The CancerverseFlagship Command Chamber
"Tell me your plan, Lord Mar-Vell," Bad Ben said, his tone carefully respectful.
The purple discoloration spreading across his skin had intensified over the past hour, tumors forming in clusters along his forearms. Each one pulsed with bioluminescent energy, synchronized with his heartbeat in a rhythm that felt simultaneously alien and intoxicating.
"If our objectives don't conflict," he continued, "then we can cooperate more extensively. Pool our resources for maximum effectiveness."
The original Captain Marvel—Mar-Vell, wearing his iconic red and gold uniform—stood at the command console with an expression of messianic satisfaction. His medium-length golden hair was parted to either side of his face, framing features that cancer had rendered simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.
But the most disturbing feature was his mouth.
Two long purple tongues emerged from between his lips—not human tongues, but something that resembled cancerous growths shaped into muscular appendages. They moved independently, tasting the air, writhing with eager anticipation.
Mar-Vell grinned, revealing teeth that glowed with the same purple luminescence.
"I need to locate a very specific individual," he explained. "Someone I call the Coroner."
"The Coroner?" Bad Ben asked, intrigued despite himself.
"I don't know their exact identity or current location," Mar-Vell admitted. "But this person exists closest to Death itself—someone who bridges the gap between mortality and the abstract entity. A nexus point where the concept becomes vulnerable to attack."
The purple tongues writhed with excitement.
"Once we find the Coroner, we perform a ritual using their unique connection. This summons Death—the actual abstract entity, not some avatar or manifestation—into physical proximity. And once Death manifests..."
Mar-Vell made a crushing gesture with his fist.
"We kill it. Permanently. Just as I did in my own universe."
His expression turned curious, purple eyes studying Bad Ben with cosmic awareness.
"And what is your purpose in our target universe? What brings you to seek alliance with us?"
"Excellent," Bad Ben said smoothly. "Our purposes don't conflict at all. We simply need to eliminate one crucial individual. A specific person whose death will achieve our strategic objectives."
Mad Ben glanced at his counterpart but didn't speak, maintaining his façade of brooding expertise.
He knew Bad Ben was being deliberately vague, revealing just enough to seem cooperative while hiding their true agenda.
Just stating his purpose so casually, Mad Ben thought with contempt. It has to be said that Bad Ben is indeed shameless. No wonder Maltruant doesn't completely trust guys like him.
Because Mad Ben knew something Bad Ben didn't realize Maltruant had shared with him privately.
Whether or not they killed Ben Parker was actually irrelevant to Maltruant's true objectives.
The Chronosapien's real purpose was finding something that could help him achieve his ultimate goal: an extraordinarily powerful artifact capable of reshaping the fundamental structure of all universes simultaneously.
And that artifact existed somewhere within Ben Parker's reality.
Of all the Ben Tennyson variants in Maltruant's army, only Mad Ben knew this critical information. The time-manipulator hadn't told anyone else, maintaining operational security through compartmentalization.
Let Bad Ben think he's playing everyone, Mad Ben thought with dark amusement. When the time comes, Maltruant will discard him like garbage.
"That makes things considerably simpler," Mar-Vell said, apparently satisfied with Bad Ben's explanation.
His purple tongues tasted the air again, as though sampling the flavor of their impending victory.
"If we're not seeking the same person, we help each other achieve separate goals. If we are seeking the same individual, we help each other even more effectively through coordinated assault."
"Absolutely right!" Bad Ben agreed enthusiastically, his own tumors pulsing with excitement.
But internally, his thoughts raced in different directions entirely.
Originally, he'd been supremely confident in his power. Possessing an Omnitrix made him special, unique, superior to baseline humans and most aliens.
Then he'd met the other Ben variants.
Dozens of them. Hundreds, counting Eon's puppet army. All wielding Omnitrixes. Some with watches even more powerful than his own.
The revelation had shattered his sense of superiority.
Nega Ben—that Pale Prince bastard—possessed unilateral control over Alien X, making him exponentially stronger than any other variant. If Nega Ben weren't so fundamentally unmotivated, so pathologically lazy and indifferent, things would never have become this complicated.
Bad Ben, now transforming into what might be called Cancer Ben, couldn't accept being merely average among his variants.
He wanted—needed—greater power.
The Celestialsapien transformation was impossible to obtain. Even if he somehow unlocked Alien X, he wouldn't dare use it. His own consciousness was already rotten to its core. Who knew what the other two required personalities would be like?
Maybe one would specifically oppose everything he suggested. The other might be some bleeding-heart pacifist. The greatest transformation in the Omnitrix would become a stationary statue.
Pure waste of potential.
But Death was different.
According to Mar-Vell, Lady Death was one of the five most powerful abstract entities governing the Marvel multiverse. She possessed unimaginable, incomprehensible power that transcended normal divinity.
She represented a fundamental concept itself—the ending of all things.
Death, Eternity, Infinity, Annihilation, and Oblivion.
These beings surpassed ordinary gods by orders of magnitude, wielding genuine multiversal-level authority. They existed beyond time, beyond space, beyond conventional reality.
And Bad Ben's ambition didn't stop at claiming just one of them.
He wanted all five.
I'll become the Pentad Lord, he thought, tumors pulsing faster with anticipation. Absorb all five abstract entities. Become something beyond Celestialsapien, beyond Alien X, beyond anything the Omnitrix was designed to contain.
I'll transcend the very concept of transformation.
"The cosmic fault line has stabilized!" Mar-Vell's voice rang out across the command chamber. "All ships, prepare for immediate deployment!"
The announcement jolted Bad Ben from his grandiose fantasies.
The assembled forces—Revengers, corrupted heroes, and hundreds of beings with their own hidden agendas—immediately sprang into action. Battle stations activated. Weapons systems powered up. Biological ship components flexed and writhed with anticipation.
The massive fleet, carrying countless monstrosities within its holds, surged toward the enormous dimensional rift.
Some of the twisted creatures they transported were larger than planets. Their bodies defied conventional biology—tentacles thick as mountain ranges, mandibles the size of cities, eyes that could swallow moons. Cancer had transformed them into living weapons, immortal siege engines that couldn't die no matter how much damage they sustained.
Through the distorted spatial tear, the dense fleet quickly spotted light ahead—the telltale glow of another universe's space-time manifold.
Everyone's faces lit up with anticipation, as though success was already guaranteed.
The power of the five cosmic entities!
The annihilation of Death itself!
Ultimate victory!
Bad Ben's thoughts blazed with ambition: I'm coming! Power beyond imagination—I'm finally coming for you!
Everyone aboard the fleet was thinking variations of the same thing simultaneously, their thoughts creating a psychic resonance of greed and hunger.
However, the moment the first ships passed completely through the fault line, the scene that unfolded before them brought every triumphant thought to a crashing halt.
The viewscreens showed something impossible.
A crimson sky stretched overhead, its color like infected blood or the glow from a dying star. The atmosphere itself appeared murky, thick with particulates that could have been sulfuric acid vapor or pulverized stone. No stars were visible through the haze—only a dim, blazing sun that radiated heat without light.
Below the fleet, barren red earth extended to every horizon. Not a single trace of vegetation. No water. No cities. No life.
Broken rocks floated impossibly in the air, defying gravity as though the fundamental laws of physics had shattered along with the landscape. Entire mountain-sized fragments drifted like balloons, their trajectories making no sense.
It looked like a world that had been demolished and left to decay.
"Where... where is this?" someone asked, voice trembling with confusion.
The question rippled through every ship simultaneously.
Where had they been thrown?
Was this still the correct universe?
"Are there such bizarre places in the target reality?" Mar-Vell asked, his cosmic senses struggling to process the dimensional coordinates.
This didn't make sense.
The other side of a cosmic fault line should lead to the corresponding location in the approaching universe. If they'd entered through a tear near Earth, they should emerge near the other Earth.
But this clearly wasn't outer space. The atmospheric pressure readings, gravity, environmental composition—it all indicated they were standing on the surface of an impossibly vast planet.
Looking up at the crimson sky, all they could see through the murky haze was that dim, oppressive sun.
They weren't in space at all.
Bad Ben stared at the viewscreens, his enhanced mind racing through possibilities.
Recognition dawned like ice water down his spine.
"No. No, no, no—this can't be—"
His voice rose to a panicked shout.
"GO BACK! Everyone turn around! Now!"
He lunged for the communication controls, frantically trying to broadcast orders to the entire fleet.
Mar-Vell grabbed his arm, purple tongues recoiling in surprise.
"What's wrong with you all of a sudden?"
Even Mad Ben didn't understand what had triggered this reaction, much less the Revengers who didn't know Bad Ben's background.
Rather than following his desperate orders, several security personnel moved to restrain him, assuming he'd succumbed to some kind of mental breakdown.
But Bad Ben had no time for explanations.
His hands flew across the controls, switching the main viewscreen to show the fleet's rear cameras. And there, his worst fears were confirmed.
The dimensional passage they'd just traveled through was collapsing.
Sealing shut.
Disappearing completely as space-time knitted itself back together.
"It's over," Bad Ben whispered, his voice hollow with despair.
Then louder, his composure completely shattered: "WE'RE FINISHED!"
"What's wrong?" Mar-Vell demanded, cosmic awareness finally detecting that something was fundamentally incorrect about their situation. "What was that passage? Why is it closing?"
"That was a portal to the Null Void!" Bad Ben grabbed Mar-Vell's shoulders, shaking him despite the immense power difference. "This isn't the universe we were supposed to invade! This is the NULL VOID! The dimensional prison!"
He frantically gestured at the barren wasteland surrounding them.
"Don't you understand?! We've been trapped here!!"
His lower eyelids pulled open wide, revealing bloodshot eyes and ugly purple blood vessels.
"The enemy knew we were coming. They positioned a Null Void portal at the fault line's exit point. We just flew directly into their prison dimension!"
Every face in the command chamber turned grim.
The realization crashed over them like a wave. They'd anticipated outsmarting their enemies, using the cosmic fault line to achieve strategic surprise.
Instead, they'd been outmaneuvered before the battle even began.
They'd thought using the dimensional rift would catch the enemy completely off-guard.
Now it seemed they were the ones who'd walked straight into a trap.
Wakanda
Meanwhile, in the monitoring facility deep beneath Wakanda's Golden City, Ben Parker watched the entire sequence of events unfold on holographic displays.
The Cancer fleet had entered the fault line exactly as predicted.
The Null Void portal had functioned flawlessly, redirecting the entire invasion force into the prison dimension.
As the portal to the Void sealed completely, only the original cosmic fault line remained, still radiating distorted energy from the approaching Cancerverse.
"Their main invasion force has been successfully sealed in the Null Void," T'Challa observed, studying the tactical situation. "Should we act immediately and destroy their Earth, or maintain the original timeline?"
The Black Panther had initially been quite merciful in his strategic thinking, always seeking diplomatic solutions when possible.
But the enemy had clearly arrived with military force, intending conquest rather than negotiation. Facing such an obvious threat, he had no room for hesitation.
"Any delay only invites complications," Ben said decisively. "Let's destroy it directly. I don't want to drag this out and risk more variables entering the equation."
"Let me make this absolutely clear," Tony interjected firmly, raising both hands. "I am not volunteering to personally deliver the antimatter device. Find another sacrificial hero."
He crossed his arms, expression stubborn.
"I refuse to travel to the enemy universe, fearing I'll be deliberately left behind as some kind of poetic justice."
"You're overthinking it," Ben said, shaking his head with mild amusement.
"Even if we detonate antimatter weapons and destroy their Earth, the two universes don't separate instantly. The gravitational attraction and dimensional stress remain for several hours afterward. The fault line can hold stable long enough for a return journey."