Doctor Strange, watching from a distance, realized things were no longer following the timeline he had foreseen. A chill crawled up his spine, spreading through his entire body until he couldn't stop trembling.
In the timeline he had seen, Mantis successfully controlled Thanos. Everyone rushed in, piled onto him, and tried to pry off the Infinity Gauntlet. Wanda became the main source of damage, and together they overwhelmed and killed him.
Sure, a lot of details had gone off-script at the start, but the overall direction hadn't changed. Or at least… it wasn't supposed to.
What no one expected was that the plan would collapse before it even truly began.
Without Mantis's control, there was no way they could remove Thanos's gauntlet. And without that, how were they supposed to win this fight at all?
At that moment, the five members of the Guardians of the Galaxy stared in stunned silence at Mantis's lifeless body.
She had been with them for so long. She'd saved their lives more than once. She was family.
And now… she was just gone.
Gamora was hit the hardest.
She stared at Thanos—her father—who was slaughtering his way through the battlefield without the slightest hesitation, and felt like she was looking at a complete stranger.
She had always believed that, while her father was cruel and domineering, he wasn't mindlessly bloodthirsty. He valued discipline, balance… purpose.
It was impossible to say she never loved him.
Decades of upbringing and complicated affection don't just disappear overnight.
Soon, she flew closer, stopping not far from him. Tears streamed down her face as she shouted, her voice shaking with rage and heartbreak.
"Father! Is this what you wanted? Endless killing and destruction? Why can't we just live in peace?"
At that very moment, Thanos casually grabbed a small figure lunging toward him with his left hand.
The attacker was wrapped head to toe in black tactical armor, agile and feral-looking, like a wildcat. His strength wasn't impressive, but the armor itself was—vibranium, capable of absorbing enormous amounts of energy.
Thanos didn't even spare him a glance.
With a single squeeze, he crushed the life out of him.
Only then did Thanos turn toward Gamora.
"Peaceful coexistence?" he said coldly. "They will live in peace once they learn to submit… or once they are all dead."
In truth, he had never intended to coexist peacefully with Earth.
If he had, he wouldn't have ordered a long-range bombardment from the Star Fortress without so much as a warning.
Gamora stared at him in disbelief. Her voice dropped, confused and broken.
"Father… you weren't like this before. Why have you become like this?"
Nearby, several bald women in red armor froze for half a second when they saw their king strangled to death.
Then rage exploded across their faces.
They raised their spears and charged forward as one.
"For Wakanda!"
"For the King!"
Thanos shattered their magical shields with a few ruthless strikes, sending them after their fallen king. Then he spoke, his voice calm, almost bored.
"Do you even understand what my ideals are?"
After that, he lost all interest in speaking to his daughter. With a single swing, he sent Gamora flying, then turned and shot forward toward Doctor Strange in the distance.
Once that man was dead, the battle would be more than halfway decided.
But Earth had no shortage of heroes.
Another figure stepped into his path.
This one wore a red coat and carried two katanas strapped to his back. He also had an unfortunate habit of talking way too much.
"You're Thanos, right?" he said cheerfully. "Look, I suggest you turn around and leave now. Because once I make my move, you won't even get a cameo. You see, I am—"
Thanos didn't wait.
One impatient slash, and the man's head went flying.
Thanos frowned.
He was starting to think he had seriously overestimated Earth's so-called superheroes. Most of them were just filler—loud, flashy, and completely useless.
He turned to continue forward.
Then the same voice rang out again.
"You hurt me," it said indignantly. "And now I'm angry!"
The headless man reached down, picked up his own head, pressed it back into place—and it healed almost instantly.
Doctor Strange, watching from afar, finally let out the breath he'd been holding.
Thank goodness Deadpool hadn't messed up.
In the future Strange had seen, Deadpool's immortality allowed him to stall Thanos just long enough for the others to destroy the interstellar fortress and the enemy fleet.
But just then, Mr. Fantastic suddenly shouted from nearby.
"Thanos, that's Deadpool! His abilities—sob, sob—"
Before he could finish, his expression froze.
He opened his mouth again… and realized no sound was coming out.
Turning his head, he caught Doctor Strange staring at him with a livid expression, both hands flickering with sharp, restless magical light.
Mr. Fantastic felt a small stab of sadness right away.
He knew he wasn't the strongest one there. He wasn't even close. He just wanted to say a few encouraging words, boost morale a little. Was that really such a crime? And yet—nope. Apparently, even that was forbidden.
On the battlefield, Thanos immediately recognized the man in front of him the moment he heard the name Deadpool.
There were rumors—those half-forbidden comics no one officially acknowledged—claiming that this lunatic had once rampaged through the entire Marvel Universe and even broken into the author's house for good measure. Supposedly, he possessed near-immortal regenerative abilities, able to revive so long as a single cell, or even a molecule, remained.
But the Deadpool standing here clearly didn't match that legend.
Oh, and there was another rumor—something about competing with Thanos for the favor of the God of Death.
Unfortunately for Deadpool, Thanos was no longer simping for Death. That whole angle was completely irrelevant now.
Once his identity was confirmed, everything became simple.
World-destroying power surged once more, wrapping itself around the Tyrant's Blade. Thanos swung down without hesitation.
Deadpool was instantly chopped into pieces, annihilated with overwhelming force, his body erased down to the cellular level.
As expected, this time Deadpool didn't get back up.And—tragically—he didn't get to say another word.
Without pausing for even a breath, Thanos turned and shot straight toward Doctor Strange.
This time, he wouldn't hold back.
Once he confirmed that the "player" couldn't interfere, his last trace of restraint vanished. Earlier, he could have killed Captain Marvel but chose not to, wary of some unknown force stepping in.
Now? He knew those beings couldn't—or wouldn't—act directly. If they couldn't interfere recklessly, then what exactly was he afraid of?
Might as well go all in.
…
Meanwhile, the overall situation on the battlefield was becoming clearer by the second.
Despite being outnumbered and facing a coalition of powerful superheroes, the Black Order showed no signs of collapsing anytime soon. In fact, they even managed to kill a few careless opponents here and there.
The biggest reason was that infuriating magical shield.
It allowed many heroes to shrug off anything that wasn't a truly heavy-hitting attack, turning what should've been fatal blows into mild inconveniences.
Laufey wielded the Ice Box relentlessly, freezing everything around him. Even with magical shields active, resisting the Ice Box's power was a struggle at best.
Hela's fighting style, on the other hand, was eerily elegant.
She moved like she was dancing across the battlefield. With every twist of her body, several black swords shot out in smooth, deadly arcs. Magical shields could block them—up to a point. But once more than five swords struck at the same time, the shield shattered, and the target died almost instantly.
Farther away, the spaceships were accomplishing very little. If anything, they'd become oversized targets, casually blown apart by Earth's superheroes.
With top-tier combatants from both sides tangled together, the ships didn't dare fire recklessly.
Just then, a massive ball of fire bloomed in the distance.
Captain Marvel burst out from it, her body glowing with a blazing red light.
She had already destroyed an interstellar fortress—and judging by her trajectory, she was heading straight for the next one.
.....
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