"So does anyone have an idea how we can escape from this twisted universe where versions of ourselves became zombies and want to eat us before we turn into zombies ourselves?" Tony asked, looking directly at Luke, because in this situation he had nothing — no suit, no technology, nothing around him he could salvage or reverse engineer into something useful.
For once in his life he was completely dependent on someone else figuring it out.
"I can guarantee your safety," Luke said, "but even I'm not sure when we can leave. Someone is blocking my attempts to open a portal back."
Tony's expression said everything he didn't bother putting into words.
Luke turned to Daniel. "What about you, do you have anything that can work around it?"
Daniel checked his system and his expression answered before he did. "Mine stopped working too. Same block."
"Then we should go to Asia," Luke said.
"Why Asia?" Natasha asked.
"Because that's where Nepal is," Luke said, "and in Nepal is Kamar-Taj. The residence of the Sorcerer Supreme. If anyone left in this world has the magical infrastructure to help us punch through whatever is blocking dimensional travel, it's there."
"Umm… did you think whatever this Kamar-Taj is would still be safe after everything that happened?" Tony's variant asked.
"Only one way to find out," Luke said, already moving.
Tony looked at the ruined city around them, then at the horizon, then back at Luke.
"You know Nepal is on the other side of the planet from here."
"I'm aware," Luke said without stopping.
"And you're just going to walk there."
Luke glanced back at him with the expression of someone who found the question mildly amusing.
"Who said anything about walking?"
Then in the sky a blue streak cut through the clouds, Luke having shaped a chunk of pure mana into something large enough to carry all of them, the construct solid beneath their feet as it carved through the air toward Nepal.
Luke and Daniel sat at the front, the wind doing nothing to either of them.
"So how many worlds have you traveled to?" Luke asked, genuinely curious now that the immediate chaos had settled into something manageable.
"Mummy universe, Pirates of the Caribbean, DC, and several others," Daniel said.
Luke nodded slowly, processing that. Then a smile appeared.
"And along the way did you pick anyone up? Women specifically."
Daniel turned to look at him with the expression of someone whose morals had just been personally insulted.
"You think I'm like you?"
"Yes," Luke said, without a single moment of hesitation. "You don't even need to think about it. By now I'm certain you have women surrounding you from every universe you've visited."
"I'm not surrounded," Daniel said, correcting him with great dignity. "They love me. There's a difference."
Luke stared at him.
Then he laughed, loud and genuine, the kind that didn't happen often.
"Same thing nephew," he said. "Exactly the same thing."
On the back of the construct, Natasha and Wanda sat listening to the entire conversation from the front with completely deadpan expressions, every word carrying back to them with perfect clarity.
Two men casually comparing their history with women across multiple universes.
They both turned and looked at the two Tonys.
Tony looked at them. Then at his variant. Then back at them.
"I'm done with that life," both Tonys said at the exact same time, hands raised. "I only love Pepper now. With my whole heart."
The synchronization was so precise it was almost impressive.
Natasha and Wanda continued looking at them with the same expression, unchanged, unmoved, giving absolutely nothing back.
The two Tonys slowly lowered their hands under the weight of that silence and turned back to face forward, saying nothing further.
A moment passed.
"You two should probably know," Tony said, glancing back at Natasha and Wanda, "that in my universe Natasha you are very close to him." He paused then pointed at Wanda. "And you and your brother both live with him."
Wanda went still.
"Wait," she said quietly. "Pietro is alive in your universe?"
"Yeah," Tony said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Why, what would happen to him? He's doing fine."
The silence that followed was a different kind entirely.
Steve looked at Wanda and could see it happening in real time — the mention of a living Pietro pulling up everything she had buried after the Ultron incident, the loss she had never fully put down sitting right back on the surface of her face where she couldn't hide it.
"In our universe," Tony's variant said quietly, filling the silence before it became too heavy, "he didn't make it. There was an incident."
Tony looked between his variant and Wanda and understood immediately what he had just walked into without meaning to.
He said nothing after that.
There wasn't anything useful to say.
Then a roar came from behind them and everyone turned at the same time.
"Is it just me," Tony said slowly, "or does that roar belong to the green guy?"
"It belongs to Hulk," Natasha confirmed, her voice carrying none of the comfort that identification usually would. "And infected he is the most dangerous thing we have encountered so far. Hulk's rage without any restraint, driven purely by hunger."
Nobody argued that assessment.
Then a web shot through the air and wrapped around Daniel's arm, yanking hard, trying to pull him clean off the construct.
Daniel looked down at it, grabbed the line with his free hand, and pulled back harder, reeling in whatever was on the other end until a zombie Spider-Man came flying toward him, and Daniel put a fist straight through his face before he could land.
Then the sound came.
Not one. Many. Repulsor whines and wing beats and the distinct noise of powered armor cutting through air, closing in from multiple directions at once, and beneath all of it Hulk's roar growing louder, the ground below them cracking from the shockwaves of something enormous moving very fast.
Luke stood up from the front of the construct and looked out across the sky at everything converging on them at once.
"Avengers," he said, his voice carrying back to all of them. "assemble."
*****
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