"Dreams influencing reality?!"
Tony didn't know how that was even possible, but it gave him that instinctive sense of "I don't understand it, but it sounds terrifying."
Even if he couldn't grasp what it truly meant, just the name alone made it obvious—this was the kind of power that could twist reality itself.
After that, Harry and Tony coordinated with the Avengers. The others—along with Harry—moved to eliminate the Extremis-infected agents the Ten Rings had deployed around the world.
Meanwhile, Tony and Bruce Banner used every scrap of intel they could gather to track down the Ten Rings' main base.
…
A few days later, the United States—some desert town.
The sky above the town was a deep sapphire blue without a single cloud. The blazing sun hung high, pouring down scorching light as if it wanted to roast the ground dry.
Sunlight hammered the sand, kicking up a blinding glare that made it hard to look straight ahead.
In the middle of the howling yellow dust, a room somewhere in town suddenly erupted with an earth-shaking roar.
The next instant, a wooden wall shattered under a brutal impact, and a figure wrapped in raging flames burst out, fleeing in panic toward the distance.
At the same time, a graceful silhouette chased after him.
She wore the same style of sorcerer robe as Harry's—silver fabric embroidered with delicate star patterns—snapping loudly in the wind and sand.
It was Gwen.
Gwen shot both hands out. In the blink of an eye, translucent strands sprayed from her wrists, launching straight into the sky.
If it were normal webbing, it would've run out of momentum and fallen under gravity.
But what Gwen fired now was spatial webbing Harry had specially developed—thread infused with unique spatial properties.
Instead of dropping, it anchored itself around space itself, becoming the perfect foothold.
Gwen yanked hard on the spatial webbing. Using the powerful pull, she shot forward at high speed and intercepted the fleeing man head-on.
Then she raised her hand without hesitation and fired a beam of energy, punching straight through his chest.
But an Extremis subject's recovery was absurd. Even with his chest blown open and blood pouring out, he still had enough mobility to stagger upright.
His eyes burned with hatred as he glared at Gwen, his face twisting into something savage.
He knew he didn't have much time left. Gritting his teeth, he forced the Extremis in his body into overdrive.
His whole body began radiating blistering light—turning into a bomb on the verge of detonation.
At that distance, even Gwen couldn't possibly escape the blast radius in time.
The heat-bright glow intensified. Death's shadow fell over her.
And in that split-second—
A crimson figure blinked into existence.
She stepped in front of Gwen, blocking all the incoming danger, and said calmly:
"There is no Extremis here."
The moment her words fell, a terrifying reality-rewriting force crashed down onto the terrorist about to explode.
In an instant, the red light that had wrapped his body—ready to swallow everything around him—was scattered by an invisible hand.
The unstable glow visibly receded, and the terrorist's body reverted fully back into flesh and blood.
As weakness flooded him, he froze, staring down at the bleeding hole in his chest with blank confusion.
Then his legs gave out, and he toppled backward like a felled tree, slamming into the ground.
The crisis finally passed. Gwen's tightly wound nerves snapped loose, and she let out a long breath.
She lunged forward and hugged Wanda hard, her voice filled with relief and gratitude.
"Wanda—thank you so much. If you weren't here, I would've been done for."
Wanda was a little older than Gwen. She smiled gently, lifted a hand, and softly patted Gwen's head.
"We're family. Don't be polite with me."
Nearby, Harry Apparated in the moment he sensed Gwen was in danger. He'd been ready to step in—only to see Wanda had already handled it, so he stopped.
But what happened next genuinely threw him off.
Watching Wanda and Gwen cling to each other so intimately, Harry's expression turned… complicated.
Ever since Harry had rescued Wanda from a Hydra base, Wanda's feelings toward him had been shifting fast.
In just a few months, that affection had quietly climbed into full-blown infatuation.
Harry considered himself a principled man. He and Gwen were deeply in love, and he wasn't about to pull some two-timing, scumbag move.
Except life was always more absurd than fiction.
Gwen knew Wanda liked Harry. At first, Gwen had been pretty resistant—almost hostile about it. But not long ago, something happened between the two of them, and Gwen's attitude did a complete flip.
She stopped pushing Wanda away. If anything, they got closer and closer, to the point where Harry couldn't make sense of it.
Even worse—sometimes when Harry and Gwen were "sparring," Gwen wouldn't call his name anymore.
She'd call Wanda's.
That gave Harry a very real sense of being cheated on.
If he hadn't secretly checked Gwen's soul and confirmed she wasn't being influenced by Wanda's chaos magic, he would've assumed Wanda had cast something and forced Gwen to fall for her.
And now Gwen kept vaguely, repeatedly tempting Harry—trying to pull Wanda into their relationship too.
Was that… really what she wanted?
Or was she testing him?
Or was Wanda just so lethal that she'd turned Gwen into a switch hitter?
Shoving the weird thoughts aside, Harry looked at Gwen and Wanda walking over hand-in-hand and couldn't help twitching at the mouth.
"That was the last Extremis-infected target in this area. Now we just wait for Tony to find the terrorists' main base, and we can resolve most of the crisis."
"But Nightmare is still waiting for us!" Gwen frowned and shot back immediately.
"Nightmare isn't something you two need to get involved with," Harry replied, steady and unhurried.
Wanda and Gwen fell silent.
They both knew it—even though their strength had improved drastically compared to before, a dimensional demon-god was still an entirely different level of terror.
Wanda hesitated, unwilling to accept it, then finally forced herself to speak.
"My chaos magic might be able to help—"
Before she could finish, Harry cut her off.
"Last time you forcibly erased a demon lord who was heavily wounded and near death, your soul took a catastrophic hit. You had to rest for a long time. This time, if you try to rewrite reality involving Nightmare, your soul will collapse instantly—and you'll die."
That shut Wanda down completely.
Right then, a panel popped up in front of Harry—Tony's incoming call.
Tony looked frantic.
"Harry—turn on a live news broadcast. This is bad. Really bad."
Seeing Tony that shaken, Harry's brows tightened. He issued a low command:
"Hedwig, connect to public TV broadcasts. Find a live news station."
A second later, a crystal-clear 3D projection appeared in front of Harry, Gwen, and Wanda.
But it wasn't a familiar news channel display.
It was a vivid, multicolored banner.
Ten interlocking rings formed a tight chain across the flag, and in the center sat two crossed long blades.
The image flickered. First, it showed footage of a riot.
Then it cut to a man in his fifties with a long beard and a loose robe.
Harry recognized him at once—the leader of the Ten Rings, the Mandarin, and the head of the terrorist organization that had attacked Tony.
The Mandarin's expression was flat, a faint mocking smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he spoke coldly:
"Mr. President, only two lessons remain. I intend to end the course on Christmas morning."
The shot widened, revealing a miserable figure at the Mandarin's feet.
This was a man who appeared often on television—an influential businessman in the United States.
The Mandarin calmly drew a pistol, aiming toward the camera, and said in an icy voice:
"This is Thomas Leecha—an important figure with a big name. He is an accountant for Roxxon Oil.
"I believe he's a good man. But I'm going to execute him—live on television.
"However, I'm offering him a chance. Mr. President, do you see the number beside me? Call me within thirty seconds, and I may spare him."
In less than ten seconds, a call came through. The President's voice sounded from the broadcast.
"I'm calling. Let him go."
The Mandarin smiled with satisfaction.
"Good. Very… sensible."
Before the President could even breathe—
Bang.
A gunshot rang out, and Thomas Leecha dropped dead on the spot.
The Mandarin's grin turned ugly as he continued:
"Mr. President, that was your final lesson.
"Never trust anyone.
"Now… we're coming for you."
The broadcast cut to black.
…
Harry stared at the scene, thoughtful.
The Mandarin clearly understood something about portal-travel logic. Aside from himself, everything around him had been pixelated beyond recognition—so even Harry couldn't directly open a portal right beside him.
Which meant someone knowledgeable had to be advising him.
And the Mandarin's insistence that the President call him was likely an attempt to locate the President using the phone signal.
On top of that, he sounded extremely confident in the Ten Rings' hacking abilities—sure he couldn't be traced back, or else sure he didn't care even if he was.
Suddenly, a portal opened beside Harry.
Tony stepped out, looking exhausted. He didn't waste time.
"Harry—I've got the Mandarin's location.
"Whether it's the Ten Rings or Nightmare behind them, it's all a massive problem. Let's move. We have to end this fast."
Harry raised an eyebrow.
"Alright. Where are they?"
"Florida. Miami."
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