“What the hell would I buy some rundown hotel for?” Tony shot back instantly, caught off guard by Henry’s suggestion.
Henry just shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe you want to retrofit the whole building into a giant robot. Or turn it into a love hotel and rig every room with hidden cameras…”
“Okay, first one’s delusional, second one’s disgusting. If you ever actually try either, don’t tell people we’ve met.”
Henry only smirked, unbothered. It wasn...
"What the hell is happening?!"
Bruce Banner’s jaw dropped as one spaceship after another poured out of the quantum tunnel, like a dark tide spilling into the skies of Earth.
The air seemed to vibrate with the shrill hum of alien engines. The once-bright horizon dimmed beneath the hulking silhouettes of warships blotting out the light, their metal frames glinting with an ominous glow.
Even if Bruce didn’t fully grasp the mechanics behind it, his gut screamed th...
2023
New York, Times Square
Times Square at night was like a living organism—endless neon lights pulsed in rhythm with the crowd, gigantic screens looped ads and news that bathed the streets in shifting colors, and a sea of people from every corner of the world moved like a tide across the sidewalks. It was noisy, dazzling, and chaotic, yet strangely mesmerizing.
This was undoubtedly the most vibrant and iconic location in all of New York—if not the world.
...
Henry had just bitten into another muffin when he realized Tony Stark was fiddling with his gear. With a sigh, he wiped his hands and snatched the bone-conduction mic back from him.
“This thing’s live,” Henry said, clicking it back into place around his neck. “I don’t need you sending random noises into her ear. If you want to play with it, I’ll let you mess with it another day. Or, better yet, go home and build your own.”
If there was one thing Henry knew ...
Hearing that Alex had arrived through “legitimate means,” Doctor Strange didn’t press further—but the faint crease between his brows deepened. The dim light of the room caught the lines of strain on his face, shadows sharpening the edges of his expression.
Thanos’ snap, the silent deaths of half the universe, the Avengers’ crushing defeat in the Infinity War…
All of it had been part of the one future where they prevailed, the single thread of victory woven ...
"Honey..."
Clint Barton’s hand trembled as he fumbled for his phone, his voice breaking before he could even finish the word.
"Clint, I—I don’t know what happened. I felt dizzy, thought I was just tired, but everything around me seems… wrong."
Her tone was confused, hesitant. There was a faint background noise—wind rustling, a screen door creaking open. It was so achingly normal that it nearly brought Clint to his knees.
"Where are you?"
Th...
“Coming your way—Jean-Jacques Handali, senior exec at Geneva Bank. The woman on his arm? Cindy Crawford—model, Northwestern University standout, currently on a leave of absence. That’s all.”
Henry tapped his bone-conduction mic off and popped a tiny cake into his mouth.
A few yards away, Audrey Hepburn and Robert Wolders stepped forward with the warm poise of seasoned diplomats, greeting the pair. Handshakes, a quick exchange, and the women met with a light kis...
Captain America’s words might have sounded like dramatic praise at first, the sort of thing people said in the heat of relief.
But the more the Avengers thought about it, the more they realized — it wasn’t an exaggeration at all.
After all, this was Thanos they were talking about.
The mad titan.
The cosmic warlord who had once stood unopposed against the united forces of Earth, Asgard, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The being who had collected all six In...
"Jesus Christ!"
"Rocket! Not the time!"
The Avengers shot simultaneous glares at the irreverent raccoon. Rocket only shrugged, unrepentant, but the scolding was half-hearted — their mood was still buoyed by a rare surge of optimism.
The Infinity Gauntlet was complete.
The shimmering glove sat on the workbench, mechanical clamps still holding it in place from the assembly process. Each Stone gleamed with its own alien light — six colors pulsing like the ...
In the rented luxury sedan, Audrey Hepburn and Robert Wolders sat in the back seat, fiddling with a sleek, ear-hook–style wireless earpiece.
Henry had passed it back to them during a red light, one of his own little pet tech projects.
The device was based on the Bluetooth transmission protocol, which had only been publicly released two years ago. In reality, it would still be another seven years before companies like Ericsson even began producing commercial versions. H...
Silence.
The room fell utterly, painfully silent—so still that even the faint hum of the air filtration system felt deafening.
Every Avenger stared in shock, eyes wide and unblinking, as if afraid that blinking would make the impossible sight before them vanish.
Alex had lifted Mjolnir.
How was that possible?!
Captain America had been able to lift it once—that had been a moment of awe, born from a lifetime of unwavering selflessness and a noble h...
While the Avengers regrouped, deep in discussion about how to forge the Infinity Gauntlet and reverse the catastrophic snap, Alex was already far away. In fact, he had crossed oceans and continents, traveling thousands of miles at impossible speed, until he arrived at a place unlike any other on Earth.
Krakoa.
That’s right. The very first place he sought out was the mutant homeland—a nation he, Charles Xavier, and Erik Lehnsherr had painstakingly built together in th...
Jean Grey wasn’t the type to just stand there and take it. She fired back, her voice sharp with frustration.
“As long as what we do brings a good outcome, what’s so wrong about it?”
Henry tilted his head, almost amused. “Even if it goes against the person’s own will?”
Jean hesitated. “We’re just trying to help him.”
Henry gave a short, humorless laugh. “Really? Let me give you a scenario. An elderly woman loses the child she loves most to ...
Swish!
The sudden displacement of air heralded Alex’s arrival, the sound slicing through the tense quiet like a blade. One instant, the space before the Avengers was empty; the next, Alex was standing there—broad-shouldered, calm, and utterly unbothered by the collective shock radiating from the room.
Every pair of eyes locked on him immediately.
The expressions he found were a cocktail of emotions—hostility in some, wariness in others, the faintest flicker ...
2023.
Avengers Headquarters.
A low hum built in the cavernous hangar, followed by a shimmering distortion of air above the quantum platform. Sparks of pale blue and gold danced across the arcs of the time machine’s frame, its bulky, almost industrial design clashing with the other sleek Stark tech around it. It didn’t look particularly futuristic—more like an over-engineered science fair project powered by raw genius.
The energy swelled, making the air heavy in ever...
Nightcrawler’s tail drooped low, the fight gone from him. Wide-eyed, he glanced helplessly at the only other teammate still on her feet.
Jean Grey wasn’t the type to scare easily—there was a reason she was an X-Man—but even she wasn’t foolish enough to think she could take down a man who had just flattened nearly the entire team. Adding Kurt into the equation didn’t make the odds any prettier.
She swallowed her pride and asked, “What do you want?”
...
"Mr. Sinister? Alex, didn’t you kill Mr. Sinister?"
Hank’s voice was tinged with disbelief, his brows knitted as he stared at Alex. The words slipped out almost before he realized it, as if the sheer impossibility of the idea demanded an immediate answer.
"Under normal circumstances, yes, he should be dead," Alex replied with a frown, the kind of frown that carried not only annoyance but also the faint pulse of an oncoming headache. "I turned him into a pile of mush...
"Homelander, we can't take you back directly from here. Time travel isn't like hailing a cab—the quantum tunnel's programming is preset."
Tony wiped a streak of blood from the corner of his mouth, his fingers lingering for a second as if checking whether the injury was worse than it felt. His voice carried that particular brand of weary sarcasm he reserved for moments when he was explaining cutting-edge science to people who still thought “turning it off and on again” was...
If you had to sum it up, it was basically the psychic equivalent of a DoS attack—overload the system with so much useless data that it crashes.
First, pi. Not just to a few decimals, but all the way out to googolplex territory. If that didn’t fry him, time to unleash the Mandelbrot set in all its infinite, fractal glory. Two processes running at once. Three. Four. Throw in every unsolved math problem you could think of. Oh, and why not mentally flip through the complete arc...
The room fell silent, as if the very air had been pulled out of it.
Every mutant present stared at Alex, their expressions a mix of disbelief and apprehension.
Travel to the future?
It was an idea so audacious, so utterly impossible, that only Alex would say it aloud without hesitation. The concept hung in the air like a live wire, sparking with danger and possibility.
"Go to the future? Professor, are you serious?"
Scott’s voice cracked as he blur...
"Vanished overnight?"
"What the hell does that even mean?"
The words echoed in the tense room, as if the walls themselves were struggling to contain the shock. Mutants glanced at one another, searching for answers in each other’s faces, but finding only mirrored disbelief.
They had assumed gone meant exterminated—wiped out by some great war or cataclysm, an enemy too terrible to name.
But this… this was something else entirely.
One moment, ever...
The first giveaway had been the smell.
Not perfume—not really. The scent rolling off her was something sharper, more primal, something that definitely didn’t belong to Audrey Hepburn. But at the time, Henry had brushed it off as some weird chemical reaction from a fancy fragrance.
And that’s how Mystique got him.
“So… you’ve figured out where we are, haven’t you, brother?” she said, now fully in her natural form.
Henry kept his expression co...
The heavy, almost suffocating silence inside the war room was broken by Alex’s calm, almost cheerful voice.
"Captain America—Steve Rogers."
"Iron Man—Tony Stark."
"Welcome, guests!"
His tone was warm and oddly hospitable, as if he were greeting friends who had come for tea rather than two battered men whose faces were still swollen from the beating he had given them.
He leaned slightly forward, the corners of his lips curling in a polite, unrea...
CRUNCH!
Another devastating punch landed, the sound echoing like a hammer smashing metal in a silent forge. The impact tore away the last fragile remnants of Tony’s helmet, shards of nanotech scattering across the cracked pavement like glittering debris.
Now there was no hiding the damage.
His face—bruised in angry purples, streaked with blood, and already swelling in uneven patches—was laid bare for everyone to see. One eye was half-shut, the other glassy a...
“First thing’s first—we need to flag down a cab,” ‘Audrey Hepburn’ said, patting Henry on the shoulder.
“Oh, come on. You know what an impossible mission that is? Hailing a taxi in New York?”
“C’mon, little tiger. If you can’t pull off something this small, you’re not living up to your own legend.”
“Fine, but we’ll have to head out of the park. You could stand here for a whole year and not see an empty cab roll by,” Henry said, gest...
"Am I supposed to know you?"
Alex’s tone wasn’t mocking, nor was it the smug sarcasm that Tony often got from his rivals.
It was genuine curiosity.
He wasn’t particularly impressed by the red-and-gold man standing before him, but the way Tony spoke—as if they had some deep, unspoken history—piqued his interest.
What was his relationship with Tony Stark in the future?
Why did this man behave as if Alex was already a known quantity—someone he h...
That had to be it.
In an instant, Alex pieced everything together, the fragments of overheard words and faint mechanical hums snapping into place like a puzzle he’d already solved halfway in his head.
A slow, knowing smirk curled at the corners of his lips.
Iron Man and Captain America—here to steal from him?
Now this was amusing.
He’d taken the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. on a whim, tossing it into his base like a trinket picked up during a la...
The story of Audrey Hepburn’s harrowing flight made headlines across the globe. But for once, her name wasn’t splashed across entertainment columns or red carpet retrospectives—it was on the front pages of politics and society.
The political angle? The incident had occurred in the midst of a coup in Somalia. The humanitarian trip that Hepburn had embarked on—intended to spotlight child welfare—ended up becoming the symbolic curtain call for the Somali Democratic Repub...
Even in the most beautiful moments, there’s always something to break the spell. That’s just how life works.
Henry was the one to break the calm.
“Everyone,” he said, his voice steady but serious, “I’d like to remind you all of that little secret I asked you to keep.”
The group went quiet. All eyes turned to him, no one speaking—just watching.
Henry looked directly at the Italian pilot. “Captain Luca, the successful landing? That’s all y...
"Shit."
The word slipped out like a sigh—low, sharp, bitter.
"So we really have to go there now?"
The man in the passenger seat leaned back heavily in his seat, glasses slightly askew, hands resting on his lap as if holding the weight of the world. He stared at the road ahead, but his eyes were focused far beyond the windshield—on memories, on threats, on gods wearing capes.
Beside him, Steve Rogers' expression was grim, carved from stone. His broad sho...