"Fitting name… Thanos."
Stephen Strange sat on a broken slab of rock. All around him: ruins, ash, a sunless sky the color of old iron—an end-times canvas.
"Looks like the Tongued Schemer is dead," he murmured. "A heavy loss for the day—but he completed his task."
Footfalls crunched over gravel.
Thanos approached, expression unreadable. The deaths of Ebony Maw and the rest of the Black Order stirred no sorrow in him. In his eyes, casualties were merely the grease of destiny's gears.
"You'll still have to spar with this master of the mystic arts," Strange said mildly.
"And us. Don't forget us," called a voice from the broken colonnade.
Tony descended beside him, repulsors whining. The Iron Spider's nano-suit gleamed at his shoulder. A third figure stood with hands in pockets and a bored look—the bald man named Saitama.
"Jumping clowns, all of you," Thanos said, gaze sliding past Tony and Peter to lock on the only threat that stirred a whisper of caution: Saitama.
"Unfortunate for you," Strange added with a faint smile, "you only have one Infinity Stone. Saitama's presence… diverted fate, didn't it?"
"I'll take the rest myself," Thanos replied, voice cold. His eyes flicked from Saitama to the Eye of Agamotto at Strange's throat.
"Heh. Not late, I hope?"
A chuckle rippled the air. Space rippled like a pond; several figures stepped through the shimmering fold.
A king in black and gold, scepter in hand—Loki. At his heel padded a squat, bulldog-shaped creature whose eyes burned like coals.
The other Asgardian warriors had already been ferried by the Space Stone to Wakanda—that was their battlefield.
But this shattered Titan? This was for generals.
"The Space Stone?" Thanos glanced at Loki, then nodded. "Good. Saves me a step."
"Well, if we're all here," Tony said, jets flaring as he surged forward, "let's begin."
Missiles stitched the ground in a storm. Through the smoke, thermal scans locked on. Twin forearm blades of hard light snapped out and slashed—
Thud.
A single punch from Thanos crashed into Tony's chestplate, denting the vibranium weave deep as a crater. Tony pinwheeled away, skidding through a curtain of sparks. A red line scored Thanos's side—already knitting shut.
"Titan physiology," Loki drawled, eyes wary. "Impressive durability, strength—and regeneration."
His scepter flashed. A lance of golden light stabbed for Thanos's heart. Strange wove sigils in a blur, summoning crimson bands, mirror-gate feints, and whips of azure force.
They hit him. He barely seemed to care.
"Rrraaah—!"
The bulldog yawned, then exploded upward. In the space of a heartbeat it became a towering fire giant, a mountain of magma and iron crowned in flame.
"Surtur?" Thanos's eyes narrowed. The giant's meteor-shower fists fell like a cataclysm, firestorms roaring outward to drown the plain.
"Loki is insane—what did he bring here?!" Tony coughed, hauling the Iron Spider with him as Strange and the others blinked to the perimeter in a scatter of portals.
Thanos stared into the rain of fire—and advanced.
His gauntlet flared. Reality bent. A distant star ignited and guttered in an instant, torn to cinders—then its death scattered into a deluge of blazing meteors that hammered down.
Even Surtur flinched, gargantuan frame staggering beneath the cosmic hail.
With a snarl, Thanos launched himself skyward. He met the giant at eye level, cocked his arm, and drove a single titanic punch into Surtur's jaw.
The fire giant—one hundred meters of apocalypse—toppled like a felled tower, bellowing in pain.
"How—?" Loki's smile thinned. Surtur was Sky-Father tier. With the Reality Stone, Thanos was beyond even that—terrifying.
"Is this all?" Thanos asked, voice a low thunder. Strange's assaults he ignored with contempt, slipping them with short, brutal folds in space. The damage they could do was negligible.
Only one man here mattered.
The bald one who had watched, hands in pockets, since the beginning.
"Your turn," Thanos said, stepping toward Saitama. Scarlet shimmered around him as the Reality Stone pulsed.
"Me?" Saitama stepped forward, eyes flat. "Why're you worrying about the whole universe anyway? Being a couch potato isn't so bad."
"…Hm?" Thanos's gaze drifted over the ruins. "Once, Titan thrived. I offered a solution. They called me mad. Then… this."
"But why kill so many to 'save' it?" Saitama asked.
"With six Stones," Thanos said, "one snap ends half of all life. Mercy."
"Weak or strong—people still get to choose to live. You don't get to take that away. Maybe existence has its own balance without you," Saitama said.
"Enough." Frost crept into Thanos's tone. "Anyone who stands in my way dies."
"Okay. Guess we use our fists then."
Saitama sighed and walked out onto the broken plain.
In his view, a translucent overlay blinked awake—a tidy list of enemy parameters, danger indices, and tactical prompts scrolling down like a system readout.
(End of Chapter)
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