SCP-682, the Hard To Destroy Reptile. A living engine of destruction and death, impossible to kill except for exceedingly rare circumstances.

I watched as Strucker fought the thing desperately off for the mental equivalent of minutes. Which was a lot better than the fight might have gone in real life.

My impressions of SCPs were fairly strong and recent, but they just didn’t have the ties to my memories that other monsters of fiction did. So I couldn’t one hundred percent mimic them, which meant they were weaker.

But that was good. All part of the plan. See, they were freaky enough to weird out and befuddle Strucker, strong enough to give him trouble, while being weak enough parts of my mind to leave me room for the next phase.

As Strucker fought, I also carefully kept one eye on the other cameras. This may have been my mind, but the SCPs would kill me just as happily as they would Strucker. The cameras were also carefully blurred. That was good because SCP-096 was staring at the camera, his face fuzzy and indistinct.

On another screen, a teddy bear was building another of itself out of human genitalia. SCP-053 was playing in a room with SCP-999, a cute gelatinous blob.

SCP-106 was nowhere to be seen. I tried not to let that bother me.

But the main show was Strucker and 682. They were currently in a small auditorium. Strucker was holding the scepter tight, his body covered in scratches and bruises. Okay. Just needed him to keep fighting. Waste time, waste time, force him to use the Mind Stone more and more. In real life, I could see the gauntlet holding the stone beginning to crack even as we fought in the clouds high above the battlefield. I just needed-

“ENOUGH!”

My ears rang. I screamed in pain, grabbing my head as a sudden feeling like nails scratching the inside of my skull filled my mind. The walls shook. Strucker, on camera, was beginning to glow. Through blurry eyes, I watched him look at me.

“Enough of these games, Dial.”

682 rushed him. Strucker raised a hand and turned the mental projection of a monster to dust. The pain in my head became a wailing scream as the backlash of that attack struck me.

“This nightmare ends.”

He raised his Scepter. The Mind Stone flared a brilliant gold, then exploded. A sound, like glass shattering. The whole world began to fall apart. The cement ceiling was ripped away by an impossible wind. The rooms, halls, and monsters of the world I’d made were pulled into the storm. I was lifted off my feet and sent into the spinning wind, with Strucker’s golden glowing form at its center.

And the pain. I’d put so much power into that place. Now, as SCPs and rubble were evaporated, I felt a portion of my mind begin to break. I clutched as hard as I could to my mental impression of myself, keeping my mind alive despite tumbling through a hurricane of lunacy.

I wanted more time. But if I let Strucker continue to wreak havoc within my mind, he would turn me into a vegetable. I needed to activate the next part of my plan now!

Desperately, I poured all I had into the next construct. Strucker, sensing what I was doing, tried to stop me.

I forced the image in my mind.

And suddenly, Stucker and I were falling towards New York City. We tumbled on the wind, facing the city below.

New York City. But as I saw it. A massive sprawling set of streets, buildings, and memories, with a glittering ocean in the distance and a fuzzy outline to show the cities around it.

And the memory thing wasn’t a metaphor. I’d avoided making the SCP structure with anything familiar, but I’d done none of that with New York. Echoes of me roamed the streets below. Vague representations of civilians, police officers and cars flowed through it. Sharper figures glowed in the streets.

Steve and I walking together, laughing. Creel, Fantasma, and me hanging out on the top of the Empire State Building, eating food and arguing. Daredevil and me, raiding a building right out of hell.

Jen and I. She glittered below us, a hundred emerald diamonds below me, even in her human form.

And the Avengers Tower. It wasn’t exactly in the center of the city, but it had a weight that the rest of the buildings didn’t, every inch of it clear whereas some buildings had a bit of fuzz to them.

I twisted in the air to face Strucker as we fell. He glared at me, then, hefting the scepter in one hand. I streamlined my body to shoot forward, my sudden acceleration making him miss a blast from the scepter that scorched my side. His eyes widened as I raised my fist.

My punch landed across his nose with brutal force. He reflexively reached out as he shouted in pain, hand wrapping around my wrist and pulling me back in. Strucker and I smashed into each other as we approached a memory of me racing Tony in Astrodactyl form. As we passed through, I let the memory consume me. The exhilaration of flight, Tony’s joking taunts, the feel of star power in my body.

My body shifted in a burst of light. Strucker gasped as the human he’d been facing suddenly became an alien pterodactyl.

I easily pulled my hand from his grasp and punched him in the gut, following with a beam of green light from my jaws that sent him flying downwards. He crashed into the street, bouncing off the fuzzy image of a Toyota/Chevy hybrid built from vague memory. When I flew in to attack again, he blasted me with his Scepter, sending me crashing into an apartment with a spray of false bricks and mortar.

“I believe I’m beginning to understand,” Strucker floated upwards, rushing towards me. “A battle like this, with memories and emotions as the tools,” he smirked as he came to a stop before me. “Can you truly stand in this fight, however?”

I blitzed towards him, smashing into his body like a cannonball. He laughed.

“In this realm, where a man’s intelligence and will hold precedence!?” Strucker twisted around and kicked me back, then fired another beam of energy, the painful energy sending me into another building. I twisted in the air and unleashed my blast of power, ripping apart three buildings as he dodged it. “Here, I have power! What do you have?”

I grinned. God, what a tool. But hey, when someone feeds you a line like that…

“I have the power of god and anime on my side!”

It was a stupid line. But it was also the trigger I’d prepped for something new. Strucker flew towards me. I shifted forms. I think he expected something familiar. Another alien, like Astrodactyl.

So when I began to grow and grow, he must have imagined something bigger. Maybe Four-Arms. Or even my new Godzilla-esque form.

But that wasn’t my plan. I picked a form from my childhood. Something I’d grown up with.

“You stand there wanting to be this big strong Tyrant. Claiming you have power!?” I grew. Ten, fifteen, twenty, then finally 38 feet. My orange scales become hardened cybertronian metal. My feet were still clawed, metal slicing through the stone beneath me as the building shattered. Grey steel shone in the sunlight, highlighted by purple glows across my body as crimson eyes burned. I raised my right hand. The fusion cannon there ignited with a violet flame.

The symbol of Decepticons burned on my chest. This form was fed by childhood memories of a monster who killed legends, fueled by the adult experience of becoming an alien over and over, giving me power, real power on this plane. The little Hydra man in front of me gaped upwards, then started shooting at me.

Loki’s Scepter was strong. But I knew it couldn’t put a scratch on me. So it didn’t. It splashed across my metal shell like a water balloon.

"You have no idea what that looks like Strucker. A true tyrant, true power! Let me show you!"

I fired the fusion cannon. Strucker dodged. And the block behind him exploded apart.

“Let me make you scream,” I moved forward, faster than anything my size had a right to, and smashed him out of the sky, sending him flying into the nearest building. I smiled, a slow and sadistic smile as I let my mind be taken in by the role I’d taken. “So says Megatron.”

------

In the real world, Strucker was silent. All the action was happening in my mind after all. He was fighting me as best he could, but spending brain power on speaking would have been a waste.

Which was why I was running. I had to speak after all.

“-Get somewhere safe. I won’t do it to anyone who hasn’t volunteered, but the second it happens you guys will be vulnerable.”

“I get it,” Natasha said, sounding hectic. “We’ve got our people ready. Hydra’s forces at this point won’t be a problem anyways. Strucker is the only one to worry about. Some of us have been getting headaches and hallucinations.”

My blood chilled even as I dived through the remains of a tank, the metal ruin exploding with Strucker blew it apart. “Anyone hurt?”

“34 dead since he started using that thing,” she didn’t mince words. “He may be fighting you, but that stone is getting more powerful the longer he holds it. If this continues, he’s going to be able to control all of us.”

“Then we need to get it done now,” I said firmly. “Get ready. 1 minute.”

“Mark.”

I twisted around and tossed a psi-lance his way. When he prepared to block, it exploded just in front of him instead, turning into a violet fire that surrounded him. He blew it aside with a wave of telekinetic force, just to be forced to block a metal object I threw at him while his vision had been obstructed.

Then his eyes widened in horror as the metal ‘object’ raised a gun.

“Howdy pardner,” X said.

He fired an M61 Vulcan cannon, the echoing sound of the giant machine gun echoing across the landscape. The bullets were blocked by a psychic shield, only for Strucker to be forced to also block a psi-lance from me. X punched, his immense strength shattering the now weakened shield. Strucker let out a wordless cry, his psychic grip reaching out for X’s mind.

A mind he didn’t have of course.

My next psi-lance struck at the same time as X did, sending him flying back. X, no longer in the grip of Strucker’s power, plummeted downwards until I grabbed him, pulling him over to land on the ground next to me. I floated next to him, trying my best to smile despite my lack of a mouth.

“Good to have you helping, X. Is Jarvis on the way?”

“He’ll be doing long-range support, pardner,” he said in that Matthew McConaughey voice of his, his eyes still set on where Strucker had gone.

“Then we’re all set,” X and Jarvis. Robotic bodies, whose minds couldn’t be manipulated by a psychic, who could coordinate at light speed. With the two of them backing up, I could put more focus into the battle of the mind.

“See you on the other side,” I mumbled to X as Strucker came flying towards us.

“Good luck,” X said earnestly.

Strucker smashed into us with a wave of telekinetic force, opening a Rift at our location. I activated my Rift, my storm of violet energy battling his gold, while X hefted a massive gun and fired it at Strucker.

Then I retreated into my mind. The more important battle would be there.

------

Megatron. A massive engine of destruction, one of the scariest beings in the galaxy. Not scary in the sense of the SCPs, most of them anyway. That was more of a horror movie fear. Something kind of abstract, so unbelievable that it couldn’t be one hundred percent imagined. Megatron, on the other hand, had a solidity to him.

A giant that fired weapons and could become a tank. Simple. And a different kind of terrifying. After all, it’s hard to imagine some things. It’s horrifically easy to imagine getting ripped in half by a big-ass robot, feeling the tearing of skin and muscle right before bone snaps.

Strucker flew through an alleyway. I chased after him, my armored shoulders destroying the buildings on either side of me as they ripped out huge chunks of cement and steel. He twisted in mid-air, firing shot after shot from Loki’s Scepter.

“Damn you, you short-sighted bastard!” Strucker landed on the street and lifted two fuzzy memories of Volkswagens into the air, tossing them at me. I blew one apart with my cannon, then swatted the other aside. “Do you understand what you, what the Avengers, tried to stop?”

“A world of fascists ruling over humanity and preventing any growth?” I scoffed in Frank Welker’s voice.

“Preventing chaos. Madness!” he dodged the giant fist that tried to squish him, my clawed hand tearing through the concrete. Strucker raised a hand. “I have seen what the future holds. Let me show you.”

There was a ripple in reality. All around us, my memories of random citizens in the streets, foggy remnants of my past, stilled.

Then they turned to face me.

One of them transformed, becoming a monster of stone flesh. Another raised hands covered in strange pale white energy. A young woman began to grow in size, her clothes shredding as she growled.

They came at me. A bolt of lightning splashed across my chest. I grit my teeth, firing my fusion cannon just before the giant woman punched me in the face. I stumbled back from the superhuman blow, buildings shattering under my bulk. I grabbed her head and pushed her back as I snapped my other hand out, an ax of energy forming in my palm.

I almost, for just a moment, hesitated. Something about this woman was so… human. Not just some fake being Strucker created, but a memory of a person he’d seen. She looked like she was in pain. Radiated it on a spiritual level, such that it seemed to echo in the world around me. Strucker’s memories of this person were of a woman suffering.

I embedded the ax in her skull. I fired a blast at the stone man. I stomped on the man who was firing lightning at me.

But there were more. More and more. People from all walks of life, attacking in waves.

“This is the world to come,” Strucker said, his voice echoing. “I’ve seen dozens of people, of all races, creeds, and countries. Gaining the power of gods.”

A man with eyes of yellow turned into a small sun and smashed into me, the extreme heat burning against my skin and destroying a city block before I could grab into him and rip his head off.

“It has different triggers. Strange chemicals. Radiation. Genes within their DNA activating under stress, or even puberty. I’ve discovered many of them. Hydra and SHIELD discovered more.”

An Asian man landed on a building across from me. He looked familiar. Someone from Coulson’s mission reports?

My memory of him was a mistake. Fed by Strucker and me, the form of the man sharpened, his eyes coming alive with more intelligence than before. He ignited into flame and blasted me with them, the white-hot plasma turning the asphalt beneath me to liquid. I grit my teeth under the burst of flame as above me, a tornado controlled by a young woman began to circle.

“This is what I wanted to stop. You call me a tyrant!? Is it tyranny to fight for peace? For a world where men, women, and children don’t have to worry about monsters among them, killing thousands on a whim! Hydra could have stopped them. Contained them. Prevented some new despot from destroying the world!”

A blast of energy sent me flying back. I flew over Grand Central Terminal’s green tiles, crashing into a street a moment later. I rolled to my feet and faced Strucker with hard eyes as he flew over to face me. An army of men and women followed in his wake, flying, jumping, and running.

“You see,” Strucker raised his hands. “I am not a monster. I am trying to save the world! From the superhuman threats among us. The aliens above! I-”

“Hey, you recognize this place?” I asked, cutting off Strucker.

“...What?” he asked, startled.

“Here. This spot,” I rose to my feet. As I did, I shifted slowly. My body shrunk and shrunk until I was back to human form. “The street in front of Grand Central Terminal.”

I turned to face the street. Strucker watched as, in the center of the street, an image formed.

“The whole world remembers this spot. Aliens pouring out of the sky. A mad god flying about on his chariot. The death toll is listed as 75. A miraculously small number, some people said. But the families don’t agree on that.”

“Why are you bringing this up?” Strucker landed before me, striding forward confidently. “Are you agreeing with me? Because that is my point,” his left eye had some popped blood vessels. So did his nose, based on the red dripping there. “If Hydra had been able to spread the Iron Man technology amongst our forces. Or Hulk powers. If we could have made more super soldiers. No one could have stopped us. We would have saved everyone.”

“Someone did save everyone.”

An image appeared. The Avengers. This image was oddly clear. As though I’d seen it for years. But I only remembered it from one appearance. Captain America hefting his shield. Black Widow reloading a pistol. Hawkeye pulling back on his bow. Iron Man floating on jets of fire. Thor twirling Mjolnir. And the Hulk, his hands clenched in fury. All in a circle, back to back. Facing a sky of aliens.

They didn’t notice the random future Avenger and Hydra leader, or the army of superhumans. But I smiled at the sight. It was a clear image. Very clear.

“The Avengers…” Strucker glared at them.

“Everyone remembers what they did here. How they showed up as a team and saved the world…” I grinned as the memory sharpened further. They were breathing evenly. Iron Man’s armor seemed to glow a bit brighter.

“The way that affects history has a sort of weight to it. It carries a concept to it even. This day, right here? This place? Here’s where, when the world was in danger. When a mad despot carrying a scepter showed up with an army of superhuman monsters under his control. The Avengers formed into a team to save the day.”

Strucker stared at me. Then down at the scepter in his hand. The army around him. His mouth gaped open as the pieces came together.

See, in a battle of the mind, symbolism is everything. The Avengers had formed here in New York City. It was an image both Strucker and I had in the depths of our minds. For a specific purpose, in a specific way. And that gave me a way to open the door.

In that circle of heroes, Hulk blinked. Then he smiled slowly. Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Iron Man’s suits all flowed with color, shifting and changing to match their recent ‘updates’. Thor turned to face Strucker with a smile.

“Verily, Strucker. You have made a mistake,” he said slowly.

In the center of that circle, a hole ripped open in time and space. Jen came out of it, her hair waving behind her. Creel cracked vibranium fists together. Quicksilver sped out of the portal. Fantasma and Scarlet Witch flew upwards, while Marian Pouncy smashed into the ground next to Hulk, who smiled at her. The roar of a bear was followed by the Winter Guard flooding in. Black Panther flipped his way into the battlefield, while the Punisher strolled in with a shotgun raised.

“Symbols have power in here,” I said to Strucker, grinning as the minds of Avengers, BRIDGE Agents, and our heroic allies across the world entered. “That’s true. And it’s what I was trying to guide you to all along. To make you dance to the right sort of thought. I’m lucky though. This plan wouldn’t have worked if you weren’t a genius.”

Strucker snarled. “Get them!”

I lifted my arm and touched my hand to it. “Avengers Assemble!”

In a flash, I was in the Ethereal form within my mind. Cap tossed his shield, while Tony laughed. “Ohhh, this is gonna be good!”

------

We charged as one. I flew upwards, sending out beams of psi-energy, the power rippling through the air as it ripped one of Strucker’s simulacrum in half.

“This is familiar,” Black Widow said as she landed next to me and Clint, firing her pistol into the head of a man in escaped prisoner garb.

“I think that’s the point, wasn’t it?” Clint asked me as he fired his bow.

“Hey kid,” Tony dropped next to me, firing both repulsors. “I can make anything I want in here, right?”

“As long as you believe it, it’s true,” I made my voice echo. “You hear that!? As long as you want it, you can make it!”

I could feel the emotions that followed that. The way everyone grinned. Tony’s armor flowed as it changed again. And became something out of a lunatic future. He laughed like a madman as dozens of ports opened across his armor, then fired out dozens of repulsors across the crowd.

War Machine flew forward as a giant tank/armor hybrid. Creel shifted colors in a flash of light, changing over and over as he smashed through the army. Natasha and Punisher started shifting guns so fast it was hard to figure out what they were shooting next.

The Winter Guard, Ares, Luna Snow, the Grapplers, everyone started letting loose with their imaginations, ripping apart the New York City we fought in. They tore havoc. Buildings fell. Soldiers died. Strucker screamed as he blasted the Hulk, only for the superhuman to grab him out of the sky and toss him through the Avengers Tower.

“I gotta say, sweetie, you throw a hell of a party,” Jen joked as she wrestled with a man who had grown to match her in height, smashing him into the ground.

“I aim to please,” I said with a grin.

“This won’t be enough!” Strucker shouted in the distance. “You want to bring in allies? Then I’ll bring your worst enemies to life!”

All around me, the heroes I knew began to glow yellow. Jen stared at herself. “What the hell is this!?”

Flashes of gold across the battlefield.

Tony was suddenly tackled by an Iron Man suit. For a moment, I thought that Rhodey had smashed into him. Then I realized this suit was so much larger. An armored tank of steel, with a round glowing port in the center. The helmet pulled back to reveal-

Jeff Bridges!?

“Hello again, Tony!” he said in a smug voice.

“Obadiah!?” Tony rose to his feet, glaring. “Ah. So this is what he meant.”

A redheaded woman taller than Jen fell out of the sky towards my girlfriend, who met her in the center. Natasha stabbed an older fat man in the stomach with a lot more joy than I would have expected. Hulk and Abomination smashed into each other with explosive force. Thor blocked a blow from the Destroyer armor.

I grabbed a robotic monkey servitor out of the air with my telekinesis as it attacked Fantasma, ducking under a Chitauri soldier (As in the alien, not the armored Hydra guys). “Seriously, with this shit again!?”

“I like it,” Ares said as he boxed with Ulik with a wide grin. “We’ll need to incorporate this into our training sessions.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Nat said behind.

God save me from my mentors.

It was an insane grouping, powers, and abilities flying about at high speed. All of our oldest enemies, rushing in waves.

Creel and Davida punching Rath in the face made me blink as my tiger alien form fell. They shared an embarrassed look when they saw me staring.

“You kinda kicked my ass in that form,” Creel said with some trepidation.

“Same,” Davida added.

La Vent and Quicksilver smashed into waves of dinosaurs from the Rio De Janeiro incident. War Machine destroyed a series of robotic drones shaped like his own suit.

Chernobog laughed as he ran past chewing on… Was that SCP-106’s head!? Where the hell did he find that!?

Have you ever had a dream where it felt like you’d lost control? That all you could do was make the best of it? This was like that times a thousand. Heroes used their imagination to become the most powerful versions of themselves. Villains from the past kept attacking us. Hulk and Bruce split into two separate beings to dodge an attack from Abomination, then recombined for an insane haymaker that turned Grand Central Terminal to ash.

But in the center of it all was Captain America. He didn’t change. He was the same person, down to the smallest detail. But he shone brighter than anyone in there. Red Skull appeared for a moment and tried to attack him.

Steve shattered him into pieces.

Outside, in the real world, Steve was a super-soldier. Powerful, but not invincible.

In the stage of the mind? He was unbeatable.

We all gravitated towards him. He broke Strucker’s mental projections with cold ease, he flipped through the air, he tossed the shield even as his fists landed like small bombs. We were all pretty strong mentally. Thor and Ares turned the Chrysler Building into a crater as they smashed it apart.

But none of us were Captain America.

That helped. I used him as an anchor point. A way to nail this insanity to some form of reality. Then I focused on business.

“I’m going after Strucker,” I wrapped four arms around Jen, pulling her in for a brief kiss. As I pulled away, I smiled. “No making fun of me for what you find in my mind.”

“No promises,” she said right back, teeth flashing. She spun around and leaped away, an emerald in the smoke and chaos. I flew towards Strucker as my friends and allies continued to wreak havoc.

------

In the Avengers Tower, Strucker was sitting against a wall. His body looked broken. Arms and legs bent, groaning in pain. He gazed at me as I approached.

“...They came for you,” he whispered.

I knew what he was thinking. “They always were. But if I wanted to make sure they all showed up in the right spot…”

“You had to use a place that we both had strong memories of. A place we thought of as the appearance of the Avengers. Creating an opening in the construct. Combined with me matching a basic description of Loki,” Strucker laughed, raising his Scepter in a salute towards me. “I thought you were a lot dumber than this.”

“I have my moments,” I raised my four arms, each glowing with the full power of an Ethereal. “Shall we?”

Strucker nodded slowly. We faced each other. We raised our hands for the final fight.

The room shook then. For a moment, I thought Strucker was the cause, but he looked confused. Then I thought it was one of the others. But the room continued to quake.

Then I felt like a nail slammed into my forehead. I screamed, falling to my knees. Heat burned into the space between my eyes. “YAAAA!”

Strucker stared at me as the floor beneath me began to shake. Violet energy blew out from me, Strucker blocking it on a shield of gold. “What is this? Dial, what are you doing!?”

I couldn’t speak. I could barely think. I just screamed.

------

Outside, the entire city began to shake. Tony stopped while kicking Raza, the Ten Rings leader that had kidnapped him all those years ago, in the face. “Hey uh, this seems bad? Is somebody shaking Dial out there?”

He flew up on his repulsors and marveled at the speed he could put on. Out in the real world, his crazy ideas could come to life. But slowly. They needed time for tech to catch up. The right materials, a huge amount of testing. But in here? He could make anything he’d ever imagined.

His armor was based on a design he was still coming up with. Not catoms. Not even nanomachines. Instead, dozens of wafer-thin ‘scales’ that came together in tandem. They could form into structures as thin as a layer of human skin, or become armored plating as thick as concrete. It could create all versions of his weapons, worked off his thoughts alone, and shapeshifted nearly instantaneously. The endpoint of his armor. Armor that was ALL his armor. An Iron Man suit for all occasions.

And completely impossible right now. But way cool.

Besides, if a man couldn’t dream, what was the point? Even so, as he was flying around in the suit right out of his dreams… couldn’t he make it better? Weren’t there more advanced versions he could make, more efficient?

Even in the suit of his dreams, Tony Stark was always thinking of improvements.

His boots shifted into rockets that burst with intense power, sending up high enough to get a good view of the city. Thor flew up to join him, Scarlet Witch coming to his left. In the distance, he saw something begin to crack.

The sky. The literal SKY was shattering.

“That can’t be good,” Tony mumbled.

“It’s not,” Scarlet Witch said, her voice soft. “Something is coming.”

“You can feel it, young Maximoff?” Thor said seriously.

“Feel what?” Tony said, turning from one to the other. “This a magic thing?”

“This is no magic,” Thor said, his voice harsh. “I sense a presence beyond.”

“He’s right,” Wanda raised her hands, red energy flowing to them. “I can feel another presence pressing against Mahmoud’s mind. It’s trying to break in… No, it’s more like,” she frowned, eyes flashing. “Like it’s been pressing against his mind for some time? It’s hurting him!”

Below, the ocean began to glow with white energy. The sky began to dissipate, becoming glowing shards of crystal, as though a diamond was shoving itself into reality.

“Can you stop it?” Tony asked, worry filling him.

“I don’t know? I can try-”

The world shook. Then, Dial’s voice filled his mind.

“I can’t stop it! I’m pushing everyone out before it can hurt you guys!”

“Dial, stop, Wanda is going to hel-”

Suddenly, vertigo hit Tony like a tornado. He gasped.

And he was awake. He snapped his head around. He was sitting in a chair like many of the others around. It had been part of the plan. They would rest their bodies on the Enterprise as Dial pulled them in. He could see Nat rise to her feet, clutching her head. Thor was already standing, Ares joining him. “What was that!?”

“He forced us out,” Wanda said, walking over with Quicksilver on her arm. She looked haunted. “Whatever is attacking him, he’s on his own.”

Tony’s stomach dropped. On his own. With Strucker and that… whatever had been cracking his mind. The sound of crunching metal drew his attention to the right. Standing there, She-Hulk ripped a metal wall apart. She glowed with gamma radiation, Tony’s suit counting the radiation before Hulk joined her as she raged, calming the superhuman.

“...Fuck.”

------

My world was pain. Strucker walked over to me as I lay in my back, bent in agony. The Hydra leader looked confused. “Now… what could be causing this?”

“-AHHHHHHHH!”

God. I wish I could speak. I could feel it. This pain. It wasn’t just familiar. I’d felt it at the corner of my mind for weeks. No. Months. Always showing up at the worst times. But now it was building. The Ethereal part of me knew what this was. Not just a psychic attack, but one that was built on a mental block that had been put on my mind long ago. Like building a ramp to allow a tank to smash its way into a building.

I had to fight it. I had to…

“RAAAAGH!” I spun to my knees and looked out at the city. I could see it in the distance. A massive, ten-mile gash in the sky and sea, a hole in the reality I’d made. Beyond that, a kaleidoscope spun. I could feel it there. Someone pressing against my mind. Something so powerful. It wasn’t as strong as the Mind Stone. But it was stronger than Strucker, by a wide margin.

I reached out to the horizon. Strucker watched, curiosity in his eyes, as a storm of violet energy smashed into the ground around me. I focused my mind past the pain. I had to remember one thing. That horizon. The city. They were mine. Parts of my mind. This presence was trying to break me with a block they’d placed. So I needed to find it. The root of it.

The Avengers Tower began to shatter. Strucker and I stood on separate platforms of telekinetic power, the multi-story building turning to ash. My room shone out to me, the image of Jen, Thor, Nat, and I talking peacefully shattering apart. Symbols, right? If the Avengers Tower was a place I thought of as home in my mind, the center of my universe, then it was the best place to find the ‘roots’ of my psyche.

And when the Avengers Tower broke down, at the very bottom, where Tony had once shown me the power of an Arc Reactor flowing into the building, I could see it.

A cancerous growth. That’s what it reminded me of. A giant glowing set of ugly crystals, pulsing along veins of red flesh. It might have been beautiful once. Just a simple thing. But repeated attacks on my mind had made it grow, fed the cancer until it had become a horrific mass of stone and flesh.

I reached for that cancer. And I burned it. The heat wasn’t real, but the fire I made felt like a cleansing one. The smell of the smoke was the same as when I’d been young.

I’d been with my father, in a campground a million miles away. We’d been the only ones awake, sat side by side as we watched an ocean of stars above us, the rest of our family sleeping peacefully in tents nearby. He’d smiled at me, his salt and pepper beard shifting. The fire smelled good, a pine and cedar smell. That fire scorched the cancer away.

New York City turned to ash and dust in turn as I released the construct. I felt like a nail was slowly being pulled from my mind, leaving an empty hole that began to fill with blood. Painful. But somehow, a release.

Strucker and I watched the city fade away. And soon, another construct came to life. He looked around curiously.

“So. What memory is this?” he asked.

We stood in a white room, a study of some sort. The floors were smooth marble. The piano was painted with some sort of oil that gave it the same pearl sheen as the walls. There was a polar bear rug on the floor. Outside, snow fell behind smooth paned glass.

“It’s not his,” a female voice said.

Strucker and I faced the direction it came from. She was leaning back against a desk. Ice-blue eyes gazed upon us, snapping between us. Sapphire painted lips smiled lazily. She was wearing a white corset that held up her breasts for display, much the same way her leather pants were tight enough to show the form of her legs, all the way to her high-heeled boots. A white-furred hood lay across her shoulder, white-blonde hair laying across it.

“Emma Frost.”

She didn’t seem surprised I knew. She only smiled. “Well. Seems you’ve fought through that little mental block of yours.”

“...Mutants,” I said softly. “You created a block on my mind. Maybe on dozens of people’s minds. To remove all memory of them.”

“In truth, I wanted to be subtle about it at first,” she said without a hint of shame. “But you kept remembering things. Kept trying to fight it off.”

“Does that include me?” Strucker asked. He sounded haunted. Worried.

“Oh no, you pathetic little man,” she said with a laugh. “You never fought it a day of your life. In some ways, it’s your fault,” her calm faded. The chill in her eyes became a burning cold, dry ice against the skin as she stepped forward. “Hydra. SHIELD was surprised to know you survived. WE were not. We knew you were kidnapping us, killing us!”

She calmed herself, sighing. “And now, you two know the truth. I was going to try and wipe your mind. Turn you into a blank state, drooling in a hospital bed somewhere,” she said as casually as though she was talking about an errant stain that had discolored a favorite shirt.

“Especially before any of the others could intrude,” the snow outside briefly parted. Beyond, Strucker and I could see them. Shadows in the snow. Other telepaths gazing upon us. Held at bay only by the strength of our minds. It was unnerving, seeing some of the strongest minds on Earth as shadows beyond a snowstorm…

“But this form of yours is stronger than I would have believed. I suppose, now, that I’ll have to face you more openly.”

The smugness in her voice. That confidence. She walked up to me, placing a finger on my alien chin, looking into my four eyes.

I stared at her. Emma Frost. Telepath. Super-villainess… Absolute bitch.

“When this war is over. I’m going to find you, Frost. And you’ll learn to fear me.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “I doubt that.”

“That’s good,” I raised my hands. My two right ones. The Ethereal power within me flexed, then pushed outwards. Emma had a moment of surprise as her immense psychic presence pressed against mine. But I’d struck her off balance. The room around us blew apart into waves of snow and ice. She seemed ready to fight it, but relaxed after a moment. We met eyes as her boots began to change to flakes of frost, fading in the wind.

“See you after this,” I said softly.

Her pale lips quirked, and something a bit warm entered her eyes. “If it’s any consolation… I hope you kill him.”

Emma Frost gave Strucker a final hateful gaze. Then she faded into the storm.

Strucker stood silently as the snow and ice faded to nothing, to be replaced with a field of stars. We stood on an asteroid that had been smoothed out to become a platform floating in space, looking down upon the Earth. Behind us stood a temple, but we didn’t face it.

The Earth is a beautiful thing. Call me a romantic. Call me biased. But it really is. Clouds swirling over sapphire gems, with hints of emerald and chocolate.

“...All I wanted was to protect her,” Strucker said. “The Earth is so… small. Hanging in all this darkness.”

I changed from my Ethereal form to my human one. For this part… my humanity was my strongest advantage. Outside, in the real world, Strucker and I were ripping the mountain we stood on apart. But within my mind, we stood in peace.

“Mutant,” Strucker said thoughtfully. “That word. The context of it. I’d forgotten them. I had some idea that we’d encountered those beings. The threat they pose. And you know-”

“I know a lot, Strucker,” I cut him off. “Thing is… I agree. Earth. The people on it. They need protecting. But the cost isn’t worth it. Not the costs you’re willing to pay. Because mutants aren’t the threat to worry about. They aren’t the worst the universe has to offer. Not by any means.”

Strucker and I looked up at each other, meeting eyes.

“...Show me.”

This was the most delicate stage of my plan. Emma had forced me to speed it up. But in some ways, she’d helped me. I’d have to thank her… personally, later.

“You want to know about what we’re really facing as a species? How small mutants, inhumans, supersoldiers… aliens, and gods are?”

I held out a hand. “You’ve got the Mind Stone. A repository of all the universe’s knowledge. Why don’t you and I take a look?”

He scoffed. “You think I’m a fool. To give you access to the power of the stone?”

“I think you’re a scientist,” Natasha had told me once there was a cadence you could add to your voice. A way to draw people in. To convince them that something was as much their suggestion as yours. “A discoverer of the unknown. More than Hydra’s leader, you were always at the forefront of their research. And now, all you need is someone with the right questions… and you could learn more than you ever dreamed of. The Mind Stone must be telling you that.”

His eyes were glowing golden as he stared at my hand. “So much… More than just mutants.”

That taste of previously unknown knowledge Strucker had accessed. The confusion he’d been hit by through this whole fight, the way he’d been struck by unknown after unknown. To a scientist like him, that taste was a hit of narcotics to the brain. I could see him thinking it over as the Mind Stone whispered to him. So much knowledge. Power. All with just a little push.

“All you need is for me to ask… you wondered how I knew so much. Don’t you want to find out just what else I’ve been hiding?”

He swallowed reflexively. With a single movement, he reached out to my hand and took it. Symbolically, sharing his access.

I touched against the Mind Stone as Strucker touched my powers. And then I asked the questions.

Show me the Brood.

------

Suddenly they came. We stood in a city on an unknown planet. A species of blue glowing humanoids were screaming, running.

A horrific sound echoed. Not just in the air, but on the psychic plane. A slithering sound that scratched on the nerves.

‘Hssssssss!’

Insects chased after the innocents running through the streets in impossible waves, more of a flood than a horde. Teeth ripped through flesh. Stingers injected poison that either paralyzed or poisoned the victims. Sunlight shone off of carapaces before blue glowing blood marred the shining surface. Eyes of red glowed. The horde was unending. Flying, running, chasing their prey. I’d once seen an army of ants ripping apart a dead dog. This was worse. Insects tearing through buildings. The corpse wasn’t a small animal. It was the planet itself.

The hive felt us. Their minds pressed against us. Inhuman presences asking what we were. Prey? Enemy? We were different. So of course we must be either. They had no concept of anything else.

And then, there were the bodies that they left alone. The blue glowing people who had been left to wander, shell-shocked. Then, their hands formed into hardened brown talons. They knew what was happening. We could feel the panic that set in. Their faces elongated, turning to fanged muzzles. Screams of agony and fear echoed in the air.

Strucker watched with cold analysis. But that was fine. We were just getting started. I entreated the Mind Stone.

Show me the Black Queen.

------

We suddenly stood in a room again. A dungeon of an ancient castle. Two people were there. A young man. He looked like a college kid, dressed in clubwear. Ready to party and get girls.

I clenched a fist when I saw what was happening to him. His skin was becoming wrinkled. Youth was fading in mere seconds, the passage of time on fast forward as flowing trails of smoke-like energy left his body. And entered her.

She was in many ways Emma Frost’s opposite and her reflection. Black leather and hair, but the same incredible beauty with enough difference to tantalize. She was smiling with euphoria, head laid back as the one young man groaned in agony. He turned into ash in her arms. She laughed.

Then Selene Gallio looked at us. Her mind pressed against us. The Black Queen of the Hellfire Club smiled. Her power echoed to us. The Mind Stone and my Ethereal powers barely held her off. If Strucker and I hadn’t been prepared, she might have done something. Instead she laughed again, a sensual and deep sound that made the chest tighten, filling me with the thrilled excitement that only comes from the most beautiful predators.

I wanted to kill her. For the poor kid now turned to ash. From Strucker, I could feel something else.

Whatever else Selene was, she had power. It echoed from her. Like the waves under an ocean. As close to a goddess as could be without being directly related to Ares or Thor.

I focused again, focusing on the task at hand. The psychic vampire spoke as she watched us depart.

“Leaving so soon? Well, come back later. I’m sure I can arrange a wonderful dinner for your next visit… Dial.”

The Hellfire Club’s two top women knew my name. A problem for later.

We left for our next visit.

Chthon

------

In the next place, we entered a dark space, standing in nothingness. Strucker looked over at me and smirked.

“So far, Dial… you have yet to impress me.”

“Is that so?” I asked calmly.

“An alien species of parasites? A particularly powerful superhuman woman? Dangerous, yes. But neither is anything out of my plans. I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve run out of tricks.”

I thought about that. “Tricks… You don’t feel it, do you?”

“Feel what?”

Instead of answering, I waited.

“...” Strucker gasped. I could see it in the reflection of his eyes. A shadow passing behind me. He stepped back, gazing behind me. “Wha-what-”

I didn’t look behind me. I just watched that reflection. I got a sense of… limbs stretching out around us, tasting us in the air. I felt the hot breath from jaws pass across my skin. A moist feeling crawled into my lungs, drawing bile into me.

The place we were in didn’t have a center. But there was an hourglass. Even as I kept still, and Strucker screamed, the hourglass stood. Within, paper fell down one after another as nails tapped against my ears. The writing on the paper writhed and faded. I felt heat in my blood when the demonic script appeared. I felt horror when it became English. The pages seemed to freeze in time. Inviting themselves to be read if only I had the courage. The Mind Stone pressed against us, importing us to look upon the text, to learn so muc-

The darkness shifted. It had no eyes, no it had dozens, it was looking, it tasted, invaded,bit-

Chthon was beginning to feel us.

A Marvel creation equivalent to Cthulhu and similar Lovecraftian monsters. God. That sentence just didn’t compare to the reality of it. I could say it was a beast that had made monsters, that it made so many evils. But here, in its home, where it was everything around us, where even the sound of passing by my chest screamed at me with an oozing sickness like rotted flesh somehow pressing against the pupils and slowly digging in-

I ran. I pulled us out as quickly as I could before we could blackout under the waves as the moist air clawing up my nostrils and down my throat began to stroke along within me. And a book closed over the horrid place with a gentle flutter of pages with impossible to read words that begged to be understood. On that book was a title.

Darkhold.

I pushed the next location into the Mind Stone.

Strucker’s future.

------

Strucker landed in a pile of volcanic ash. He clawed at his throat, gasping as hot air entered. I felt the same relief he did. This air, burning and painful, was like clean water after the horrid moistness of the realm beyond.

“W-What-” he stared at me. Blood came from his mouth. His nails had scratched trails against his skull. “I-I don’t-”

“You wanted me to impress you,” I croaked, my own horror almost choking me. “Then let me. After all, I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

I wish I could have laughed at the irony of the last line. But I dismissed it to look around. “For now, I wanted to show you something special. I wanted to show you tomorrow. At least… the tomorrow you have to look forward to.”

Strucker looked around. His monocle had faded away, allowing me to see the look in his eyes. “This… isn’t real.”

“It is,” I looked upon the lands before me. “When I was young, my mother and father would warn me of this place. They told me I had to be good or I would end up here… hehehe,” my chuckle was quiet. A bit manic.

Lord save me. When I made this plan I had some idea- No. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would be this.

Fire blazed in the realm. We could feel it. Not just physical heat, but a burn that pressed against our minds. I knew Strucker could feel it. That if we touched the lava running through the rocky landscape, if a lick of fire touched our skin, if god forbid we were engulfed, it wouldn’t matter what we did.

We wouldn’t die. But when we appeared in the real world, the scars on our souls would never leave. Eternally burned and scorched by the power of our sins.

The fire terrified me. Strucker? Well… he had more sins on his soul than could be counted. His mouth opened as he stammered.

“T-This place isn’t-”

The sight of a confident and powerful man letting out stammering denials made me snap. I grabbed him by his jacket and lifted him up. “Isn’t what!? Real? You can feel it Strucker! This place doesn’t give a shit what you believe in! This isn’t about religion or righteousness, it’s about one thing! The innocent and the guilty!”

I twisted him bodily around and pointed him outwards. “Look! Look at them burn!”

At the core of the fire. Soaking through the lava. They screamed. What could have been mistaken for the crackle of flames was seared throats and lungs croaking in eternal pain. Brimstone was mixed with burnt pork sizzling on eternal skillets of stone. There weren’t laughing demons cackling as they tortured souls. There didn’t need to be, not on this level.

Strucker’s eyes reflected red-orange as his eyes met his predecessors.

Then we noticed him.

He was on a platform to our right. He should have been unnoticeable. Just a man in a red suit sitting on a throne of stone.

But the realm bowed to him. Those screaming faced him periodically. He would never grant them mercy. They had to know that. Their suffering, eternal and unending, was his pleasure. He lazily kicked his foot as he watched them soak, a small smile like that of a young child looking upon a field of flowers.

That was his great cruelty. He would never grant them mercy. And yet, he sat there. Because in this place, any hope, no matter how thin, was an addiction as painful as glass. They saw him, and they hoped. Only for him to shatter that hope again. Over and over, cruel indifference followed by fire. They couldn’t help but try. And he loved it.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Not a threat. A warning. Because it would make the torment easier.

Mephisto flickered his eyes towards Strucker and me. I froze. But he didn’t look at me. He focused on Strucker.

His smile stretched into a horrific face-splitting thing that made me reel back. He waved a hand.

And the fires around us separated. Visages grew from the stone, the lava, the pits. Figures barely burnt, but suffering in agony as they screamed.

This was just one version of their torment. Stuck in hellfire on this plane. Repeating loops of horrific torture in another. Trapped with the images of those they’d hurt in yet another plane.

I recognized them. Not their faces, not when they’d become blackened husks. I saw Chitauri armor scorched and turned to slag. Massive green flesh sloughing off to become more crisp ash. A patch that had somehow survived the lava, displaying the image of a head with tentacles growing from it.

“no...” Strucker whimpered. Hydra soldiers screamed.

I don’t think he noticed the others. The ones with a symbol I recognized. BRIDGE soldiers. American, Russian, Chinese, men, and women who had died on my side.

Intellectually I knew that no army was one hundred percent clean of sinners. But it was sobering to see them burning alongside the Hydra soldiers. Much, much less of them. But a few.

Mephisto held a hand up, fingers lazily waving in a wave. He mouthed something to us.

“Be seeing you.”

I pulled us out.

One last place. One last visit.

The Devourer.

------

Strucker and I landed in a field of grass next to a river. He fell to his knees, staring at nothing. I circled him, looking at him. “Mephisto isn’t something Hydra fights. He’s the final home for you.”

He looked up at me. “I didn’t know. I didn-”

“Quick lesson in life… no one gives a shit about your justifications for those atrocities. In the end? Cool motive, still murder,” I let out a breath tinged with that horrific moist flavor and a bit of ash. I breathed deeper. “And honestly, even if there weren’t some cosmic scale to worry about, the shit you did in Hydra was still a waste of goddamned time. All the crap you did, that great empire you would have made, would have broken the second the right threat came along.”

“...The same could be said of the Avengers,” Strucker pointed out.

“That’s the point you wanna make? We both might lose? Because we might, but at least we won’t go down justifying random bullshit,” I sighed. “Strucker. You don’t understand, even now, how out of your league you were. The stuff I’ve been preparing the Avengers for. Preparing the world for. So I brought you to the worst place I could think of.”

Strucker blinked. Then he looked around.

It was an alien world. The grass was a shade like water under glass. The wind blew through trees covered in fruit shaped like fuzzy mouths. There were two suns in the sky.

But it looked like paradise.

Strucker rose to his feet. He looked terrified. “What is this place?”

“Agrapon-B. A lush planet full of life. It’s got animals, plants, all that good stuff. One day it could become a civilization…”

I braced myself. He sensed it.

Above, a silver streak crossed the sky. Strucker glanced at it. The blur was gone before he could get a perfect look, but he must have caught something. He frowned.

“A… surfboard?”

A shadow came over us. It crossed the land in moments, covering us both. Strucker and I looked up.

It was impossible. Insanity. Across the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, blocking out the suns across the continent. Clouds were blown away by it’s passing, trees becoming blown about by hurricane-force winds.

A hand. Fingers that-... How do you even explain the size of something like that hand? How do you explain the size of a continent? Creases the size of rivers, fingers that hung like asteroids slowly falling towards us. I fell to my knees. The river behind me began to rise as the mere approach of the hand’s mass began to pull everything towards it.

The hand dominated our attention for a moment before the wrist appeared. Like the glove, it was encased in violet armor that emitted a light that danced across the spectrum of human vision. Along with arms with biceps the size of moons, connecting to a chest larger than the planet we stood on. And to a face that gazed upon the planet we stood on. The upper half of his face was covered by a mask, with eyes glowing with white-silver energy burned. A head covering purple helmet, rising like a Babylonian crown of old. With two sharp-angled flat horns rising from the temples to almost meet the helmet at the top. Only the burning eyes and uncaring, frowning mouth of its wearer were left visible.

But that wasn’t his real appearance. The Mind Stone, my Ethereal powers. They couldn’t comprehend him. The greatest repository of knowledge in the universe. Powers that could bend reality and read the thoughts of all living things. Useless.

He read us. His mind passed over ours. I could feel him read me at a fundamental level. A mind larger than the form before us. I felt myself breaking under the strain of his existence, both physical and mental. I tried to hide my thoughts, my meager barriers nearly shattering just at his gaze. If he learned what I knew, learned the location of Earth, everything would be over.

I’d made a mistake, coming here. I thought only to break Strucker, but in my hubris, I thought the best way was to astral project to the real beings. To show him the truth in action, rather than a false image from half-remembered dreams. And now, we would-

He dismissed us. I felt tears fall down my cheeks as he turned his attention away. To the planet he was enveloping with his hands.

Of course. Of course.

Galactus wasn’t a villain. He was a trial. A literal force of nature. We couldn’t fight him. Only endure him. If he’d wanted to kill us, then Strucker and I would be dead. Our bodies, eons away on planet Earth, would have turned to mere ash as our astral projections were destroyed.

Instead… he hungered.

That deep and impossible hunger. It soaked into the atmosphere around us. I felt it pull at us, looking upon our life force.

But when you’re hungry, you don’t eat a pair of ants. Not when a buffet table is laid out before you.

The hands approached. The winds became a hurricane, sending trees flying, turning the water into a storm. The sound was insane. The ground shook. I felt immense cold, then heat. I grabbed Strucker and pulled. We had to get a different perspective. If we stayed there, we were dead.

The Herald.

In a flash, we were in space. Strucker and I floated in space. We must have been thousands upon thousands of miles away from the planet we had been on. I let out a mental gasp. The weight was gone. No, just lessened. I could still feel it, but compared to before…

The planet sat in the distance. And floating before it, he stood. I could barely comprehend his size. A planet the size of Earth, maybe larger, and it was only as large around as his stomach.

Galactus dug his hands into the surface of the planet. I could feel the life force of the planet screaming in agony. See the crust shatter like the surface of an orange, releasing the juices within. Galactus’ face didn’t move. But I could feel the ecstasy in him as he fed.

It was the worst feeling in my life. When I’d watched Star Wars as a kid, I remembered the scene of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s horror as he felt Alderann die. For the first I really, once and for all, understood how he felt. The planet's place in the galaxy, a spiritual and literal weight, sucked into Galactus like water down a drain. Water turned to steam. Magma spat upwards around his fingers. The lush life of the planet, every animal and plant, dying in moments.

The planet exploded. For the first time in my life, I saw a world die. I prayed softly, watching as the remains of it faded into Galactus.

Galactus’ hunger was barely sated. That was the worst part. That the atrocity I’d seen was nothing to him. Barely any sustenance.

“Monster,” Strucker whispered next to me. His skin was beginning to crack. Shining golden light flickered through those little fissures in his body.

I shook my head. “No… that’s the thing. He’s not evil. He’s not cruel. One day, he will come to Earth. He’ll try to devour us. And unless we fight back, well… he’ll have no more care for us than a bulldozer paving over an anthill.”

It might have been easier if he was evil.

Someone floated past us. I looked over at him.

The man stood on a surfboard in the depths of space. His skin was beautiful silver from head to toe, his body built like Steve’s. He spared a glance our way. Then he turned and leaned over. At the speed of light, he flew off, before easily shattering that limit.

Galactus’ minds passed over us for one moment longer. I pulled us out.

------

In the real world, Strucker fell to his knees. I floated before him. My bottom right arm had been ripped off at some point. He’d ripped a chunk out of my thigh as well. I could barely feel them. I think he’d also broken my spine at some point.

But Strucker? He was far worse off.

The Mind Stone still rested in his hand. The gauntlet he’d been using had shattered, leaving the stone embedded in his hand. Fading grey skin surrounded it, glowing with the energy of the gem as it tore apart his mortal flesh. He was panting out, steam leaving his lips. His clothes had begun ripping at some point, allowing me to see the striations of golden energy burning his skin like electric wires slowly cooking him alive.

“...I was a god,” Strucker whimpered. “I had the power to do anything.”

“No. You just had power. More than most. Less than many. Nothing special,” I said.

“I-I can still save this,” his eyes dripped blood. “Hydra will survive.”

“Hydra is dead,” I said. “Maybe some idiot will take up the name again down the road. But this? You? It’s done. You know that.”

He gasped in pain as he tried to straighten, only to gasp again. “...So is this it? You kill me?”

“Me? Nah. I promised I’d let someone else have the honor.”

“Someone else?” Strucker laughed, coughing up more red and green liquid. “Who is worthy? Of killing me? I was a god!”

Somehow, he rose to his feet, clutching at the Mind Stone. His broken mind continued to shatter in front of me. “A GOD DAMN YOU! I was going to bring this world to a utopia! The unlimited truth of the universe, the code to reality! All that horror! I-I could have stopped it! Hydra could have… could have-”

He stumbled over his words. I think, on some level, despite his insanity, he didn’t even believe himself.

“...I was a god.”

A loud gunshot. Strucker stared at me. The hole in the center of his head leaked, the back of his skull blown out. Three more shots. Two struck him in the heart. The last in the wrist, sending the Mind Stone bouncing across the ground.

Fury walked up beside me, watching as Strucker crumbled to the ground. He was chewing on a cigar, the smoke trailing up into the air. He scoffed.

“A god. Don’t make them like they used to,” he took the cigar from his mouth and tapped away some ash. “Good riddance.”

X and Jarvis joined us. X was holding Jarvis up. His head had been blown in half, sparks flickering across the hole there. He’d fought well. So did Jarvis, who had a hole in his chest. The two AI joined Fury and I in looking down on Strucker.

“...Is it over, pardner?” X asked.

“Not yet,” I said softly.

I reached out to grip the Mind Stone in my telekinetic grip. I felt the Mind Stone as I brought it close to me. I gripped it in my remaining right hand.

Holy- How had Strucker held onto it as long as he had? The thing was powerful and hurt like hell. Maybe because I was already tired?

That was fine though. I only needed it for a moment.

The power I felt though… If it wasn’t for the bought of humility I’d been recently hit by, I might have lost myself in it. The Mind Stone boosting the powers of an Ethereal to insane heights, turning my already reality-shifting psychic powers into something beyond that.

I felt the psychic plane shift. The minds that had been drawn to Strucker and I fighting. They had looked in on the fight between two psychic powers. Some with greed. Some with worry.

Now? They fell back. Almost all their eyes faded. If they’d stayed, I would have known everything about them. It would have taken no effort.

That was the level of power. Effortless. True strength is like that. Where all feats are simple as breathing.

I pushed that thought down. I pushed down the thought that I could simply rip apart the minds of every HYDRA soldier, Kree, Remorath, and other enemies currently attacking us. I could turn them good, mind-control them into allies. Maybe spread my reach further. Turn the world into a utopia. A place whose minds would be under my control. I could turn all humanity into a place where everyone's morals were my own...

Instead, I sent one message out to them.

“Sleep.”

The wave of psychic power infected the air. It spread outwards, echoing to every enemy soldier. Fighter ships fell out of the sky. They passed out mid-run, while shooting guns, in cover, even as they were shot in the head.

“Sleep.”

The command echoed into the world around us. I had to pull back when I noticed even Fury slowly closing his eyes before they snapped open.

“Sleep.”

In a single moment, the battlefield was quiet.

“...Now it’s over,” I said softly.

Then, I held out the Mind Stone. X took it and placed it in a pouch at his side.

“What now,” X said.

“Now we count casualties,” Fury said, looking tired. Now that I looked at him, he looked horrible. Bruised and battered. His shoulder had a bleeding bandage I recognized as a gunshot wound. “Then. Well. We all have a drink.”

“Mr. Fury. Mr. Schahed,” Jarvis said, drawing our attention. “We’ve isolated the broadcast.”

Broadcast? Oh right. Hydra had been sending out some kind of message we couldn’t figure out.

“What was it?” Fury asked.

“The battle,” Jarvis sounded confused. “It seems Strucker dedicated a massive amount of computer power to sending out footage of the battlefield.”

We stared at Jarvis.

“Why the hell would he do that!?” I asked, befuddled. “Was he trying to get more subscribers on Twitch or something?”

Fury didn’t respond to my sarcasm. Instead, he looked over at Strucker’s corpse, his single eye-widening. “To send a message. Jarvis, what was the broadcast being sent to?”

“One moment… it was broadcast across the world. But now that we can follow it, it looks like it was also sent out into space, sir,” Jarvis said. “He used the technology of the aliens under his command to send a live-stream of the fight. With multiple levels.”

Oh. Oh shit.

“The whole galaxy?” I mumbled.

“Perhaps,” Jarvis said. “The broadcast was public.”

“He wanted to make sure the rest of the universe saw the fight,” Fury growled. “Who knows how many aliens just saw what we’re capable of. They know how dangerous we are…”

And how valuable.

Strucker had made sure he would get the last laugh. I had no idea how the footage would be seen across every species out there. But they would know about us now. They saw Earth’s warriors. Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Luna Snow, Thor, Ares.

I stared up into the sky. Fuck. Things had gotten complicated again.

------

Peter Quill/Starlord

On Caligula Station, in a bar called The Broken Blade, Peter stared at a hologram in front of him, the sexy Aakon woman clutching to his arm almost forgotten, his drink spilling on the floor.

An image of a weird alien he never saw turning into a human with a flash of green, with two robots and another human standing next to him, blinked away as the broadcast ended.

Holy. Shit. That was Earth. Earth. His home planet. He thought it was boring! Not… whatever that had been!

“Damn, Quill,” some random Guna, a short reptilian guy with a big ass head, shouted with a laugh at the other end of the bar. “I ain’t ever seen you fight like that! Maybe you’d be half the badass you pretend to be if you did that kind of shit!”

Quill may have been shocked, but he would be damned before he missed a chance to brag. “That’s cause I never had to fight like that! Maybe if one of you idiots ever gave me a real challenge, I’d pull out some of my real tricks!”

A few jeers came from the other patrons.

“Who were those guys, anyway?” A Krylorian asked Quill, the red-skinned man looking genuinely curious. “The Avengers? What is that?”

Quill froze. The Aakon woman on his arm looked at him, her gaze burning as the light bounced off her yellow skin.

“Well uh, they’re friends of He-Man!” Quill spurted out. “I told you guys about that guy, remember?”

“Oh come on, that bullshit-” someone shouted.

“Nah, I kinda believe him,” Quill nearly fell out of his seat. “You see the Asgardian and Olympian there?”

“What, so Quill isn’t full of shit!?” someone else shouted.

Quill grinned as the Aakon woman pulled closer to him, crooning in his ear. “Tell me more stories about Earth.”

Well damn. Looks like things would be looking up for Peter Quill.