BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The alarm shrieked through the ship's interior like a banshee having a seizure.
Ivan's feet left the floor as the ship bucked violently. Nano-armor erupted across his body in an instant, forming protective plating just before he slammed into the bulkhead.
Mario, somehow, remained perfectly seated in his chair. The game mechanics apparently recognized him as sitting in a Minecraft vehicle, making him immune to the physics currently trying to turn Ivan into a human pancake.
The shaking stopped as suddenly as it started, but the ship's velocity had dropped.
"WARNING: FLIGHT PATH DEVIATION DETECTED. UNKNOWN REGION. PROPULSION SYSTEM DAMAGED. INITIATING EMERGENCY LANDING PROTOCOLS."
The robotic voice announced their impending doom.
Mario unbuckled and rushed over to where Ivan was peeling himself off the wall. "You alive?"
Ivan pressed one hand against his lower back. Through gritted teeth, he managed: "My back..."
Mario pulled out his wand without hesitation and cast a healing spell. The warm golden glow wrapped around Ivan, and the pain in his spine faded almost immediately.
"Thanks," Ivan said, rolling his shoulders.
"Save it. Let's figure out what just happened."
Ivan hurried to the control console and looked out the forward viewport. His expression went from concern to outright shock.
"Mario... I think we've been transported to a completely different planet."
The sky was filled with portals, dozens, maybe hundreds of them, in every size and color imaginable. They looked similar to the wormholes created by Space Stones.
Periodically, massive quantities of debris would pour out of these portals like cosmic garbage chutes, adding to the mountains of trash covering the planet's surface below.
"Sakaar. We're on fucking Sakaar."
Sakaar was infamous across the galaxy, a junk world surrounded by unstable wormholes that made conventional space travel nearly impossible. Dozens of civilizations used it as a dumping ground for everything from broken technology to unwanted criminals. It was basically cosmic Australia, if Australia was run by an immortal lunatic with a fetish for gladiatorial combat.
And speaking of the local management, the Grandmaster controlled everything on this planet.
BOOM.
The ship hit the ground hard, plowing through a mountain of debris before grinding to a halt. Dust and smaller pieces of garbage rained down on the hull.
Ivan managed to stay on his feet this time, though just barely. "We need to upgrade the ship's defensive systems. This is unacceptable."
Mario pulled his shield and wand from his inventory. "Put that on the to-do list. Right now we've got more immediate problems."
He gestured toward the viewport. Dark figures were moving through the dust cloud, converging on their crashed vessel.
"Scavengers."
Scavengers were Sakaar's most common inhabitants. They viewed newcomers as commodities. Either you were a warrior worth selling to the Grandmaster's gladiator pits, or you were meat.
He had no interest in being either.
BOOM.
Something hit the ship's hatch hard enough to dent the reinforced metal inward. These assholes weren't even trying to be careful, they clearly didn't give a shit if whoever was inside survived the breach.
Ivan headed for the storage bay where his personal combat suit waited. The nano-armor was convenient for emergencies, but it lacked the raw firepower of his custom rig.
Moments later, three meters of advanced Russian war machine came online. The suit bristled with weapons, an energy shield in one hand, an electrified whip-chain in the other. Ivan burst through the ship's hull without waiting for the hatch, landing in the middle of the scavenger group.
The chain lashed out. Flesh, bone, metal, nothing could withstand it. The superheated links cut through everything they touched, cauterizing wounds as they went.
Mario waved his wand and blew a person-sized hole through the ship's wall. No point being subtle now.
Some tried to fight back with laser rifles, acid sprayers, kinetic hammers, even what looked like a medieval flail attached to an electric generator.
Several laser beams struck Ivan's armor, leaving scorch marks but no real damage. A few brave, or stupid, scavengers rushed him with melee weapons.
Ivan retracted the whip and his arm transformed into an energy cannon. The weapon cycled up with a whine, then unleashed a storm of plasma bolts.
When no more life signs registered on his sensors, he finally stopped. "We're clear."
No response.
"Mario?"
Mario jolted. He blinked and looked around at the carnage with a complicated expression. "All done?"
"Yeah. No life signs in the area. You okay?"
"Fine. I'm fine."
That's when the sky darkened. A massive aircraft descended toward them, its design looking like someone had taken Tetris blocks and decided they'd make a great spaceship. The blocky vessel bristled with weapons that were now tracking both of them.
"Incoming!"
Mario's expression turned serious. He immediately cast Diamondflesh on both himself and Ivan.
WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.
The aircraft opened fire with dozens of energy weapons simultaneously. Ivan, being the larger target, caught the brunt of it. The concentrated fire lifted his suit off the ground and sent him tumbling backward. When he crashed down, his armor was covered in blast marks and several weaker sections had been breached completely. Two more volleys like that and the suit would be scrap.
Mario wasn't having a great time either. Each energy blast that connected dealt over twenty points of damage right through his defensive buff. These scavengers had serious firepower.
Pushing through the barrage, he reached Ivan's position. "Get out! Now!"
Ivan triggered the emergency release and ejected from the rear of the suit. Mario grabbed him, stored the damaged armor in his inventory, then pulled out a diamond pickaxe and started digging straight down.
THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.
The sound of Mario's pickaxe striking stone echoed like a jackhammer as the two disappeared beneath the surface in seconds.
The scavengers' aircraft stopped firing once their targets vanished. A section of the blocky ship detached and descended toward the spot where Mario had disappeared. Armed figures poured out, approaching cautiously.
They found nothing but a smooth hole in the ground.
"They're gone," one scavenger reported into his comm.
"Then find them. Search everywhere."
---
One hundred meters underground, Mario finally stopped mining. He placed a torch on the wall.
Ivan was already pulling up his suit's damaged status on a holographic display. "Those bastards nearly killed me."
"Yeah, well, they're about to have a much worse day. Get your army ready. Time to say hello to the locals."
Nearly dying tended to put people in an unfriendly mood. "With pleasure."
---
On the surface, the scavenger commander sat in his ship's control throne. "They're still down there somewhere. Find them and kill them."
His crew responded with enthusiastic war cries before spreading out to search.
"Damaging my property," the commander muttered darkly. "I'll make them pay for every scratch."
---
Deep underground, Mario was unpacking his inventory. Combat robots of every size and configuration materialized in the tunnel, bipedal units, quadrupedal tanks, flying drones, and things that looked like mechanical spiders designed by someone with severe arachnophobia.
Ivan had been building this army since Earth, refining designs and adding capabilities the entire time. Now was the perfect field test.
"Ivan, activate the Iron Legion. Eliminate all hostile forces."
Mario's mini-map showed the red dots above multiplying as more scavengers arrived. They were conducting a grid search, clearly confident they'd find their prey.
"Activating now." Ivan's new suit was even more impressive than the damaged one, over six meters tall. His voice echoed from within: "All units online. Weapons hot. Commencing combat operations."
Every robot in the tunnel came alive simultaneously.
Mario climbed onto a hovering platform and ascended toward the surface. Ivan followed in his suit, and behind them came the tide of death machines.
Most of the army wasn't humanoid, Ivan had designed for function over form. Some units were basically gun platforms with legs. Others looked like flying weapons racks. A few defied easy description entirely.
Mario punched through the plug he'd left at the top and emerged onto Sakaar's surface.
Immediately, shouts erupted around him. "There! Found them!"
Scavengers started converging from all directions, weapons raised. Then the ground behind Mario erupted.
Robots poured out by the dozens, then hundreds, spreading across the battlefield. Ivan's suit landed beside Mario.
"Kill everyone who resists."
Mario pointed his wand at the scavengers. The army responded by opening fire with everything they had.
The scavengers' confidence evaporated instantly. They raised their weapons and tried to fight back, but it was like throwing pebbles at a tank. Energy bolts and kinetic rounds tore through their ranks.
Within thirty seconds, every scavenger in visual range was down. Most were dead. The lucky ones were just unconscious.
Mario surveyed the carnage and was reminded of a movie he'd seen once. "You know, I'm starting to think I'd make a better villain than a hero."
"Mario. More inbound. Looks like we pissed off their friends."
Mario followed Ivan's pointing finger. On the horizon, blocky shapes were approaching, more scavenger vessels, at least a dozen of them.
"Time to bring out the big guns." Mario started pulling items from his inventory. Small battle cruisers materialized around them, "small" being relative to capital ships, but these modified semi-autonomous vessels were still ten meters long and packed with enough firepower to level a city block.
Twenty cruisers lifted off in formation, burning toward the incoming scavenger fleet.
"You know," Mario said thoughtfully, "these blocky ships fit my aesthetic pretty well."
Ivan laughed despite the situation. "When we have time, we should find Thanos and learn how to make Pym Particles. Then you could carry actual capital ships in your inventory."
"Now there's a thought." Mario had never bothered learning the production process – the Pym Particles he'd looted from Thanos would last him basically forever for personal time travel. But for military applications? The tactical possibilities were endless.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The battle cruisers opened fire. Surprisingly, the old-fashioned explosive rounds were just as effective as the lasers.
Ivan wasn't listening anymore, he was fully focused on the battle, operating his robotic army. Squads repositioned based on sensor data, units concentrated fire on priority targets, and the tide advanced slowly.
The flames of war lit up Sakaar's twilight.
Mario's cruisers unleashed a coordinated bombardment on the lead scavenger ships. Energy shields flickered into existence around the blocky vessels, absorbing the first salvo.
Then the shields failed.
Energy supplies on a junk planet like Sakaar were limited at best. The scavengers' shields lasted exactly one volley before sputtering out.
Inside the lead vessel, the scavenger commander who'd been so confident minutes ago was now screaming into his comm. "Where did this army come from? Get a message to the Grandmaster! NOW!"
His ship shook as another wave of fire hammered it. Without shields, the vessel was just a flying target.
"Retreat! Head for the city! Move!"
Whatever dreams of profit he'd had were gone, replaced by the urge to survive.
Ivan saw the scavenger fleet attempting to disengage and smiled coldly. "Yeah, that's not happening."
One of his cruisers broke formation and accelerated. This particular ship had a special payload, a missile designed specifically to crack open hardened targets. It struck the lead scavenger vessel, the initial explosion creating a breach that the secondary charge exploited perfectly.
The enemy ship came apart.
Once a breach appeared, the vessel's fate was sealed. Energy beams and conventional missiles poured through the gap, and secondary explosions rippled across the hull. Within seconds, nothing remained but expanding debris.
Mario wasn't even watching the defeated scavengers anymore. His attention was fixed on the horizon, where dozens more black dots were appearing against the sky.
"Well, Ivan, how confident are you feeling?"
Ivan pointed at his cruiser formation. "See that third ship from the left? It's carrying a 200-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. If the ship gets destroyed, the warhead activates automatically. Someone's gonna have a really bad day."
Mario's head snapped toward Ivan so fast his neck cracked.
"WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET A NUKE?!"
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50 Advance Chapters!
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