The Avengers had made one preparation specifically for the Time Stone problem: Doctor Banner.
The math was simple—the Ancient One's known weak points were scientific argumentation and someone willing to have the conversation at her level. Banner was both. Whatever happened when a top-tier physicist met a five-centuries-old bald Sorcerer Supreme who had been managing Earth's dimensional defenses since before the Enlightenment, it would be interesting, and it would be between the two of them.
The four of them stepped out of the time portal and into New York, 2012, with the particular spatial awareness of people who know exactly where they are and exactly what is happening around them.
One brief assessment of the surrounding situation, and they split.
Tony and Steve moved toward Stark Tower before it collapsed. Banner peeled off toward the Sanctum Sanctorum to make his case for the Time Stone. Jordan turned to face the battle.
His objective was different from the other three. They were there for specific objects. He was there to fight.
The principle was established: parallel branching timelines. Whatever the time travelers did here would generate its own separate timeline, independent of the one they'd come from. The future they lived in wouldn't be changed by their actions in this past—they were operating in a branch, not the trunk.
Given that, the question worth asking was: why let this branch follow the same path as before?
Doctor Strange, across 14 million possible outcomes, had found exactly one that led to victory. That one required every prior failure to set it up. But those constraints didn't apply here. Here, Jordan had a clean run at a healthier version of Thanos—peak condition, no restrictions, the Infinity Gauntlet not yet assembled. A chance to end the problem from the source rather than scrambling to reverse it afterward.
That was the goal. First, the cleanup.
New York was suffering.
The Chitauri army had been pouring through the portal above Stark Tower for hours by the time the time travelers arrived, and the Battle of New York was in its active phase: Leviathans threading through the canyons between buildings, Chitauri infantry swarming street level, the original Avengers running at full capacity across the borough and still losing ground. The police and National Guard had pistols and rifles and were pointing them at energy weapons several technological generations ahead, which deserved a certain amount of respect for sheer persistence.
Thor—the 2012 version, with both eyes and Mjolnir and the slightly less war-weathered face of a man who hadn't yet been through everything his future self had accumulated—was spinning the hammer overhead and unleashing arc-lightning across a formation of Chitauri infantry with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely enjoys this.
The formation became charcoal. The charcoal fell.
"Hmph." Thor watched it settle with satisfaction. "Weak."
Then he noticed something.
The sky behind him was clear. Not becoming clear—already clear, the way a room looks when someone has already tidied it before you arrived. He turned, scanning, trying to find what had changed—
Jordan's eyes dimmed from blue as the psychic burst completed. Map-wide. One pulse, attuned to the specific incomplete-soul signature of the Chitauri—mass-produced semi-mechanical soldiers that maintained function through a central WIFI connection to the mothership's command node, rather than individual consciousness. Against things with no real inner life, telekinetic area denial was the most efficient instrument available. The majority of the Chitauri ground forces in the surrounding blocks had ceased functioning simultaneously.
(F-boy, returning from an independent sweep of the battlefield: These are trash-tier units. Zero card yield. Not even worth sorting.)
(Jordan: Brother F. We're rich. We don't need the drops.)
(F-boy: ...)
(Jordan: Deep breaths.)
"Hey." 2012 Iron Man's voice came through the combat frequency—not directed at anyone, just broadcast, the voice of a man noticing something his instruments couldn't account for. "Is it just me, or did the enemy density just drop significantly?"
"Enemy numbers are down." 2012 Steve Rogers, from somewhere in midtown. "That means we're closer to the end. Hold the line—everyone keep pushing."
"Copy." Natasha's voice, clipped and professional. The sound of something's neck snapping in the background.
"Received." Clint, wind-sound through the earpiece. "Progress is good."
The Hulk's contribution to the communication channel was wordless and enthusiastic and approximately 140 decibels.
Jordan moved through the battle as a ghost—no signature on Avengers sensors, no visible presence in the existing footage of this event, carefully threading through the engagement zones without altering any of the things that needed to happen. The original Avengers were doing their work. He was doing his. The city's defenders—the ones with the completely inadequate sidearms pointed at alien energy weapons—found the pressure on their positions reducing without quite being able to explain why.
On the rooftop of Stark Tower, Loki was pacing.
The 2012 version of the God of Mischief had the specific energy of someone whose plan is not going as planned and who is considering escalation. The Chitauri numbers visible through the portal were significantly lower than they should have been. The formation that should have been overwhelming New York's defenses was getting overwhelmed. The timeline was moving wrong.
He stopped at the edge and looked down at the Tesseract machine, which was humming steadily as it fed energy into the portal above. He made a decision.
Expand it. Maximum output. If he could make the portal bigger, more troops through, faster—
He stepped across to the machine.
He stepped back to exactly where he had been standing.
A hand had closed around his shoulder armor.
Loki's expression changed before his mind had fully processed the sensation—the god of mischief's instincts were excellent, and every one of them was screaming. He turned his head.
The figure was taller than Thor. Black battle suit, gold lightning patterns traced across the fabric in lines that followed the musculature beneath, the whole composition carrying a specific kind of visual weight that communicated, without ambiguity, do not start something with this person.
Loki's eyelids did something involuntary.
He lowered his voice to the register of divine authority—the one that usually made mortals reconsider their choices. "Release me. If you don't want to suffer consequences."
Jordan let go of his shoulder.
Then stepped back and made an open, inviting gesture, with the mild curiosity of someone who is genuinely interested in seeing what happens next.
"I'd like to see," he said pleasantly, "exactly how you plan to arrange that."