[ Krouse is fairly jaded about the scope of disasters, or so he likes to think. It's a good quality to have with the looming apocalypses of so many different worlds hanging over all of them, an everpresent threat that squats like a bilious elephant in the midst of everything else.

But he's taken aback by half, in a different way than he was by aliens. He sits back in his chair, fiddling with the handle of his coffee mug as he gives Peter the look of someone who knows they should be saying something considerate, but not what that something in. ]

We've lost a few countries, but not...Jesus. And that happened to you? You were just - gone for five years, and then you were back?

[ Another resurrection, but the scale - he's spun his coffee mug most of the way around, he notices, and reverses its course. ]

The Avengers did that? I've heard some other people mention them before.