said, his voice rising to be heard over the battle in the next room. Rocket shook himself after his outburst and then resumed firing his gun through the doorway where I heard his shots clang against the Gauntlet Thanos wore.
"It's time to disappear, Alex." Bruce said calmly, gesturing for me to summon a portal like we had planned originally. I fidgeted with the Sling Ring over my glove on my left hand and when I met Bruce's gentle, knowing gaze I nodded in halfhearted agreement.
"…But not without Dan." I said hollowly. Bruce's face fell into surprise as I shakily stood up and pressed the spider insignia on Peter's suit. A dim green glow swelled up from my chest, and I felt the familiar burning sensation of the Time Stone's essence I had sent to Peter to store in his suit. The real Stone was still in the pocket of my robes where Peter was currently pretending to be me, protected by Wong and the remaining Avengers.
"Alex, we had a plan...it's never good when someone decides not to stick to it…" Bruce warned, glancing over his shoulder worriedly. I nodded in acknowledgement without looking at the scientist and focused my sleep-deprived attention on my dying friend where he lay against the wall just beside the doorway of the training room.
"We'll get back on track with the plan in a second. I have to take care of my friend first." I said calmly.
I centered myself as deeply as I could within the circumstances and felt the burn spread throughout my upper chest. The green glowing band appeared in a flash around my wrist and I chanced a glance at the doorway where I could feel Rocket's gaze on me.
"What the hell are you doing?! I really don't think that's a good idea, kid – put it away!" Rocket said, flicking his gaze back and forth between the glowing Time Stone's energy emanating from Peter's spider insignia and whatever was going on in the kitchen/dining room. I ignored him as I tried to keep my concentration up and from the corner of my eye I could see that the raccoon resumed rapidly firing his weapon into the room as the scene shifted obviously inside. He suddenly tossed the gun aside and scurried back towards me with a frantic look on his face. "Get ready to run kid – away from your friend!"
"Come on, Dan…" I muttered as I ignored Rocket and slowly twisted my wrist to the side to reverse time and hopefully heal my friend. My heart slowed with relief as the color steadily returned to Dan's face and his eyes began to uncertainly flutter open.
"Alex…there's…" Bruce was suddenly cut off as the wall to the left of where Dan rested blew apart, throwing the scientist against the pile of fallen ceiling where I had decimated Corvus Glaive's weapon. Rocket's small figure scurried around me and Dan, shouting out a few curse words as he peered through the newly blasted hole in the wall.
"You'd better get a move on, kid! He's headed right this way!" Rocket growled, clearly getting antsy at the delay with the plan.
I quickened my wrist's movements and stepped back hesitantly as Dan hurriedly shifted to his newly-healed legs. I smiled at my best friend in relief through tear-filled eyes and watched as the green band disappeared from around my wrist. I reached up to tap the spider insignia on my chest to conceal the small bit of Time Stone essence left in the small contraption and Dan looked down at the lower half of his body in disbelief.
"Alex…" He said breathlessly, and I threw him one of my teasing smirks which probably looked a little odd on Peter's face.
"It's kinda hard dragging you around with me all the time, ya know?" I joked lightheartedly. Dan's shoulders shook with the ghost of a laugh and that was when I realized that he was shaking his head sadly.
"Yeah…well it probably won't be for much longer." Dan said softly. When he finally looked up at me, his face was almost a cloud of misery. I shook my head trying to make sense of what he'd just said.
"What do you mean? You're okay now…" I said, hearing Peter's younger voice come out of my mouth. I looked down at the spider symbol embedded in the Spiderman suit on my chest and pointed at it before looking back up at Dan demandingly. "I reversed time to heal you, don't you realize what this means? We can't get hurt! Not for real, anyway."
Dan sighed deeply and looked at the giant hole that Thanos had blasted through the wall. Rocket had pressed himself against what was left of it just around the edge and out of sight where I could see the metal armed guy shooting another gun at Thanos who was out of my line of vision. When Dan turned back to me finally, he looked like he was about to tell me something he really didn't want to say.
"Alex…Peter…whoever you are at the second…you have to promise me that you won't risk letting the Time Stone be revealed just to try and save someone. The Avengers lost some of their numbers, and it's just something we might have to face. Saving the people here at this moment isn't the goal. We need to focus on preventing Thanos from getting all of these Stones so that the whole world will be safe from him."
I blinked and waited for Dan to add more on to his little speech but there was no need. He knew something I didn't, and I figured he was still holding on to whatever visions the Orb of Agamotto had shown to him. As if he was reading my mind, Dan then smiled at me wearily and gently punched my shoulder.
"Now, go and lead this Thanos guy on a wild goose chase until we can figure out a way to get that Gauntlet away from him."
I nodded and then turned with my left hand raised before me to swirl a portal into existence behind us. When the upstairs hallway was blurred into view in the midst of a golden circle, I glanced back in time to see Rhodey collide with Thor who was barely in my vision through the gaping hole in the wall.
"Boys, get down!" Bruce's pained voice shouted from the rubble he had been thrown into behind us. There was a flash of purple and the wall just behind Dan and in front of me exploded outward, throwing us into each other. In midair, I could see Dan twist himself around and flash a golden shield into place before a second explosion rumbled a millisecond after the first one.
"Dan, look out!" I shouted as a bolt of lightning shot our way simultaneously. Dan turned his shield in the direction of the Thor's retaliating power blast, blocking it from hitting him fully. I had half a second to realize what the thunder god had been aiming for, before I was suddenly seized by my right arm and thrown into floor by giant hands.
"Don't move." Thanos barked from right above me. I looked up to see that the glowing multicolored Gauntlet was inches from my face and I punched at his giant hand, angered that he was able to hold me down so effortlessly. Another clap of thunder seemed to echo from the Sanctum itself and I cringed as I tried to brace myself for the impact it would have if Thor struck Thanos while he was attached to me.
"Thor, stop!" Rhodey's voice rang out from nearby. Thanos tore his triumphant face away from me for a brief moment to grin back at the Avengers.
"Afraid to hurt the kids, right?" Thanos said coldly with a terrifying smirk on his alien face. From my place on the ground, I could vaguely hear the sound of footsteps approaching on my left and I tried to squint my eyes to the side to see who was daring to just simply walk up to the Mad Titan.
"Lucky for me, I'm not afraid if we get hurt."
I recognized my own voice coming from a few feet away and I also could see the slippers that went along with the robes Wong had given me from the corner of my eye. Peter was trying to stand his ground against Thanos just as I would have. The giant purple man stood up just a tad straighter, still keeping the Gauntlet aimed at my face.
"Give me the Time Stone or the Spider gets it." He warned lowly, clearly long done playing games and waiting for something to happen. His tauntingly knowing smile still lingered and I felt another wave of anger run through me with his threat.
"See…I don't have it…" Peter said with my voice and I could visibly see the massive eyeroll that Thanos delivered upon just the first few syllables out of Peter's mouth.
"Enough stalling. One of you has it and you have five seconds to hand it over." He said, actually sounding bored with us. Peter, still possessing my body stepped into my line of vision, his eyes on me dejectedly.
"You have to give it to him, Peter. We're out of options." He said, going along with the body swap name calling. I caught the twinkle in his gaze that meant he had a plan and I hesitantly flicked my gaze back to the villain who still pinned me down. Thanos released his hold on my neck just enough to allow me to move my head and look at the spider insignia on my chest. When I glanced back up, Peter had shifted slightly further into my vision and I could see Wong just behind him, waiting for me to meet his gaze. When I started to shift hesitantly to my feet, Thanos stayed intimidatingly standing over me. I threw a look towards the few people in my vision and caught Wong's subtle nod as he silently moved behind Thanos who still had his right hand clenched in a fist expectantly.
"Um…okay…" I said with Peter's shaky voice, playing up my soreness from being thrown into the ground by the Mad Titan in a lead-up to the grand reveal. I met the huge villain's gleaming gaze as my hand wavered over the spider in my chest. As soon as my finger touched the small insect design, I had a quick glimpse of green before a ball of fur slammed into my chest, attacking and clawing at me in a deranged and unstoppable frenzy.
"You – can't – let – him – just – take – it!" Rocket shouted in between swipes and punches at my borrowed face. I clawed and fought to get him off of me, and distantly heard the hum of the Stones above me.
"Rocket – stop!" I shouted before the ground below me disappeared. I was suddenly falling freely, Rocket now latching his paws around my neck to keep from flying away from me in our descent. Over his furry head, I could see that we had fallen through a portal that Wong had conjured, and were now currently falling from the ceiling of the Sanctum and straight towards the ground.
"Kid?!" Rocket exclaimed, latched onto my back with a death grip. I had a millisecond of time to consider how strong of a hold his paws had before I hastily conjured up my own portal in the floor of the Sanctum before we could collide with it.
"Brace yourself!" I warned him loudly as we vanished through the portal and transported to the upstairs hallway. I had positioned that portal at an upright angle so that instead on falling headfirst into the ground, we were flying horizontally down a small bit of hallway before we rolled to a stop on the polished wood floor.
"What was the freak-out for?!" I exclaimed hurriedly, feeling several scratches and scrapes from his small but mighty paws.
"Your pudgy magic friend just told me to keep up the illusion that you had the real Stone. So I tried to cover it up so Thanos wouldn't see that the green light show disappeared as soon as you opened up that spider thing." He said casually. I pressed a gloved hand to my face and could see that the red fabric was dyed a deeper crimson when I lowered my hand again to examine it. I threw the raccoon an agitated glance and pointed to an open door up ahead.
"That leads to the library. Wong had me and Dan train in there last night unexpectedly and he caused the whole room to flood with water until we found a way out. Maybe if we can lure Thanos in there, I can try to replicate that." I suggested quickly. Rocket stopped in his tracks and gave me a disbelieving look.
"You think he won't know that it's an illusion?" He asked. "I've seen your magic tricks, kid and they're pretty good, but are they that good?"
"It won't be an illusion, it'll be real." I explained quickly, suddenly able to hear the clatters and rumbles from downstairs. "We honestly almost drowned when Wong did it!"
"Well, you'd better get Wong on the same page with that plan because if you try to put that much power into it, then that's sure to wear you down fast." Rocket grumbled thoughtfully.
"No – I have something better."
Dan appeared suddenly on my right, blocking our entrance to the library. He dissolved the portal he had conjured to reach us and quickly elaborated.
"If we can somehow get to the ship up there –" He pointed up to the ceiling where I assumed he meant the sky. "The one that Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive and Cull Obsidian got here with – we can destroy his method of transportation. He won't be able to go anywhere to even use the Stones!"
"Let me stop you right there, Danny Boy…there ain't no ship up there anymore." Rocket interrupted him quickly. Both me and Dan stared down at him in surprise.
"But that's what blew a hole straight through the front of the building." I said hurriedly, glancing around at the destruction that apparently existed in all corners of the mansion. "That's how they got here earlier."
"And that's apparently how they showed up in Wakanda too. But Wong teleported us right outside the door of this house here and we didn't see a sign of any spaceship out there then. Thanos had no issue at all just portaling those baddies and that ship away from the battle in Wakanda when it seemed like we were being overpowered. Once he yanked that yellow Stone out of the robot guy's head, he made himself disappear too." Rocket explained.
"So he can portal too?" Dan repeated slowly, the knowledge creating a new fear in both of us. Rocket nodded and crossed his little arms over his furry chest.
"Yeah…much like you can. So I'd scratch out any ideas where you think you can trap the guy cuz most likely he'll be able to get out of it easier than you can put him there."
"Maybe the ship was programmed to know when the owners weren't returning. Once I got rid of Proxima Midnight, it must have retreated automatically." I murmured thoughtfully. I snapped my fingers and pointed to Dan. He spoke the same thought I had before I could utter it.
"Simple magic tricks alone won't be able to stop him. We have to outwit him." Dan said.
"Duh, is that not what we've been trying to do?!" Rocket retorted looking back and forth between me and my friend. Neither of us returned his critical gaze.
"Thanos thinks that I, pretending to be Peter, have the Time Stone. So he's coming up here after me any second now. And when he does, maybe the real Peter and I need to swap back. I honestly have no idea how to work this high-tech spider suit…so trying to fight Thanos using these reflexes and spider powers will probably do more harm than good to myself. And then with him preoccupied with you guys up here…" I said absently.
"That should work. Okay, switch back then while we've got you covered." Dan said, turning around to flick his golden mandala shields into existence. I hesitated to leave my best friend with just a weaponless talking raccoon as backup and Dan seemed to realize this because he threw his familiar annoyed glance over his shoulder when I didn't move.
"Just something I wanna do first…" I said crossing the hallway past Dan and reaching over Rocket's head for the uneven picture frame that still hung on the wall. I straightened it and heard the distant click of the opening secret passageway behind us. Rocket looked up at me as I made my way back to my original position and shook his head skeptically.
"You've got some real perfection issues, huh kid?" He grumbled sourly, having completely missed the revelation of the door behind him. I gave him a humored smirk as I leaned closer to Dan.
"Promise me if things go sour up here, you'll retreat to the passageway." I muttered to him. Dan frowned at me with a knowing glance before shifting his shoulders and nodding his head.
"You want us to get stuck in there…knowing that Thanos can get in and out easily? Did you miss the part where the raccoon said he could teleport too?" He said sarcastically. Rocket threw his paws in the air clearly irritated with us calling him by the animal that he was.
"I don't think he will be able to get out easily." I said in contradiction. "I wasn't able to use the Time Stone in there earlier…so maybe the Infinity Stones count as magic that the passageway repels?"
Dan hesitated for a brief moment before nodding in agreement. I still didn't move, wanting to know that he would follow my suggestion if the need arose to retreat. He finally glanced back at me with fear clearly present in his eyes as his shields held out in front of him shook with his worried stance. I nodded in confirmation and then pointed to Rocket.
"Watch out for the little guy too." I said lightly. Rocket grumbled out some unheard curse under his breath and I grinned at him tauntingly. As I turned back around to try and center myself to perform the body swap again, my breath caught in my throat. Thanos appeared before my very eyes surrounded in a cloud of sparking blue energy, seemingly conjured from the blue Stone glowing brightly on his fist.
"You'd better be watching out for yourselves as well."
I reflexively flicked my wrist in Thanos' direction and clicked the small shooters embedded in the palms of my gloves as I'd seen Peter do several times this afternoon. As I'd hoped, a string of webbing flew out of the contraption in the wrist of the suit and before it could latch onto Thanos' face like I'd anticipated it to, the Mad Titan merely raised his Gauntlet- covered hand and disappeared in a red glow. The web instead hit the wall behind where he'd just stood and I had just enough time to whirl around before I could see that the Thanos I had been facing before had been merely an illusion. The real Thanos was standing over Dan who had just been knocked to the floor. My friend resisted falling completely down and braced his knees against the floor with his glowing shields held in front of him so Thanos couldn't strike him again.
"Leave him alone!" I shouted, running towards him and leaping over Dan's hunched shoulders to land firmly on his golden mandalas before leaping upward and punching Thanos squarely in his jaw. The large man grunted in protest and grabbed me by the neck, throwing me into the wall beside him. The wall gave in slightly with the force of my collision and I hurried to scramble to my feet before Thanos could whirl on me. Instead, he was focusing on Dan who had a shield hovering over one arm and a golden whip in the other. Rocket was huddled underneath my friend's shield, ready to leap out and attack rabidly should Thanos try to get past it.
"I don't have it either!" Dan shouted to something I hadn't heard Thanos say to him. I looked down at the spider insignia on the chest of Peter's suit and could see that it had been left open. Seeing no green glow emanating from it, Thanos had immediately lost interest in me and just assumed that whatever bits of essence of the Time Stone were left up here with us was coming from either Dan or Rocket.
I struggled to my feet and shot a web at the back of the purple man's left shoulder, yanking with all my might to prevent him from delivering another blow to Dan's weakening shield. Both Dan and Thanos jerked around in my direction and I quickly released the web from my right wrist to roll out of the way reflexively as a blast of purple energy was shot towards me. The wall where I had just been exploded inward, revealing the room on the other side of it. The sound of cannon fire reverberated and I clamped my hands over my ears as a whoosh of frigid air flew past me and straight for Thanos. Apparently the Sanctum's spirits had been taking refuge in that particular room and were deeply disturbed by Thanos' use of the purple Infinity Stone.
"Fear not, dear apprentices!"
"We must do our part to protect our home!"
My eyes widened at their odd remarks and when I saw Thanos stumble under some unseen force of energy, I understood that the spirits were attempting their own method of retaliation. Thanos held up his bare right hand to ward off the spirits' ghostly energy as it looked like he was caught in hurricane-level winds. Dan and Rocket dove away from him as he stumbled drunkenly in their direction, the spirits encasing the large villain in a sort of mini invisible tornado.
In the midst of the violent ghost-tornado, Thanos suddenly stopped and focused on the first figure he could see. With lightning speed he raised his golden fist and a blast of glowing multicolored energy shot straight from his Gauntlet and through Dan and the wall directly behind him. The spirits that had been unleashing their fury upon the Mad Titan vanished in another explosion of cannon fire and the hallway was cast into dead silence once more. Thanos stayed where he was and I flicked both of my wrists in his direction to shove him backwards, pinning him to the ruined wall with a web on each of his shoulders. Seeing from the corner of my eye that the giant villain wasn't currently going to fight his bonds, I dove forward as I saw Dan's knees buckle from underneath him.
"Oh Dan…" I muttered, my voice eerily calm. Rocket scurried out of the way before Dan fell completely to the ground and then stood unsurely by my friend's side. I hesitated as I took in the sight of the gaping and smoking hole in Dan's torso and my heart leapt into my throat, causing me to literally choke out a surprised cry. Dan's deadening gaze swiveled in my direction and with some inhuman strength he held out his hand in a signal that told me not to come any closer.
"Hey uh…Spider-boy…I don't think…" Rocket said quietly holding both of his paws up towards Dan where he was wobbling weakly with his knees barely holding him up on the floor. Thanos still stood motionless against the wall, though I knew that he could easily escape the webbing I had shot at him.
"Dan…" I whispered, wishing that I, as myself were standing here in front of my dying friend. His eyes lost focus and I dove forward as I watched him slump to the side towards Rocket. Before his upraised arm fell however, an overwhelmingly strong blast of golden energy exploded from Dan's palm, throwing me backwards past Thanos. My vision then blurred, whether through tears or just an emotional blackout. I succumbed to it eagerly for the moment, feeling myself roll to a stop and go limp on the ruined floor of the hallway. The last thought that flew through my head was that my best friend would no longer be here to help me through this unbeatable battle.