"Now we just wait for the serum to take effect." Pietro straightened, his breathing still elevated from the extreme exertion. Maintaining those speeds, even for seconds, pushed his enhanced physiology to its limits.
He turned to look at the others, expecting to see relief, maybe even cautious optimism.
Instead, he saw Harry's face going pale.
"How long does it take to work?" Pietro's question came out sharper than intended, anxiety creeping into his voice.
"I don't know." Peter's XLR8 form shifted nervously, clawed feet scraping against dead earth. "Mr. Stark didn't specify. Mr. Stark?"
Tony's response crackled through their communication system, his voice carrying the confidence of a man who'd just achieved the impossible. "Five minutes, give or take. You should be seeing aggressive cellular regeneration by now. Necrotic tissue sloughing off, healthy flesh growing to replace it. It's not pretty, but don't be alarmed by—"
"Alarmed?" Pietro's voice rose to something approaching a shout. "Stark, you've completely screwed us!"
Confusion flooded the comm channel. "What? Pietro, what's wrong? The serum should be—"
"Mr. Stark." Peter's voice cut through, steady despite the dread filling it. "The cure isn't working."
Silence on the other end. Then, simultaneously, two voices:
"That's impossible!" Tony's denial was immediate, instinctive.
"The watch!" Dr. Animo's realization came half a second later. "Oh god, the WATCH!"
Understanding hit Peter like a physical blow. His XLR8 reflexes were already moving before conscious thought could catch up, his body becoming a blue streak as he lunged for the severed arm lying in the dirt.
His claws were centimeters away from the gray device, close enough to feel the Omnitrix's residual energy signature—
A black tide erupted from the ground.
Not water. Not shadow. Worms. Millions of microscopic organisms moving with unified purpose, flowing like liquid darkness. They enveloped the severed limb, connecting flesh to flesh, bone to bone, restoring what had been separated.
In less than a heartbeat, the arm reattached itself. Not even a scar remained to mark where Peter's claws had sheared through.
"How disappointing."
Benzarro rose from his prone position, moving with the fluid grace of someone who'd never been injured at all. His right hand gripped the Omnitrix on his left wrist, and his expression carried something that might have been amusement if not for the absolute emptiness in his eyes.
"You should have gone for the head." The Thanos quote was delivered with perfect timing, perfect inflection.
Then, before anyone could respond, he reached up with both hands, gripped the sides of his own skull, and pulled.
The wet, tearing sound of his head separating from his neck made several team members flinch. Zombie Ben held his decapitated head at arm's length, that mocking smile never wavering.
"Just kidding!" His voice came from the severed head, lips moving independently of the body. "The head wouldn't help either!"
The head reattached itself with the same disturbing efficiency, worms knitting flesh and vertebrae back together in seconds.
Tony and the others had arrived during this display, forming up behind Peter and Pietro. Every face showed the same grim realization.
They'd failed.
"You knew." Pietro's statement wasn't really a question. "You knew about our plan from the beginning."
"Obviously." Benzarro shrugged, the gesture somehow more disturbing coming from someone who'd just demonstrated his head was optional. "Why else would I wander alone into an empty wasteland? I was creating an opportunity for you. Making it seem achievable."
His dead eyes swept across them, calculating and cold. "I need you to stay on this planet. Need you focused on something, anything, to keep you from attempting an escape before the bomb detonates. If I didn't give you hope, give you a mission to accomplish, you might have run. And if even one of you carries the zombie virus into another universe..."
He didn't need to finish the thought.
Benzarro's hand moved in a casual wave.
The ground... moved.
No. Not the ground. The zombies that had been buried beneath it.
Thousands of infected bodies erupted from the dead earth like a macabre crop being harvested in reverse. They came from every direction, a shambling army that had been waiting in perfect silence. Heroes and villains alike, their costumes tattered, their flesh rotting, their eyes empty of everything except hunger.
"This is bad." Harry's voice barely qualified as a whisper. "This is very, very bad."
"I have a question." Tony stepped forward, his tactical mind still trying to solve the puzzle even as doom closed in from all sides. "Why didn't the cure work on you?"
If he was going to die here, he at least wanted to understand why.
"Tony Stark." Benzarro's tone shifted, carrying something that almost resembled genuine respect. "You truly are a genius. Perhaps the greatest scientific mind this universe ever produced."
He looked at the assembled heroes, at the determination still burning in their eyes despite overwhelming odds. "I thought the zombie virus was incurable. An absolute, a fundamental law of this reality. But you and Dr. Animo... you proved me wrong. You achieved what should have been impossible."
A pause. When he spoke again, something like regret colored his words. "It's a shame the serum can't be mass-produced. If you'd had more time, more resources... I might have been able to spare this universe. Let it heal instead of burning it clean."
"Then why—" Tony started.
"The cure doesn't work on me because I'm not infected with just the zombie virus." Benzarro tapped his chest, right over where his heart should be beating. "There's something else in here. A second pathogen. The genocide virus, what I call the torment plague. When your cure entered my system, the genocide virus consumed it. Broke it down, analyzed it, learned from it."
He paused, and for just a moment, the eleven-year-old boy beneath the monster showed through. "Born at the wrong time, Tony Stark. If I'd met you a decade ago, before the torment plague infected me alongside the zombie virus... maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe I wouldn't have had to kill my own grandfather."
The words hung in the dead air.
"A decade ago, without Dr. Animo's research data, I couldn't have done anything." Tony's response was quiet, accepting. "The technology didn't exist yet."
"Then perhaps it was fate." Benzarro's hand moved toward the Omnitrix. "Just like this moment is fated."
"On that point," a voice called from above, clear and strong, "I have a different opinion."
Every head snapped upward. Against the dying sun, a silhouette descended.
"HA!" Tony's laugh was pure, unrestrained joy, more genuine happiness than he'd felt since being exiled to Sakaar. "You magnificent bastard! You're finally here!"
"Is that the Ben from your universe?" Gwen and Dr. Animo stared upward at the figure backlit by solar radiation.
But where they expected relief, they saw only mounting horror in the locals' eyes.
"Wait!" Dr. Animo grabbed Wanda's arm. "Make him leave! Now! Immediately!"
"What? Why would we—"
"What if Benzarro's torment plague infects him too?!" The old scientist's voice cracked with panic. "What if your Ben becomes another vector for the virus, carries it back to your universe—"
"He won't be infected."
The interruption came from Benzarro himself. The infected child squinted up at the descending figure, studying the black silhouette adorned with white pinpoints of light.
"Alien X's power is the only transformation I can't replicate. The only alien form that remained immune to contamination." His voice carried something between admiration and frustration. "I never imagined you actually possessed that power."
"Not the full thing." Ben Parker's voice resonated with cosmic harmonics as he descended. "Just a fraction of it."
As he drew closer, Benzarro's expression shifted from confidence to confusion to dawning realization.
This wasn't standard Alien X. The familiar black-and-white form was there, yes, but flames wreathed the figure's head and shoulders. Not ordinary fire—these were flames that looked like condensed starfields, like burning galaxies compressed into humanoid shape.
"Alien X Heatblast fusion?" Benzarro processed the implications. "So you only managed partial access to the Celestialsapien power."
"It's enough." Ben's mismatched eyes—one stellar flame, one cosmic void—fixed on his zombie counterpart. "More than enough to ensure I don't get infected by your plague."
"But is it enough to beat me?" Benzarro's hand slammed down on the Omnitrix. "Can you save two universes with that fractional power, Ben Parker?"
Green light consumed him. When it faded, the Infinite Energy NRG stood where the boy had been moments before, that nuclear containment suit barely restraining the cosmic forces churning within.
The super-enhanced version of NRG, powered by infinite nuclear fusion, versus the drastically weakened version of Alien X, limited by incomplete fusion with Heatblast.
The question hung unspoken in the air: Which was stronger?
"Celestial Annihilation Sphere!"
Ben opened his palm. Black flames ignited in his hand—not fire in any conventional sense, but compressed reality itself. He shaped the energy into a sphere, condensing an entire miniature universe into something the size of a basketball, then hurled it toward the Infinite Energy NRG.
The reactor core on NRG's chest went supernova-bright. Limitless atomic energy gathered between his hands, building to critical mass, preparing to meet the attack head-on.
Both attacks launched simultaneously.
The collision made stars tremble.
The Earth beneath them buckled, tectonic plates grinding against each other as reality struggled to contain forces that belonged in the hearts of galaxies.
"Wanda! Gwen!" Ben's mental voice carried urgency even as he maintained his attack. "Use the spell I taught you! Evacuate everyone on Earth to this universe's version of Sakaar! NOW!"
Knowledge flooded into their minds—the incantation, the gestures, the precise application of dimensional magic required. Ben shattered the limitations on their Mana reserves, opening the floodgates, allowing his cosmic power to flow through them without restriction.
Their combined magical might surged to levels that would have been impossible seconds before.
Ben disappeared.
One instant, he was in Earth's atmosphere. The next, he materialized directly beneath the Infinite Energy NRG, both hands pressing upward in a gesture that looked almost gentle.
Reality... shifted.
The stars changed positions. Countless points of light streaked past them, each glowing spark a nebula containing billions of suns. Distance became meaningless as Ben folded space-time like origami, carrying them both across impossible gulfs.
When motion finally stopped, they hung in perfect void. No planets. No stars. No reference points except the distant, dim glow of galaxies so far away their light had been traveling for billions of years.
"The center of the universe." Benzarro's voice carried grudging respect. "You brought me here to avoid collateral damage. To keep our fight from destroying what's left of Earth. How noble. How pointless."
The NRG suit's radiation shielding flickered with barely contained power. "When Alien X fuses with any other transformation, he loses his omnipotent reality-warping abilities. You're left with only infinite energy manipulation. In that regard, we're perfectly matched!"
Benzarro's confidence was absolute. "You can't beat me like this!"
"Really?" Ben's flaming head tilted, cosmic fire casting strange shadows across nothing. "What if I don't stay fused?"
Wait.
What?
Comprehension hit Benzarro like a physical blow. Alarm flooded his consciousness.
No. He wouldn't. He couldn't possibly—
"Alien X."
The flames extinguished. The humanoid shape dissolved.
And in its place, the true form of a Celestialsapien manifested in all its terrible glory.
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