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“Excuse me, Mr. Thanos sir, I have a question.” Peter raised his hand like he was in class.
“Peter! What do you think you're doing?!” Tony looked like he was seconds away from having a heart attack. Steve just made a strangled noise, like he wanted to give a speech about impulsivity, but his words had failed him.
Thanos smiled condescendingly. “Yes, child?
Peter scratched his head. “Well, how exactly does this whole eliminate half of all life thing work? I mean, are you going to wipe the left side of the universe or the right side? Or is it totally random, and Earth might not even get touched? Or is it like half of every planet? But if it's half of every planet, which half? And are you still counting people that would have died tomorrow anyway? Or are you doing a hard cut off where people have to have at least 5 years left? And how do you know that anyway? And are we talking just people, or are you coming for puppies and my snake plant? ‘Cause if so, I need to emotionally prepare.”
Thanos, whose smile had dropped after the first few sentences, blinked and looked unsure. Steve let out another gurgling noise and Tony had his face in his hands, muttering about how Aunt May was going to kill him. Peter ignored them both.
He pointed at the infinity stones. “Is it okay if I just like, talk to the stones real quick? I mean, there's a chance that I'm going to be totally dead in a few minutes, which is fine, I mean, life is kinda a meaningless void anyway, am I right? But I'd really just like to understand how all this works first. Is that cool?”
“Uh…” Thanos seemed at a complete loss for words, as did everyone else.
“Cool! I'm gonna take that as a yes, thanks Mr. Thanos, sir!” Peter webbed over to Thanos, sat on his forearm, leaned forward, and promptly began chatting up the stones.
Everyone watched in disbelief, trying to figure out if they were hallucinating, if they were already dead, or what.
After several minutes of hushed discussion, and some unhinged giggles, Peter sat back and said, “Okay. That's pretty cool. Good talk.” He patted Thanos on the arm. “All right man, have at it. Snap away.”
“Peter, no!” Multiple people lunged forward, but Peter was faster.
Peter grabbed Thanos's hand. “Whoa, dude, your fingers are weirdly cold. Is that, like, a villain thing?”
Everyone stared.
Thanos seemed to recover just a bit. “Listen, you impudent–”
Peter shrugged and snapped Thanos’s fingers for him.
There was a pause—then Thanos and his army faded away into dust. Everyone stared in shock. Peter wrinkled his nose. “Gross. Now there’s bad guy dust everywhere. Clean up is going to suck. Can we get an army of roombas? Hey, Tony, can you make a roomba army? Cuz that would be super sweet.”
“Peter, what did you do?” Tony was pale and didn’t seem to realize that he and Rhodey were practically hugging. Peter thought it was adorable, but figured now was not the time to say anything.
Peter shrugged. “Pretty simple. I just talked to the stones and we chatted about ethics and math and stuff. Reality Stone got super into it, it loves the trolley problem.”
Tony mouthed “the trolley problem?” to Rhodey, who just shook his head in despair.
Peter ignored them and plowed onward, “But yeah, you know, like what even is life, what’s its value, how do you do the numbers on that sort of thing? So we agreed to dust any sentient beings who were gonna die in the next week anyway, serial killers, rapists, Thanos and all his followers who were fully on board with his plan, child abusers, evil dictators, and then that was still way less than half, which was actually really nice, because I guess the universe isn’t all bad, right? So to make up the difference, we killed all the mosquitoes, and their equivalent on other planets. Anyway, I figured it would mess with the ecosystem a bit, but everybody hates those things. And it seemed like a better option than, you know, destroying half of all life.”
Everyone stared.
“Well anyway, hate to dust and run, but since we're all still here, I need to finish up my chemistry homework. Kinda wish I’d been dusted now. At least I still have my snake plant. Laters!” Peter waved awkwardly and then swung away.
Rhodey rubbed his face like he could feel the stress lines he’d gained in the past 15 minutes. He let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, okay, that’s it. I’m officially retiring. A kid dressed in spandex just prevented genocide by discussing the trolley problem with some sentient rocks. If something comes up, don’t call me. I’ll be in Fiji.”