Two days later...
As Heisenberg basked in the sun, he kept thinking about Loki's situation.
He had been in the current universe for three months and two days already. Granted, he had changed this world a little, but it should not have been enough to delay Loki's army's arrival on Earth by this much, right?
Who knew what the hell that guy had been busy doing ever since Heisenberg let him go last time?
...
At the same time, Iron Man and Captain America walked side by side into Heisenberg's private lounge.
"Your Excellency, your suit is ready. When do you plan to leave?"
"Hm?"
Heisenberg glanced at the two of them and instantly saw the emotions written all over their faces.
One of them looked as though he was reminiscing about a certain woman, his lips curving into a happy smile every now and then.
The other looked as though he was thinking about a certain man, his eyes flashing with wisdom from time to time.
So Heisenberg understood.
"You got the Space Stone?"
"That's right. We just got back from 1970, and we already have the Space Stone!" Captain America answered with a smile.
Seeing that, Heisenberg nodded in understanding and smiled warmly.
"Looks like what you brought back wasn't just the Stone, boys."
As he spoke, he rose from his recliner and headed toward the lab.
And as Captain America and Iron Man followed behind him, countless memories of what they had just experienced flashed through their minds.
In Captain America's heart, his beloved had been separated from him by only a pane of glass.
In Iron Man's heart, his father had once again given him all the encouragement he needed.
But neither of them knew...
That after Captain America left, the woman he loved had immediately smiled sweetly and gone right into another man's arms.
"I saw him, darling, but I could only pretend I didn't!"
"Yeah, same here. Watching you stand there back then, I really had mixed feelings."
"There was no need for that, my love. Haven't you always been by my side?"
"Of course. Forever."
And Iron Man knew even less that once his father got into the car, he immediately shared the whole story with Jarvis.
"That kid's way dumber than I am, but he got one thing absolutely right. I'm definitely smarter than he imagined!"
"Indeed, sir. He looked rather travel-worn. He must have gone through quite a lot."
"You're right. Who knows what he went through to need to come back and steal our Tesseract. For my son, I'd do anything, even neglect my duty and hand the Cube over to him!
But did you see how nervous he was, Jarvis? He barely even knew how to shake hands anymore. Hahaha!"
"You were much the same, sir. Weren't you so nervous that you nearly forgot the flowers in his arms?"
Jarvis said with a smile, then started the car and slowly drove away from S.H.I.E.L.D.
...
Completely unaware of all that, Captain America and Iron Man entered the lab with Heisenberg.
First, under Hulk's guidance, Heisenberg put on the temporal beacon, then pressed the equip button and let the nano-travel suit cover his body.
"Your Excellency, operating the time-travel system is very simple. You only need to press the fixed button on the hand section of the suit. We've already set the timeline for you, so please don't worry!"
"Okay!"
Heisenberg was not worried in the slightest about getting trapped in some timeline, or being stranded in some bizarre dimension.
After all, he had his system.
With nearly seven hundred thousand units of Origin Matter saved up, he could escape from almost any predicament.
So without the slightest hesitation, he pressed the travel button.
In an instant, Heisenberg seemed to arrive in the sky, with a bottomless abyss below him.
He kept falling, descending nonstop while deliberately restraining his biofield.
If he accidentally started flying in the Quantum Realm, who knew whether he would still make it to his destination?
If he went off course, he would probably have to waste thousands of Origin Matter just to correct it and reach where he wanted to go.
At last, the brilliant swirl before his eyes gradually faded, and Heisenberg once again felt the solid sensation of standing on real ground.
...
New York, 2023, Avengers Compound.
On the time-travel platform designed and built by Banner and Tony.
Heisenberg, Tony, Rogers, Scott, Banner, Thor, Rocket, Rhodey, Nebula, Barton, and Natasha.
All eleven of them had returned in perfect order!
Other than Heisenberg, everyone else was standing where they had been before departure.
Only Heisenberg, somehow, was standing right in the middle of them all!
Because of that subtle difference in position, nearly every Avenger's eyes landed on Heisenberg first.
And in that instant, the whole scene exploded into chaos.
Nebula's eyes widened violently, and while suppressing the hatred and fear in her heart, she shouted at Heisenberg,
"Heisenberg, why are you here?!"
Not far from Nebula, Natasha and Barton reacted far more enthusiastically.
"My God, so this is where you meant we'd meet!"
"Wow, I never thought you'd actually come to our side!"
Clearly, those three knew Heisenberg.
But the others were not like them.
War Machine, Rhodey, looked completely dumbfounded. He turned to Tony and impatiently asked,
"Who is this? Who brought him back? What the hell is going on?"
The moment Rhodey finished speaking, the one standing with Thor, the Flying Thunder God...
No.
Fat Thor, froze on the spot.
"You're Heisenberg?!"
Thor roared, then charged straight at Heisenberg with Mjolnir, still bearing a handprint, in one hand and Stormbreaker in the other!
Seeing Thor's actions, Heisenberg naturally felt baffled.
But baffled or not, his counterattack was not slow in the slightest.
Thor had only just raised his axe when Heisenberg kicked him away with brutal force!
Boom!!!
That kick was monstrously heavy, sending Thor crashing straight through the Avengers building and flying backward for more than eight hundred meters.
Thor even had to slam his axe into the ground to borrow force before he barely managed to stop himself.
On the time platform, while the Avengers were still in shock from that one kick, Thor had already flown back up from the distance and charged at Heisenberg again.
At the same time, he let out a roar so loud it shook the world.
"Heisenberg!!!
It was you, you vile bastard, who killed my father, humiliated my mother, exiled my brother, and controlled my sister!
You ruined my life, ruined everything I had, and even destroyed my Mjolnir!!!
Come on, kill me, or I'll kill you!!!"
Amid flashing lightning and rolling thunder, Thor charged straight back in front of Heisenberg, his axe chopping viciously toward Heisenberg's head!
Ever since the war with Thanos, every strike Thor made aimed for the enemy's head, nowhere else.
Watching Stormbreaker draw closer, Heisenberg suddenly smiled.
He shot up one hand and grabbed Stormbreaker hard!
Clang!!!
A sharp metallic collision rang out as Heisenberg successfully stopped Stormbreaker in his right hand.
But what made him frown in surprise was that his right hand actually felt a trace of pain.
And that damned axe had truly cut open his palm, leaving a faint streak of blood there!
He was injured!!!
That result made Heisenberg knit his brows in astonishment. He had never expected that in this tiny little Marvel Cinematic Universe, there would actually be something capable of injuring his body!
But after a second thought, it made sense.
Superman's physical resistance was indeed extremely high, but before reaching a sufficiently powerful level, there were still plenty of things that could hurt him.
Kryptonite went without saying, though Heisenberg no longer had that weakness.
And the other things that could injure him included things like Nth Metal, red sunlight, primal darkness, the power of Dionysus, and so on.
Among that rare handful of things, there was one more material that could draw his blood.
Divine Metal.
Just like in Batman v Superman, the Doomsday transformed from Zod had a body even tougher than an ordinary Kryptonian's.
But Wonder Woman's sword had still managed to wound his calf.
That was proof enough that Divine Metal could injure Kryptonians.
And Stormbreaker, the axe in Thor's hand, was unquestionably one of the most powerful divine weapons in the Marvel movies!
So the fact that he had been injured was not all that strange.
Once he understood why he had been hurt, Heisenberg relaxed immediately.
The facts proved that if the wielder of Divine Metal was not overwhelmingly powerful, then at best they could only scratch his skin.
He yanked hard with his right hand, dragging Fat Thor toward himself, while raising his left hand to block the Mjolnir Thor smashed at him.
Boom!!!
The hammer, still bearing that handprint, slammed accurately into Heisenberg's left hand, but Heisenberg still caught it dead in his grip.
With the axe pinned and the hammer seized, Thor's defenses were wide open.
And Heisenberg rewarded the maddened Fat Thor with a savage headbutt.
Bang!
Two streams of rum ran from Thor's nose...
No, no.
Two streams of blood.
But that was only the beginning!
While Thor was still dazed from the headbutt, Heisenberg lifted a leg and drove a vicious kick into Thor's stomach!
The thick, godly fat around his belly blunted the blow, preventing that kick from doing enough damage.
But if one kick was not enough, then he would use another!
For the second kick, Heisenberg adjusted the angle and struck precisely where Thor's huge belly met his oversized chest, right around the ribs where the divine fat was thinner!
Crack!!!
The sharp sound of ribs breaking rang out instantly, and the surging shockwave blasted the other Avengers straight off the platform.
At that point, the only ones left standing on the platform besides Heisenberg and Thor were Hulk and Tony.
"Fuck, what the hell is going on?!"
Banner was completely dumbfounded. After all, the fight between Heisenberg and Thor had not even lasted three seconds yet.
But while Banner was stunned, Iron Man was not.
"Banner, I don't know why Thor is acting this crazy, but we have to control him first!
There are six Infinity Stones here. If they keep fighting, the war could escalate because of those Stones!"
"Okay!"
The two of them instantly got ready, just waiting for Heisenberg and Thor to separate.
But Heisenberg was using Thor's own weapons to pin him in place while hammering more than a dozen kicks into Thor's chest in a row.
Blood poured from Thor's mouth in great gulps, yet none of it was enough to extinguish his hatred for Heisenberg.
"I will never submit to you, bastard! I'm going to kill you!"
Not only did his injuries fail to break his will to fight, but as he endured the beating, the lightning around him only grew more violent, until even his eyeballs turned into dazzling white light!
"No one humiliates Asgard like this, no one!
I am the thunder!!!"
Crackle!!!
Endless lightning exploded high in the sky and came crashing toward Heisenberg inside the Avengers facility.
That made Heisenberg frown.
If the time platform beneath his feet got destroyed by that blast, then how was Thanos supposed to come to this universe?
So Heisenberg smashed straight through the ceiling with Thor in tow and charged upward to meet the lightning head-on.
/-\
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