The High Evolutionary's base was on an obscure planet, the kind of place you would never find in any galactic travel guide. But the turncoat Sovereign High Priestess had sold out her former creator without a moment's hesitation, and with the coordinates she provided, the Planeswalker crossed half the galaxy. After a week of travel and more than a hundred space jumps, they finally reached their destination, Counter-Earth.
When Counter-Earth appeared among the stars on the bridge display, everyone thought for a moment that their eyes were playing tricks on them.
Because the planet's continents and oceans were laid out exactly like Earth's.
Tony asked Skyl whether he had entered the wrong jump coordinates and somehow looped them all the way back to the Solar System. Skyl told him to look up at the surrounding stars. Anyone with even a basic grasp of constellations would realize this was truly foreign space. The coordinate signals from nearby pulsar beacons proved it too. This was not the Solar System.
"So the High Evolutionary built a copy of Earth." That was the final conclusion everyone reached. It felt unbelievable, but the evidence was right in front of them. Maybe the High Evolutionary was just a fan of Earth civilization.
"So this is what Earth looks like?" Jojani asked eagerly. "Mr. Stark's homeworld looks like this too? The ocean is so huge, like a blue glass marble."
The girl should have stayed on Xandar, but one wizard had been so impatient to go cause trouble for the High Evolutionary that Jojani had somehow ended up tagging along on the Planeswalkers' latest adventure.
Tony had the ship drop into low orbit and enter the atmosphere from the day side. They were flying over the Atlantic now, nearing the East Coast of North America. The details on the surface matched Earth directly. Even the ridgelines and geological structure of the Appalachians looked as if they had been copied from the same mold.
Soon enough, they saw New York.
As the ship passed over the familiar harbor, everyone noticed that the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island had been replaced by a monument to the High Evolutionary. The towering green-bronze statue stood in the blazing sunlight, grand and imposing.
The city's skyline differed slightly from Earth's, but the landmark buildings had all been recreated. The stores, the parks, the city hall, everything looked exactly like the home they remembered.
Tony looked baffled. "I really feel like this is New York. Other than that statue, it's all too similar."
But not long after, he rejected the thought himself. "This is definitely not Earth. Damn it, I just saw the Twin Towers."
Jojani did not understand. "What's wrong with the Twin Towers?"
"You just need to know those towers were buried in Earth's history." Tony's expression turned indescribably strange. "Looks like this world never had terrorist pilots."
The people on the surface had all noticed the alien visitors, staring up in shock at the Planeswalker as it flew over the city. And from the bridge, the crew could clearly see what the locals looked like too.
These residents were not primates or humans, but upright walking animal-people, bats, octopi, cats, dogs, sea turtles, and all kinds of beasts moving on two legs. They still retained heavily pronounced animal traits, fur, tentacles, claws, scales, shells, and the like. But they dressed just like Earth people. Shirts, jackets, and jeans were popular here too.
Counter-Earth was the homeland of these beastfolk.
"They're all products of the High Evolutionary's research," Skyl explained. "He has a special technology that lets a creature cross millions of years of evolution in a very short time. That's how these humanoid animals were born."
"I seriously suspect the High Evolutionary has a furry fixation." Tony's eyelid twitched. "So where exactly are we supposed to find this guy?"
"Let's ask someone for directions," Stan said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I've traveled all over and never gotten lost."
"You got lost all the way to another planet," Skyl and Gali said, both completely unimpressed by the old man's shameless confidence.
Stan's proposal was unanimously accepted. Really, everyone just wanted the chance to get a closer look at Counter-Earth's local culture. After all, the temple would still be there even if the monk ran off. The High Evolutionary's whole power base was on this planet. There was no need to rush into picking a fight with him.
Everyone planned to disembark except Jojani, who volunteered to stay behind. She wanted to look after Rocket and Groot, and if anything urgent happened, she could launch the ship right away and support the others.
The Planeswalker set down in Central Park. The beastfolk gathered around them curiously, speaking some obscure alien language that even the translator could not recognize.
The locals of Counter-Earth were visibly uneasy about these alien visitors. Judging by their reactions, they truly had never experienced anything like a close encounter of the fourth kind before. But these beastfolk were exceptionally friendly. Normally, if an alien ship landed in America, the welcome party would be attack helicopters and Marines.
Stan cheerfully stepped forward to greet them. Even without a shared language, he managed to communicate through gestures. Before long, the warmhearted locals accepted them and even invited the aliens into their home.
Inside the local family's house, the décor looked exactly like modern Earth interior design. Music from a virtual pop idol played on the radio, bright and upbeat. Gali stared in shock. "Hatsune Miku?!" Then she immediately shook her head. "No, not Hatsune Miku. Just kind of sounds like her."
Skyl took a little time and used mind-reading magic to learn the local language. After that, he was able to understand Counter-Earth's native inhabitants in detail.
From the homeowner, they learned that all of the beastfolk had been created nearly half a century ago by the High Evolutionary, and under the grace of that creator, they had been granted this beautiful planet.
The High Evolutionary knew everything that happened on Counter-Earth.
"So he already knows we're here. We just have to wait for him to come to us." Skyl sounded pleased. "That certainly makes things easier."
Before he had even finished speaking, there was a knock at the door.
The homeowner hurried to answer it, then immediately cried out in shocked joy and terror before dropping to the floor to kiss the visitor's boots.
The Planeswalkers all turned to look, and at last they saw what this so-called High Evolutionary actually looked like. He was a tall, broad humanoid alien with dark skin, dressed in purple armor, steady in bearing and cold in gaze. His face looked profoundly strange, like a mask of human skin stretched over bone. And that was exactly what it was. Gali's super-vision saw straight through the flesh mask and revealed the bloody ruin beneath, making her recoil in disgust and hide behind Skyl.
This god of Counter-Earth looked over the group with detached indifference and asked coldly, "Where did you get the coordinates to this place? Answer truthfully."
Behind him stood a squad of heavily modified beastfolk, huge animal heads mounted on mechanical bodies, like butchers forged from steel.
Skyl answered pleasantly enough. "Ayesha told us."
"The Sovereign. Their civilization chose betrayal, which means it no longer deserves to exist." The High Evolutionary angrily sentenced the Sovereign to death on the spot. "And as for you, what purpose brought you here?"
Skyl answered just as honestly as before. "I came here to beat you up."
He raised the Infinity Scepter and pointed it at the High Evolutionary. The Power Stone flared, and a dark purple shockwave as thick as a tree trunk erupted outward, blasting the High Evolutionary and his soldiers off their feet and hurling them into the street like chunks of rubble.
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