Chapter 196: The Transmigrator Was... Me?
"You know who I am?"
Ethan stared at the still-bound Strange, genuinely thrown.
He'd never set foot in this universe before in his life. So why did this version of Strange act like they were old acquaintances?
A handful of explanations cycled through his head at once. Did this Strange somehow still have the Time Stone, watching other universes through it, and had caught wind of him that way? Had some version of Strange astral-projected into his own universe at some point and picked up the intel secondhand?
Watching the confusion play out across Ethan's face, something in Strange settled into deep, private satisfaction.
He'd just spent the better part of an hour being outmaneuvered by a teenager. This — Ethan, off-balance, asking the questions for once — was the first good thing that had happened to him all day.
So there are things you don't know after all, Ethan.
He'd been quietly irritated for a while now by Ethan's whole "I already know everything" routine. This felt like overdue payback.
When Strange didn't answer, Ethan pressed again. "How exactly do you know me?"
Strange's eyes glinted, something almost playful in them. "Guess."
Ethan didn't take the bait, and he wasn't annoyed either — just unbothered.
"I'm not guessing. If you're not going to tell me, I'm leaving." A portal flickered open behind him, casual and pointed. "Without me, you're probably stuck in here for about a month."
That landed. Strange's composure cracked immediately.
"Fine — fine, I'll talk." He sounded almost relieved to drop the act. "Last time we spoke was after the Battle. Though, like you told me back then — the you standing here right now genuinely doesn't remember me yet."
Ethan stopped mid-step. He closed the portal and stood there, working through what that actually meant.
It took him a minute, but the pieces clicked.
A future version of me crossed over here. During the war with Thanos — which means he showed up around the same window the Avengers used time travel to go collect the Infinity Stones from the past.
But that raised an immediate problem. The Avengers' time heist should have pulled from the main timeline's past — not from his universe. His Avengers were a non-issue back home; he'd already taken them apart months ago. There was barely anything left of that organization to even bother time-traveling for.
So something had clearly changed between now and whenever his future self showed up here.
And — that explained Tony. That's why Tony was alive in this universe. His future self had been here, doing something, and Tony's survival was downstream of it.
The transmigrator I was looking for, he realized, with a kind of flat disbelief, is me.
"Did he say anything else?" Ethan asked. "Anything he wanted passed along?"
He knew himself well enough to know that if future-him had gone to the trouble of crossing universes, he wouldn't have left without a message. That wasn't his style.
Strange thought about it. "He mentioned someone. Said you should go save a man named Martin Lee, back in Hell's Kitchen. And two people with him."
Ethan frowned at the name.
Martin Lee. Sounded like it could be one of his own — Chinese-American, maybe — but he didn't recognize it at all.
Who was this guy? And why would future-him specifically flag a rescue mission for someone Ethan had never even heard of?
Knowing his own temperament, this "Martin Lee" had probably caused — or was about to cause — some genuinely significant trouble. He wouldn't have bothered leaving a note otherwise.
And the "two people with him" detail nagged at him too. Why mention they existed without naming them?
He filed it away. The second he got home, he was putting people on finding this Martin Lee. He wanted to meet the man himself and figure out what made him important enough for a cross-temporal warning.
Strange's voice cut through his thoughts.
"Could you untie me now? Please."
Ethan blinked back into the present and glanced over. He doubted the webbing was actually holding Strange — this felt more like Strange choosing not to bother breaking it himself. But he obliged anyway, a flick of magic slicing through the strands.
"I genuinely hate children," Strange muttered, rubbing his wrists.
Ethan rolled his eyes. There was no version of reality where Strange actually lost a straight fight to Peter. He'd clearly held back.
"You sure 'hate' is the word?" Ethan said dryly. "Because you let him win pretty hard for someone who can't stand the kid."
Strange dropped the pretense entirely. He didn't bother asking how Ethan knew that, either — by this point, Ethan apparently knowing things he had no business knowing had simply stopped being surprising.
He sighed. "I don't even know where the kid learned to be this stubborn about saving people. He took my Sling Ring, you know. Genuinely ruthless about it."
Ethan laughed.
He recognized the complaint for what it was: Strange grumbling about Peter being too reckless, too soft-hearted, too determined to do the right thing even when it cost him.
"I just hope he can actually pull it off," Strange added, a real note of worry under the dryness now. "This can't drag on too long. The longer it takes, the worse the multiversal exposure gets."
He knew Peter had the talent and the nerve. He also knew Peter was still young enough to occasionally let both of those things get ahead of his judgment.
"Relax," Ethan said, cutting him off. "Don't intervene. My student's already on it, and if anything goes sideways, I'll clean it up myself."
He was thinking about the wager with Miguel. If Strange jumped in and fixed things himself, Ethan's whole bet collapsed before it even resolved.
Strange seemed to relax at that, visibly. Whatever reputation Ethan had built clearly carried weight here too — he nodded, willing to take Ethan at his word.
"Come on," Ethan said. "Let's go say hi to this universe's Tony."
He was curious what a version of Tony who'd never had to make that final sacrifice was actually doing with his life.
Strange shook his head. "You go. I'm heading back to Kamar-Taj — see if there's a cleaner fix for all this."
Ethan didn't push it. He turned to leave the Mirror Dimension.
Just as he was stepping through, Strange called after him.
"Oh — one more thing. Past-you also said something about a 'world-breaker and his beloved wife' showing up at the Illuminati."
Ethan stopped cold.
He turned, clearly hoping for an explanation. Strange just smiled — sly, deeply satisfied, offering nothing.
This was, evidently, payback for the earlier embarrassment. He gave a small wave and vanished, leaving Ethan alone in the Mirror Dimension with absolutely no context.
Every individual word in that sentence made sense to Ethan. Strung together, they made none.
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