Star-Lord, Gamora, and Groot weren't the most nerfed members of the Guardians.
Not even close.
The real victim was Drax the Destroyer.
In the original source material, Drax was an absolute monster. A warrior built like a cosmic executioner, somewhere in the same league of brutal masculinity as Kratos himself. He had driven Thanos into desperate situations multiple times through sheer raw combat ability and had even killed the Mad Titan more than once.
Actually killed him.
At one point, Drax had ripped Thanos's heart out with his bare hands and crushed it.
But somewhere along the line, things had clearly gone wrong.
Maybe it was the redesign.
Maybe the gray-skinned version just couldn't compare to the original green powerhouse.
Either way, the current Drax mostly came across as a musclebound idiot with questionable intelligence, an endless supply of sarcasm, and accidental comedic timing.
A tragic downgrade.
Watching this dysfunctional crew of lovable disasters drift through space under Star-Lord's leadership, surviving largely through dumb luck and emotional support, Drex Valen found himself wondering yet again how these people had somehow helped win the final battle in Avengers: Endgame.
The Guardians, naturally, had no idea a galactic overlord was casually observing them.
After spending several days partying on some random planet, the team quickly ran into a familiar problem.
They'd burned through all their money.
Inside the Milano, silence hung heavily in the air until Rocket finally snapped.
"Quill, this is your fault," he growled. "You never should've let Drax drink that much. He burned through a hundred thousand credits in one night!"
Drax immediately pointed a finger back at him.
"That's rich coming from the raccoon who drank almost as much."
Rocket's ears twitched violently.
"I am not a raccoon."
Drex continued monitoring the so-called "Galaxy Goofball Squad" for one reason and one reason only.
Ego.
More specifically, Ego the Living Planet.
There were endless theories surrounding Ego's true identity. Some believed he was tied to the Celestials. Others argued he was merely a member of an ancient celestial race mistaken for one.
A particularly ridiculous rumor even claimed Ego was the severed head of a Celestial decapitated by Odin long ago.
Which was obviously nonsense.
The Celestial head Odin had supposedly severed already existed.
Knowhere.
The gigantic cosmic corpse currently serving as the Collector Tivan's territory.
The moment Drex encountered Star-Lord, he secretly used the Reality Stone to create a perfect genetic duplicate of him without anyone noticing.
Mostly out of curiosity.
Star-Lord carried Celestial DNA.
That alone made him worth studying.
More importantly, Peter had somehow inherited divine power despite Ego still being alive, which made the entire situation even more interesting from a biological standpoint.
Even for someone like Drex, a being powerful enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with gods using nothing but mortal flesh, Celestial genetics still held considerable research value.
After extensive analysis, Drex developed a far deeper understanding of Celestial biology.
But in the end, he lost interest fairly quickly.
There was no point creating Celestial super soldiers anymore.
Ultramen were simply better.
They could grow gigantic or shrink down at will, possessed absurdly high baseline strength, and had almost no natural predators.
Very few beings in the universe could truly threaten them.
Even if some absurd powerhouse appeared and started tearing through Ultramen like a one-man apocalypse, the Kryptonian Empire still had monsters like Gladiator and Esdeath waiting in reserve.
And even if someone defeated them?
Drex Valen still existed.
Within the material universe, he considered himself effectively invincible.
Even a fully fed Galactus would be something he could confront head-on.
As for higher-dimensional entities, things became trickier.
Dimensional demons struggled to invade physical reality in the first place, and once they left their native realms, most of them weakened dramatically. Even Cyttorak wouldn't casually abandon the Crimson Cosmos.
And the Celestials?
Drex almost laughed at the thought.
If one showed up, he'd simply kill it and study the corpse afterward.
Ego
A breathtaking planet floating silently in deep space.
The skies shimmered with rainbow-colored streams of light while forests covered the surface in endless waves of green. Birds sang across crystal-clear valleys, and the entire world looked like something ripped straight from a fantasy paradise.
Every bit of it was fake.
The beautiful landscapes, the atmosphere, the living ecosystems, all of it had been reshaped through matter manipulation.
The real Ego was a living planet with a gigantic face buried beneath the illusion.
And that face looked monstrous.
Twisted.
Predatory.
The original star of Ego's solar system had long since become a supernova. To maintain both his survival and the endless illusion covering his surface, Ego had begun consuming nearby planets for energy.
Occasionally, passing spacecraft disappeared too.
As a result, the surrounding region of space had become eerily empty.
Only Ego remained.
Silent and motionless.
Since the Orb had never awakened Star-Lord's Celestial bloodline, Ego still had no idea Peter existed. As far as he knew, the child had died long ago alongside countless other offspring scattered across the galaxy.
Still, Ego continued searching for compatible women to produce more children capable of serving his ambitions.
Which meant it was probably only a matter of time before he eventually crossed paths with Peter.
Somewhere deep in another star system, a red spacecraft cruised through space.
The Milano.
Star-Lord lounged lazily in the pilot's chair with his boots propped up against the console while reading the Galactic Daily.
Despite galactic civilization reaching technological heights beyond imagination, printed newspapers still existed. Some traditions simply refused to die.
Peter actually preferred them.
Probably because they reminded him of Earth.
Even if he'd barely visited the planet since being abducted.
Across the front page, a massive headline practically screamed for attention:
SHOCKING! KREE WARLORD RONAN HUMILIATED BY THE KRYPTONIAN EMPIRE!
Star-Lord snorted.
"These headlines get dumber every year."
Gamora walked over holding a drink and sat beside him.
"Doesn't really matter," Peter said with a shrug. "None of us could beat those things anyway."
Gamora rolled her eyes.
Objectively, he wasn't wrong.
But hearing him say it that casually was still irritating.
Rocket wandered over from the back of the ship.
"So where are we headed next?"
"Sovereign space," Peter answered. "They hired us to kill some monster that's been eating their batteries. The payout's huge, so let's try not to screw it up."
"Works for me."
None of them realized that the route they were taking happened to intersect with Ego's current trajectory through space.
Whether they would actually meet at that crossing point remained to be seen.
Earth
A golden light suddenly appeared in near-Earth orbit.
Modern Earth detected it almost immediately.
Nick Fury took the incident extremely seriously and quickly contacted both S.W.O.R.D. Director Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, head of S.W.O.R.D.'s Oversight Division.
"This footage was captured near Mars yesterday," Fury explained while clicking a remote.
The suspended holographic screen shifted instantly, displaying deep space.
Tony recognized Mars immediately.
A dark object was moving past the planet at tremendous speed toward the camera's direction. Bright light flared behind it like propulsion exhaust, but the distance was too great and the object far too fast for the image to resolve clearly.
All they could make out was a blurred black silhouette wrapped in gold light.
And it was heading toward Earth.