From beside Peter, Mazzy watches out the front... windshield? Do spaceships have windshields or are they called windows or what? Mazzy isn't sure. It doesn't matter, anyway. She's really just trying to distract herself from the harsh reality she's put herself into. The reality is that she's stuck in a spaceship who knows how far away from Earth, completely unsure of whether or not she's going to make it back home alive. And she knows that if she does make it back alive, she's going to get a very long lecture about doing as she's told and keeping herself out of danger. Mazzy is not looking forward to that.

Snapping Mazzy out of her thoughts, Peter nudges her shoulder. "Hey. What do you think our chances are of getting back home?" he asks her.

Mazzy thinks about it for a moment before shrugging. "I'll check," she says. Peter watches her turn towards her dad, who is busy bickering with Strange about something or other. "Dad!" she calls out. Tony turns to her. "If we get back home alive, can I go to school? Like, real school? Just, y'know, as a reward or something."

Surprisingly, Tony doesn't even scoff. He looks out the front of the ship and then back at Mazzy. "Sure, Maz. If we make it back, you can go to school," he answers with an exhausted tone to his voice, though he truly doesn't have a clue why she's so desperate to go to school when every other kid in the world is desperate to get out of school.

Blowing air out of the side of her mouth, Mazzy turns back to Peter. "Our chances are low," she informs him.

Peter nods solemnly before joining Tony and Strange in looking out the front of the ship. Some planet is getting closer and closer at a concerning speed, and it makes Peter's gut churn. It looks to him like they're in for a less-than-smooth landing. "Hey, what's going on?" he asks the two adults.

"I think we're here," Strange murmurs in response.

"I don't think this rig has a self-park function," Tony says, somewhat panicked. He steps backward, towards two large, metal glove-like contraptions that he can only hope are the controls, and snaps his fingers at Peter. "Get your hand inside the steering gimbal. Close those around it," Tony says awfully quickly. Peter rushes to one glove while Tony takes on the other. "You understand?"

"Uh, yep. Got it," Peter answers, though he sounds pretty unsure about it.

"This was meant for one big guy, so we gotta move at the same time."

"Okay, okay. Ready."

Mazzy steps up between Peter and her dad, looking at each of them with her eyebrows pinched together. Peter seems very anxious, like he has absolutely no idea what he's doing despite telling Tony he understands. And Tony just looks stressed, but that's not too different from what he always looks like when he's trying to save the world. The part that worries Mazzy the most is that she's pretty positive that they are about to crash the ship into one of the large structures on the surface of this orange-ish planet they're on.

"We might, uh, wanna turn," Peter says urgently. His voice is all high-pitched and nervous, and if they weren't potentially on a death mission, Mazzy would make fun of him for it. "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Peter shouts, as if Tony can't already hear him.

And they turn alright, just not in time to miss one of the structures. As their ship nicks the edge of the structure, Mazzy stumbles back and grabs onto her dad's arm to keep herself from falling, but it isn't long before all of them go tumbling to the floor, the ship rocking and shaking as it crashes. Little scraps of the ship fall like crumbs off of a sugar cookie, and soon, the ship is on the ground, scraping against the dirt and spitting up an enormous amount of dust. By the time the ship's momentum runs out and it stops gliding, it's only half of a donut. The other half is broken up into tiny bits throughout their path on to stop the ship.

Pushing her hair out of her face, Mazzy gets up off the ground to see Strange helping her dad up, too. "You guys suck at landing ships," she tells them irritatedly. "You didn't even come close to turning fast enough."

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you stepping up to do any better," Tony says to her. Mazzy crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at him. She would say something back, but he's absolutely right. So glaring will have to do the trick for now.

Mazzy gets slightly jump-scared when Peter lowers himself down behind her with one of his webs. He's lucky she didn't punch him square in the nose, scaring her like that. Instead, of punching him, Mazzy spins around to look at him, along with Tony and Strange.

"Let me just say, if aliens wind up implanting eggs in my chest or something, and I eat one of you, I'm sorry," Peter says all to seriously.

"What the hell does that mean?" Mazzy scoffs out, completely and utterly confused. What on Earth—not on Earth anymore, actually—could possess him to say something like that out of the blue?

Tony isn't too amused by it either. He points a disapproving finger at Peter. "I do not want another single pop culture reference out of you for the rest of the trip. You understand?" he says very sternly. He then points his other finger at Mazzy. "You, too."

"I didn't even say anything," Mazzy argues.

"I'm-" Peter interjects, still hanging upside down. "I'm trying to say that something is coming."

Mazzy resists the urge to roll her eyes. "You could've just said that."

Before Peter can even get a second to defend himself, a small, silver ball rolls to the center of their little gathering. The moment it stops, it suddenly explodes, and each and every one of them go flying backward. Mazzy flies backward so quickly that when her back slams against some piece of metal, she worries she might get paralyzed forever and ever, but luckily, it doesn't turn out like that. She's actually just a little achy afterward, if not perfectly fine. When she sits up and once again has to shove her curly mess of brown hair out of her face, she sees three people rush into the spaceship.

There looks to be two men and a woman, but Mazzy can't be positive from afar. The woman looks yellowy and has some sort of attend type thing on either side of her head, which is sort of cute and bug-like, while also being a little but terrifying. One of the men has a mask on over his face and is holding a type of blaster weapon that Mazzy has never seen before. The worst, though, is a big man who is a gray-ish color and screams very loudly the second he enters what's left of the donut ship.

"Thanos!" the gray-ish man screams as she whips a few knives in Strange's direction. Stephen easily blocks the knives with shields he conjured up using magic that Mazzy doesn't understand. And that only prompts the gray-ish man to come barreling towards him, but Strange's cape flies toward the gray man and knocks him to the floor.

After that, all hell breaks loose. The other man starts flying through the air and blasting shots in every direction. Mazzy watches her dad fly up to fight him, but is quickly distracted by the sight of the bug-like lady staring at Peter while he scrambles away from her, squealing something about eggs.

Mazzy then hears a slamming sound behind her and turns to see her dad stuck to a metal piece of the ship. She rushes over to him, leaving Peter alone to deal with the bug lady. "Dad! Did you already lose to that guy?" she asks as she approaches him.

"I didn't lose," Tony tells her. He gestures toward Peter. "Go help him! I got this!"

"Okay, I guess," Mazzy grumbles. She turns back around and rushes back to help Peter, although she had literally just come from him.

As it turns out, though, Peter really does need her help. He's being ganged up on, now, by the bug lady and the man with blasters. Peter shoots webs around the bug lady, making her fall to the ground, but as soon as he does, the blaster man starts firing shots at him. Peter starts crawling around the ship, dodging shot after shot, but when he makes his move to attack the blaster guy, the man tosses a device at him and he's suddenly got electric wires wrapped around him, stopping him from moving.

"Hey!" Mazzy shouts. The man turns in her direction, but she really doesn't have any plan other than to distract him. Maybe she could try taking his weapon? "Over here, idiot! You haven't got me yet."

"What the hell?" the blaster man murmurs. "Why are you normal?"

Mazzy isn't sure what he means by that, but she assumes he's talking about the fact that everyone else is dressed like some kind of freak while she's still just wearing her normal clothes. Anyway, she takes his moment of confusion as her chance to attack. She instantly rushes forward and rips one of his blasters from his hand, leaving him with only one. She hears him shout something, and when she stands up and points his own weapon at his head, she sees Peter being held right in front of the man's chest. Keeping her aim on the man, Mazzy looks around the ship to see why it's suddenly gotten quiet. Her dad has his foot on the gray man's chest and one hand is aimed at him while the other is aimed at the bug lady. Strange has a shield up and his looking around at each person, too.

The man with now only one blaster takes the initiative to speak first. "Everybody stay where you are! Chill the eff out!" he shouts. He presses something on his mask and it disappears from around his face. Unlike the other two he came with, he looks a lot like a human. "I'm gonna ask you this one time. Where is Gamora?"

Mazzy can't help but scoff out a laugh at that because who the hell is Gamora?

It seems her dad is thinking the same thing, too, because after letting his own mask disappear from his face, he says, "I'll do you one better. Who's Gamora?"

"I'll do you one better!" the gray man speaks from his spot on the ground. "Why is Gamora?

"Tell me where the girl is or I swear to you I'm gonna french fry this little freak," the blaster man says, pointing his weapon at Peter's head.

"Let's do it! You shoot my guy and I'll last him. Let's go!" Tony shouts.

"I also have a gun," Mazzy chimes, keeping it aimed at the man's head.

The hand of Tony's suit morphs into a larger and much scarier-looking gun, and he holds it even closer to the gray man's face. The gray man doesn't look very scared, though. "Do it, Quill! I can take it," he says.

"No, he can't take it!" the bug lady yells.

"She's right," Strange says matter-of-factly. "You can't."

This conversation has been going on for a minute or two now and Mazzy feels like she knows even less now than she did before. It's like these people are sucking her brain cells out of her head just by being in her presence. "Will you guys calm down? We don't even know who Gamora is!" she shouts at the three strangers.

The man holding Peter doesn't seem to care at all about what happens with his gray friend. He's still focused on whoever Gamora is. He shoves the gun even closer to the side of Peter's head. "Oh, yeah? You don't wanna tell me where she is? That's fine. I'll kill all four of you and I'll beat it out of Thanos myself! Starting with you," he says to Peter.

Strange's eyebrows furrow with confusion. "Wait, what? Thanos?" he murmurs. He huffs out a sigh. "Alright, let me ask you this one time. What master do you serve?" That's a weird way of putting it, Mazzy thinks to herself.

The man looks like he can't even believe the question, it sounds so stupid. "What master do I serve?" he echoes, his face all scrunched up and sour. "What, am I supposed to say Jesus?"

Tony gets a very annoyed and exhausted look on his face as he turns to make eye contact with Mazzy, but he also looks a little bit relieved that whoever they're fighting with isn't any more of Thanos's guys. He and Mazzy roll their eyes together before turning back to the idiot with Peter in his arm.

"You're from Earth," Tony says more as a statement than a question.

The man looks at him like he's stupid, even though he himself is really the stupid one. "I'm not from Earth. I'm from Missouri."

"Yeah, that's on Earth, dipshit," Tony retorts. "What're you hassling us for?"

"So you're not with Thanos?" Peter asks.

That prompts a good few seconds of very confused silence. Because Peter, Mazzy, Tony, and Strange all thought that these guys were with Thanos, while apparently the three strangers all thought that the other four were with Thanos. In reality, apparently all of them hate Thanos. Still, none of them let up on holding weapons to each other's heads.

"With Thanos?" the man questions like it's the most contradictory thing he's ever heard in his life. He looks at Peter like he's stupid. "No, I'm here to kill Thanos. He took my girl. Wait, who are you?" he asks in a fast rush of words.

Peter's mask finally disappears from around his own face, and now no one is masked anymore. "We're the Avengers, man," he tells the stranger.

Mazzy can't not smile at the reminder. She's an Avenger. A real, official Avenger now. So is Peter. It's crazy.

The stranger releases Peter from his hold and Mazzy lets her—or his, rather, considering she stole it from him—weapon drop down. Out of nowhere, the bug lady, who Mazzy had almost forgotten about, speaks with a bit of excitement. "You're the one Thor told us about!" she exclaims.

Tony and Mazzy's heads snap in the bug lady's direction. How could she possibly know Thor? It's been ages since he's been on Earth, sure, but out of all the places he could have been across the whole entire universe, he was with these guys? That's one hell of a coincidence. It sounds so unbelievable that it makes Mazzy suspicious that they're lying about everything, but at the same time, how else would they know about Thor or the Avengers, especially if they're from space? It all sort of checks out, no matter how sketchy it feels.

"You know Thor?" Tony questions with raised eyebrows and a look of disbelief.

"Yeah. Tall guy, not that good-looking, needed saving," the man says.

Peter and Mazzy both scrunch up their faces with confusion. "I don't know if we're talking about the same Thor," Mazzy murmurs.

Strange doesn't pay her comment any mind at all because what other Thor in space who mentioned the Avengers could they possibly be talking about? Instead, he keeps his focus on the matter at hand. "Where is he now?" he asks the strangers.

"Something about a hammer or whatever," the stranger says.

Mazzy nods with her lips pressed together. "Maybe we are talking about the same Thor. He really likes his hammer."

✮

As it turns out, the three strangers really do know Thor. They claim he was floating around half-dead and ran into their ship. He went with half of their crew to go get his hammer while the rest went on a mission to retrieve the man with blaster's girlfriend. The man with blasters calls himself Star-Lord, which makes Mazzy wonder if he came up with that himself because if he did, that makes it way less cool. The bug lady is called Mantis and the gray man is named Drax, but those are their actual names. Anyway, Gamora, as they mentioned earlier, is Star-Lord's girlfriend and Thanos took her for some reason. And the first step in getting her back would be defeating Thanos, and to defeat Thanos they need to figure out a plan.

So, the now group of seven make their way out of the half-donut ship and onto the surface of the planet they crash landed on. The ground and air all have a very orange-ish color that reminds Mazzy of the movies. It's really strange being off of the Earth. Mazzy has never felt like she's in a movie more. This is some sci-fi stuff, and she wishes she could be really excited about that, but unfortunately, she's only here to save the universe. It's not really the time to be excited about anything.

As the group wanders the seemingly abandoned planet, Star-Lord pulls out a small device and holds it up in the air. Mazzy doesn't know what it is or where he got it, but she's a bit impressed by all of the little gadgets he has on hand. Star-Lord doesn't seem too pleased by what the gadget is telling him, though. "What the hell happened to this planet? It's eight degrees off its axis. Gravitational pull is all over the place," he explains as they walk.

"We know just as little as you do, Star-Lord," Mazzy answers. He shoots her a glare, but she ignores it.

"We got one advantage. He's coming to us," Tony says as he looks around. Mazzy isn't exactly sure how that's an advantage, because to her, it sounds like they have nowhere to run if anything goes wrong, but she supposes her dad is right. "We'll use it. Alright, I have a plan. 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 wanna dance with this guy. We just want the gauntlet."

Tony, Peter, and Mazzy all turn when they hear a quiet yawning noise coming from behind them. Beside Mantis, Drax is yawning. Yawning like this is a very boring conversation and he wants to make it known.

"Are you yawning?" Tony asks him, his voice loud and tense. Peter and Mazzy she an amused look with each other, but hold back any real laughs. Tony isn't the least but amused. "In the middle of this? While I'm breaking it down? Huh? Did you hear what I said?"

Drax seems very confused as to why Tony is annoyed with him. He looks at Mantis, and then back at Tony. "I stopped listening after you said, 'We need a plan.'"

"Okay, Mr. Clean is on his own page," Tony mutters turning away from Mantis and Drax.

Star-Lord is very unsurprised by this behavior from Drax, which makes Mazzy think this isn't the first time this has happened. Why would he choose someone like that to be on his crew if they're trying to actually get stuff done? "See," Star-Lord says, "not winging it isn't really what they do."

"Uh, what exactly is it that they do?" Peter questions gesturing over to Drax and Mantis.

"Kick names, take ass," Mantis says quite confidently.

"Yeah, that's right," Drax adds.

"I think, actually, that's wrong," Mazzy tells them. She chews on her lip for a second, forcing herself not to laugh. It's really hard, though, because they clearly don't see at all that they're completely and utterly wrong. "You have it backwards."

When Mazzy turns to look at her dad to see if he's finding this amusing, too, all she sees on his face is a look of dispondance. Hopelessness. He's not saying anything, not looking at anything, and not doing anything. Just empty for a few seconds. Thinking through what is about to happen. Thinking through the graveness of this situation and trying to figure out how the hell they're going to win with these guys on their team. Thinking about what he has to lose; who he has to lose. Mazzy, Pepper, Peter, Happy, Rhodey, everyone back on Earth. All of their lives are at stake, and he can't promise that he can save them. He can't look his daughter in the eyes and know with certainty that she'll be there with him tomorrow.

Seeing the look on her father's face, Mazzy sort of shrinks in on herself. The seriousness begins to sink in, and it's terrifying.

Tony sighs. "Alright, just get over here, please. Mr. Lord, can you get your folks to circle up?" Mazzy can hear it in his voice. He's trying not to let the gravity of it all tear up every ounce of hope he has left, but it weighs heavy on him.

"Mr. Lord," Star-Lord mocks, rolling his eyes and tilting his head to the side. "Star-Lord is fine." He nods at Drax and Mantis and they reluctantly join the others in a semi-circle to listen to the plan.

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

"Dude," Star-Lord interrupts Tony. "Don't call us plucky. We don't know what it means. Alright, 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 him about the dance-off to save the universe," Drax interjects.

"Dance-off?" Mazzy questions, trying not to let her face show her judgement.

"What dance-off?" Tony asks.

Star-Lord is immediately a bit frazzled. He shakes his head. "It's not- It's not a- a... it's nothing," he murmurs, his words all melting into each other awkwardly.

"Like in Footloose, the movie?" Peter asks him. That's a movie Mazzy has yet to see.

"Exactly like Footlose," Star-Lord replies, excitement lighting up on his face. It's like he can't believe anyone else knows what Footloose is, but it's not like it's a super indie, underground movie, as far as Mazzy knows. He is quite the strange guy. "Is it still the greatest movie in history?" he asks Peter.

Peter shakes his head. "It never was."

"Don't encourage this, alright?" Tony says to him.

"Okay."

"We're getting no help from Flash Gordon here."

Star-Lord has some sort of argumentative reply to the comment, but by that point, Mazzy has already tuned herself out of the conversation. She's already listened to a monumental amount of bickering between her dad and the rest of the Avengers, and she isn't looking to hear any more of it. It's exhausting and a waste of time. Instead, Mazzy turns her attention to Mantis, who is staring at something with very wide eyes—super wide, actually, since Mantis's eyes are already considerably large.

Mazzy follows Mantis's eyeline to figure out what she's looking at, and as it turns out, she's looking right at Strange. For good reason, too. Strange is sitting—possibly floating—crosslegged off to the side, and his head is thrashing and turning every which way so quickly that Mazzy can't even tell if what she's seeing is real.

"Excuse me," Mantis interrupts the men's conversation. "But does your friend often do that?"

"No," Mazzy answers in a whisper.

Everyone turns to stare at Strange, and Tony even shouts his name. "Strange! We alright?" he asks, concerned. Strange doesn't give any answer.

As the group approaches him, they can see that the stone in his necklace is glowing a bright green, the color wraps around his body like a shawl. His head doesn't stop moving at a very concerning rate, but at least if it's the power from his necklace that he's using, they can assume it's intentional. Hopefully.

By the time Tony gets to his side, Strange snaps out of whatever trance he was on with a yelp. He falls to the ground, because he was floating after all, and Tony tries to ground him and get him to calm down.

"You're back. You're alright," Tony says and Strange fights to catch his breath.

"What was that?" Mazzy questions from behind her dad.

"I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict," Strange explains.

"How many did you see?" Star-Lord asks him.

"14,000,605."

"How many did we win?" Tony asks.

Strange doesn't answer—not at first, anyway. He stares at Tony, something distant in his eyes, before sparing a glance at Mazzy. He takes another breath before giving his answer.

"One."

The word hits Mazzy like a bus, almost knocking the wind out of her. One. With the long, solemn silence, she sort of expected a disappointingly small number, but not one. The chances that they actually win this fight are 1 in 14,000,605. What could they possibly do for that one chance to come to fruition? And what are the chances that they actually get it right?

Almost none.

Mazzy holds back the lump in her throat. They are going to lose. It's almost certain.

💫⭐️💫⭐️

this chapter is lots of filler and i don't like it but i had to write it or else i'd be stuck procrastinating forever. sorry folks