With the firefighters' lives at risk, Doctor Strange had no choice. With a reluctant gesture, he collapsed the shimmering portal to the ocean floor. The torrent of seawater ceased, and the violent, hissing collision between elemental fire and frigid ocean depths died down, leaving a battlefield shrouded in a blindingly thick fog. The faint breeze was no match for the colossal clouds of steam, and visibility dropped to near zero.
Through the haze, the fire elemental continued its relentless march. The sudden dousing had cooled its lower legs, encasing them in a thick shell of glossy, black crystallized rock. But it was a temporary victory.
"It's not working! Any other tricks up your sleeve, Doctor?" the 1st-generation Harry asked, his voice tight with frustration. He pointed toward the titan's legs, where the obsidian shell was already beginning to crack and glow with incandescent red heat again.
"Yes," Strange replied grimly. "But first, we need to move."
He wove his hands together, and the entire pocket of the Mirror Dimension they occupied slid sideways through space. Opening a new gateway, he allowed the team to step back into the real world, now positioned on the elemental's flank. Strange then gestured dramatically, and the invisible fabric of the Mirror Dimension surged forward, attempting to envelop the fire elemental entirely.
It swept through the thick fog, consuming the steam until it met the creature's form. The moment it made contact, a violent shriek of tearing reality split the air.
"What?!" Strange's eyes widened in disbelief.
The Mirror Dimension, his infallible prison, had met an immovable object. It buckled against the elemental, unable to contain it. He had trapped the Dark Elves' mothership—a vessel hundreds of meters long—to prevent an explosion that would have leveled New York, yet this creature resisted. The sound of shattering space grew louder as fractures like black lightning spread across the dimensional barrier.
Strange's gaze locked onto the dark purple lines covering the elemental's body. They were blazing with a malevolent energy, far brighter than before10.
"Damn you, Dormammu," he cursed under his breath. It was the Dark Dimension's corruption, a power that could defy the laws of his own reality.
Though the trap had failed, he continued to manipulate the Mirror Dimension, using it to bypass the creature and vacuum away the dense fog, clearing the air for the heroes on the ground. With his primary plan in ruins, Strange's mind raced, desperately searching for another solution.
It was then that a swarm of black dots appeared in the distant sky, approaching with incredible speed.
The 2nd-generation Spider-Man spotted them first, tapping his counterpart on the shoulder. "Hey! Look! What's that formation?"
Everyone looked up to see a dense cloud resolve into thousands of advanced drones. From the opposite direction, Tony Stark streaked across the sky, with Natasha Romanoff, piloting a borrowed suit, flying close behind him. Close on their heels was the mobile armory, Veronica, which immediately began bombarding the fire elemental with high-energy ordnance from a safe distance.
Natasha, unfamiliar with Stark's tech, relied on Jarvis's calm, automated assistance to keep her steady. Captain America's Quinjet, far slower than the advanced armor, was still several minutes out.
"Hello! Did you miss me, everyone?" Tony announced, landing with his trademark swagger.
Strange shot him a withering look. "Not in the slightest," he retorted, his irritation palpable.
Natasha landed and took in the sheer scale of the elemental, which had now grown to well over 400 meters. Even through her armor, she could feel the waves of oppressive heat. "God, that thing is massive," she said, her tactical mind assessing the threat. "What's the plan?"
"We don't have one," the 1st-generation Harry admitted, shrugging helplessly. He felt utterly insignificant standing before the fiery titan, a sentiment shared by the others. The supernatural temperatures made a close-quarters assault impossible.
"Okay! Then we'll try my approach," Tony said, glancing at the damp ground, still wet from Strange's failed gambit. As he flew to Veronica to swap out his arc reactor for a fresh one, he gave his command. "EDITH, you're up."
The drone swarm moved with a single, terrifying intelligence, spreading out to surround the elemental. Each machine was reverse-engineered from Dark Elf technology, armed with miniaturized energy cannons and a select few carrying their devastating black hole grenades. For a moment, the sky was filled with the hum of thousands of targeting systems locking on. Then, the assault began—a storm of highly concentrated energy beams lashing out at the creature.
"ROAR!!!"
The fire elemental bellowed with cosmic fury as the beams struck its form. It opened its cavernous mouth and unleashed a great, molten wave of magma, spraying it outward in a blistering fan that covered a 120-degree arc, instantly swallowing hundreds of drones.
"Whoa! That range is insane! If that was aimed at us, we'd be toast," the 1st-generation Spider-Man exclaimed, watching the drones get consumed by the incandescent tide.
"It looks like your fleet took a major hit," Harry noted, turning to Tony with concern.
Tony, emerging from Veronica with a fresh reactor humming in his chest, just smirked. "Don't count them out just yet."
This new batch of drones was constructed entirely from the hyper-durable materials of the Dark Elf warships. It was the same alien alloy that had shrugged off heavy artillery fire from General Ross's forces, and Tony knew just how resilient it was.
If I had more time, he thought, I'd build a whole new suit from this stuff. The Dark Elf Armor, Mark I. Coupled with their energy cannons and black hole tech…
The thought of finally solving his long-held fear of being outgunned was an exciting prospect.
Just as he predicted, the magma cooled and cracked. From within the slag, the unblinking red sensors of the drones glowed to life. They rose, shaking off the molten rock, and resumed their attack. Thousands of energy beams continued to hammer the elemental, though each individual shot was little more than a pinprick against a mountain of living fire.
The long-range magma attack having failed, the elemental roared in genuine rage. The boiling magma covering its body churned more violently before it suddenly swung its immense, hundred-meter-long arms. They came down like a pair of molten sledgehammers, aimed at crushing the persistent mechanical swarm that dared to defy it.
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