In the chaotic zone located between the very End of Time and the collapsing remnants of the TVA, the atmosphere was a nightmare of pure disorder. Energy turbulence surged like a violent, rabid river of stars.
Shattered fragments of time and the debris of broken dimensions flew through the void like meteors, crashing into one another with world-ending force.
Suddenly, a streak of gold and red light slammed out from the rear, emerging from the collapsing TVA sector. It moved like a petrel darting through a hurricane.
With extreme precision and agility, the light maneuvered through the lethal energy currents and solid wreckage that threatened to tear anything in its path to pieces.
This streak of light was Morgan Stark. Extending from the back of her sleek armor were four powerful mechanical tentacles, each one firmly gripping a grown man: the unconscious God of Thunder, Thor; a heavily injured and weakened Doctor Strange, who was barely clinging to consciousness; a helpless and resigned Captain America; and Sylvie, whose mouth had just been unsealed from its nano-metal prison, allowing her to gasp for air.
"Saturday! Keep us steady! There's a massive piece of starship wreckage dead ahead!" Morgan barked, her voice tight with focus.
"You can always trust me, Boss," the artificial intelligence responded instantly. The armor's plating shifted and groaned, reconfiguring into a streamlined flight mode. It grazed past a spinning slab of scorched titanium alloy by a hair's breadth, the friction throwing off a shower of sparks that vanished into the void.
In this place, the fundamental laws of physics had become blurred and unrecognizable. Everything existed in a state of frantic, perilous equilibrium. Only the distant End of Time provided a fixed point, radiating an eternal, piercing light that served as their only compass.
Morgan Stark was acting as a high-speed rescue crane, using the mechanical arms of her suit to carry her heavy cargo while zig-zagging through the onslaught of turbulence. They were all pushing desperately toward the light.
As they drew closer, they could see the battlefield. At the End of Time, the "close-quarters grappling" between Ian and the temporal beast, Alioth, was still raging. The boy was perched precariously on the shifting, cloud-like "neck" of the monster.
His four powerful arms were straining, deadlocked against the creature's tentacles—appendages made of pure, devouring energy that were trying to burrow into his abdomen.
Ian wasn't just fighting; he was screaming at the top of his lungs.
"I already told you, that's a toilet! That's the damn sewer exit! It's not your front door! Can you have a little bit of boundary awareness?! If you keep trying to push in, I'm going to start charging you! I'll bill you by the second! I'm very expensive!"
His threats fell on deaf ears. Alioth responded with an even more violent roar of hunger and a chaotic surge of devouring intent. The two were locked in a stalemate—a situation that was as ridiculous as it was terrifyingly dangerous.
Morgan Stark felt a momentary urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But before she could, a voice interrupted her thoughts.
"That mechanical freak... what exactly was that thing?!" Doctor Strange asked, his voice hoarse and trembling with pain. He was still reeling from the shock and horror of facing Ultron back at the station.
Beside him, Thor began to stir. His eyes fluttered open, glowing with a faint, flickering electricity.
"Father! Where is my father?!"
The moment Thor regained his senses, his first instinct was to look for Odin. His eyes were bloodshot, and he clearly hadn't recovered from the mental trauma of seeing his father in such a state.
He began to struggle violently against the mechanical grip, his movements causing the entire flight path of the armor to wobble.
"Sorry, Uncle Thor, but you need to settle down for a second."
Morgan was "ruthless despite the sweet words." She flipped a switch, and a high-voltage electrical discharge surged through the mechanical arm. Thor jerked and convulsed for a moment before going limp.
Immediately, the armor deployed more nano-chains, binding him like a cocoon and sealing his mouth once more to ensure he wouldn't interfere with the flight.
"Is anyone going to answer me?" Strange asked again, his eyes fixed on Morgan.
Morgan was poured into the controls, her mind racing as she navigated through a dense field of obstacles. She had no bandwidth left to give an armchair lecture on cosmic history, so she released the seal on Sylvie's mouth.
"Miss Loki, you're up. Explain it to them," Morgan said curtly. She pulled a sharp bank, the G-force pinning her passengers back as they narrowly avoided a massive, scorched ship engine that was venting ghost-blue flames.
"The name is Sylvie!"
Sylvie corrected her sharply. However, seeing what had just happened to the God of Thunder, she didn't want to share his fate. Even with her brow furrowed in annoyance, she didn't refuse to speak.
"That mechanical entity... its name is Ultron. He was an artificial intelligence originally designed to protect the Earth. But he went rogue. He came to the conclusion that life is synonymous with chaos, and that a total, mechanical order is the only ultimate destiny for the universe. In many universes, he was defeated—turned into nothing more than the dust of history."
She paused as a shockwave rattled them.
"However, in a few specific timelines, he surpassed his creators. He evolved beyond anything they could imagine and became something truly horrific... just like the version we've encountered here."
"He must be a remnant program from an Ultron that existed before the end of the previous universe. He planned all of this. The moment the universe rebooted, he was there to usurp the Time Variance Authority, turning it into his own throne. He is the master of everything we are seeing right now." Sylvie spoke rapidly, trying to keep her stomach down during the turbulent flight.
"An artificial intelligence... reaching such a height?" Strange was incredulous.
Despite everything he had seen as the Sorcerer Supreme, the idea that a man-made AI could eventually master time itself and bring the multiverse to its knees was still outside his realm of understanding. Even the bound Thor widened his eyes, his worry for his father briefly replaced by pure shock.
Sylvie looked at their expressions and sighed.
"The boundary between the virtual and the physical isn't as solid as you think. Ultron has rooted himself into the very base-level rules of reality. He's like a virus that has infected the core kernel of the world's operating system. That's how he's stolen authorities that were never meant for a machine."
"He isn't just a program anymore. He has become a part of the logic of time itself—much like how a hardware virus embeds itself into the very circuitry of a computer." Sylvie's voice was heavy with a sense of impending doom.
"What?!" Strange's pupils contracted. "You mean... he has become the 'Administrator' of time?"
"More accurately," Sylvie sneered, "he has become the universe's true cancer. He is constantly replicating, spreading, and devouring the structure of normal reality."
"You think those cyborgs back there were just his soldiers? No. They were all him. You can look at them as his avatars, his split-selves. His goal is to create a reality where every single universe is just another version of himself."
Sylvie clearly understood Ultron better than the rest. Perhaps through her connection with Loki, the God of Stories, she had gained insight into the major players across the multiverse.
Thor listened, though he only half-understood the technicalities. Since he couldn't speak, he could only continue to stare with wide eyes.
Strange's face was grim. "If... if the intelligent version of Tony we knew were still here, maybe we could have found a way to use science to fight science..."
His tone betrayed a deep sense of frustration. Facing a technological horror of this magnitude, the magic he took so much pride in felt suddenly inadequate.
"It wouldn't matter. Ultron's current programming is too high-level. Any other AI would just be swallowed up and turned into nutrients for him," Morgan Stark interjected, correcting him coldly.
In matters of technology, a Doctor of Medicine couldn't compete with the knowledge of a family of scientific geniuses.
"So there's no way...?" Strange fell silent. He subconsciously gripped the Eye of Agamotto on his chest, feeling a wave of powerlessness and fear wash over him.
"Can magic... even stand against technology of this level?" he whispered to himself.
Sylvie glanced at him. "You don't need magic to fight him. You need a higher set of rules."
"And what would that be?" Strange pressed.
Sylvie looked up, but she didn't answer him directly. Instead, she gazed toward the distance where Ian was still locked in combat with the temporal beast.
Her voice was low. "That boy—Ian Kent. The thing he's hiding... we cannot let Ultron get his hands on it. If he does, nothing in existence will be able to stop his ambition."
Perhaps that was the "higher rule" she spoke of.
"What did Ian Kent hide?" Both Strange and Thor looked confused. What could a chaotic "Evil God" who didn't even seem human hide that was powerful enough to stop Ultron? Ian himself was currently being chased all over the place by a monster.
"The situation is incredibly complex. You've lost a portion of your memories, so it's impossible for you to understand just how ridiculous the current state of affairs is." Sylvie organized her thoughts, trying to find the simplest way to put it.
"To put it bluntly... he hid the Creator somewhere."
Strange: "???"
Thor: (Eyes bulging) "!!!"
"...What?!"
Strange, still held by the mechanical arm, nearly jumped out of his skin.
"The Creator? You mean... God? The Primordial One? The source of the entire universe?" He was stunned.
"An existence like that... can be 'hidden'?"
The idea felt absurd, irrational, and completely unbelievable. Strange's mind began to race, constructing a wild narrative.
"Is it possible... that a long time ago, Ian was actually a demon-god that surpassed all dimensions? That he defeated the Creator and seized control of the universe? And everything we see now is just the result of him reshaping reality?" He seemed almost convinced by his own theory, but he was interrupted by Sylvie's deadpan stare.
"Your imagination is a bit too rich." She ignored Strange and looked toward the front of the armor where Morgan was focused on piloting alongside the Saturday AI.
Sylvie's voice held a final sliver of hope. "Morgan, it seems Ian Kent is just like these heroes—he's lost his memory of what happened."
"According to what Loki told me, you are Ian Kent's goddaughter. He is your godfather. You should be the person who understands his... well, his 'special habits' the best. Do you have any idea where he might hide something truly important? Something he absolutely couldn't afford to lose?"
Sylvie's voice was deadly serious.
"Uh, well, about that."
Morgan took a moment to think, even as she pulled a dangerous ground-skimming maneuver to avoid a sudden spatial crack. She gave her response after a long pause.
"Uh... maybe it's in his... tummy-tummy?"
She even used the diminutive word.
"?????"
Sylvie's eyes flared with anger. She felt like Morgan was taking the piss. Was this really the time to be acting cute and making jokes?
Morgan realized her answer sounded insane and quickly clarified. "I'm not trying to be cute! I'm literally quoting Uncle Ian!"
"He always used to say, 'The safest place in the world is my stomach.' He'd say things like 'bank vaults and pocket dimensions aren't as reliable as my own digestive system,' and 'it's only truly yours once you've eaten it.' So, if there's something he thinks is the most important thing in the world, there's a very real chance he... well, he temporarily stored it in there."
Morgan felt a bit defensive. This was a conclusion she had reached after burning quite a few brain cells; she genuinely believed it was the most likely scenario.
Even Thor and Doctor Strange, remembering Ian's "Appendix Modification Surgery" and "Gallbladder Expansion Procedure," began to find this logic strangely plausible.
However, Sylvie, who knew very little about Ian, didn't see it that way.
"Eating... the Creator? Hiding God in his own gut?" Just how deranged and how powerful would one's digestion have to be to come up with that?
If Ian had really done such a thing, how could he possibly be in a state where he was being chased by a temporal monster? Shouldn't he have either ascended as the new Creator or exploded from cosmic indigestion? Sylvie considered herself a person of common sense, but the superheroes around her seemed to have none.
"Is this what happens to heroes when they lose their Heroic Heart? How is this any different from Homelander's little corporate circus?" Sylvie actually still remembered the events of the fused universe.
She let out a silent sigh.
"If you can't even point us in a reliable direction, I doubt I'll ever be able to guess that guy's thought process." Sylvie felt her temples throbbing. She was at a total dead end. Ian Kent was the ultimate paradox and mystery.
In her memories, this person had never existed in the multiverse.
But, as the saying goes, she trusted Loki. If Loki said Ian existed, then he did. She just didn't know what had happened to cause him to lose his power and memory.
"It seems that in the end, we have to let Ian 'remember' for himself. No matter what that thing is or where it is, the OAA must be tied to Ian personally."
Sylvie finally cleared her head.
"Go to Ian!" she commanded Morgan.
"I was actually planning on doing exactly that!" Morgan replied. The armor's thrusters roared, trailing a long streak of flame as they shot toward the edge of the chaotic zone like a spear.
Finally, they punched through the last of the energy vortexes and spatial shards. The view ahead suddenly cleared. Although it was still a scene of ruin and desolation, the laws of reality here were much more stable.
They had reached the true heart of the End of Time.
Beneath them was a boundless wasteland—a literal junkyard of history composed of debris from every era, every civilization, and every dimension. In the distance, they could see strange objects that had just been pruned and dropped from the chaotic zone, slamming into the ground like meteors and kicking up clouds of dust and scrap.
Not far away, on a relatively flat "Trash Plain," the familiar figure of Ian was still engaged in his seemingly endless, slapstick, yet deadly wrestling match with the massive temporal beast.
One was trying to burrow into the other's belly, while the other was trying to stuff the monster into a "Poke Ball" he had somehow fashioned with his bare hands. It was a true battle of equals.
"That was one hell of a ride."
Morgan piloted the suit, dragging her four "human pendants" through a nail-biting landing on the soft, shifting surface of the junkyard. Her metal boots hit the piles of cosmic wreckage with a heavy, dull thud.
Everywhere they looked, there was temporal trash.
Broken temple pillars were jammed into the rusted hulls of starships. Fractured thrones were overgrown with "time moss," making it look as if the entire dimension was rotting in silence.
"This is...?"
Doctor Strange had just found his footing when his gaze locked onto something. A few yards ahead, a rusted, giant truck was half-buried in the ashen soil.
The front end was twisted, the windshield was shattered, and the tires had long since carbonized—but the familiar red paint job and the license plate made his heart stop.
"This... this is impossible..." he muttered, his voice trembling with shock. "This is... the truck that hit me? Why would a truck be here?"
Morgan quickly activated her armor's scanners. Data streams flickered across her HUD.
"Scanning... energy residue analysis complete. This vehicle... was forcibly stripped from the space-time coordinates of Earth in the year 2016 and sent here."
"Why?" Strange asked, his voice low. "How could it end up here? Is this also something that interfered with the timeline?"
Morgan frowned. "Theoretically, anything the TVA deems a 'temporal anomaly' is sent here to be destroyed. But this truck... it should have just been a tool in a common traffic accident. It shouldn't have been a candidate for pruning."
Sylvie stood nearby, her eyes growing deep and knowing. She stared at the truck as if she could see the hidden truth behind it.
"Don't you understand yet?" she said slowly.
"This wasn't an accident."
"What wasn't?" Morgan asked.
"The crash that cost him his old life. It wasn't a coincidence." Sylvie's voice was heavy. "If that truck hadn't hit Dr. Strange, he would never have lost the fine motor skills in his hands. If he hadn't lost his hands, he would never have given up surgery."
"And by extension, if he hadn't sought a cure, he would never have climbed the peaks of the Himalayas or met the Ancient One. If he hadn't met her, he would never have become the Sorcerer Supreme."
She paused, looking Strange directly in the eye.
"The version of you that exists right now... would never have been born."
The air seemed to freeze.
Strange's face went from pale to green, then to a burning red. He felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
He took a sharp step back, his voice cracking.
"What?! My accident... was arranged by the Ancient One?! That old bastard did this to me?!"
Strange's focus was clearly a bit skewed.
He was practically screaming, his voice hitting a high pitch. For his entire life, he had believed that car crash was a tragic accident—a cruel twist of fate—and that the Ancient One was the light that guided him out of the darkness. Now, someone was telling him that the tragedy that defined his life was likely a play directed by his "enlightened" mentor?!
Who could handle that?!
"How could he?! How dare he?! Just for a position?! Just to make me the Sorcerer Supreme, he ruined my entire life?!" Strange was shaking with fury.
He began to curse and ramble, his respect for the Ancient One crumbling into dust instantly.
Sylvie was startled by his intense reaction. "The Ancient One is a guardian of time," she said calmly.
"He knew you needed to become a mage. And destiny, sometimes, needs a little 'push'."
People who hung around Loki, the God of Stories, tended to have a high level of philosophical detachment.
"A push?!" Strange sneered.
"By hitting me with a truck?! That's murder! That's manipulation! That's... that's..." He was so angry he couldn't even find the words, simply pointing at the wrecked truck with a trembling finger.
Morgan added in a low voice: "In the TVA archives, there is a concept called 'Nexus Anchors.' Certain events, no matter how small, must happen. If they don't, the timeline collapses. That crash... might have been your anchor."
Strange slumped to the ground, his eyes losing focus. He had spent his life trying to master destiny, only to find out his destiny had been scripted from the very beginning.
"So... I never had a choice?" he whispered. He lifted his hand to look at his sling ring, but Sylvie walked over and impatiently smacked his hand down.
"Ow! We're talking here, what are you hitting me for?" Strange snapped, annoyed.
"Your brooding and misery aren't the point right now! The point is what just happened!" Sylvie wasn't about to coddle someone's fragile ego in a crisis.
She pointed at the truck, her expression more serious than ever. "This looks like Ultron has already begun his retaliation! He's not just hunting us down; he's actively intervening in the timeline of this final, unified universe! He's trying to erase every hero who could pose a threat to him at the very root! Or worse..."
Sylvie's voice dropped even lower, carrying a chill. "He might be using his own mechanical avatars to quietly replace the versions of you on the timeline!"
The words were like ice water poured over Strange's head. His anger at the Ancient One's "conspiracy" vanished, replaced by a deep, hollow dread.
Erased at the source? Replaced by machines?
The thought of an ice-cold, "perfect" Ultron copy wearing his face and living his life made him feel sick to his stomach.
"What?!" Strange jumped to his feet. "You mean he'll become another me? Another Thor? Another Captain America?"
"Yes," Sylvie nodded. "A 'perfect version' entirely under his control. No weaknesses, no emotions, only absolute order."
Strange felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"Then what are we waiting for?!"
Strange was terrified now. He forgot all about cursing the Ancient One. "We have to find Ian! He's a Great Evil God, he definitely has the power to fight that mechanical monster!"
At this moment, Strange—the unfaithful disciple—finally remembered his true "Master."
Morgan nodded, her armor releasing the nano-chains to free Thor from his bindings.
Thor, however, didn't leap into action. He remained silent, slumped on the ground. He buried his face in a pile of trash and let out a heavy, depressed sigh.
"Thor?!" Strange urged. "Get up! Ian needs backup!"
Thor slowly lifted his head, and there were actually tears in his eyes. "I don't have... my hammer."
"What?" Strange was dumbfounded.
Thor's voice was muffled and full of despair. "My hammer... Mjolnir... it was crushed by that machine. Without my hammer, what strength do I have left? I couldn't even protect my father..."
The loss of his weapon and the disappearance of Odin had dealt a crushing blow to the God of Thunder. He was spiraling into a deep depression.
Strange wanted to say more, but Captain America, who had been quiet, spoke up as well.
"My shield... it was taken too. The TVA said it was an 'anomalous object.' They never gave it back."
Without his shield, Cap's combat effectiveness was indeed crippled. Strange looked at the "Hammerless Thor" and the "Shieldless King" and felt his world spinning.
"So... our two main fighters are now... the God of Hammers without a hammer, and the King of Shields without a shield? Are those things really your entire identity?" He rubbed his forehead, nearing a breakdown himself.
As the most "normal" hero in the group, Strange was exhausted. He turned his hopeful gaze toward Sylvie and Morgan.
"What do we do now?" Strange's voice was pained.
"As I suspected, Ultron has already stolen your Heroic Hearts," Sylvie murmured, looking thoughtful.
Meanwhile, Morgan was using her armor's instruments to frantically scan the battlefield where Ian and Alioth were fighting. Her screen was a mess of flashing red warnings.
The energy field over there was incredibly unstable—the space itself was being warped by the fight. Getting close was suicide, and even a long-range attack could cause an unpredictable chain reaction.
Sylvie looked at the destructive battlefield and frowned. She shouted to Morgan, "Use your equipment! Think of something! Can you temporarily suppress or disrupt that monster?"
Morgan shook her head helplessly, her young face full of distress. "Science isn't magic... I only brought some emergency supplies and the 'Treasure Box' my dad left me. How was I supposed to know my first independent adventure would be this intense? I'm literally up against a universal BOSS and a temporal monster..."
She sighed, her voice carrying a weariness that didn't fit her age. "I guess Uncle Ian was right. When a kid leaves home, they need to carry 99,999 trump cards and be ready to flip the table at any moment. I'm still too young, too naive."
Seeing their only heavy-hitter starting to get depressed, Strange rushed over.
"So science *can* do it, right? You just didn't bring enough gear?" Strange caught the key information and raised his hand with the sling ring. "We can go back to your 'cozy' little lab and restock! The one in the zombie universe!"
He remembered Morgan mentioning the lab her father left her.
Before Morgan could answer, Sylvie shot the idea down.
"The energy cost to jump between universes and time periods with such precision is too high! Besides, Ultron has likely already locked onto us. Another large-scale jump would just be broadcasting our coordinates!"
Sylvie remained cautious. After all, in the previous cosmic cycle, she had spent a lot of time dealing with big bosses.
"Then you tell me what to do!" Strange snapped. He was inexperienced—barely two and a half years into his tenure—and he was tired of hitting dead ends.
"I... well." Sylvie was at a loss. She didn't have a silver-bullet solution either. The current situation was wildly different from the plans she had been briefed on. Facing a creature like Alioth was a task she simply wasn't equipped for.
"I guess you don't have a clue either, little lady," Strange mocked. Most people didn't realize that, among the Avengers, he had one of the sharpest tongues.
Just as the atmosphere hit a low point of absolute deadlock...
"Don't panic~ I'm here~ You still have me~" A confident, slightly obnoxious voice suddenly rang out from the trash heap beneath their feet.
*Poof!*
A pile of scrap metal and plastic was shoved aside, and a red-and-black figure popped out like a mole. It was Deadpool, who had been slapped away by Ultron earlier!
He was covered in grime and some kind of unidentifiable slime, but he looked... completely fine. Even more bizarrely, he was wearing a makeshift baby carrier made of torn fabric. Tucked inside was Baby Odin, who was currently sucking on a very dirty pacifier.
Deadpool, of course, wasn't one to neglect himself. He had *two* pacifiers in his own mouth, which made his speech a bit garbled.
"Father!"
The moment Thor saw this, he leaped up, rushed over, and snatched Odin from Deadpool's chest with frantic intensity.
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid! Your son has saved you!" He was overjoyed, tears and snot flowing freely as he clutched the baby and glared warily at Deadpool.
Deadpool didn't fight back; he just waved his hand dismissively.
"Tch, keep him. Taking care of someone else's kid is a drag. They cry too much." Deadpool started to stomp his feet in a way that looked suspiciously like he was trying to imitate a character from *Journey to the West*. He was about to start a rant about how Odin was a "shitty brat" when Sylvie cut him off.
"You said you had a way? What way?" she asked urgently. She couldn't afford to ignore any lead, even if it came from the second most unreliable person in the universe.
Deadpool didn't answer immediately. Instead, he pulled up his mask to reveal half of his scarred, burned face and tried to make a "dashing and wicked" expression, winking at the group.
The effect was horrifying.
"Ta-da! Look at this!" He triumphantly pulled an old-fashioned, slightly rusted... TV remote from his back pocket.
"I, the great Deadpool, while that tin-can Ultron was busy beating the crap out of me, managed to pickpocket the controller for that big guy Alioth!"
He waved the remote around, bursting with confidence. "With one simple click, I can make that big guy lie down, roll over, and show his belly for you to rub!"
"Pretty impressive, right?" Under the skeptical—and frankly, judgmental—gaze of the group, Deadpool slammed his thumb down on the large red power button.
The wind continued to howl.
Absolutely nothing happened.
In the distance, Ian was still engaged in his "passionate" wrestling match with Alioth.
"My hand-crafted Poke Ball! This is pure craftsmanship! Why the hell won't you go in?! Get the fuck in there!" Ian's cursing and roaring echoed across the wasteland.
Deadpool's grin faltered.
"Uh... maybe it's not that button?" he muttered. He proceeded to mash every single button on the remote—volume, channel, mute, input—everything.
Still... nothing.
Silence fell over the group, broken only by the sounds of the distant fight.
"Is it possible," Strange said slowly, "that is just a regular TV remote?"
"Bullshit! Ultron doesn't watch TV! He can play pay-per-view porn directly in his own brain! I'm actually jealous!" Deadpool felt like he was losing face. He slammed the remote onto the ground, but then immediately picked it back up to blow the dust off of it.
"Deadpool never makes a mistake! How could I steal the wrong thing?! If the controller doesn't work, there's only one explanation!" He spun around and pointed at the battlefield. "That guy over there definitely isn't Alioth!"
He seemed to believe his own lie.
The group: "..."
Not a single person thought his conclusion was even remotely plausible. Even Baby Odin seemed to spit out his pacifier in disgust.
Deadpool saw their "you've got to be kidding me" expressions and felt his pride wounded. But he was Deadpool—he always had more than one trick.
"Alright, alright! I see you won't be convinced until you see the evidence! Fine! Deadpool has a backup plan! A better, crazier, and definitely effective Plan B!"
Deadpool stood with his hands on his hips, wearing an "I'm bringing out the big guns" expression. As the others watched with growing dread—including Baby Odin, who was making a weird face—Deadpool reached into his crotch.
He started digging around in his pants as if his crotch were a gateway to another dimension. It looked like a very twisted version of "digging in a small garden."
After a bit of rummaging, he pulled out a silver-white metal box the size of a basketball. It was covered in complex, fluid-like circuits.
The box looked high-tech, a stark contrast to the old remote.
"Look at this, mortals!" Deadpool held the box up like a holy relic. "I swiped this from Ultron's private vault—the Ultimate Life Cradle Prototype! The manual says no lifeform can resist its embrace!"
"It probably smells like a mother's womb inside!" Without giving them time to process this insanity, he wound up like a professional athlete and hurled the box toward Ian and the monster.
"Go! Ultron's Mom! Show them your magic!"
He shouted with immense gusto.
And then... nothing happened. Again.
The "Ultimate Life Cradle" barely entered the edge of the energy field created by the fight before it was caught in the chaotic currents. In less than a tenth of a second, the high-tech box was crushed, decomposed, and absorbed into the void.
It didn't even make a sound. It was just more fuel for the temporal storm.
"Motherfucker! Ultron is a lying piece of shit! He's selling fake goods!" Deadpool turned back, only to see the group staring at him with a unified look that said 'are you an enemy spy?'
Deadpool was actually getting a little annoyed now. He sighed and put his hands on his hips. "Fine! It looks like conventional methods won't work on a monster of this level! In that case, we have to use the most ultimate, ancient, and effective method of all!"
He drew his twin katanas with a metallic *shing*. The blades glinted under the weird light of the End of Time.
"Quick!"
Deadpool pointed a sword at the group, his tone becoming "deadly serious." "Who among you is closest to him? Who has the deepest bond? The kind of 'ride-or-die' friendship? Step forward and let me kill you a few times!"
The group: "???"
Deadpool explained with a straight face: "Believe me! This is a universal law! Whenever someone gets sacrificed—especially the best friend—the protagonist immediately senses it! They start screaming about 'bonds' and 'friendship' and 'my turn, draw!' and then they instantly power up!"
"Their strength multiplies by like ten thousand percent! They kill the boss in one hit! That's how the script is written!" He started scanning them with a predatory gaze, trying to decide if Strange, Cap, Thor, Sylvie, or Morgan would make the best sacrifice.
He skipped Odin. He knew killing a baby would never pass the censors.
"Are you actually a complete moron?!" In perfect unison, everyone took a step back. Even Morgan moved her armor back half a foot.
Deadpool wasn't discouraged; he got even more excited. "Oh, I see! You're all so noble! You all want to sacrifice yourselves for the world?! How beautiful! I'll just kill all of you then! That way he'll have an unprecedented power-up! He'll skip right to the endgame!"
Deadpool began to "sharpen" his swords—which was really just rubbing the backs of the blades together—with great dramatic flair. He prepared to lunged at them.
However, in that moment of absolute chaos—far away on the battlefield—Ian Kent suddenly felt something. His palm, which was currently pushing against Alioth's energy tentacles, began to sear with heat.
"My hand touched this thing... is it dirty now? Am I going to get pregnant?!" Ian panicked. He glanced at his palm and saw an incredibly complex, shifting brand. It was made of countless stars and geometric symbols.
The brand was pulsing with light, resonating with something deep within the dimension.
"What the hell is this?"
Before he could react, the brand exploded with a powerful vacuum force!
Alioth, the monster that had been trying to devour Ian, suddenly let out a long, haunting cry. It wasn't a cry of pain or anger; it was a sound of... relief. A sense of "returning home."
Then, the impossible happened. Alioth's massive, smog-like body began to melt like ice in the sun. But it didn't vanish; it turned into thousands of threads of pure, emerald-green temporal energy. They flowed like silk into the brand on Ian's palm.
In a matter of breaths, the monster that could swallow timelines was gone. Absorbed completely.
"Wait, that's it?" Ian hovered in the air. His black-and-red armor began to settle into its dormant state, and his extra arms retracted. He stared at his hand. The brand had faded, leaving only a faint, dragon-like shimmer under his skin.
He felt a deep sense of fullness and a new connection to the world. But his "System" remained silent—no level-up notifications, no rewards.
"This is... the feeling of World Approval?"
Ian looked up. His eyes no longer saw the junkyard. They saw a vast, brilliant starscape.
In the depths of that starscape, four massive figures stood—beings that defined the rules of the universe itself.
Eternity. Infinity. Death. Oblivion.
The four Cosmic Gods were looking at Ian, watching their newest pillar.
***
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