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"Come on, tell me what's bothering you so I can be happy about it."
Compassion… seemed to be something Arthur didn't possess in the slightest.
Star-Lord rolled his eyes and said irritably, "Alright, to put it simply, Nebula's goal is to beat Gamora."
"That shouldn't be too hard, right?" Arthur said.
"If you said that in front of Gamora, I'd salute you as a real man!" Star-Lord glared at him.
Arthur sighed helplessly. "Who taught you to talk in all this in shitty slang?"
"You---"
"…"
Arthur waved a hand. "Don't waste time with useless talk. I get it, Nebula wants to defeat Gamora. And then?"
"And then they fought, obviously," Star-Lord said. "At first, we were all nervous about it, but Nebula got beaten pretty quickly. Then she got even angrier."
"And then?"
"And then they started preparing for round two…" Star-Lord spread his hands. "You can guess the result, right?"
Arthur tilted his head at him. "Just get to the freaking point."
"Alright, alright. After seeing them duel every few days, we gradually stopped feeling nervous… and once we relaxed, we realized something: beating Gamora was Nebula's obsession. If she could do it just once, maybe everything would change. So, we even tried persuading Gamora behind her back to go easy on her."
"Did Gamora listen?"
"She did," Star-Lord sighed. "And then Nebula got even angrier and thought that Gamora was insulting her."
"That's… a little tricky," Arthur said.
"Told you!" Star-Lord said. "She wants to win, but she won't let her opponent hold back, and there's a huge gap in their abilities. There's just no way it'll happen!"
"…No, I meant insulting Nebula might actually be the tricky part," Arthur said.
"…I'm being serious here!" Star-Lord glared. "How are you even more unreliable than me?"
"Wow, you actually realize you're unreliable…" Arthur shook his head. "Where are they now?"
"Off dueling again," Star-Lord said helplessly.
Arthur's mouth twitched. Clearly, everyone here had gotten used to it, two people could be off fighting to the death, and the rest would just go about their day.
"I've got it!!!!" Drax suddenly shouted in excitement.
Arthur, Star-Lord, and T'Challa, who practically had "I'm just here to watch" written all over his forehead, looked at Drax.
"You're that Earth kid!!!!" Drax rushed over with excitement and hugged Arthur hard. "It's been so long! How have you been?"
"…I've been fine." Arthur gave a stiff smile. "And it's obvious you're doing fine too."
"Hahaha!" Drax said. "You're my friend!"
Arthur glanced at Star-Lord in confusion. Star-Lord shook his head helplessly. "His memory hasn't been great lately. He's been… jumpy like this all the time."
Arthur was about to say something when T'Challa bumped his shoulder.
Looking over, he saw T'Challa staring in a certain direction. Following his gaze, Arthur spotted someone peeking at them from behind a wall.
It was a woman, and the most distinctive feature was the pair of small antennae on her forehead.
"And that is…?" Arthur asked, pretending not to know.
"Mantis. Uh… I'm not quite sure how to introduce her. She's kind of like my father's… housekeeper?" Star-Lord said.
Arthur smiled at the words and gave Mantis a small nod.
The woman instantly reacted as if she'd been startled, quickly ducking back out of sight.
"This kind of reaction… is she afraid of me?" Arthur touched his own face, not feeling that there was anything scary about him at all.
Shaking his head, he didn't dwell on it. The Eye of Horus, which had sunk underground, also returned with nothing to report.
It hadn't found any path to explore beneath the surface.
"Alright, forget about all that," Star-Lord said, brushing off the string of interruptions and apparently forgetting what he'd been about to say earlier. Patting Arthur on the shoulder, he grinned. "Come on, it's rare to meet up. Tonight we drink until we drop."
Arthur didn't really mind either way. Pulling T'Challa along, he went with Star-Lord to drink.
Since "Planet Dad" wasn't home, this wasn't the time for unnecessary talk. More importantly, Arthur still needed time to probe the underground. The first attempt had failed, and he wasn't sure if he could find Ego's location any faster next time.
After the reunion, as was natural, the group sat down to swap stories.
Because the location wasn't exactly ideal, Arthur only gave a vague account, without explaining everything.
Star-Lord, on the other hand, had plenty to say. His life was full of color, wandering across the universe, taking all kinds of quests. He explained how he'd first met Ego while on a job, and then, on the way out, couldn't resist stealing a few things. That led to him being hunted with no way to escape, until Ego showed up and saved him at the last moment…
By the time he finished telling the whole story, night had already fallen outside.
Star-Lord arranged a place for Arthur and T'Challa to rest, then went back to his own room.
Arthur, however, had no intention of sleeping. After Star-Lord left, he sat on the bed and began to think…
First, there was Ego! To be honest, from an outsider's perspective, Ego was an incredibly over-the-line existence.
Not only had he scattered his "seeds" across countless worlds, he'd also killed many of his own children. Star-Lord's mother had been one of his victims.
And this "planet"… had an astonishing ambition, he intended to "plant" himself everywhere in order to conquer the universe! Honestly, even now, Arthur still didn't understand this part.
Why would a planet want to conquer the universe? What meaning did that hold for him?
He had produced so many children in hopes that one of them could inherit his "godlike" powers, so that in the endless years ahead, he wouldn't be lonely.
But conquering the universe had nothing to do with that! Still, whether it made sense or not, it was something Ego would do. From Arthur's standpoint, being conquered by Thanos was already unacceptable, let alone by a giant ball!
"So right now… the question is how to make Star-Lord understand all of this."
Whether in a straight fight or by sneak attack, Star-Lord was a combat asset he absolutely needed. So the first thing he had to do was make Star-Lord realize, this Planet Dad wasn't a "good planet," but a rotten one!
Just as he was mulling over the problem, Arthur's ears twitched slightly. He looked toward the doorway, and the Eye of Horus shot out instantly.
Through it, he saw a woman with two small antennae on her head staring at it in terror. The moment she realized she'd been spotted, she spun around and fled!
(End of this chapter)