Malrick stood before the Time Gate.
Before arriving, he had imagined countless possibilities for what his first glimpse of the Main Universe would be.
Maybe the world would already be collapsing, with the two Earths only minutes away from collision and people giving their final goodbyes.
Or perhaps the crisis would be solved, with Tony and the other heroes celebrating a hard-won victory.
What he did not expect was to step through and immediately find several exhausted scientists staring at him with hollow eyes, looking as if they had not slept in days.
"Why do you all look so worn out but not exactly panicked? So things aren't completely disastrous yet?"
Malrick's voice broke the heavy silence in the lab.
Tony, who was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the table and lazily tapping his forehead with a pen cap, jolted upright.
He kicked the table away in surprise, sending it crashing into the Iron Man from Universe b2.
"Damn it," the other Iron Man muttered as he stumbled.
Tony's previously dull eyes brightened the moment he saw Malrick.
"Malrick! You finished your big transformation?" He squeezed the pen so hard it snapped.
"It's done. Everything went smoothly. I even met Dormammu," Malrick said while closing the Time Gate. "But I didn't expect to return and find you all trying to save the world in your downtime."
He glanced at Tony. "And you haven't made a mess this time. Progress, Tony."
Tony's mouth twitched.
The familiar tone confirmed it.
This was definitely his irritating little brother.
For a moment he had been relieved to see Malrick.
Now he wondered why he ever felt that way.
"You're Malrick, the abstract concept or whatever they said could stop the collision?" Rocket Raccoon asked while twirling a wrench.
He studied Malrick skeptically.
"You sure you can do it? Muscles aren't enough to push planets apart."
"Oh? Sounds like you tried already. What did you use, the Infinity Stones?"
"Yeah. Deadpool and that Shazam girl both tried. They forced the two Earths apart for a moment, but they kept drifting back together."
Rocket waved his wrench in frustration.
"Deadpool came too. Kara even used the Stones."
Malrick turned his head, his enhanced vision slicing through walls and across the globe without obstruction.
In one lounge, he saw Deadpool.
The merc looked like a shriveled mummy, barely held together.
His throat muscles hadn't recovered yet, but he was still joking with the nurse beside him.
Farther away, Kara was sunbathing as if she had just returned from vacation rather than fighting a multiversal crisis.
Across Earth, Diana, Yelena, and several others were stationed in major cities, preventing uprisings caused by the looming second Earth above them.
Some governments were secretly building their own "Noah's Ark" projects.
Panic was inevitable.
"So, do you have any ideas? About stopping the collision?"
The b2 Iron Man stood slowly, supported by the two Bruce Banners.
His eyes were dim and heavy.
The b2 Universe's heroes had not had an easy time these past two days.
They had learned of the Time Variance Authority, and with it came the realization that if this collision could not be stopped, their Universe would be the one sacrificed.
All their hopes rested on the scientists in the room and on Malrick, who had finally arrived.
Their version of Doctor Strange had suggested searching for the Darkhold and the Book of Vishanti, convinced those ancient tomes held the answer.
The Strange of the Main Universe had swiftly shut that down, restraining him before he caused trouble.
The Main Universe's Strange was already overwhelmed by the number of problematic counterparts he had encountered while stopping Scarlet Witch.
Learning that the Strange from the s Universe had not yet become a sorcerer made him visibly relieved.
He warned Tony repeatedly not to let that Strange anywhere near magic.
Two days passed, and the hazy shape of the Main Universe's Earth appeared again above b2 Earth.
Research progress remained discouraging.
The Tonys and Banners had found a direction involving quantum entanglement, but every experiment revealed something worse.
The entanglement was not limited to the quantum level.
It permeated the macroscopic and microscopic layers of both Universes.
As Tony put it, "Everything is tangled together, from the stuff we can see with our eyes down to the tiniest particles."
If Malrick hadn't shown up, they would have needed a third snap just to buy time.
Fortunately, he was finally here.
The b2 Iron Man swallowed hard, staring at Malrick with desperate hope.
"You have a way. Right?"
Malrick didn't reply.
Instead, he opened the lab door.
"Let me assess the situation first."
Outside the makeshift lab, members of the Avengers rushed back and forth.
When Malrick stepped out, they slowed, confused, but before anyone could speak, he lifted off the ground and shot into the sky.
Once he reached the edge of the atmosphere, he looked down at the two slowly approaching Earths and focused.
The world began to disassemble before his eyes, unraveling into an immense network of intertwined rule-threads.
From a scientific standpoint, Tony and Banner would describe the Universe using particle behavior, quarks, and quantum interactions.
But through magic, Malrick saw something else entirely: the Six-Gem Rules.
Quantum entanglement, the very topic the scientists had been studying, was only one part of the Reality Rule.
Malrick didn't even need the Infinity Stones yet.
Just by opening his senses, he could see every point where the two Universes overlapped.
"Time, Space, Reality. If I peel these rule patterns apart one by one, the collision stops progressing."
Energy from the six Stones surged from within him.
By himself, he couldn't manipulate two Universes on this scale.
Not yet.
He needed the Stones to enter a super-singular state where such precision was possible.
The Infinity Stones could solve the collision.
Kara and Deadpool had simply lacked the understanding to use them properly.
Their attempts were the cosmic equivalent of cavemen finding a missile and using it as a shelter, completely unaware of what it was capable of.
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