18 Arc V Infinity War - Thanos and his kids come to play

Ten days later, the Ark of Asgard, as they began calling the Asgardian spaceship, had left their communications range. Eli and Loki were playing a game of mystical hide and seek, annoying everybody on the ship.

After Loki's first ever win, Thor, Loki, and Eli relaxed in Thor's cabin with a few drinks.

"Do you really think it is wise to go to Earth?"

"Yeah, sure. The people of Earth love me," Thor nodded along.

"Okay, let me rephrase that. Is it wise for ME to go to Earth?" Loki inquired.

"We'll just have to bully some governments. No worries, I already have a headstart on that when I threatened the UN after they signed the Sokovia Accords," Eli added nonchalantly from the side.

"God. of. mischief." Thor pronounced from the side with a laugh.

"Uh, it wasn't quite mischief. They had actually caused my girlfriend at the same to permanently lose her memories in some inhumane experiment where they cut out her brain to see if it would grow back," Eli explained with a shrug.

Thor and Loki looked at Eli with a dazed look, but before any of them could console Eli, they noticed that a shadow had grown in the room from something that apparently appeared outside the window they stood before.

All three looked at the gigantic spaceship outside many times the size of theirs in horror. Thor released the bracelet he had gotten from Eli in the fight against Hela, Loki took out two daggers, and Eli released all his armor pieces and Shatterstar. But none of it mattered.

In a salvo of a good two-dozen missiles, their ship was immediately ripped apart. Their cabin depressurized because of a broken window where a piece of the ship blasted through, so Eli moved his father and uncle outside in the hallway and closed the door to the cabin.

Loki looked a little disheveled, but both Eli and Thor were already wounded. Eli was littered in small cuts and burns all over his body, while Thor looked much the same, except he had already broken a few bones, courtesy of the the big piece of space ship hull that had shattered their window in the cabin.

"We have to get to the main hall and coordinate the rescue and defense of our people," Eli shouted as he dragged his father forward. Another missile landed close to them and shattered the hallway they were in, once again exposing them to the vacuum of space.

When they finally arrived in the main hall, there were four alien warriors present that Eli recognized as children of Thanos. In mere moments, they had already defeated all the likely unprepared Asgardians with a host of Chitauri warriors. There were no Asgardians left standing, not even Heimdall, who was bleeding in the middle of the hall.

Ebony Maw, an ugly, gray-skinned psychic with a stuck-up old-man vibe. Cull Obsidian, a reptilian version of the Hulk wielding a gigantic pickaxe. Proxima Midnight, a deadly, horned assassin who wields a three-pronged, double-ended spear and her husband, Corvus Glaive. A man who delights in torture and chose his last name based on his favorite weapon, a glaive with many extra serrated blades to inflict the most pain possible.

The Statesman, their spacehip, kept getting hit with by more missiles non-stop. Eli could clearly see that some of the ship's lifeboats were deployed with their people inside, but even they kept getting shot.

Eli's eyes started glowing in anger. He unleashed his sword and flew toward the closest member of the Black Order, another name for the faction those four followers of Thanos belonged to.

He surprised Corvus with his speed and managed to land a good hit, cutting deep into his shoulder. He had aimed for where his heart should be, but Corvus was a trained fighter and even in surprise could react to survive still.

A fast-paced fight kept raging on as Eli used his overwhelming speed, agility, and magic to cut the glaive-wielder in many places. Eventually, Proxima joined in, seeing her husband on the backfoot. In an instant where he left an afterimage of his sword in place with magic, Eli managed to cut off one of Corvus' legs above the knee. But his actions, and Ebony Maw weakening his footing, resulted in a backhand slap from Proxima that made Eli drop to one knee.

While this fight was happening, Cull Obsidian had thrown his pickaxe toward Thor, who dodged, if barely, and was then hit in the head with a shattered console thrown by Ebony Maw with telekinesis. Cull moved the pickaxe back and began brutalizing Thor. Loki tried helping, but the Maw simply moved several blades from the ground and pointed them at the other Asgardian's scattered in the main hall with a pointed look toward Loki, which made him stop.

Seeing as the Asgardians had lost, Proxima stabbed her spear into the floor and unsheathed her sword. She calmly looked toward Eli, who panted heavily on ground relatively close to Heimdall, who looked on with a pained expression.

"This is only fair. An arm for a leg!" Proxima viciously spat as she grabbed Eli's right arm and cut it off a little below the shoulder. With another heavy punch, she planted Eli into the ground.

From this moment on, Eli blended in and out of consciousness. The missile hits before had done too much damage already. A few minutes later, that to Eli felt like both seconds and hours, Thanos entered the ship with a sort of tractor beam.

"Hear me! And rejoice! You have had the privilege of being saved by the great titan. You may think this is suffering. No... it is salvation. The universal scales tip towards balance because of your sacrifice. Smile. For even in death, you have become children of Thanos," Ebony Maw, the most fervent servant of Thanos, monologued.

"I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you are right, yet to fail, nonetheless... it's frightening, turns your legs to jelly. But I ask you; to what end? Dread it, run from it... destiny arrives all the same. And now it's here, or should I say: I am," the purple skinned, aptly called titan, Thanos continued the monologuing. He had a physique, not unlike Hulk. And a chin not unlike a nutsack.

He picked up Thor by his collar and walked him closer to Loki, who is yet to take any real damage.

"You talk too much," Thor coughed out. But Thor quickly lost his joking mood when he was moved to a position where he saw his bleeding son, who was missing an arm.

"The tesseract. Or your brother's head," Thanos bargained as he looked toward the only Asgardian on the ship still standing, Loki.

"I assume you have a preference?" Thanos continued when Loki remained quiet.

"Oh, I do. Kill away," Loki spat. And the titan lifted his hand clad in a golden gauntlet with a purple gem in it toward Thor's head. Thor started screaming in pain as all his blood vessels at his temple slowly started visibly glowing in purple.

"Alright, stop!" Loki eventually yielded moments later.

"We don't have the tesseract. It was destroyed on Asgard," Thor breathed out after Thanos stopped causing him pain.

"Oh, you really are the worst brother," Thor sighed when Loki revealed that he did indeed have the tesseract, which he likely stole from the vaults as he unleashed Surtur.

"I assure you, brother, the sun will shine on us again," Loki said, holding up the tesseract for Thanos, but looking at Thor.

"Your optimism is misplaced Asgardian," Thanos interjected in a taunting manner.

"Well, for one thing, I am not Asgardian. And for another, we have a Hulk," Loki countered as he took a big step backward.

Hulk jumped onto Thanos from out of view from everyone and began a fierce battle, Titan versus Titan. At first, it looked like the Hulk was winning, but Thanos had simply decided to play with the Hulk and tank a few punches.

None of the tens of punches the Hulk had landed had even hurt Thanos, that much was obvious when the titan began pummeling the Hulk around. It looked like a high-schooler was beating up a kindergardener at one point in the fight. With his final move, Thanos slammed the Hulk on the ground with an overshoulder throw right next to Eli. Thanos then kicked Thor to the ground, who had wanted to hit him from behind.

Thanos turned around to walk back to Loki as the Maw moved to pick up the tesseract after he bound Thor in a sitting position with scraps from the destroyed ship.

"Allfathers, let the dark magic flow through me one last time," Heimdall whispered a soft breath from beside Eli, clutching his trusted sword, as he looked toward both him and the Hulk. Eli and Hulk were envelopped in the rainbow light of the bifrost, and they shot away from the spaceship that laid in ruins thanks to the initial missile attack. The blinding lights of the bifrost tunnel caused Eli to firmly close his eyes, and before even landed, he fell into a deep sleep.

"...could destroy life on a scale hitherto undreamt of," a voice said as Eli broke out of his sleep.

"Did you seriously just say 'hitherto undreamt of'?" A voice asked, a voice Eli hadn't heard in a long time.

"Are you seriously leaning on the cauldron of the cosmos?"

"Is that what this is?" Tony asked as something that sounded like a towel-slap hit Tony and something metallic.

"I'm going to allow that," Tony quipped.

Eli fell back into sleep for a short moment. What woke him next was what appeared to be an earthquake. Everything was rumbling, shaking. Eli heard rattling of small items everywhere.

"Say doc, you wouldn't happen to be moving your hair, would you?" Eli heard Tony again.

"Not at the moment, no," the first voice he heard when he woke up before replied suspiciously.

Someone opened a door, Eli heard footsteps.

"Hey, could you... I dunno, move him somewhere safe or protect him with a spell?" Bruce asked, but Eli didn't know who. He had yet to open his eyes, and he already felt like sleeping yet again.

Someone grunted in assent, and Eli felt like he was enveloped in warmth. 'A protection spell,' was the last thing Eli thought of as he drifted away again.

After another unknown time, Eli heard somebody talking once more.

"...-will you do?"

"I'm gonna make a call," Eli heard Bruce tell a man with a soft Asian accent.

"What about your Asgardian stow-away?" the other man asked.

"I'll take him with me, Cap will want to see him. And when he wakes up... we will need every hand we can get," Bruce sighed. Eli drifted off again.

The next time he woke up, he heard the beeping of a heart rate monitor. A soft hand brushed his hair, but he barely paid any attention to the hand on account of all the pain he felt all over his body.

"Hey Eli, could you please release your armor so we can clean all your wounds?" A voice just as soft as the hand in his hair asked.

Eli wanted to answer but had no strength to do so. Instead, he willed his armor to retract, and he felt them turn back into jewelry and a breastplate the softly laid on his upper body.

"You took a lot of damage. I'm so sorry I had to wake you up. Bruce has told us what you just went through. If you want to talk, lower your mental defenses a little, and let me hear your thoughts," Wanda offered in a soft voice.

'How long?' Eli thought.

"You haven't even slept for 9 hours since you and Bruce landed in New York. We're in the Avengers Compound now," Wanda explained.

'Thanos?' Eli thought next.

"Bruce told us all he knew. The Black Order has attacked twice already with varying success. The sorcerer in the house you landed in with the Bifrost had the time stone. He was abducted together with Tony and Spider-Man when a gray psychic and an alligator hulk with a pickaxe attacked. Vis, Steve, Sam, Nat, Sharon, and I stopped the attempt from two aliens with spears and glaives to get Vis' mind stone. They managed to get away," Wanda filled in further.

'Crown St 97, Brooklyn. Take my earring, green flag one. Go through the roof window. Get my phone, the golden one. Nightstand next to my bed. Code is 616-199999-c. Contact group 'New Avengers'. Get all the help we can get before me have to fight them again,' Eli thought as his exhaustion kicked in, and he started to drift away again.

After some more time, Eli woke up again, this time clearly from inside a plane. The soft hand was brushing his hair again, another held his remaining hand.

"Hey, Eli. We managed to contact some people called Ty, Tandy, Anya, Danny, and Nat's sister Yelena. Jessica did not respond... Nat and Yelena stayed behind to gather some of the widows to follow us to Wakanda, that's where we are headed to get the mind stone out of Vis' head without killing him," Wanda explained softly.

"Who did this to you, the arm?" A voice that belonged to Anya asked. She was sitting next to him, holding his hand, and her voice held a clear edge.

'Proxima Midnight, the horned, spear-wielding alien that attacked Vis for the mind stone,' Eli thought, and Wanda repeated for Anya.

"She's number one on my list then," Anya concluded with a cold tone.

"She can only die... after I dismembered her husband... in front of her..." Eli threatened in a hoarse voice.

"You don't need to strain yourself, I can be your voice. You need the rest, Eli," Wanda worriedly stopped Eli from talking further.

'I will sleep until... we arrive in... Wakanda. But as soon... as Thanos and his... children arrive... I will decimate them... for what they did to Asgard...' Eli thought as he faintly opened his eyes to let out a blinding green light for just a small moment. Immediately after this burst in his magical powers, he used to further heal his wounds he fell asleep again.

"Yelena and Nat managed to get twenty widows with Extremis on short notice. The rest was sadly off continent. They will enter Wakanda at the same coordinates as us in 10-12 minutes. On a quinjet same as us, King T'Challa," Eli heard Steve explain next.

"What of Elias Thorson? You said he had fought our adversary in space? Will he be able to join the fight?" T'Challa asked.

"He's pretty banged up. I'd appreciate it you could do some last minute patch up jobs. Right now, he has the highest stakes in this among all of us. He will not sit out this fight," Steve pleaded.

"Okay, just leave him to the infirmary next door. I am not sure the pods there work for Asgardians, but it won't hurt. Clearly, he is already healing properly from what you described. I'll be needed with Vision," Shuri explained as Eli woke up fully. The last time he heard Shuri was only half a year ago, but it still left like a lifetime ago based on what happened just these past two weeks.

"I'll accompany him," Anya said from one side.

"Yeah, me too," Pietro added from the other.

"We'll come along, too," Ty and Tandy said at the same time.

"Uh, alright. But try not to get in the way of the doctors there," T'Challa awkwardly agreed with his signature African accent.

"So, how come you lost so hard to this Thanos guy and his offspring?" Pietro asked as they settled in the infirmary with Eli laid in a Wakandan healing pod.

"His mothership hyperspace-jumped right in front of the stolen Cruiser ship half of our people were on. The missiles they shot fell on our spaceship like rain... by the time dad and I reached the main hall for a last stand, we were already ejected into space twice, burned, bruised, and cut from the debris and projectiles and exhausted. We arrived there finally to find the Black Order well rested on a mountain of Asgardian corpses," Eli sighed.

"You said half of your people?" Ty asked in worry.

"Yeah, we had two ships, and we split off after Ragnarok to avoid exactly this. Half of our people... gone. I'm afraid if we hadn't split up, Asgard would now be gone forever. Sadly, it will take weeks before we can expect them to arrive here," Eli explained as he tiredly rubbed his forehead.

"Shouldn't that mean that Thanos would need just as long to arrive here?" Tandy asked in confusion.

"Normally, yes. But he has two infinity stones, power and space. If he strains himself, Thanos should be able to teleport a spaceship over that distance," Eli admitted.

"How can we even beat that," Pietro muttered under his breath.

"Well, I hope the next time we fight isn't in space and after getting pelted by his neutron missiles. I'd also like to say I hope it isn't just after we barely survived Ragnarok, but I don't suppose I get that wish fulfilled," Eli recounted. "I hope to fight them with all of you by my side instead of the barebones crew we had left on the Statesman, too."

"Can you even fight with one arm? And more than that, all your injuries?" Tandy asked.

"Heimdall was kind enough to throw Shatterstar into the Bifrost as well, I always fought with a one-handed sword style anyway."

"I mean that Bucky guy got a vibranium arm, maybe we can ask Wakanda for one for you?" Pietro asked and Eli only shrugged.

"What of your father, Thor?" Anya asked.

"I can only hope he survived. If he did, he should make his way to Nidavellir. At least it is what I would do. He needs a weapon to kill Thanos. Wakandan technology and vibranium are cool and all, but by Odin's beard, I hope he asks Eitri to make me an arm, too," Eli chuckled to drive away his dark thoughts.