"You're the ones Thor told us about!" The antennaed girl called from her spot. Her voice cadence was weird, and halting. Peter wouldn't be surprised if English wasn't her first language, being an alien and all.

"You know Thor?!" Mr. Stark asked in disbelief, almost accusatory.

"Yeah," The man growled, loosing Peter. "Tall guy, not that good looking-" Peter shot him a weird face- "Needed saving."

"Where is he now?" Dr. Strange asked.

"He went to Nina- Nindl- He went somewhere to get a weapon. A 'Thanos-killing' weapon.', he said." By this time, the man had stepped a bit aways from Peter and lowered his gun completely. He shot Katya a look, and she glared back, but lowered her own gun as well.

"Sounds like we should all have one of those." She muttered.

"That's what I'd said!" The man's voice wasn't necessarily friendly, but it was a lot less threatening than it had been two seconds before.

Once everyone had calmed somewhat down- It still took Katya a hot minute to slip her gun back into her holster- the man pulled some kind of level-looking cylindrical reader from his pocket and clambered outside. Mr. Stark took his foot off of the burly guy, and Dr. Strange let down his mandala shields, the rest of them beginning to follow.

Peter rushed to Katya, who'd gone to him, so they met halfway. "Are you okay?" She asked, touching the side of his face where the gun had been pushed up against. Peter grabbed her shoulders, looking her up and down.

"Yeah, I'm fine- are you?" She'd taken a hard hit, and her face was tinged with scarlet from the rivulets of blood that were now drying out from the cut on her forehead. She nodded, and took one of his hands off her shoulder to squeeze it.

They followed the rest outside, where the man was holding the tool up in the air. "The hell happened to this planet? It's eight degrees of its axis, the gravitational pull is all over the place."

Now that they were out of the ship, it became apparent how badly they'd crashed it. Half of it was somewhere a ways away, and the last quarter that had cracked off was nearly buried into the rocky terrain. And it wasn't just their ship- there was wreckage all over the place, punctuated by craggy rocks and wasteland. It almost looked like a junkyard for a lost civilization-in the distance, there were obvious shells of what had once been buildings, but they were so cracked and broken Peter couldn't imagine what they were supposed to look like to begin with.

In the background, the anntenaed woman was jumping up and down, presumably playing with the gravitational pull that the man from earth had mentioned. Peter tried a quick jump of his own- but landed back down almost immediately after, like regular gravity. Maybe if he went a little further away….

"Well we've got one advantage-" Peter could barely hear Mr. Stark say, so he came closer, tugging Katya unnecessarily- as she was following him anyway- by the hand. "-He's coming to us." Mr. Stark paused for a moment, as if to think. "We'll use it. All right, I have a plan-" He turned, and Peter and Katya stepped up to circle up. "-or at least, the beginnings of one. It's pretty simple. We draw him in, pin him down, get what we need- definitely don't want to dance with this guy, we just want the gauntlet." His voice had taken on a clipped tone, as it did when his mind was working faster than his mouth, something Peter had grown used to.

Off to the side, where the burly figure and the antenned woman had gathered, the burly man let out a long, heavy yawn. Mr. Stark looked like he'd gotten slapped in the face. "Are you yawning? In the middle of this, while I'm breaking this all down, huh? Did you hear what I said?"

"I stopped listening after you said 'we need a plan."

"Okay, Mr. Clean is on his own page." Mr. Stark waved over at him dismissively.

"See, not winging it isn't really what they…do." The man from earth said this as if it was okay.

"So what exactly is it that they do?" Peter asked, enough frustration emanating from Mr. Stark that he was beginning to feel it himself.

The anntenaed woman spoke up. "Kick names, take ass." Yep, definitely not her first language. The burlier man agreed.

Mr. Stark sighed deeply, as if he was reconsidering involving any of them in the first place. "All right, just get over here, please." He turned to address the man from earth. "Mr. Lord, can you get your folks to circle up?"

The man let out half a half a laugh- Peter had no idea when they'd exchanged names, as he still didn't know who the hell anybody was- "'Mr. Lord'- Star-Lord is fine." They all drew closer until they were encircled around Mr. Stark.

"We gotta coalesce. Because if all we come at him with is a plucky attitude-"

"Dude-" Star-Lord interrupted. "Don't call us plucky, we don't know what it means."

Peter and Katya glanced at each other, Katya raising an eyebrow. Really?

Star-Lord continued. "All right, we're optimistic, yes. I like your plan. Except, it sucks, so let me do the plan, and that way, it might be really good."

"Tell them about the dance off to save the universe." The burlier man muttered.

"Like in 'Footloose', the movie?" Katya asked incredulously. Star-Lord's face lit up.

"Exactly like 'Footloose'! Is it still the greatest movie in history?"

"It never was." Peter shot Star-Lord a confused look.

"Don't encourage this, all right?" Mr. Star turned to him and Katya, "We're getting no help from Flash Gordon over here."

"Flash Gordon?!" The man asked, almost defensively, "By the way, that's a compliment. And don't forget, I'm half-human, so the fifty percent of me that's stupid, that's-" he gestured to them vaguely, "A hundred percent you."

"Your math is blowing my mind." Katya said flatly.

"Excuse me?" The anntenaed woman interrupted, "but does your friend often do that?"

Off to the side, Dr. Strange was sitting in a meditative stance again, this time a green light flowing between his hands, head jerking every which way at a pace no human neck should be able to accommodate.

"Strange! We all right?" Mr. Stark called, nearing him. It took a few more moments of Strange struggling before he was able to break his trance, gasping. Mr. Stark closed the space between them. "You're back," he assured him, "You're all right."

Katya and Peter exchanged glances, and all Katya could offer was a slight headshake and a ghost of a shrug.

"Hey, what was that?" Peter managed to ask, voicing what they were both thinking as he approached cautiously.

Dr. Strange's voice was shaky. "I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."

"How many did you see?" Star Lord sounded genuinely concerned for maybe the first time since they'd met him.

"14,000,605."

There was a beat before Mr. Stark asked the question none of them dared to. "And how many did we win?"

"One."