They walked back toward the castle when the balcony conversation started.
Star-Lord was leaning on the railing, looking out at the planet — the river valleys, the colored bubbles drifting up from somewhere in the forest, the light doing something particular to the atmosphere that made everything look like a painting of itself.
"All of this might be mine someday," he said.
Smith looked at him. "Only if you outlive a god."
Gamora said nothing, but the expression she wore was the one she used when she'd thought of something she wasn't going to say yet.
Her communicator chimed.
She took it out, tapped play, and Rocket's face appeared on the projected screen.
He looked extremely uncomfortable — the kind of discomfort that comes from having completed too many consecutive space jumps — and extremely excited, which was not a combination his face was designed for.
"Quill. Gamora. You are not going to believe this." He paused for emphasis. "Collect all seven Dragon Balls, make any wish. Any wish. The resurrection on Earth — the New York one, during the Chitauri invasion — that was this. That was the Dragon Balls." Another pause. "We need that championship. We need to be at that tournament."
He took a breath.
"Also — Yondu says Quill is in danger. He didn't explain. I don't know why. Just — don't be stupid about the father who appeared out of nowhere. I've fixed the ship. I'm coming. Our goal is the Dragon Balls."
The recording ended.
Star-Lord and Gamora looked at Smith.
Smith looked back at them with the mild expression of a man who is slightly impressed by how quickly someone found classified information using alien technology and Earth's open internet.
He'd underestimated Rocket's capability. He was revising that estimate now.
"Any wish," Gamora said.
"With conditions," Smith said. "I won't authorize wishes involving mass death, planetary destruction, or anything comparable. Everything else goes through a review."
Star-Lord straightened from the railing. "What if someone wanted to be a planetary lord?"
"Achievable."
"What about planetary lord of, say, thirty planets?"
"Also achievable."
Star-Lord looked at the horizon and was quiet for a moment, doing mental math. Then: "What if someone wanted to eliminate half of all life in the universe?"
Gamora looked at the floor.
Star-Lord looked at Gamora.
Smith looked at Gamora.
"That's not your wish," Smith said.
"No," she said. "It's not."
Star-Lord waited.
Gamora looked up. "That's Thanos's goal."
Star-Lord stared at her. "That's what he—" He stopped. Started again. "Half the universe. He wants to eliminate half of all life in the universe."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Smith waited, also curious — curious specifically to see which answer Gamora had.
She looked at the river valley below. "To please a woman," she said.
Star-Lord was quiet for a moment.
Then: "What."
"He's been doing it for years," Gamora said. "Conquering planets, reducing populations by half. Each one an offering. I found out by accident — I'd always assumed there was an ideology behind it, resources and sustainability, something that at least made a brutal kind of logic. But it's devotion." She shook her head slightly. "To a woman he's never introduced me to. I've never seen her. I only know she exists because of what I found."
Star-Lord looked at Smith. "Who is she?"
Smith thought about the comic version of Thanos — the Eternal-Titan hybrid with the particular affliction of being in love with the abstract embodiment of death itself. The goddess Death, who received his gifts and was always, by her nature, pleased and never satisfied. An audience that would never walk away.
"I don't know," he said, which was true in the sense that he didn't know which version of the situation was operating here.
"We kill her," Star-Lord said. "Whoever she is, we find her and we kill her and then Thanos doesn't have a reason anymore."
"I've thought about that," Gamora said. "The problem is that if she's the reason and not an ideology, then killing her doesn't end it — it just gives him a different reason." She looked at Star-Lord. "Grief is worse than devotion."
Star-Lord didn't have an answer to that.
"The Dragon Balls," Gamora said. She looked at Smith. "Thanos cannot get access to them. That's more important than the Infinity Stones, in a way — the Gauntlet requires all six to work, but a Dragon Ball wish requires only winning a tournament and getting through your review." She held his gaze. "And if the dragon can grant any wish—"
"I won't approve it," Smith said.
"Can he grant it if someone gets past you?"
Smith was quiet for a moment.
"The current Dragon ball could fulfill the wish," he said. "Whether anyone can get past me to authorize it is a different question."
Gamora nodded slowly. "Then make sure no one does."
"I intend to."
Star-Lord looked at his hands.
The divine power came when he called it now — not instantly, not with precision, but there when he reached for it, settling into his palms with the particular weight of something that had always been waiting. He turned it over in his hands and let it go.
"Rocket said I'm in danger," he said. "Yondu said I'm in danger. Neither of them explained."
Gamora tried the communicator. No answer — Rocket was either mid-jump or had thrown the device across the cockpit again. She left a message.
"What danger would I be in from my own father?" Star-Lord looked at his hands again. "I've been here one day. I've discovered I actually have divine power. He wants me here. Why would he—"
Smith thought about a cave full of bones.
He thought about what Ego actually wanted from Peter Quill — not a son in any ordinary sense, but a power source. The Expansion required two Celestials to complete, and Peter was the first child in Ego's long history to have inherited the ability to channel divine power. Without Peter, the Expansion would remain a permanent ambition. With Peter, it became achievable.
And what happened to tools that were no longer useful, Ego had demonstrated at length.
"Rocket knows something we don't," Smith said. "Yondu knows something we don't. Between the two of them, the answer is probably connected to what Ego actually wants from you, rather than what he's told you he wants." He looked at Star-Lord evenly. "Stay alert. Don't let the fact that it's working blind you to the possibility that there are conditions on it working."
Star-Lord looked at the planet spread out below the balcony.
"He told me to keep developing it," Star-Lord said. "The divine power. He said I'd need it to help him with something. He called it his 'expansion' — something about making meaning." He frowned. "He didn't get specific."
Smith kept his expression neutral.
"Keep practicing," he said. "It's worth having regardless of what it's for." A pause. "And if anything feels wrong, tell me immediately."
Star-Lord looked at him. "You're the strongest person on Earth and you came to visit a planet that turns out to be a living god, and you're telling me to alert you if something goes wrong."
"Yes," Smith said.
Star-Lord looked at his hands one more time. The light in his palms came up easily now, settling into a steady sphere that didn't require effort to maintain. He held it there and looked at it.
"Okay," he said.
Meanwhile, in deep space, Rocket was somewhere in the two hundreds on his jump sequence and had long since stopped feeling his face.
Groot, in the seat beside him, said "Groot" in the tone of genuine concern.
"I'm fine," Rocket said, through what were technically his teeth. "Keep counting."
The Milano jumped again.
Yondu's ship was making better time but not comfortable time. Fifty-node jump sets, rest, repeat. The raiders had stopped complaining out loud, which meant they'd reached the point where complaining required energy they didn't have.
After the fourth set, one of his crew said, from the floor where he was currently lying: "Boss. The cut's gotta change after this. This is not a standard retrieval."
"Ninety-one," Yondu said.
The raider stared at the ceiling. "Did you say ninety-one?"
"Quill gets nine. We get ninety-one." Yondu looked at the star chart. "He'll know what's good for him."
The raider did the math and decided that nine percent of seven hundred million was still seven hundred million Star Coins more than he currently had.
"...Okay," he said.
Yondu looked at the coordinates. Ego's planet was still a long way out. He thought about the cave full of bones he'd heard about from a source he'd never entirely trusted until right now.
He thought about a kid he'd found on Earth thirty years ago, small and scared and useful for getting into places adults couldn't reach, and he thought about what Ego had sent Yondu to collect and what Yondu had decided to do with the delivery instead.
"Faster," he said.
"Boss, we literally cannot—"
"Faster," he said.
The navigator started pushing the jump intervals.