But, even for him, it would take time.
Even as Thanos, taking a double hit from the Force and the Mind Stone with zero preparation meant he needed at least one full second to recover.
One second was already an eternity for someone fast enough.
Pendragon took off his glasses. His dark golden eyes locked onto the Infinity Gauntlet on Thanos's hand.
His telekinesis pried apart fingers as hard as forged titan steel. Pendragon grabbed one finger with each hand, braced himself, and yanked the Infinity Gauntlet straight off the Titan's arm.
"I actually pulled it off."
Things were going so smoothly it felt unreal.
Pendragon's face lit up with a bright smile. Across from him, the Titan who had just lost five Stones through a moment of carelessness felt nothing but a tidal wave of rage crash through his mind.
"No!"
The roar felt like it was shaking heaven and earth, perfectly conveying his madness and fury.
"So he really does speak English."
Pendragon could not be bothered to keep gloating. He shoved his arm into the Infinity Gauntlet without hesitation.
His slender arm was wildly mismatched with the gauntlet that had been custom built for a Titan, but with help from his telekinesis, he could still move it just fine.
"You are not worthy to wield that power."
Thanos's massive body was already gone from Pendragon's retinal focus. All that remained were exploded chunks of dirt and air rippled by the shockwave.
"Actually, I am."
With his glasses off, his dynamic vision, boosted again after eating Black Bean Paste, was flirting with literal time stop. The magic furnace in his body released endless mana to keep up with the cost.
The Power Stone on the Infinity Gauntlet flared purple.
The moment Thanos's movement registered in Pendragon's vision, the Titan lost any chance to resist. Their fists collided, and Thanos was punched clean off his feet and sent flying.
The collision of pure power crushed the air to an extreme, then detonated it in an instant, unleashing the violence inside like a bomb going off.
The ground under Pendragon's boots cracked with a deafening boom. The force bored straight down into the crust, tearing open plates and carving out a canyon that stretched beyond the horizon.
The enormous rift was still widening at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if it intended to become a brand new ocean.
"Wow. This is insanely fun."
Pendragon's compatibility with the Stones was even better than he had imagined. Just the Power Stone alone was this intoxicating. What about the full Infinity set with all six Stones?
Could he really do… literally whatever he wanted?
His telekinesis scooped up all the heroes who could no longer move and set them down safely along the edge of the chasm. No sense letting anyone without protagonist level plot armor die from a fall.
Before the airborne Thanos could come back for round two, Pendragon pulled out the Mind Stone he had hidden earlier and set it into the last empty socket on the Infinity Gauntlet.
Hum.
All six Stones resonated at once, amplifying one another as their powers converged into a single unified force that flooded through Pendragon's body and soul.
The initial discomfort in his flesh vanished almost instantly. A beam of high energy from Thanos lanced toward him and, the moment it met Pendragon's gaze, it simply unraveled into nothing.
Power that could have shattered a planet was erased like a chalk mark on a board.
"You are wielding a power you cannot control. Without that gauntlet you are nothing but a pathetic worm."
Thanos poured more energy into the blast and kept talking, trying to shred Pendragon's confidence and pry open a chance to take the gauntlet back.
"You will never become the supreme being of this universe."
If Pendragon let the rush of power get to his head, if he swelled with arrogance and forgot himself, if he took the bait, then the Titan might seize that moment to reclaim Infinity.
"You talk too much."
Pendragon ignored the taunts. He simply extended the gauntleted hand and felt the infinite power of the six Stones roaring under his control.
The targeted Titan's attack cut off at once. His towering body faded into a half transparent blur as the power of the Space Stone locked him into another dimension.
"I am the king who rules the galaxy."
Infinity gathered in his palm. Pendragon raised the gauntlet high and let his declaration echo across the universe.
Storm and thunder howled his name. Fire and frost boiled together. Dozens of ancient stars, long since grown old, burst into fierce brilliance, offering up the brightest moment of their lifetimes in the cold dark of space.
The heroes Pendragon had just saved stared up at that small figure. His ahoge swayed in the wind like their hearts right now, completely unsettled.
Even though he was not that tall, the flickering lightning made him seem impossibly imposing. Fueled by overwhelming power, Pendragon's over the top chuuni speech somehow did not sound cringe at all. In Steve and the others' eyes, it was pure overwhelming presence. They could not help feeling a kind of awe, like standing before a towering mountain.
They envied him, and they admired him.
Pendragon held the pose for a full three minutes. Both the demons of hell and the gods in their heavens heard his voice and fell silent.
"So… so embarrassing."
His cheeks burned. At a time like this, even if he did not have millions of adoring gazes on him, there should at least be a rival jumping out to talk smack. Letting the silence drag on like this was unbearable.
"You."
Flustered and annoyed, Pendragon shifted his attention back to the Titan he had pinned, anything to distract himself.
"You have two choices, Titan."
"Option one, I banish you to Mars and you grow purple sweet potatoes until your harvests can feed half the universe."
"Option two, you debut as an idol and control the universe's population through otaku dance performances."
The imprisoned Thanos wore the exact expression of a confused purple sweet potato. In all his years, he had faced countless cruel and merciless enemies and invented more than a few brutal tortures of his own, but never had the Eternal Titan met anyone this… special and completely unfathomable.
Arrogant? Cunning? Twisted? Aloof?
Everything about this opponent was an unknown.
One way or another, he was paying the price for a single moment of carelessness.
"If you cannot decide for yourself, I will help you pick in the fairest way possible. With a snap."
Before that, Pendragon used the gauntlet to knit the torn plates of the earth back together, restoring the land to how it had been before their clash.
Move mountains and fill seas, make flowers bloom with a thought, control the dance of the stars with a whim. So this was what it meant to do whatever you wanted.
Thanos still had not given an answer. Mostly because he was still completely stunned.
Snap.
After a delay long enough to be awkward, the sound finally rang out. The red Reality Stone lit up on the back of the gauntlet.