The "G" Shield

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Ego's orbit [July 2015]

–Jack Sullivan–

The distance between their previous l; location and Ego's main body was not long or rather, the far more probable thing was that the ship they were in, was just much more advanced than the normal spaceships. It should be, considering it was powered completely by cosmic energy. 

The spatial manipulation inside the ship was probably a direct result of cosmic energy manipulation but it had none of the finesse that he had read about, in the libraries of Kamar Taj, well, the restricted section of Kamar Taj. He was given access, after he had a problem himself to be strong enough to become the Sorcerer Supreme, in a reality where freaks of nature like the Ancient One and Stephen Strange didn't exist.

Seriously, he was stronger than like half of all Sorcerer Supreme that existed before the Ancient One but she had raised the bar so high that it would be all but impossible to become the Sorcerer Supreme and surpass her in, strength, diplomacy, and more importantly, the sheer length for which she protected the planet.

Man, he was really going to miss her when she inevitably died, something of a "fixed" point in time, according to her. She was the strongest protector of Humanity but she was also the dam that held back the river that was human potential. Unless and until she left, the true potential of the next generation of humanity would never get the chance to show itself, and according to the mad woman, she didn't have the strength to defeat Thanos.

No, not magical prowess but the strength of mind. The mindset required to defeat Thanos in a way so that the Abstracts of the universe were fulfilled.

He shook his head, his mind once again going on a tangent, as they watched the ship go through a wave of golden light that passed over all of them. His brows furrowed as he watched Thor's intangible, invisible shroud of lighting become visible for a moment and his body to be covered in his barriers, they were just much brighter than their normal settings.

Gamora had a slight purple sheen on her body, with Drax's body bulging with veins showing. Rocket's brain glowed a bit and Groot's body began sprouting multiple saplings instantaneously.

His gaze met Thor's who didn't react much to the wave of light so he didn't react negatively as well. He was sure that Ego would be with them soon enough. Judging by the reactions of everyone's bodies, the wave probably had something to do with figuring out the powers of everyone on the ship.

It was not present in the movies but hey, things could change. He was sure that this way, Ego must have confirmed that Quill had confirmed Celestial's parentage, allowing him to go ahead with his plan.

A moment later, Ego arrived in the room they were occupying, with a noticeably more confused Quill in tow. The smile on Ego's face was all the answer he needed about what the wave was and what the consequences of that piece of information were.

"Sorry for that, folks. It's just a part of the security measures. Now, why don't we?" Ego talked to them with a smile as the ship began descending on the planet. If he focused his gaze, he could see the faint outline of a face, with mountains and rivers and all the textures they created.

Soon, the ship landed in the middle of a forest, with nothing in sight. They all alighted the ship, only for some of them to be shocked as they saw a literal pathway, appear from the ground, with stairs and ominous blue lights and everything.

"Now, this will take you all to your guest quarters, Rexo" Ego told them before he snapped his fingers, causing a piece of the ship to detach itself and then float in front of them, eventually turning into a small robot with humanoid features. "-Rexo here will guide you. Now, if you will excuse me, we have some family things to discuss," Ego put his hands over Quill's shoulder as he led Quill away from all of them.

Damn that bastard.

He took one look at the so-called Rexo, who was still smiling but now the smile looked much more ominous, and at the passage that led to the so-called "guest quarters". Yeah, right. More like some dungeon.

Now, he could have taken some aggressive route and attacked Ego right on the spot but the knowledge that any sort of energy manipulation would set off the Celestial stopped him. Besides, wasn't Ego's brain deep in the planet as well?

"Lead right on, Rexo," He declared cheerfully as he nudged the robotic being to go ahead. Thor followed suit, without any question, but he could feel the glares from the rest of the Guardians but knowing that he was their best shot at survival and also strong enough to wrangle them all into submission, they gingerly followed in his footsteps.

Surprisingly, it was not a dungeon with ambush attempts awaiting at the edge of the staircase, which was not a staircase at all. It was an escalator that activated as soon as Drax, the last person in their line, stepped foot on it. It whisked them quite deep into the planet and led them now into the huge hall that expanded as far as his eyes could see.

It would seem that Ego's body did not have the pesky limitations of having an inner and outer core with molten metal coursing through the layers.

No, the perks of being one of the very few beings capable of commanding cosmic energy itself meant that Ego could create whatever he wanted, only limited by his imagination, and looking at the very sterile hall, his imagination was lacking indeed.

Only a few beds, with storage units and white hospital lights, littered the massive hall. He could see a very sparse kitchen but he had a hunch that this space was created like, very recently, possibly just for them.

"These will be your temporary Living quarters," Rexo announced to them before the little bastard dipped its head at them before just melting into the ground.

"Oh shit" Rocket swore as he backup several steps from the white goo which then disappeared into the similarly white ground, the spot wobbling for a moment before it returned to its pristine white flooring/

"What the? Are the little freaks everywhere?" Rocket drew a comically oversized gun of some sort and pointed it at the floor while jumping on Groot's shoulder who similarly looked warily at their surroundings.

He let his barriers spread all around him and as they breached the floor below him, he realised that Rocket was right. The flooring was not a single material, it was billions of small things coming together to create the entire space.

Nanotech, or some other cosmic energy manipulation? 

Never mind that.

He created a large barrier around all of them, turning to Thor who understood his message and nodded, holding Mjolnir in one hand.

"So, I assume Quill knows nothing then?" He turned to Gamora who sported a conflicted look on her face but still nodded. He turned to Rocket and GFroot who looked very confused, "Rocket, I assume you know that Quill's father is the bad buy here?" 

Rocket scowled fiercely and then reloaded his gun, which was somewhat redundant since he was pretty sure that the entire gun was completely energy based, judging by the intense white glow that made Rocket's face glow menacingly.

"Drax, follow Rocket's lead," He ordered Drax who nodded at that, and then let the barrier fade away.

"Rexo?" He called out, unsure if anybody would answer or not.

It had been a little bit over half an hour since they were separated from Quill. This much time should be more than enough for Ego to give Quill the whole they were gods spiel and try and turn him into a celestial battery.

He received no reply. He shared a tense look with Thor who clenched Mjolnir just a tad bit tighter. Movement caught his eyes as he turned to the entrance of the hall, which had just now closed up. The white lights in the room were now replaced with red as Rexo, with a vastly different form rose up from the ground, towering over all of them, with its humanoid features being the same as before.

The rest of the body was now over 10 ft tall with energy blasters glowing menacingly on each hand, with multiple such cannons just waiting to be unleashed on them, resting on Rexo's back.

"Tony warned me that the robot uprising will come sooner rather than later," He muttered to himself, surprising himself with a quip before he waved his hand, creating a large barrier around them, before he created a large drill above the barrier, in the direction of the surface.

It might have shortened the amount of work they needed to be done if he had just tunnelled to the chamber where Ego kept his head but that would tip him off and there was no guarantee that Ego was distracted at the moment or not. So, with a negligible wave of his hand, they rocketed upwards, with the drill working overtime to dig through the surprisingly hard rock, even as another barrier sheet flattened to ridiculous levels slicked straight through Rexo's current body, before repairing the same thing a hundred times over, creating a sliced Rexo, if you will.

What the fuck was the material made of, Titanium? He thought to himself as he felt the resistance being significantly more than he imagined it to be. He still couldn't let his full powers out on display because he did not want Ego to turn tail and run.

With his ability to manipulate cosmic energy, there was no telling where he might run off to and hide, with Quill in tow. He might just win that way because as far as he could tell, the connection to each of the "seeds" he had planted was not bound to the distance in any way. So, all he needed was another battery, Quill, and he would win, voila.

Well, not on his watch, he thought to himself as with a shower of dirt, they burst out of the land, only for a sea of green to immediately assault all their barriers. He could sense the pulse of cosmic energy that made him falter momentarily as the plants managed to eat through some of his barriers before he turned them into the cutting variety and began acting as the gardener of this place.

He hadn't expected Ego to take such drastic measures. Save for a couple dozen people in the universe, not many could confidently stand against cosmic energy being actively channelled against them, not without outside protection and he was still one of them. Even then, 3 of his 7 layer barriers were shredded upon contact with the plants.

Thor and the rest were still looking around, with his barriers keeping all of them safe and secure. His barriers told him that the plants were trying to bury them all, back into the same hole from where they burst, with Rexo somehow still alive.

Duh. Bullshit nanotech.

He narrowed his eyes as he let the plants take them a bit below before he cast a spell, something that would be so blatant to someone like Ego, that it might as well be him shouting for Ego to come attack them. That was why he had refrained from casting any number of spells that he could have cast on Quill that would have updated him about Quill's current status.

His neck snapped to the left as he could feel two massive, one dwarfing the other, energy signatures, a bit underground but still reachable to the surface.

He waited a bit as, with another cosmic pulse, the plants redoubled their efforts to chew them all alive. He could feel Thor's latent lighting, bubbling under his body, just dying to let loose and char everything around Thor to ash. 

Come on! Come on! 

His eyes widened as he received the second ping, confirming something for him and also making things very much easier for him. He let loose his powers, not quite transforming into his powered up state but close as he changed the shape of his barrier, covering the rest of the Guardians in another unit while he created a small rectangular block on the ground, right in front of Thor.

"Do it," He nodded to Thor who reared Mjolnir's back, lightning flashing across the surface of the enchanted Uru hammer before he slammed the hammer on the block with all his might. His back arched as the entire area around them was now just a molten pit as Thor's lightning had incinerated everything around them to the point not even ashes were left.

He turned around, his vision tinged with blue, to see Rexo's dying form, flickering in and out of solid forms, apparently on the verge of death.

"Oh, you poor thing!" He pitied the clearly very artificial creature and raised his arm. With the gesture, the barriers around them molded to his wishes, forming a ball of energy right in front of his palm, crackling with lightning.

"Sorry, the robot uprising is postponed, indefinitely," Well, the dialogue delivery was not as impactful as he wanted it to be as the ball of energy was blasted from his hand, carving a deep trench in the ground, leaving molten lava behind them.

It was not remiss of him that even after Ego had clearly fortified everything to hell and back, energy from one of Thor's hammer swings was enough to turn an area hundreds of meters into what can only be called a molten pit.

Even still, the energy was still there, as potent as ever. From his calculation, he could do one more attack of that calibre before it fizzled out. Damn, Thor could act as a very potent battery for him in the final battle.

His thoughts flashed through his mind as the barrier tore through the wind, hundreds of trees that tried to appear in their path before they reached a relatively clear patch of land.

Well, time to spend the leftover energy then, he grinned to himself as he let loose the stored energy right into the clearing, under which he could sense the two massive energy signatures. The result was immediate, a mushroom cloud as a huge cavern was revealed to them, remnants of a shield flickering before the forms of Ego and Quill were revealed to them.

Quill looked like he had been through hell, parts of his face being flaked off, revealing sparking blue energy beneath while Ego looked at them, a snarl on his face as he thrust both his hands at them. His eyebrows rose as he felt a push, a telekinetic push, something that would have easily drowned entire islands back on Earth, crashing into his barrier. His barriers tanked the attack, with some of the energy being absorbed, the flavour of cosmic energy in his attacks being very distinctive to his senses.

For someone with so much power, Ego sure was lacking in imagination.

"Groot, Rocket, get to work," he whispered to the rest of the Guardians before he dispelled the barriers, dropping all of them in the cavern, with intricate displays on the walls around them, all of them being 3D with moving characters in various intimate positions.

Groot landed on the ground with a thud, his roots immediately digging deep, with Rocket firing at all the plants that once again began attacking them. Quill seemed to be dazed as Ego chose to fight him and Thor, at once, by himself.

Big Mistake.

He grinned as Thor's punch cleanly launched Ego's head off his body, with a thin line of blue energy the only thing keeping it connected to his body, something that Thor rectified as he smashed the body with Mjolnir, nearly destroying the body, before similar arcs of energy crawled through the ground, empowering Ego's avatar.

Ego's avatar was only halfway formed before he was subjected to a barrage of nearly mono molecular blades that created perfectly sliced cubes of his form.

Gamora and Drax were trying to reach Quill, something that Ego noticed.

"No!" Ego's voice had taken a monstrous hue as he lunged at Quill, only to be stopped in his place by a barrier of lightning that surrounded his form, the Crown Prince of Asgard standing in his path.

The lightning, both kept outside arcs from reaching the avatar, stopped the avatar from interfering and also continuously damaged it, just enough for it to hurt. Some godly mumbo jumbo must be afoot because he could not sense Ego creating any other pulses of cosmic energy, something that he was realising was the necessary trigger for him to do anything with the planet, essentially.

He shook his head. God, what a fool.

He purposefully let some of the plants drag Gamora and Drax behind, only letting them be unharmed because he could not let Ego be desperate. Thor was also aware of that so he let the lightning cage dissipate much earlier and let one of Ego's attacks hit him, throwing him back into the ground, arcs of Blue Cosmic energy lingering on his form, before his entire body was cuffed to the ground with the same Cosmic energy.

He gulped at that. That kinda looked painful.

"Useless!" Ego roared once again, the voice seemingly reverberating throughout the planet as he waved his hands once again, lashing out at Gamora and Drax with arcs of Cosmic energy that their barriers barely stopped, rendering them unconscious.

Seeing his comrades "hurt", he seemingly went mad with rage, as a giant Gandum manifested all around him, nearly destroying the cavern as he let the avatar rampage all around him. He let Ego secure Quill because as long as Quill was still in his sight, he was all but in his pocket.

"Begone!" Ego lashed out once again, and he let his Gundam stagger back before he once again punched the ground near Ego, letting the Celestial avatar jump around, attacking his avatar.

He let his anguished emotions show on his face, as well as fear and anxiety radiate out through his mind, a trick he learned in Kamar Taj used to shadow one's emotions from emotion-eating Demons.

This was good.

Time and time again, he let the Gundam get beaten back, before attacking Ego with all his might, seemingly. Thor, along with the rest of the Guardians were swept to the side as he bore all of Ego's attacks, which were heavy but nothing like the ones from Gamma Hulk's energy leeching abilities that were also empowered by the Scarlet Witch.

The fool was a celestial but he was no better than a human in mind.

He hadn't even noticed that Rocket and Groot were both missing, with Groot's roots allowing him to dig deep into the planet. He had full barriers on Rocket and the torso and head of Groot, so he knew that they were so far completely undetected.

Rocket had 3 moon breakers in his possession, something totally overkill but hey, ain't nothing as overkill if it could kill a universal madman.

Now, all he had to do was keep Ego occupied and more importantly, feeling that victory was in his grasp, while Groot and Rocket did their job.

Their plan worked, a grin threatened to slip past his carefully constructed emotional wrap over his true mind.

Nothing could go wrong at this point. Victory was in their hands.

...

…..

….

'Fuuuuuuuc–'

Word Count - 3330

A/N - Murphy's a bitch, huh?

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