Silence.

The entire Endgame battlefield suddenly went dead quiet.

Whether it was Earth’s superheroes led by Captain America and Iron Man, or the mad armies serving the Mad Titan Thanos, every one of them, the mightiest heroes in the universe and the most fearsome army in existence, all turned in perfect unison to stare wide-eyed at the figure who had dropped to the ground like a meteor and, the instant he appeared, became the center of the battlefield, the only true lead in the whole fight.

This man, who had stolen everyone’s attention the second he arrived, showed the entire battlefield exactly what a surprise looked like.

A surprise was a man holding all six Infinity Stones in one hand, choking Thanos from a distance with the other, with the word invincible practically written all over his face.

"Lord Thanos, I’ll save you!"

With a wave of his hand, Ebony Maw sent countless chunks of rubble rising from the ground, shaping them into blades that shot straight at the man.

"Hm?"

The man holding the Infinity Stones in one hand and strangling Thanos with the other looked at the incoming blades of stone and gave a contemptuous smile.

"Even with one hand full of Infinity Stones and the other around Thanos’s throat, I can still kill you with nothing but a glance."

As he spoke, orange-red light flashed in his eyes.

A terrifying beam tore through the air the next instant. It smashed Ebony Maw’s incoming rubble into dust and then sliced his head clean off. One ugly head flew into the sky like a misshapen watermelon before crashing into the dirt. Congratulations, Ebony Maw had met the class requirements and successfully promoted into a Headless Horseman.

"Ebony Maw?"

The other members of the Black Order, Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight, both stared in shock when they saw Ebony Maw collapse to the ground. For a moment, they even forgot to keep attacking.

"Open fire! Open fire! Keep firing!"

As a conqueror of an entire age, Thanos reacted with incredible speed. He knew that if they kept dragging things out here, the situation would only become worse for them. In a moment like this, the only answer was to carpet the battlefield with bombardment and try to break out of the deadlock by force.

Boom!

At once, the shells that had already turned this land into ruins began firing from the warships overhead once again.

"Watch out!"

"Find cover, now! Protect yourselves!"

Looking up at that endless storm of shells filling the sky, the heroes felt their scalps go numb. They all started scrambling for cover, trying to avoid the lethal rain falling from above.

"Hmph."

But unlike the heroes diving for shelter, the man standing at the center of the battlefield merely snorted at the countless shells above him.

In an instant, every shell in the sky froze in place, then reversed direction and flew back the way it had come.

Boom!

A second later, as the shells slammed upward into the fleet, warship after warship exploded across the skies above the Endgame battlefield.

...

At that moment, Thanos, who had bet everything on his bombardment only to find it completely useless, looked drained, but he still refused to give up.

"If I fall here, then who will defend the peace of this universe?"

Thanos kept trying to fire himself up. In that instant, he pushed beyond his own limits. Every cell in his body burned. He broke free from Jovian’s invisible grip, swung his giant blade, and lunged at Jovian.

Faced with Thanos charging at him with that massive sword, Jovian remained expressionless. The next instant, a red-gold beam flashed through the sky.

The defender of cosmic peace, Thanos, lost his still-living head, but even after that, his body remained locked in the motion of swinging the blade. In that moment, the warrior stood upon the earth with his broken weapon in hand.

"You did your best, Mad Titan, little Eternal."

Jovian granted Thanos, chairman of the Multiversal Family Planning Committee and lifelong enemy of the Celestials, who had once single-handedly ensured that not a single Celestial could emerge, one last shred of dignity. Even in death, Thanos remained standing, as if he had never fallen in the end.

"Now that your master’s dead, why are the rest of you still alive?"

After burying Thanos, Jovian turned his eyes toward Thanos’s army.

The next second, red-gold light tore across the battlefield like a spear, punching straight through the alien bodies of Thanos’s troops.

Then it swept through them like a scythe through wheat, cutting the grotesque-looking aliens into pieces.

"No need to thank me."

"I’ll be taking this set of Infinity Stones, though."

After cleaning up Thanos and all the eyesores under his command, Jovian floated up into the air. Then he raised the Infinity Stones in his hand, as if speaking to some unseen presence.

"These are the Stones the Watcher promised me..."

The moment those words left his mouth, the space around him shattered like glass. Jovian took one step forward through the door he had opened into a parallel universe.

The heroes watched Jovian swagger out of their world and disappear before their eyes. As proper heroes, they maintained the basics of heroism, silence, composure, and trying to look cool.

"My God..."

"Do any of you understand what just happened?"

"That guy in the white and gold suit just traveled through time and space without using Pym Particles. My God, how did he even do that? That’s incredible!"

But among that group of silent, cool-headed heroes, there was always one person who stood out completely from the rest.

...

"Does anybody want burgers?"

As everyone watched Ant-Man fiddling excitedly with his equipment while studying the data it had recorded, Tony Stark was the first to speak.

"Funny you say that, Mr. Stark, I’m starving too. How about McDonald’s?"

Spider-Man dropped down on a web and immediately made his suggestion to the very-much-alive Tony Stark standing before him.

"McDonald’s? What, you want me to take you there like I’m your babysitter so you can get a Happy Meal?"

"Sorry, kid. The best I can do is Burger King."

Sadly, this world’s Stark was still a loyal Burger King supporter.

"All right, everybody, break it up."

"The war’s over. We won."

Stark announced their victory. Sure, it felt like a victory they had stumbled into by accident, but a win was still a win.

"Oh, right, Mr. Stark. Earlier you all explained how bringing us back worked, and yeah, I get that now, but I still have one more question."

Spider-Man seemed to remember something, or maybe his Peter Tingle had been screaming at him the whole time that something bad was coming. He turned to Stark and asked.

"What question?"

Stark was in a good mood. He was perfectly willing to answer Spider-Man’s questions, and answer them seriously.

"So here’s my question. If we can’t return the Infinity Stones to the past, won’t that really affect our present?"

Standing behind Stark, Spider-Man voiced the thought that had been bothering him. If he remembered right, the Infinity Stones from their universe had just been taken away by that mysterious man. And if the Stones were gone, then how were they supposed to return them to the points in time where they had borrowed them? And if they couldn’t return them, wouldn’t that bring huge consequences to the universe they were living in right now? That was what Spider-Man had been thinking about.

"Heh..."

"Relax."

"Past universes losing their Infinity Stones might not be a bad thing at all. Honestly, I’d say it’s a good thing."

"At the very least, any ambitious lunatic who wanted to use the Infinity Stones for something can forget about it. Sorry, but there won’t be any Stones left for them to abuse."

Captain America still remembered how dangerous the Infinity Stones were, so he wasn’t especially worried about them vanishing.

"If the Infinity Stones are gone, then we really are in trouble."

Among all the Avengers, only one person looked truly panicked, Doctor Strange.

And there was only one reason he looked that panicked. If his past self no longer had the Time Stone, then he would never be able to defeat Dormammu.

Boom!

Just as Doctor Strange was running through possibilities with that brilliant mind of his, the sky suddenly cracked open. A massive face appeared before everyone on Earth, and the owner of that face glared straight at Doctor Strange.

"Boy, are you still planning to bargain with me?"

The owner of that enormous face, the immensely powerful dimensional lord and dark god Dormammu, stared at Doctor Strange while dragging Earth toward his own realm.

"Ah..."

Doctor Strange’s mouth fell open slightly. He did not want to admit it, but if nothing changed, then this Earth’s future was over. Put simply, Earth was dead.

"Kid, now let’s see who’s going to save you this time!"

Dormammu glared at Doctor Strange, practically itching to swallow him whole.

"Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain."

Just as Dormammu was about to act, a voice he knew all too well rang out in front of him.

"That voice..."

"You’re..."

Dormammu looked at the person before him with visible shock.

Meanwhile, after taking that universe’s Infinity Stones, Jovian went straight to the parallel universe he had once visited before, the one from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. This time, though, he arrived directly in that universe’s Avengers: Endgame era.

"Hahaha! We did it!"

What made this world different from the others was that, after bringing everyone back, the Avengers in this universe had not been attacked by Thanos at all.

And there was only one reason this universe had avoided that final battle, Jovian had restored Nebula to a flesh-and-blood body.

Because Nebula was no longer mechanical, she would not establish a link with her past self or her alternate selves from parallel universes. That meant she completed her mission perfectly and never attracted the attention of that universe’s Thanos.

And because of that, this world’s Endgame battle had turned into an Endgame party. Everyone was drinking, singing, and dancing together.

"I have to perform for everybody today!"

Totally drunk, Star-Lord stood on the tallest platform with the Infinity Gauntlet in his hand. His eyes were unfocused as he danced in complete self-absorption.

"Hey, hey..."

"What’s the matter with your head? Yeah..."

"Hey, hey..."

"What’s the matter with your mind and your sign?"

With the Infinity Gauntlet in hand, Star-Lord danced like a complete idiot, singing all the while.

"So he’s an idiot, right?"

Standing below the stage, Colonel Rhodes shook his head at the sight of the self-absorbed Star-Lord, then looked toward Nebula and Gamora beside him.

"...Yeah."

Nebula looked at Star-Lord, then lowered her head. She really had thought about saying a few words in his defense as her future brother-in-law, but honestly, with Star-Lord acting like that, she had no idea how she could possibly defend him.

Crash.

Just as Star-Lord was awkwardly dancing by himself, the space around him shattered like glass. A handsome man in a white-gold combat suit appeared right in front of everyone.

"Star-Lord, remember what you promised me? You said you’d gather the Infinity Stones for me and hand them over. Well, I’m here to collect them."

As he spoke, the holy-looking man snatched the Infinity Gauntlet right out of Star-Lord’s hands.

Then, just as suddenly as he had arrived, the man with the sacred light around him shattered space again and disappeared.

"Star-Lord, just look at the kind of mess you’ve made."

The Avengers and Guardians all stared for a long moment at the place where Jovian had vanished. Then one by one, they slowly turned to look at the stunned Star-Lord.

"I never said that!"

Star-Lord looked utterly confused.

"No, you did. You promised him. Drax can testify."

At that moment, the big idiot Drax stepped forward out of the crowd and firmly backed up the man in the white-gold suit, who had appeared in a hurry and vanished just as fast.

...

The second Drax finished speaking, everyone stared at him in amazement. They were amazed that Drax had actually stepped up as a witness for someone.

"Why are you all looking at me like that? Do I not look like a witness? Or do you all think I’m stupid?"

Drax glared angrily at all the strange looks around him.

Pfft...

The moment Drax said that, Mantis could not help laughing.

"You’re laughing at me?"

Drax asked Mantis viciously.

"No, no, no, I don’t usually laugh..."

Mantis was struggling so hard to hold it in that she felt like she was suffocating. Only now did she truly understand how painful it could be to suppress laughter.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Ultron stood with his spear like some great god, completely overpowering the Watcher. With all six Infinity Stones, he had become a god in the truest sense.

"Hah... hah... hah..."

The Watcher leaned against the ground, breathing heavily, clearly exhausted by the battle with Ultron.

"Space. Time. Reality. Power. Mind. Soul."

Each time Infinity Ultron spoke one of those words, the Stone on his body grew a little brighter than before.

"I possess all six. I possess the Stones of infinite power. I possess absolute power."

Infinity Ultron looked at the defeated Watcher and calmly stated the truth of what he was.

"So..."

"You think that as long as somebody has more Infinity Stones, that means they’re stronger?"

Just as Infinity Ultron was majestically declaring facts to his opponent, a voice suddenly rang inside his mind.

"Infinity Stones? I’ve got two full sets."

The space around Ultron suddenly cracked apart. Jovian slowly stepped out of the rift, walked up to Infinity Ultron, and then raised both hands in front of him in the most internationally friendly gesture possible.

"What the fuck?"

Jovian held his hands high enough for Ultron to see clearly, and Ultron naturally noticed the Infinity Stones embedded into the gauntlets on both of Jovian’s hands. His eyes widened instantly.

"Surprise, motherfucker!"

Jovian bared his teeth in a savage grin and charged forward with his Infinity Stone boxing gloves, modified from Infinity Gauntlets, then slammed a vicious punch straight into Infinity Ultron’s face.

"That Power Stone hit of yours hurt like hell, didn’t it? So why don’t you hit me again now? What happened, getting scared? You were talking pretty big a second ago."

"Or did you actually think you were the only one in this universe who could use the Infinity Stones? Have you always been this brave? Did it never occur to you that I can use them too?"

Jovian grinned ferociously as he looked at the Infinity Ultron he had just punched flying and asked his question.

...

The Watcher stared at Jovian as he walked toward Ultron with that savage grin on his face, and for a moment, he honestly could not tell which one of them was the villain trying to wipe out all life in the multiverse.

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