TOTAL X-MEN: Summer's Gaze

by Morris777

In the late 1980's, a young Scott Summers escapes the lab of Natalie Essex and finds himself thrust into a conspiracy involving the Island of Genosha, encountering an array of deadly enemies and powerful allies. For Scott and his strange new friends (and blossoming love with Ororo), the only way to survive everything and everyone up against them...is to go TOTAL X-MEN on them!

12. The First Point

Author's note: ALL ART COMMISSION OFFERS FOR THIS STORY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DECLINED

...

The pounding on the armored door to J. Jonah Jameson's office steadily grew worse, and Bullseye was behind the desk, Toad waiting with bated breath as the pounding grew more severe.

Suddenly, it stopped.

Everyone was too frozen to move for a second. They kept waiting for a follow up. Nothing. But they could still hear the sound of ape creatures running around the office outside, albeit farther away.

"That's not good..." Bullseye said. "Something drove them off..."

"What, though?" Toad asked.

"It could be anything..." Thanos speculated quietly. "Could be one of those Wendigo..."

"Could be Cameron Hodge..." Bullseye speculated back just as quietly. "He was still a thing a month ago...dunno where he is, now..."

"The old bat didn't tell you, Poindexter? Bastard got tricked into a Limbo Portal by her..." Thanos dismissed. "Something else spooked them..."

There was nothing for few minutes. After a while, they relaxed their muscles by a fraction. Due to not having the rest of his body, Thanos could only relax his facial muscles.

"Alright lads, here's the plan..." Bullseye said, taking a seat behind Jameson's desk, pulling out all his guns, and counting the bullets.

"We're gonna be real quiet, next few hours, see? And we're not gonna leave this office until I'm sure most of those things are gone from the building...so get comfy..."

Toad slumped in a corner, face slick with fear sweat...

...

They could not hear the ape creatures after an hour, but Bullseye had said that didn't mean anything. The De-Evolved humans were nothing if not patient. But it still didn't explain what had spooked them.

Toad spared a glance at the Head of Thanos.

"So, did you really kill half the universe?" Toad asked in a whisper.

Thanos smiled. "I did, indeed."

"You're lookin' at one of the only men to ever assemble all six Infinity Gems for his own use," Bullseye said with a dismissive snort.

"Could have had anything he wanted. But like most men buying a sports car in their fifties due to a mid-life crisis, he was trying to impress a girl at the same time."

"Who?" Toad asked, bewildered and disgusted by the disturbingly pleasant smile on Thanos. "Who's worth killing half the universe for?"

"Death!" Thanos said with a mad gleam in his eye, showing the obsession had not left him...

Toad blinked. "Ya lost me."

"Ol' Thanos here believes Death has a physical embodiment that can be interacted with. And he's slavishly devoted to winning its affection. Too bad she never paid attention," Bullseye chuckled softly.

Thanos' face twisted in sorrow. "She's a tough woman to impress."

"Why the hell are you attracted to Death?" Toad wondered, staring at Thanos' mad gaze and perfectly understanding why he had been reduced to a head in a jar.

"I need someone my speed," Thanos replied before grinning and winking at him.

"Hey Swampy..." Bullseye whispered, pulling open a drawer in Jonah's desk, and pulling out a strange wrist mechanism that had a tiny pad built to fit a palm connected to it. He tossed it to Toad.

"What's this?" Toad asked.

"One of Spider-Man's Web-Shooters..." Bullseye said quietly. "That old bastard Jameson was obsessed with him. It's an earlier model, the kind he was using when Osborn threw that blondie off the bridge, but it still works..."

Toad looked at it hesitantly, then at Bullseye.

"There's a good lad," the old, scarred man grinned with yellow teeth. "I'd have been disappointed if you'd put it on without thinking."

"How do I know you ain't booby trapped this somehow?" Toad questioned suspiciously.

"Nothing except my sincere word," Bullseye cough-chuckled. "Which I fully admit is worth less than nothing. But in this case, you genuinely have nothing to worry about, Swampy. I got nothing to gain by betraying you. Loki made it clear if I screw up, get you killed, the deal is off. I don't get reborn."

"Same goes for me..." Thanos confirmed. "If I don't give you the best advice possible out here, I get nothing."

"Okay...let's start with this Stryker fella. Loki said the Celestials punished him. How?" Toad questioned Thanos.

"By turning him into what he thought he was fighting. He's quite insane by this point. I doubt you'll be able to reason with him," Thanos answered. "Enclosed spaces where he's at too. I can't help but appreciate the irony of his Punishment."

"Turning him into what he thought he was fighting..." Toad trailed. Then it dawned on him. Stryker thought Mutants were the Spawn of Satan.

He looked back at Thanos. "He's Devil Themed, ain't he?"

Thanos smiled sagely. "I do believe I misjudged you. You're quicker than I gave you credit for..."

"You think using his Religion would get under his skin?" Toad wondered.

Thanos seemed to actually take a moment to consider this.

"It might. If you want to break an enemy, use what he cherishes most against him," Thanos advised. "Worked for me when I killed The Scarlet Witch."

Toad turned to Bullseye. "Your thoughts?"

Bullseye scratched his head.

"Stryker was just about the most fire and brimstone sorta guy I ever saw. You shoulda seen him during all those T.V. rallies," Bullseye muttered thoughtfully. "If there IS anything left of ol' Willie in whatever husk that Celestial put him in, I think...yeah...yeah, you just MIGHT get under his skin. Better hope you can survive the response..."

Toad let Thanos examine the Web-Shooter. "Did Bullseye tamper with this?"

"Not that I can tell, no."

Toad hesitated. After a moment, he attached the Web-Shooter to his wrist.

"You fire it by pressing that little touch pad close to your palm. Out shoots a pressurized chemical that hardens in the air into a line to swing from. Quick taps fire short gobs of the stuff. Careful with it. Only got a limited supply of the chemical inside. Parker was making full on grenades with the stuff before he quit, but I could never get my hands on any of those," Bullseye explained.

There was a thud. Their eyes darted to the door, wondering what it was.

"What's that?" Thanos whispered.

"My guess it's whatever scared off the ape creatures..." Bullseye mused.

They all got their answer when what looked like the tip of a Sai punctured the armored shutters.

"Like an Elektra LMD..." Bullseye grunted as the Sai was withdrawn and rammed through the armored door again, this time puncturing the lock.

"Yep...that'll do it..." Thanos confirmed as an Elektra LMD finally kicked down the door.

The Android took the form of a curvy, muscular woman with olive skin and raven hair in an all-red leather ensemble, consisting of a skintight, Corset-Like top, tight-fitting pants, and matching boots.

"Eh, Lovely..." Bullseye grinned demonically as he leveled the Shotgun at the Android's face.

"Long time no see..."

The LMD tossed the Sai with frightful speed, but Bullseye caught it with an expert grace and flung it back into the Android's chest, where it pierced right where the heart would be on a human and it fell over, sparking and jerking violently before its head exploded in a shower of circuits and wires...

Bullseye went over to the corpse, pulled the Sai out of its chest, and chuckled to himself. "That never gets old..."

Toad hopped to join him as he began scouring the floor looking for the parts to its mechanical brain.

"How many decades of advancement had they achieved with the Life Model Decoys before everything capsized and they STILL can't make these things fight any better than the real Elektra did," Bullseye snorted, as he picked up some sort of processor that had been part of her brain once.

Bullseye smiled to himself. "That never ceased to piss Murdoch off. Even at the end before the playing card went into his brain, he got testy when I pointed out how her bark was always worse than her bite..."

He erupted into fits of coughing, and this time, Toad saw actual blood on his hand as he pulled it away from covering his mouth to muffle the sound.

"Here...you hold onto that for me, would you?" Bullseye said as he tossed the processor to Toad.

"We need to go. There will be more, if they aren't here already..." Thanos advised Toad as he was clipped to his belt

As if on cue, three more copies of the Android Bullseye had just destroyed slinked into the area through the very elevator shaft they themselves had used.

Bullseye dropped two of them with a shotgun blast each, all of them ducking the deadly projectile speed the Androids hurled their Sai's at as they closed in, taking down the third by throwing the shotgun itself through the android skull, which he quickly retrieved and reloaded.

They heard the roar of the Ape Creatures as they retreated backwards from more Elektra copies coming up the shaft. Bullseye resorted to playing cards from his belt that he hurled with curious accuracy at their skulls even as the Android's tried to dodge as they pursued. Things went from bad to worse when the Ape creatures that were still in the building caught sight of them and began their own pursuit. Toad kicked up dust to make the ape creatures devolve into fits of coughing and sneezing as they ran through uncomfortably narrow passages of cubicles, the creatures momentarily cut off from pursuit by being forced to engage the Androids, which swiftly eviscerated the Ape creatures. Toad and Bullseye didn't dare stand their ground against the massive crowd. Toad especially didn't want to have to go toe to toe with the LMD's: Their agility scared him, and he knew he couldn't hope to match them at hand to hand.

Bullseye grabbed a rusted nail off the ground and flung it into the eye of one of the devolved humans, blinding him and causing incredible pain which made the sadistic killer grin.

"A pity you can't die..." he admitted as he raced down the stair, grabbing a loose brick and sending it sailing with lethal speeds into the head of an Elektra LMD, smashing it to pieces in a shower of sparks, Toad rebounding off a corner in the staircase shaft a second later to spin kick one of the ape creatures that had been chasing the LMD in the jaw and sending it plummeting off the stairs and down the empty middle of the case spiral, screeching as it hit the floor below.

Bullseye wheeled around and hammer-fanned his magnum revolver, dropping three of the LMD's chasing him with headshots that exploded their mechanical brains...but not before one of them threw their Sai's and managed to hit him in the shoulder, and oddly, he realized he had forgotten his Gas Mask. A mistake he never would have made in his youth. Although such a Sociopath he reveled in the pain, even he was staggered back by the force of impact, and whipped out a grenade, and made it ricochet up the staircase with a well-placed throw, and it detonated just as a pack of the screaming, ravenous, and inhuman monsters came thundering down it like a tidal wave. The structure above collapsed from the force of the explosion, and Bullseye dived off the railing along with Toad at the same time, both barely catching the railing of a lower section of the staircase as the above section collapsed, sending choking clouds of dust that made Bullseye start coughing more violently than normal. That was when it hit Toad just how much it was costing the old monster to be out here, doing this. Bullseye was literally on his last legs. He had given himself the prognosis of a month to live but from where Toad was standing as he pulled himself up and watch the old man pull himself up after, struggling and hacking with the effort, and forcing himself to keep going no matter how horrible his coughing fits got, Toad figured this was an overly generous estimate. Even if it had been true, just the effort to escape this building with their lives would take so much out of him he'd likely be dead by tomorrow, if not by nightfall.

They raced down the staircase even as it collapsed behind them and managed to burst through a window on the first floor just before the whole staircase came crashing down behind them.

Bullseye couldn't stop coughing as he and Toad ran for their lives, upon seeing a whole swarm of Elektra LMD's chasing after them.

...

Ground quakes and hellish jets of flames dotted the landscape as Toad, Bullseye, and by extension Thanos due to hanging from Toad's belt, ran for their lives.

"So, Thanos," Toad panted as he hopped for his life, barely out of reach of the stream of Sai's thrown by the Elektra Robots.

"Got any advice?" Toad asked desperately.

"A hot area. The LMD's track via thermal imaging," Thanos answered patiently.

Toad noticed an area where multiple buildings were on fire and directed Bullseye to them. Toad knew that with the buildings on fire, the particulates in the air would be much heavier than normal. But they had no choice now.

They ran into the burning streets and the air warmed up instantly. and it got worse and worse until he threatened to fall from heat exhaustion as he and Toad, his behind warm rubble, the Elektra LMD's filing through the street.

Bullseye was covered in sweat, struggling to stay conscious, on the verge of a heat stroke. He leaned against the over-warm, verging on hot debris, panting, too tired and exhausted to even cough.

"Toynbee. Bullseye. The time has come to do some simple equations, no Arithmetic your human brains are too stressed out to process," Thanos said in a cold, distant manner, albeit in a whisper, sweat pouring down Toad's face, made ten times worse by the gas mask he was wearing.

"If we run together, we will die together and exhausted at that. Given what's at stake here, it's clear one of us is going to have to stay as a distraction. I think we all know who the distraction needs to be." he finished, grimly eyeing Bullseye.

"No need to go jumping for joy, Skulljob..." Bullseye wheezed. "I'll see you in Hell."

"Only if I ever bother to visit," Thanos replied just as coldly.

"Wait, we can't just throw someone to the wolves!" Toad protested quietly, peeking up and watching the squads of LMD units diligently searching every nook and cranny in the street for them systematically.

"Yes, we can..." Thanos rejoined. "You don't get it, do you? It doesn't matter if he dies. It doesn't matter if I myself die, so long as you succeed. If you fail, all of this will be for nothing, anyway. You must retrieve the Skull of Nate Grey. It's your only hope of not ending up as just another living corpse in this dead-end reality."

Toad looked at Bullseye with an expression of total helplessness, knowing the Head of Thanos was correct. In fact, Bullseye only chuckled.

"Don't feel sorry for me. I wouldn't," Bullseye said. "I killed for money and thrills. Old, young, innocent, guilty, it didn't matter. Hell, the last few years of total devastation was an extended picnic to me. I always knew deep down it was going to end for me violently and emptily. I still chose to keep killing until there was literally no one left that was worth it to kill. No other way it could end."

He leaned forward in his sickened, nearly delirious state.

"You're almost there. Just keep heading seven blocks north and you'll find him. I'm afraid I've taken you as far as I can..." Bullseye wheezed again, struggling to get air into his lungs. "I'm gonna get as much of them on me as possible. The rest is your problem."

"I'd thank you if you weren't so psycho..." Toad said quietly, watching the old man force himself to stand up, a playing card in each hand.

He crept across the street behind the Elektra LMD's and flung the playing cards into the skulls of the two closest Elektras, dropping two more with his now empty Magnum, tossing it in such a way that it curved like a boomerang through the air, and smacked into the head of another with the grip, knocking its mechanical jaw clean off and dropping it before somersaulting over the fallen robots and grabbing one of their Sai's deflecting a series of thrown Sai's from the Elektras, smirking.

"You all fight like Elektra? Do you have her memories too?" he taunted the robot's as they surrounded him.

"You remember Murdoch? Y'know how he died?" Bullseye taunted the silent Robots. "I flung the ace of spades into his freaking skull!"

There was not much of a change, but Bullseye could have SWORN he saw their faces collectively harden, if only slightly...

Three rushed him, and they went down in a series of precise stabs. Six rushed him and Bullseye killed three with the Sai, flinging the Sai he had taken into one skull, dropping the next two with his sawn-off shotgun, flinging the shotgun itself into the legs of the other rushing Elektras, tripping them up. Then he began grabbing more of their daggers before he backed off, flinging three of them at once before drawing a throwing knife and another playing card and bringing down two more-

He went cold as a flung Sai pierced his gut, and he saw Toad hopping away in the distance with Thanos.

Sociopath that he was, Bullseye let himself enjoy the pain, and the old man was alive, grinning with yellow teeth.

"Number One Rule about targets, whether in war or life..." Bullseye muttered, pulling the dagger out of his scarred chest and deflecting three more thrown at him.

"...is that eventually, they all get hit..." he sneered as he dropped one more Elektra.

"It never NOT amused me, taking you away from Murdoch..." he taunted coldly, as he caught a kick from an Elektra.

"He spent years trying to avenge you, only to go out in an even more humiliating way than you did. And that bastard had the nerve to call himself Daredevil." Bullseye sneered as his brute psycho old man strength allowed him to twist that same Elektra Robot's head backwards, even as he parried a strike from another.

"I was better than both of you put together!" he raged as he withdrew Daredevil's Billy Club from a back pocket, the collapsible combat stick disguised as a walking cane clicking to full extension, mercilessly beating four that attacked him from all sides using pure martial arts, making him spit blood as he fended off the attacks, but smashed five more in exchange.

"I should have been the Daredevil!" Bullseye shouted as they mobbed him from all sides, making him deflect their thrown weapon, using his arch enemy's cane to savagely batter them in response, having given full reign to his inherent bloodlust, even as three more Sai's managed to pierce the area around his heart.

"I could probably do a better job than he could! Not just with girlfriends, but with everything else!" Bullseye shouted in full homicidal mania as he continued defiling his enemy's weapon by using it on the image of his enemy's loved one, his attacks so savage that even as more Sai's began to get buried in his body, he continued decimating the Elektra copies, to the point they actually started to retreat from the bleeding, dying old man furiously pulling the embedded daggers out of his body and scoring a headshot on every robot he threw them at.

"That's probably the one thing I wish I COULD change about my deal with the old bat..." Bullseye choked out, as he fell to his knees, choking and wheezing a final time.

"That in the next world, I wouldn't get recreated as Bullseye...but...as...Daredevil...just..." Bullseye struggled as he lifted the cane to throw like a spear at the only remaining Elektra LMD in the area, now outright running away to try and re-pursue Toad.

"...just..." he coughed out, vision starting to get blurry as he bled out, aiming the cane while his eyesight could still work well enough.

"...just so I could bloody prove it..."

He threw the cane, and it sailed through the air, its tip smashing through the LMD's skull.

Benjamin Poindexter smiled as the last of his strength finally left him.

"Bullseye..." he gasped with a sickening grin on his face as he at last fell dead.

...

Toad leapt for his life. He had no protector but himself once more. Bullseye was dead (Something that oddly relieved Toad, despite still feeling awful about leaving Bullseye behind), and all that was left to guide him was the dismembered head of someone who was seemingly an even bigger psycho than Bullseye himself.

"Don't feel bad, Toad. He was dead anyway from all the tumors in him. He wouldn't have made it to the next hour with how he exerted himself back there, never mind the end of this day..." Thanos said as he dangled from Toad's belt.

"That still don't make it right! Someone DIED buying time for us! Even if he was a heartless jerk who only cared about his reward, he still DIED allowing us to escape!" Toad shot back, following Bullseye's directions, until he spotted a hovel...a hovel of metal. Twisted spires rose up as a sort of gate around the former remains of a car repair shop. Toad saw discarded whiskey bottles everywhere.

"Behold, the last safe zone on earth besides the Triskelion..." Thanos noted.

"Is that you? With Bullseye again?" asked a man's voice, elderly but with the remains of a once commanding baritone from the darkness past the repair shop entrance.

"I told you. I will not help you..." said the voice inside. "Humanity has been given too many chances, too many passes. The same goes for Mutantkind as well. It is time to let BOTH die..."

"If you really believed that, why haven't you simply drunk yourself to death?" Thanos asked.

"You atone for your failures however you like, Thanos of Titan. Let me atone in my own way."

"Is this how you want History to record the death of the great Magneto?" Thanos asked. "A broken-down alcoholic who spent his last days in an abandoned car repair shop?!"

"There is no Magneto. Magneto fought for something. That was why he existed. When that something was destroyed...when that something perverted itself...there was no more point...and there's no one left to document it anyway. No one willing to go to the effort at least."

"Loki has a plan, Magneto! A Plan to un-screw our situation! It only requires you help us with a quick task!" Thanos called out.

"To what end?" called back the voice of the old man from the darkness of the repair shop entrance in a clear snarl. "To watch it happen all over again, to watch friends die again, to watch my schemes fail? To watch my kind become just as vile as the humans themselves?"

Thanos glanced Toad's way, things suddenly clicking into place as to why Loki would bring Toad, of all people, here.

Toad was maybe the one person left on Earth who could get Magneto to listen.

"Kid," Thanos said in a whisper. "Talk to him."

"What?" Toad asked.

"Talk to him. Tell him your name."

Toad scratched his head but shrugged.

"Uh? Mister Magneto Sir?" Toad called out. "My name is Mortimer Toynbee. They call me Toad where I'm from. I need your help."

Silence on the other end at first, and then a sharp, pained hiss from the old man inside.

"Toad is dead. He's been dead for years."

"I'm not 'your' Toad, sir. I'm the Toad from the other side of this equation. The side where Loki's...scheme...worked. It's 1986 on my end. The world doesn't know about Mutants yet. Not the general public anyway. We're in hiding, and we're mostly terrified. A guy named Charles Xavier is running interference for us, but he's close to being overwhelmed by the task. I..." Toad, paused, trying to sound composed even though he was anything but.

"I know things went bad for Mutants on your end. But the ones on my end still have a fighting chance! All we need you to do is just lift the barrier around Avengers tower so I can get through and retrieve the Skull of some guy called Nate Grey! Real easy stuff! Ten minutes of your time, please!"

The old man finally stepped out, and Toad saw he had once had a very muscular build but one that had started getting on the verge of emaciated. He wore simple, tattered slacks and what looked to be a scavenged polo shirt, a long white beard sticking out from a head covered in a strange crimson helm with a prominent but small, horned emblem in the forehead section, the design reminding Toad otherwise of some old roman legionnaire helmets, in how the cheeks and brow were fully protected. This seemed to be one solid piece, as opposed to segments, however. He couldn't quite make out the face in the interior shadow of the helmet.

Magneto stared at Toad as he floated towards him, and Toad was eerily reminded of the Mutant they had busted out of a specially restricted section in Essex's lab when all this had started. He even sounded like the guy that had solo'd Essex's robot security force slightly.

Magneto stared at him. Toad subtly gulped.

"Mister Toynbee..." Magneto said slowly and quietly to Toad. "It would seem Fate has permitted me one, final, small chance to fix an old wrong of mine. Allow me to be the Leader to you in my life's twilight that I was not in my life's cusp."

Toad felt himself being lifted up in astonishment and terror, but he simply floated behind Magneto, who floated them all across the city scape to Avenger's tower. As Toad stared below, he saw only absolute chaos and devastation between them and Avenger's Tower. A miasma of riotous, screaming, devolving humans as far as the eye could see. Whole plains of impassable wreckage that would have taken him forever to scale. He'd have likely starved before he could even REACH the tower, which was covered in a twisted barrier of electrified wreckage that he could never have hoped to scale anyway. Magneto possibly really was the only way to complete his task and return alive at this point.

Magneto set them down on the other side of the sea of devastation, on a relatively barren street. But the devastation was unmistakable.

Toad spotted what looked like a fallen, badly damaged Elektra LMD and hopped towards it.

"Hey, Magneto! Can you do anything else besides float us? Could you, say, fix this LMD here?" Toad asked.

The old man floated over to it.

"A relatively simple task...but the processor seems to be missing..." Magneto noted. "And I have neither the time nor patience to create and program a new one. And even if I did have the latter, my skill in this area has slipped...I would need a working example."

"Like this?" Toad asked, reaching into the pocket of his green, unstable molecule jumpsuit and pulling out the LMD processor Bullseye had taken earlier and tossed to him. Internally Toad wondered why Bullseye had given him this processor at all. Was he anticipating they might find a stray android that could be reprogrammed by Magneto? Or was he simply a sicko claiming a trophy/future murder weapon? Both?

Magneto caught it and examined it.

"Main LMD Processor. A sub-par example. Whoever made these things was in a hurry. Nevertheless..." Magneto trailed, a purple glow enveloping the brass-colored processor, struggling to recall his advanced scientific knowledge through the haze of alcoholic depression.

"I have reprogrammed it, improved upon it even. As I shall improve further upon this broken Automaton you have found..."

Toad watched as the Elektra LMD was lifted, a purple glow enveloping all its broken parts as it was broken down to the molecular level, metal parts from other nearby machines flying into the moving metal mass and breaking down before being restructured, its design completely rebuilt internally and somewhat externally, its once crimson clothing now completely black, and its once long raven hair now a curly dark brown. It pulled out its Sai's and stared at them.

"Please state my programmed duties," The rebuilt, reprogrammed Elektra LMD said in a calm, polite voice.

"Protect all allied Mutants, of which I am one," Toad spoke up. "Even at the cost of your own functioning."

"Nice and ruthless. You would do well in my Black Order, Toynbee," Thanos said with a grin.

"Secondary duties?" The LMD asked.

"Fight threats to Mutants alongside Allied Mutants..." Toad said in reply.

"Simple. To the point. Well done," Magneto complimented. "I've redesigned it for improved performance. Some of the new elements I've incorporated are derived from Sentinel Tech..."

"You mean the giant killer robots I've been seeing everywhere?" Toad asked, bewildered. "The ones that killed all the Mutants? How the hell is that a good idea?"

"Always try to learn from your enemies, Mortimer. They'll sometimes teach you more than your friends ever could," Magneto replied politely. "It all depends on who controls the technology, ultimately...and who is willing to use it..."

"Primary handler designate?" The LMD asked.

"You have multiple handlers," Toad replied.

The rebuilt LMD's head tilted. "Specify."

"Toad. AKA Mortimer Tolansky Toynbee, AKA the Mutant answering your question. The other handlers are Cyclops, Mystique and Charles Xavier..." Toad answered, thinking ahead.

"Duties and Designates registered. Standing orders?" The LMD asked.

"We're going into Avengers tower. And we're gonna find the skull of Nate Grey," Toad answered.

The LMD nodded and waited for them to lead the way. Magneto began moving down the street.

"By the way, what do I call you?" Toad asked the LMD.

"Elektra will do nicely," Elektra answered as she followed them.

"So, you got any memories of who made you? Or why?" Toad inquired as he hopped next to her to the foreboding, ruined, encased tower.

"There is a crashed SHIELD Helicarrier just at the edge of the bay, where models similar to me have been manufactured for months..." Elektra replied. "I have no idea who or why. Only that I was to come out here and kill whoever I perceived as a threat. Like the devolving humans. Or you."

"Whoever is making them will strike at the last possible second. Mark my words..." Thanos declared. "This scheme seems very familiar..."

"It does, doesn't it?" Elektra admitted.

"I find it very odd that whoever would unleash you all would choose for you the guise of an Assassin who was almost too easily dispatched by what I must assume is the now departed Mister Poindexter," Magneto commented soberly as he led them through the street ruins to the tower.

"That could mean anything. It could have been pure coincidence. It may be that Elektra was the only template they had to work with while creating an LMD line," Thanos argued. "Or, perhaps whoever chose her guise wants us to assume it's someone else, so we won't be able to anticipate the plans of who it actually is."

"There's not many left on Earth who have the desire or means to take this approach. I'd say Ultron was my top candidate if I hadn't hurled him into the sun twenty years prior," Magneto mused. "My second guess would be Von Doom, if Grimm hadn't finally managed to get his hands on the real deal and pound his skull in. What do you think, Thanos? Osborn, perhaps?"

"Nah. Him and Octavius killed each other during the final war against the Sentinels," Thanos answered. "Apparently Spider-Man ate Pizza over Osborn's grave...using Osborn's headstone as a table..."

"The Goblin's played dead before," Magneto rejoined acidly.

"When he was coherent enough to manage his resources, sure, but that formula of his had really done a number on his brain by the time he ran into Otto again, and there was nowhere left to hide anyway," Thanos explained as they made the journey through empty but still shattered streets, the roar of the devolved humans, even though very far away, seemed omni-present, unnerving Toad, which made him keep a head on a swivel. Elektra remained silent, striding confidently as if she owned the place.

Magneto chuckled very darkly before coughing a little.

"What was the fight over?" Magneto asked.

"Who got to be the one to finally kill Spider-Man," Thanos laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.

"How amusing..." Magneto replied crisply as they finally stopped at the jagged mess that was the Barrier surrounding the tower. "All those years trying to kill him, and when they finally die themselves, they're not anywhere near Spider-Man. I can't think of a more fitting end for both of those psychotics."

"I'd agree, but then it's the Pot calling the Kettle black," Thanos replied with a chuckle.

Most of this completely flew over Toad's head, mainly due to it all being the dead history of a semi-erased reality. But he pushed on to the tower, until he and the others finally reached the electrified wreckage that made up the barrier that surrounded the once glittering tower.

Magneto raised his hand, and Toad watched as the Metal, jagged and rusted and sparking had a large flap torn open and lifted up.

"I can accompany you no further, I'm afraid. But please make use of this Automaton to accomplish your objective," Magneto said, gesturing to Elektra.

Toad's head tilted. "Why not?"

"It has been many years since I have taken a life," Magneto answered. "It's nothing to break down and rebuild a common LMD. But I'm in poor health as it is. My body, at my age, simply couldn't take the strain of fighting. Of killing."

"Huh. Well, thanks anyway, sir."

"You owe me no such gratitude," Magneto dismissed. "I was part of the problem. And its only now, after I have lost everything, that I finally have the strength to admit I was probably an even bigger risk to Mutant survival than any Human."

"What did you do, exactly?" Toad asked.

Magneto sighed. "My boy..." he replied, placing a hand on Toad's shoulder in an almost fatherly manner that unsettled the young Mutant.

"It would be easier to ask what I didn't do for my cause of Mutant Supremacy. But there was one lesson I didn't learn until it was too late: that the evils of the Humans I was so viciously fighting were exactly the same ones I had fostered in myself and others. And how could they not be? Mutants are derived from Humans. It was only natural we would inherit their innate wickedness...and choose to act on it..." Magneto admitted bitterly. "But I was too proud to admit that the only thing separating Humans and Mutants was the ability and degree to which they can unleash the evils within themselves. In all others, we were exactly alike..."

Magneto's head drooped, and his voice grew quieter.

"When they acted on those evils I had recklessly encouraged, fighting hate with hate, to the point they had started opening death camps by the end of our war with the Humans, stamping their victims with numbers to be marked for slaughter, I realized I had learned absolutely nothing from my own time in such camps. I departed in shame and will lie in shame when I breath my last," Magneto admitted. "I stay alive to bear witness to my role in the end of the world. So that I can suffer alongside it as it dies. A fitting punishment, wouldn't you say?"

"I ain't your judge, sir. You're the one who has to live and die with that," Toad replied neutrally. "I'm not even sure who you're supposed to be to me, on my end of things."

"It's nice to not be alone in confusion when someone professes a connection to oneself," Thanos quipped.

Magneto sighed. "I suppose you are right. But if I may offer one final piece of advice..."

Magneto leaned forward.

"If I exist in this other reality of yours...if you run into me...you must find a way to kill me at the earliest opportunity," Magneto warned, deadly serious. "My actions to protect Mutants will only harden Human opposition. As long as I live, the X-Men will forever be putting out the fires I start."

Toad blinked. "You serious?"

"Like a coin forced through a skull," Magneto confirmed. "Keep it in mind. Removing me may be the best chance Charles Xavier will ever have at success."

He looked at the torn open Barrier. "I shall wait for you. If you are not back in one hour, I shall leave. Good luck."

Toad and Elektra rushed through the opening, Thanos jangling violently on Toad's belt as he moved.

...

Avengers Tower had once glittered. It was now a rusted, broke spike in the air, surrounded by an equally rusty barrier. It didn't even look safe to stand near it, never mind actually venturing inside.

Elektra analyzed the structure with her completely rebuilt and redesigned from the ground up sensors, analyzing multiple structural weaknesses with an X-Ray function in her eyes.

"We should approach through that gap right there," Elektra advised, pointing to a large gash in the southeast section of the tower base.

"Gotcha," Toad replied, "So uh, you don't mind having been reprogrammed by Magneto and all that?"

"Should I be?" Elektra asked, tilting her head in curiosity as she walked.

"Never mind," Toad said, giving up and following Elektra. The gash in the tower led to the remains of a once high-tech security station, now fallen into complete disrepair save for what looked like a gun locker surrounded by a still functioning conformal force field which shimmered blue in color. The interior was the corpse of a gilden age

Elektra approached it, spinning her Sai's in a robotic manner before holstering them into a built-in sheath behind her back, mouth opening up and Toad heard what sounded like an internet dial up tone issuing from her throat. The Forcefield deactivated, and Elektra retrieved some weird looking rifle that was bronze in color.

"Never discount the uses of Stark Tech in an emergency," Elektra advised. Toad stared as her arm split, open revealing metallic, yet alien internals from which tiny metallic cables sprung out that rapidly broke down the laser weapon and distributed its systems across her left arm's innermost interior, integrating it fully before the arm resealed, going back to its unblemished state.

"Can you spot any traps?" Toad asked.

Elektra looked up and around her.

"No hidden traps or improvised devices detected for the next five levels above or below us, though my sensors are unable to account for the presence of more supernatural methods of area denial," Elektra answered. "But this is William Stryker we are dealing with. Even the old version of my database had warnings to stay away from him at all costs."

Toad plucked the Jar containing the head of Thanos.

"Is Stryker the type to even LEAVE traps?" Toad asked Thanos.

"Stryker was a treacherous being. Sometimes he used traps. Other times, he left himself wide open. Experience taught the X-Men that when Stryker left an open path to himself, it promised the potential for the greatest viciousness and collateral damage," Thanos answered. "It's exactly what cost them Storm, and later Charles himself."

"Why was Stryker so convinced that Mutants were the spawn of Satan?" Mortimer asked.

"His wife supposedly gave birth to a Killcrop type Mutant. You know what that term means?" Thanos inquired.

"Don't remind me," Toad growled.

Thanos only grinned. "Yeah, thought so. So anyway, he freaks out when it happens. It didn't come out until years and years later that he had dispatched both. But by then the world was too broken to care."

"We are wasting time. Magneto's timetable is whittling down the longer we stay here," Elektra reminded them sternly.

"Right, let's go. How much time?"

"Fifty-eight minutes and thirty seconds left," Elektra answered as she pointed to an emergency staircase.

"That is the most stable structure we can use to ascend."

Toad reattached Thanos to his belt and hopped delicately up it, Elektra ascending after him with deathly silence and considerable alacrity.

"My sensors are registering a mutant organism twenty stories above us," Elektra said after they had gone up three flights of stairs. Toad felt his adrenaline system spike when the staircase structure creaked occasionally. The structure around the staircase gradually grew more decrepit and broken down as they ascended.

"The Celestials turned him into a Mutant?" Toad asked in astonishment.

"It would appear so. It is the only life form I am registering," Elektra answered.

"The best punishments are ironic punishments," Thanos replied in a disturbingly merry manner. "Wait till you see what he looks like! When everyone saw what the Celestial had turned Stryker into, the first thought was how appropriate it was."

The head paused thoughtfully a moment, remembering the occasion. "That may well have been the only time anyone ever saw Venom try to kill anyone out of mercy."

Toad stopped. "Wait a moment."

Elektra spun around. "This structure we are on is only so stable. Lingering weight for any amount of time is potentially very dangerous," she warned.

"It just occurred to me...how do I tell which Skull is Nate Grey's?" Toad asked.

"Loki said you'd be able to pick it out. Nate was a powerful warper of reality. Your very presence here is a warp of reality. It will react to an anomaly like you," Thanos answered. "But we must go now. We are losing time."

The climb upstairs seemed to take an agonizingly long time, with Elektra giving updates as the minutes whittled down.

"Any idea how to wound him? Slow him?" Toad asked as they hopped up, seeing holes that exposed the blasted landscape outside.

"Venom found out the hard way that Stryker is something you stay away from at all costs. Do not try to defeat Stryker. You are not here for that. You're here for the skull," Thanos reminded him crossly. "This LMD next to you can buy you time, but that's about it. You yourself could never hope to survive a confrontation on a physical level with him."

"There's gotta be something that can buy us more time..." Toad complained.

"Toad..." Thanos trailed. "We ARE in Avengers Tower. Stark kept a lot of his suits and tech here. The safeguards are no longer functioning. Never mind what other goodies might be around."

Toad scratched his chin, then blinked as he realized that if any security fail safes were still functioning, they would already be fighting them.

"He's right. My sensors are registering an armory two flights above us. No security systems are operational," Elektra confirmed.

"Couldn't hurt to take a peak..." Toad said, exhausted from the climb up so far. "Might let me catch my breath..."

They continued upward, both Elektra and Toad having to leap, over completely broken off sections now, until they reached a collapsed wall with a breached open vault wall Toad hopped in, alert for threats, and had a peek inside.

It disturbed him how pristine it was, how unspoiled it was in comparison to everything else in this place. Very few things had been taken. He saw multicolored versions of Iron Man's armor lying undisturbed in their display cases. Unfamiliar weapons and suits dazzled the eye. Stryker had taken none of it. He had no use for it. There was practically no one left to make use of it, due to either being, dead, devolved, or worse. Only interlopers like Toad were left to use such wonders.

We have thirty-seven minutes left, and several flights of stairs to still climb," Elektra reminded them. "If you're going to pick something and try to use it, Mortimer, I suggest you do it fast."

Toad hopped into the vault and looked about for something that might at least buy him a moment or two against Stryker. The seconds ticked away. Elektra, for her part approached a matching set of bracers attached to armor meant for a female figure, with a red hourglass symbol on its belt.

Elektra held out her hands, which split open, hair thin metal wires snaking out from the metal interior and disassembling the bracers, and reassembling them onto the exterior of her wrist, which closed up when the Bracers were fully integrated.

Toad held up a Sun dial-like device that was listed as "Nova Corps Force Field Generator Duplicate-Prototype Only."

"Is this safe to use?" He asked, showing Thanos.

"A relatively safe device," Thanos answered. "I'm familiar with the Nova Corps. Mid-Weight in terms of tech. But reliable."

Toad thought about it a moment, then turned to Elektra.

"Integrate this into yourself. You see anything else you think you need, integrate that too."

"There are limits to what my system can handle at any one time," Elektra warned. "I'm a Swiss Army Knife, not a Katana."

"Then do it as safely as you can..." Toad replied softly. "If we do this right, all three of us walk out of here."

Elektra nodded and went around, her body splitting apart everywhere like a jigsaw puzzle, hair strand wires snaking out from each part of her exposed interior and taking small, choice bits of tech, including stuff from the errant armors of Tony Stark.

"Y'know," Toad said as he watched her. "I think you need a new name. The random copy of a dead Assassin doesn't fit you anymore..."

"You have a recommendation?" Elektra asked as her body sealed up, now crammed with stolen tech from the vault.

"Hmmm..." Toad thought. "How about Danger? Y'know, for when you're on task? You could still use the Elektra name for when you're off duty."

Elektra raised an eyebrow. "A little on the nose, don't you think, Mortimer?" she asked in mild bemusement, folding her arms.

"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck..." Toad trailed in response.

The LMD seemed to ponder it more.

"Your reasoning is solid. And it WOULD help avoid battlefield confusion...very well. Danger it is," Danger replied. "Shall we go?"

Toad nodded and they left the vault, Danger held out her hand and Toad took it, and Iron-Man like Rocket jets escape the base of her boot heels as they ascended upward, shaving time off. The jets made very little noise as they landed a flight of stairs just beneath where they needed to go.

Toad felt instant unease as they entered a partly collapsed hall, Danger's now improved sensors detecting odd energy fluctuations from the Mutant Organism. But the soundproof interior made it impossible to fully determine what Stryker was up to.

"Our best chance to reach him lies through a cavity leading upward at the end of this hall," Danger said.

"We'll do everything we can to look for that skull without alerting him..." Toad whispered. "We only fight him if left with no other choice."

"You better be ready to sacrifice both of us," Thanos warned. "Remember. We don't matter. Only getting the skull matters."

"That kind of thinking is what killed THIS reality," Toad snapped quietly. "If my reality really does deserve to exist, then I better start proving it!"

They reached the cavity in the ceiling at the end of a once eco-architecture inspired passageway to now destroyed automated labs. Toad clambered up it, followed by Danger.

What Toad crawled into was a horrific arena of skeletons, arranged and assembled like a twisted parody of one of those megachurches. Much was bathed in shadow, but what Toad saw sent his Adrenaline spiking through the roof. Poles held half melted candles everywhere in what obviously had once clearly been a large command center.

"ThE DaRkNEss HATH SWAllowed tHE EArTh..." came the twisted hiss of a shadowed THING in the center that towered over them, even as they hid behind the pews. Toad saw on the skeleton pews the long-decayed bodies of what had once clearly been The Avengers, Captain America's corpse still in the shredded remains of its costume.

"AnD iT haTH SWALLOWed mE...I aM ForSAKeN..." came the monster's hiss. Toad's heart pounded. He saw Danger grow visibly uneasy as she hid behind a pew. He dared peak his head out to look for this Skull that he was supposed to magically identify upon sight according to Thanos and didn't see it. Skulls lined the walls.

"I PrEAched thE TRUth...anD BECAME iT..." the abominable perversion of a beast in the shadows said. "My SerMON iS DELIverED iN tHE BLOod oF THe EaRtH...AnD waITS FOR THE TRUE GOD to release US..."

Toad decided to get a better vantage point, hand signaling Danger to take a position against a particularly tall pile of Skeletons...

As Toad crawled low amongst the horrific, filthy skeleton pews, he caught glimpses of the monster, saw its cloven hooves, the outline of a goat-like head in what little light from the candles was able to expose his profile. It was good nine feet tall.

"FiLThY ArE the DAMNED, FOR THEY SHALL aLwaYs REaP THE ReWaRD of thEiR SIn..." it hissed at its dead audience in its unnatural syntax.

Toad was absolutely scared out of his mind at this point, desperately looking for the skull.

"DOoMed ArE ThE FAITHful, For THEIR hoPES aRe eVER a SNAre..."

Toad spotted something in the distance, glittering in a strange aqua color on the wall. He focused. It was a skull. He wondered if it was the one he was after.

"MINE EYes bAre WITnesS TO THE EnD..."

Toad was very, very quiet as he moved now, and as he moved, he spotted a skeleton in a trench coat and an eye patch, clutching what looked to be an old, single shot grenade launcher, of a forty-millimeter caliber. He reached over slowly and opened the breach loading mechanism as quietly as possible, removing an intact, forty-millimeter grenade round. He quickly put it back in.

"We ARE LeFt to LANguish in BLINDness..."

"Kid..." Thanos whispered. "Your plan?"

"You said don't try to defeat him, so I'm not," Toad hissed back as he aimed at the ceiling, appalled at this grotesque mockery of all his most cherished heroes.

He said a quick prayer, then fired the round at the ceiling, and a rotted mountain of wires, circuitry, machinery, and building material came crashing down directly above the thing that had once been William Stryker but also threatened to collapse the whole structure above them. The beast roared as it was buried in the mountain of debris.

"Any other bright ideas, Genius?" Thanos mocked as the ceiling and everything above it continued to collapse.

"What the hell was in that grenade?" Toad sputtered as he and Danger desperately avoided the crashing parts of the ceiling.

"Do I look like I know?!" Thanos replied in exasperation as he was jangled about on Toad's belt as the teenage Mutant desperately hopped flipped, spun, and somersaulted through the crashing ceiling.

"REAL SMOOTH, MORTIMER!" Danger shouted as she employed her own acrobatics combined with her now inbuilt repulsor cannons and laser weapons destroying larger pieces of falling debris. The Skeleton of Black Widow was obliterated as a desk from a floor above crashed into the pew it rested on.

"I"M STILL A ROOKIE!" Toad shouted back as he desperately hopped to the glowing skull on the wall, finally reaching it and carefully prying it loose as best he could and then began hopping towards danger and the cavity that they had entered the defiled chamber through when Toad heard a beastly roar from under the center of the debris mountain that he himself was trying to survive the forming of.

He didn't quite catch a glimpse of William Stryker. The most he caught was a shadowed mass due to the already dark chamber, and the eruption of tons of debris behind him as he and Elektra dropped down the hole, still clutching Nate Grey's skull, which filled his head with strange visions of stranger futures as he grasped it.

"That could have gone better!" Danger exclaimed as she ran with Toad.

"Better is for people with Time!" Toad shouted back as he put Nate Grey's Skull in the interior of his jumpsuit. "For us, there is only Least-Crappy-And-With-A-Shot-Of-Survival!"

"We DID get the Skull!" Thanos pointed out to Danger.

"Two things can be true at once!" Danger retorted as they ran.

The passageway behind them collapsed and they spun around in the darkness, spotting the large black mass slowly moving towards them, its profile like that of a satyr in the low light. Toad was grateful that the outline was all he could make out. He didn't think he could handle it if he got a full glimpse of whatever this atrocity was in the light of day.

"ANOthER APOStAte tO the CHApeL..." it hissed, cloven hooves slowly moving towards them.

Danger's enhanced vison capability, unlike Toad, allowed her to FULLY make out what the Celestial had done to William Stryker, and though she had only been active approximately an hour, she was starting to rapidly understand what pure terror was as she unleashed the integrated laser cannon in her left arm, which snapped out of its concealed cavity in her limb to blast the abominable creature backward with a terrible white beam that barely made it stagger backward before it began marching toward them again.

"ThE TRIcKS oF SINnerS HoLd NO MORE SECRETS fOr mE..." William Stryker hissed as he began charging at them at full speed, forcing them to flee back down the emergency staircase, Toad and Danger practically pin balling between the interior railing of the stairs in an ever-downward pattern as William Stryker began crashing down the staircase with sheer brute force, sending more debris as he punched his way down above them, the cloud of dust made obscuring the full, terrible nature of his form, which was beyond awful for ordinary people to glimpse.

Danger twisted in Mid-Air as she fell, an area in her sternum opening up to reveal an integrated Arc Reactor, which she fired not at Stryker, but at the ceiling structure above him, and the staircases he was crashing down in his crazed, fanatical pursuit.

White beams pulverized vital structures, sending William into a more uncontrolled tumble as she activated her leg jets and flew downward, catching Toad and twisting them into a gap un the eight floor, the massive, cloud obscured body of a roaring William just barely missing them at the last possible second.

"We need to think fast, I bought us maybe a minute with that stunt," Danger said, her eyes scanning through the layers of material. "I can already see IT climbing back up..."

"That monster is indestructible to everything in this universe. Loki said since I was a foreign presence I wasn't bound by the Celestial's judgement," Toad muttered, standing up. "I think it has to be me that stops him."

"Your odds of surviving a direct physical encounter with William Stryker are LITERALLY a million to one," Danger stated flatly.

Toad felt something vibrating against his hip, he looked down, saw the Tiara Loki had gifted him earlier, still ever attached to his presence, yet out of sight and out of mind as it had hung from his belt since he got to Germany. He wondered if the thing had been noticed by anyone else here. Bullseye or Thanos hadn't commented on it. Did it disappear whenever he looked away, only to suddenly appear when needed? Toad didn't know, and he had neither the time, nor will, to find out the answer. He only plucked the horned Tiara off his belt, the headpiece glittering in the darkness.

"Where did that come from?" Danger asked, mystified.

"Loki," Thanos sneered, "Whether on my end or yours, it seems, you're never entirely free of her clutches."

"Danger," Toad breathed. "Keep Stryker's attention on you however you can..."

Toad hopped off into the darkness.

"Easier said than done..." Danger whispered as the shadowed hand of Stryker punched through the floor.

Her left arm laser popped out and she fired it on full intensity along with the repulsor beam module in her left hand, part of her palm opening up to expose the aperture, along with the Arc Reactor cannon in her sternum, the outline of Stryker's hideous form lit up intermittently in flashes of energy weapons fire. It powered through the beams almost like they weren't there, and Danger was forced to fly away as it pursued. Nothing she had, even with everything she had taken from the vault, was enough to even scratch William Stryker.

"WHy hAth THE WORLd seNT thEE?" it asked, reaching out for her, and she glimpsed as she flew the sores on his still human looking arms and fingers, that had sharp fangs inside them.

"To tHE SeRMOn thEN..." the fanged sores on his arm spoke in unison as he lunged for her fleeing robotic figure. His hand caught her and swung her hard into support pillar, which knocked her systems completely for a loop, disorienting her as she rose. She was based off Sentinel tech, but even Sentinel tech could only withstand so much. Most of her weapon systems as well as her flight systems shut down for repairs on impact and she was forced to scramble up and simply run from the horrific, mostly unseen beast in the shadows as it gave chase.

"YouR SuFFerinG is SACREmenT..." it hissed as it pursued.

Danger activated her integrated Nova Corps Force field, and a bright orange field surrounded her as Stryker's punch landed, sending Danger flying and skittering across the floor, parts of her special metallic flesh flying off as the field failed. It wouldn't reactivate, again with time to extensively repair it.

Danger somersaulted away using her default acrobatic programs, barely evading the hulking Stryker's lunges, the sores on his exposed arms hissing for her mechanical muscle.

She was driven into a corner, her damaged systems mercifully preventing her from being able to fully see Stryker due to the darkness of the ruined building.

She never wished to look upon anything so wretched ever again for as long as she functioned, which was right now looking to not be very much longer.

"LaMbS. oN. ALtArS..." Stryker whispered as his mutated hands closed around her throat...

Stryker was distracted, the creature blanketed by surrounding shadows turning to locate the sound of whistling finding a purple head floating in a fully sealed jar whistling...

That was when Toad dropped down from above running one of the sharp horns on Loki's Tiara down Stryker's back, golden light erupting from the cut he made as Stryker let go of Danger, clutching desperately at his back as he let out a truly cacophonous, unholy shriek of agony, as a massive ball of Mucus erupted from Toad's throat, completely covering Stryker's hooves, and he leapt again, spinning and somersaulting right over Stryker's head...

...and blinding him with the horns on Loki's Tiara.

Toad fired the web shooter with a quick tap at Stryker's head, which practically enveloped it. He instinctively fired two gobs at both hands to keep Stryker from thrashing about in his blinded state.

Danger activated her sternum housed Arc Reactor Cannon, a white beam repeatedly blasting Stryker's horrifying face and stunning him as Toad pulled her back from the figure of Stryker thrashing about.

"We may not have been able to save this earth..." Toad said as his tongue shot out and retrieved Thanos's jar, placing it into his hands, watching Stryker roar, trapped for the moment.

"But we were at least able to get some payback for it, just a little bit," Toad added somberly, turning to Danger. "You gonna make it?"

"I believe so..." Danger answered. "Thank you for preserving my functions, Mortimer."

"No problem," Toad replied. "How much time we got left?"

"Eight minutes," Danger answered.

Toad looked at the Web-Shooter.

"I got a bad idea," Toad muttered, clipping Thanos and the Tiara, to his belt.

"Blast open a wall. We're diving out."

Danger nodded, her sternum cannon blasting open a wall to the outside.

"Take my hand..." Toad ordered.

Danger took his hand, and Toad felt his heart drop to his stomach. But he leapt out, and his superhuman reflexes kicked in as he fired the Web Shooter at the tower above him, executing a perfect arcing turn around the building...at least, at first...

The web line snapped due to the age of the chemical used and Toad and Danger tumbled roughly to the ground, Toad getting mild injuries from the violent scuffs...

But it had deposited them perfectly on a path in front of the very hole in the Barrier Magneto had torn open, only ninety meters away.

Toad got up, dusted himself off, and helped Danger up.

"I have to admit, Mortimer, I've seen a lot of hair brained plans work by complete, happy accident over the years," Thanos admitted as Toad wearily walked with Danger to the forced entry way.

"But that was by far one of the most impressively epic examples of one working out that I personally, have ever been witness to," the disembodied head praised. "A foolish thing, still, ultimately, to risk everything for a mere machine..."

"The logical thing to do would have been to leave me behind and escape with your prize," Danger observed. "You risked everything to rescue me. Why?"

"Because I'm not the sort who snaps half the inhabitants of a universe away just to impress a girl," Toad answered both of his companions as they reached the entry point into the barrier with two minutes to spare.

Magneto waited patiently for them...yet he was surrounded by fallen, devolved humans and destroyed Elektra LMD's.

"I was forced to defend myself while you were gone..." Magneto said in a pained hiss, clearly stressed as he clutched his chest. "We must leave, quickly, while I still have the strength to complete the journey. I...I fear I don't have very long to live."

Danger ran an X-Ray analysis and nodded to Toad soberly.

"Systemic Organ Failure. He has twenty minutes," she verbally confirmed.

"Curse my precision!" Magneto spat. "Now I have an EXACT time to total failure."

Danger tilted her head, paused at his words.

"Give or take," she added a few seconds later.

Shaking, he lifted them all up and they floated across the sea of death and devastation towards the Triskelion...

Toad blinked, watched as rockets from of the decayed coast flew towards the Triskelion, slamming into it.

"That's not good," Toad breathed, noticing how their flight was considerably wobblier and more unsteady due to Magneto's now rapidly failing health, and they barely landed at the base of the Triskelion itself, where missiles continued to impact.

"The trajectory of those missiles is very close to the crashed Helicarrier I was originally made on," Danger noted.

"Told you," Thanos boasted.

"We need to stop those missiles! They could total whatever Loki is preparing!" Toad exclaimed.

"I'll try and shoot some out of the sky," Danger said, handing the weakened Magneto to Toad to hoist on one shoulder.

"No, it's hopeless. I saw the volume heading our way..." Magneto said, taking off his helmet, revealing the wrinkled, defeated looking old man with wild white hair underneath. "I'll stop them."

"You have literally minutes to live!" Toad protested.

"I'm dead anyway. The whole Earth, and Mutantkind dies if you fail," Magneto said firmly, even as he turned ashen. "Let me do one genuinely good thing for my people and trust the future to someone like you..."

"Goodbye, Mister Lensherr. It was privilege to have known you," Thanos said sincerely.

"I'm not sure how to take that coming from the Universe Zapper himself," Magneto said to Thanos dryly.

"Game respects Game," Thanos replied, pouting like a child at Magneto's dismissal.

Magneto handed the helmet to Toad.

"Remember my warning. Kill me wherever I am found, however you can do it, on your side of the pond," he said before he floated unsteadily up to the sky above them to start diverting and deflecting the missiles.

Toad and Danger fled inside, the impact of the high explosive projectiles shaking everything in the building as they headed into the underground garage.

...

Loki waited in the command center of the Triskelion as Toad entered, removing the Skull of Nate Grey from the interior of his jumpsuit.

"Please tell me this is Nate Grey's skull," Toad said as Danger folded her arms behind him, having put on Magneto's helmet simply because he had no other place to store it.

The elderly, wrinkled Asgardian smiled.

"The one and the same..." she said. "You've impressed me. I admit, I had my doubts...but you have dashed all of them...though I see it was at the cost of Mister Poindexter...who is this? One of the Elektra LMD's?" she asked of the LMD next to him.

"I'm Danger," Danger said.

"I imagine..." she remarked, eyes spotting an exterior camera feed of Magneto floating and diverting the missiles launched from offshore.

"Poor Erik..." she remarked.

"You feel sorry for him? Magneto, I mean?" Toad asked, noting it was a little hard to see wearing the old man's helmet.

"Erik's entire life was defined by hatred, bigotry and fear. It's not an excuse for even a tenth of the things he did, but if you thought you had found a second people to call your own after your first was slaughtered, and you had the level of power Erik once commanded...you might be very, very tempted to do at least one or two of the things he did with it...human nature," Old Loki said with a shrug, glancing at the skull.

"So, what now?" Toad asked.

Loki stared at him. "Now I can get to work on erasing this trash fire you've been exploring the past couple of hours...follow me..."

Old Loki led them to a small chamber covered in Asgardian runes. Toad saw very strange objects, a crystal, an amulet, a glowing blue cube and now the Skull, in the middle of the chamber.

"The only way to undo this is to do what almost no reality attempts. I must create an Infinity Stone," Old Loki announced, her green gown flowing behind her as she clutched her spear.

"One that, by the very nature of its existence, MUST over-write everything around us," Old Loki explained to them. "I had to get permission direct from the Living Tribunal to attempt this."

"The Tribunal AGREED?!" Thanos asked in astonishment.

"The One Above All has tired of watching so many universes turn into unbearable trash fires for its inhabitants, or descend into gibbering insanity, or even full-on zombie infestations. It wants to see what happens when one is specifically cordoned off from the rest of the multiverse. Isolated from that pattern of increasingly nonsensical destruction and splitting off into more future variants from each failing or failed universe than you can shake a stick at," Loki replied.

She gestured to her gathered objects. "In two minutes, I will commence ritual preparation. All my energy will be devoted to completing it...you and Danger will have to keep me alive-"

A particularly heavy impact startled everyone.

"Just as soon as we find out who's behind this attack," Old Loki said, clutching her spear a little tighter, venturing out into the remains of the large command center, now devastated by an impact crater.

The four watched as a large mountain of a figure with thick arms and legs in a dapper white suit rise up, each footstep it took bringing a resounding thud that shook the area.

Loki got one good look at the man, and everything clicked about the Elektra LMD's.

"Of course, how did I not see it," she muttered in a dry, utterly humorless manner. "Only the one man who loathed Murdoch more than Bullseye himself did would go to the effort of defiling the memory of the only woman Murdoch truly loved."

"A final little spit in the eye of our dearly departed attorney. Unnecessary, but gratifying..." came the deep, cold business-like tone of the huge, pale, bald man as he clenched his fists. "Permit me, if you will, to formally introduce myself, since you have me at a disadvantage and my reputation clearly precedes me even now. My name is Wilson Fisk..."

"The Kingpin," Danger said immediately, still having her base memory files. "One of New York's most ruthless and dangerous criminal masterminds. Bullseye's very first employer. Daredevil's worst, most hated enemy."

"I see you have retooled one of my Elektra LMD's. Presumably with the help of the once great Mister Lensherr and his wonderful powers of magnetism," The Kingpin observed, sweeping an arm to gesture outside one of the windows. "It will do you no good."

"I once was this city. I was its blood. It's strength. I will be again. And your scheme to rewrite reality is the key to it."

"What scheme to rewrite reality? Whatever do you mean?" Loki asked, wondering how he had crashed through the building without a scratch.

The Kingpin pointed an accusing finger, scowling.

"It's no use, Asgardian. The Mysterium laced bugs I paid decades ago the ransom of twenty kings for to be planted throughout the Triskelion has allowed me to keep up with and digest the level of ambition you possess. Your ritual will go through as planned. But it will be one in my favor. Where reality makes sure I can never lose."

"Fisk," Loki said firmly, one hand on her hip.

"If you have ANY bloody sense about you, you'll turn around, give up this venture, and forget you ever heard about my plans..."

"You're insane to think you can strong-arm Loki, of all aliens, Fisk," Danger said with an unmistakable contempt. "Even if you did defeat her, how could you hope she'll do what you want?"

"Because I have the Ultimate Nullifier..." Kingpin said with a smirk, holding up a silvery, misshapen device that reminded Toad almost of one of those hand crank batteries.

Everyone except Toad froze, who scratched his head. He saw Loki go pale from terror.

"How...how did you get that?" Thanos asked in shock.

Kingpin chuckled. "You'd be amazed at the things left unattended on this ruined world. After Latveria fell, the contents of Doom's private vault ended up in my possession. And what should I find amongst his many, MANY doomsday devices but the most terrible of them all?"

Loki paused. Doom had certainly proven he was capable of far more insane feats than that. It must have been an auxiliary plan he hadn't gotten a chance to deploy before Grimm finally caught up with him.

Toad looked right at the Nullifier in Fisk's hand, not knowing what it could do, only that he had to get it out of Fisk's hand as soon as he could, because he saw how frozen in terror Loki herself was at the very sight of the strange silver device. They either turned this around in the next thirty seconds or they never would. Kingpin seemingly had the power to force a genuine stalemate.

Toad stole a glance at the Web-Shooter on his wrist, a quick tap fired a gob, he reminded himself.

He could catch even the most erratic fly buzzing in the air. That required targeting.

Toad subtly gestured to Danger.

"Fisk, are you really that selfish, to set up a reality that revolves solely around you?" Old Loki critiqued crisply, though she never took her unblinking eyes off the device in his hand. "Even Ultron wasn't that egotistical. Even Baron freaking Mordo wasn't that egotistical."

"And you aren't?" Kingpin shot back. "Tell me, Loki, just how cushy will your position on the other side be, if everything goes to plan?"

"I'm certainly not going to be ruling the universe."

Kingpin only scowled at this.

"It depends on what you consider a position of power. And what better way to ensure that than crafting your own set of custom-made Infinity Gems, Loki?"

"Everything I'm doing is to avert the catastrophe the world has become," Loki replied.

"And you think just resetting everything makes it okay? You think it won't take hard work to keep your little experiment stable? You'll have to micromanage things constantly at a bare minimum, and that's just on Earth. Even if you genuinely have the best of intentions, you'll have to be a Tyrant by default," Kingpin snapped in derision. "At least I have the guts to admit I want to be an absolute Tyrant."

"Guts? Yeah, maybe. You certainly got the girth too, buddy," Toad quipped dryly.

Kingpin fixed a steely gaze on him.

"I'd thought I'd heard the last Parker-ism from the man himself decades prior," Kingpin said quietly. "What did Loki promise you, boy? Riches? Power? Loki sees the entire universe as a Chess Game! And you are her latest Pawn! If you think she won't sacrifice you to capture a high value piece from the board, well...just ask Kurt Wagner...Hell, just ask one of the High Value Pieces. He's dangling from your belt!" Kingpin exclaimed, pointing at the head of Thanos.

"I could die a hundred times because of Loki, Fisk, and I would trust her reasoning in resetting reality a thousand times that amount before I'd even once glance at a suggestion of yours over how things ought to be arranged," Thanos replied in open dismissal.

Kingpin scoffed at this. "Oh, what do you know? You couldn't keep out of reach of a common Circus Performer."

"Nobody is EVER gonna let me forget about Nightcrawler Teleport-Decapitating me, are they?!" Thanos exclaimed in pure exasperation. "Please tell me we get to kill him, Loki."

"I'd rather not, but he isn't leaving me many options. And what few of them he IS leaving me are all bad ones," Old Loki replied. "Fisk, I beg you, see reason! If you get your way, you will create an unimaginable hell for every other living creature. Everyone on our end who gave everything to make sure this moment happened will have died for nothing, and all because some crime boss wants to set up a racket across all of existence!"

"Either this goes MY way, on MY terms, or this all ends, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!" Kingpin roared, waving the Ultimate Nullifier around like a protective talisman.

Old Loki folded her arms. "Go ahead. Do it. Use the Nullifier. Because I refuse to help you. I'd rather everything go bye-bye than everything become one more fold of your fat, Wilson," Old Loki spat defiantly, glaring hard at him. "Do your worst."

The Kingpin sighed.

"Ah, well, it was worth a shot, I guess..."

He lowered the Nullifier slightly and for a half second, Old Loki dared to hope The Kingpin really was just going to let it drop, his final bluff having been called.

She held out her hand.

"Please give me the Nullifier, Mister Fisk."

But then The Kingpin grinned cruelly and leveled the Ultimate Nullifier squarely at Old Loki's wizened features, and she fully understood just why Peter Parker, Matt Murdoch, and Frank Castle had so utterly loathed The Kingpin while they were alive.

"The most important thing about threats," he said, still grinning, "is the fun in fulfilling them..."

That was when Toad fired his Mucus right at Kingpin's eyes and feet in two heavy gobs, the tough but disgusting substance curing in the open air rapidly. just as he fired a tiny gob of Webbing at The Nullifier, knocking it out of the still surprised Fisk's hand, which was followed by another gob of Mucus from Toad, which hit and pinned the Nullifier to the wall. Kingpin sputtered in rage as Danger blasted him with her Sternum Cannon as he struggled to move and Loki, without hesitation, hurled her spear right at The Kingpin's heart, slamming him backward into a wall, where he slid down, inert. Old Loki called her spear back to her, still slick with Kingpin's blood.

His glowing green blood. Old Loki's eyes widened. So THAT was why he hadn't devolved like the others. That was how he had crashed through the Triskelion.

Wilson Fisk was no longer human. But when he had STOPPED being human, (Or, indeed, whether he had ever BEEN human in the metaphorical sense) was a riddle for the ages.

"Back off, BACK OFF!" she shouted as she heard the deep growls and rumbling from the debris cloud they had made.

"He's a Gamma Mutate!" Thanos shouted as Fisk, now more a mountain than ever of green skin and bulging muscles in the remains of his white suit stepped out of the cloud.

"Now where is that Nullifier? Ah, it doesn't matter. I much prefer the traditional methods of settling disputes..." The mutated Kingpin said, his unnaturally wide mouth stretching into a grin of jagged, yellow teeth, cracking his massive knuckles.

"With Magneto out there burning his worthless life out deflecting that missile barrage, there's no one left strong enough to protect you, Loki. Just you, me, and the fate of the world as the prize," The Kingpin boasted, approaching slowly. "Either way, things end on my terms, either with me on top of the world forever, or on top of the ashpile I'll leave it as if I can't have it..."

"She's not alone," Toad said defiantly.

"I think I'll make her watch as I squash you flat..." The Kingpin snapped, glaring at Toad with deadly intent. "Who the hell are you supposed to be again?"

"I'm the TOAD, baldy!" Toad snapped.

"Oh, and what's your superpower besides being a literal snot nosed punk? Giving me warts?" The Kingpin scoffed.

"My superpower is not having to look like the mascot of a canned veggie brand!" Toad shot back.

The Kingpin roared and lunged with deadly speed at Toad, who barely managed to execute an awe defying somersault over his charging foe that carried him just a centimeter enough out of his grasp.

"So, what's with this gamma whatsit, eh?!" Toad mocked as he landed behind the Kingpin, backing off as the giant being spun around with a growl.

"What, you think pumping radiation into yer' veins is supposed to make ya' a bigshot?" Toad asked, not noticing Old Loki eye him with an expression of intrigue.

"Newsflash, cueball, it just makes you a failed cancer patient!" Toad spat in contempt.

The Kingpin blitzed Toad at top speed and only Toad firing a gob of Mucus at tree trunk width legs that rumbled the floor with each step, slowed the Kingpin down enough that he managed to roll out of the way of the deadly charge, the mucus hardening in the air making the Kingpin trip and go flying through the wall. But he broke free very rapidly and only Danger and Loki blasting the Kingpin through the floor, Loki, with brilliant golden rays of her spear, Danger, with her Sternum Blaster, stunned Kingpin long enough to give him a breather.

"He's not Banner's level. Not even Blonsky's..." Loki observed. "But I'm not at full strength either...and even if Wilson IS a poor man's Hulk, he's still got enough power to at least level this place, if he keeps trying."

"And I'm damaged..." Danger said. "It's going to take all of us to defeat him."

"We can't let him damage the building any more than he already has..." Thanos barked. "The Triskelion is acting as an essential conduit. If it suffers critical structural damage, Loki's experiment will fail."

Toad looked down at the hole.

"I'll get him outta the building."

"How?" Danger questioned.

"His ego's pretty fragile. all it took is some nobody poking fun, and he went charging like a bull," Toad observed.

"Yes, Mister Toynbee DID seem to get under his skin rather easily. Almost as easily as Parker himself could..." Loki said enthusiastically, before handing Toad her Spear.

Toad blinked. "Y-You sure?"

"If there is one soul on this planet still worthy, it's you," Old Loki confirmed.

Toad took it, noting the subtle differences between this Loki's version of the Spear and the version of the one he had first met in his own version of this reality.

Then he hopped down the massive hole and Danger jumped in right behind him. They went through multiple floors, using their acrobatic skills to navigate the damaged area, and began to hear Fisk groaning.

Danger's Sternum-Cannon revealed itself, firing a white beam at a car that had been hurled at them.

Toad spun the Spear as Kingpin lurched out of his crater grinning but bleeding.

"Heya, Jolly! Long time no see!" Toad mocked.

"I'm going to fold you like paper, Mutant," Kingpin growled at Toad.

"You had a doomsday weapon and it was literally spat out of your hands! You have sticks of butter for digits!" Toad pointed out, watching as Kingpin's veins bulged with rage.

"C'mere, little Toad...I gotta find a pot to boil you in..." Kingpin hissed homicidally.

Danger's Sternum-Cannon glowed but Toad gestured for her to not bother.

"Catch me if you can, Pinny, I got a bowling alley all set up for you!" Toad taunted, leaping for his life with the Spear as Kingpin smashed through barrier after barrier chasing him out into the street.

"Good old Wilson Fisk. Even the least of Parker's jabs always got under his skin. How interesting your brand of taunt should so match Parker's style to the degree that Kingpin's brain registers them virtually the same..." Thanos remarked in fascination as he dangled from Toad's belt.

"Less academics, more advice!" Toad griped as he hopped through the debris field, going deeper into the area where he had been attacked, Kingpin jumping as much as Toad did to keep up. But he was hesitating, unsteady. He wasn't used to his powers, at least not to the degree of using them for an active pursuit, Toad realized. But he still knew enough to keep up all the same through a field of destroyed Sentinels...

"Lead him into one of the unfinished construction sites!" Thanos replied. "It's your only chance!"

Thanos wasn't lying. The devolved humans in the area had caught his scent and were attracted to the loud noises. He already had a bunch of them following them both. He was still somewhat faster and nimbler than Kingpin, so his leaps carried him father. But even Toad would get fatigued eventually. Superhuman stamina and endurance could only take him so far. He spotted an unfinished Skyscraper frame, long abandoned and rusted and leapt to it, using Bullseye's trick of covering himself in the decayed local oil and grease to obscure his scent as he hid among a bundle of gigantic pipes on the Site, hearing Kingpin land nearby also.

"Little Pig...little pig, let me in...or I'll HUFF! AND PUFF! And BLOW YOUR HOUSE IN!" Kingpin roared as he scoured the site for Toad.

Toad crawled on all floors, keeping low as he moved between equipment to avoid Kingpin's search, hearing him bash and throw aside the Devolved humans that found and attacked him. Toad quietly climbed the operator crane, and spotted Kingpin below, lifting piles of expired construction material to find him. The site was now surrounded by the Devolved, who, while no longer attacking Kingpin, had surrounded the place. Toad clutched the spear very tightly, even while he realized the Crane mechanism was for using a large industrial magnet, round and slightly conical in shape.

"The Spear, Thanos. What do I do with it?" Toad asked as he climbed up and inspected the operating booth. It looked intact. The console was still working. Toad saw a sign that said the machine was powered by an Arc Reactor, which explained some things. He was starting to get an idea...

"Loki used it to conjure Illusions. And being made of Uru, it's near indestructible, and eternally sharp," Thanos advised. "I always liked the Asgardian Tech. Very Reliable. Fancy looking. FANTASTIC conversation piece in a living room display-"

"Tech? It's not magic?" Toad asked.

Thanos had to stop himself from bursting into laughter, though he DID snicker somewhat.

"Forgive me, Mortimer, I forget your species is the alien equivalent of one of your own jungle tribes that have barely begun contacting the modern world, or rather, they were. OF COURSE it's Tech, boy. It's always tech. It's just the science that's different. You think the Asgardian's are Gods? Bah! One of Odin's most infamous psyche jobs on the whole damn universe, not to mention your planet's Mythology-"

Thanos squinted, refocused.

"The Asgardians are masters at hype, and to be fair, most of the time, they legitimately succeeded in maintaining the hype with genuine successes. But it was all smoke and mirrors. A House of cards. That's why there is always a Ragnarök of some kind with them."

Toad was silent a moment, considering what Thanos told him even as he watched Fisk rip apart the structure with growing frustration. Sooner or later, he would get the bright idea to look up.

"Can Loki deliver on results?" Toad asked quietly, clambering out of the operator booth and going behind the crane arm to obscure Fisk's ability to see him.

Thanos seemed to think his answer over carefully before giving it.

"Maybe. Your being here is evidence that SOME kind of reality exists on the other end of the experiment. But whether that reality will really work out for the best or turn into yet another hot trash fire like you see here...that remains to be seen..." Thanos answered as accurately as he possibly could.

"My Loki seems to think it worked," Toad replied.

"Your Loki could have confirmation bias," Thanos replied quietly and clinically. "Mutants are still under threat, are they not?"

"Yeah."

"When are they not?" Thanos pressed.

Toad thought very carefully before he told Thanos what he told him next. It is unwise to casually reveal information to someone who snapped half the universe to dust.

"My Loki is trying to alter certain details of an Absolute Point..."

Thanos raised an eyebrow. "Which one?"

"Something that's supposed to occur on some British controlled Island called Genosha..." Toad whispered, watching how Fisk was growing more frustrated, tossing equipment into nearby buildings in a rage.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE?! YOU GOTTA COME OUT SOME TIME!" Fisk roared inhumanly, his gargantuan form beating its chest.

"Oh...that one..." Thanos whispered, watching Fisk starting to climb the crane tower, having exhausted his search of the base construction pit.

As Toad climbed further along the crane arm to evade Fisk's sight and buy more time, Thanos thought about what Toad had told him.

"Absolute Points can't be stopped," Thanos said firmly. "But you said she isn't trying to. But she is trying to alter certain details..."

"Yeah, more or less."

"They can't possibly be trivial details."

"She says there will be an attempted massacre of large numbers of mutants."

"I've got it," Thanos said in realization.

"What?" Toad whispered as Fisk climbed ever higher.

"I can't tell you. I could screw up whatever she has planned on the other side."

"Thanks fer' nuthin..." Toad muttered, having a death grip on the spear. "Can you at least tell me how to work this before Pinny crushes us into a raisin?"

Thanos grinned. "Why of course, Mortimer. I thought you would never ask..."

Kingpin was busily climbing the Crane Tower when he spotted Toad sticking out his massive tongue and wiggling his fingers below him on the ground.

"Hey Jolly, down 'ere!" Toad taunted. "So, what's in your tin, eh? Sprouts? Creamed Corn?"

Fisk roared and launched himself off the crane, only to find Toad had mysteriously reappeared to the North of where Fisk had impacted.

"It's carrots, ain't it?" Toad asked dryly.

Fisk snarled and lurched at Toad, throwing a punch at the diminutive Mutant teen, only to find his fist passing through Toad's body like he was a hologram.

Toad shrugged.

"Water Chestnuts?" Toad suggested with a wide grin.

"FIGHT LIKE A MAN!" Fisk demanded.

"Says the baldy who deployed an army of fembots across the city!" Toad sneered. "Says the petty crime boss who wouldn't even have what it takes to go up against a fella' like me if he didn't dose his cells in radiation first!"

Kingpin roared and threw a massive meaty fist at the illusion, almost frothing with rage at Toad's needling, triggering instinctive memories of every "Your Momma's so fat" joke Spider-Man had ever web slinged his way. Toad kept sticking his tongue out, reappearing on a pile of Metal tubes, still gripping the spear.

"I'm right here, Jimmy Jumbo!" Toad yelled.

Kingpin approached, slowly, more cautiously this time, not sure if this Toad was an illusion from the spear.

"You're nuthin' without the spear, Kid! And at the end of the day, I'M STILL THE KINGPIN!" Wilson Fisk bellowed.

"Yeah?" Toad asked, tossing the spear aside. "FREAKING PROVE IT!"

Kingpin threw a fist, but Toad jumped on his arm, rebounding off it for a spin kick that connected so hard that it actually made Fisk stumble backwards, now recalling every blow Spider-Man had ever given him, which made him hate Toad that much more as he performed a trick he had once seen the Hulk use.

He clapped his hands together powerfully and a shockwave erupted from the clap which caught Toad by surprise and flung him backward, his head clipping a steel beam on the building frame. It would have knocked him out cold had he not been wearing Magneto's nearly indestructible helmet, which absorbed most of the impact but tumbled from Toad's head as a result, clattering into the debris somewhere as Toad hit the ground dizzy, Kingpin already nearly on top of him for the kill.

"TOAD!" Thanos screamed as he dangled from the Mutant's belt as he saw Fisk approach. "Get up! GET UP!"

Toad forced himself to focus, hearing the terrifyingly close thuds of Kingpin's feet

Toad spotted Magneto's helmet, launched his tongue at it and retrieved it just as Kingpin bore down on him. Toad backflipped away from the double fisted clubbing attack Kingpin made that smashed the ground to pieces in a wide radius, sending shards of it everywhere, forcing Toad to use his tongue, still wrapped around Magneto's helmet, to use the top of the helmet to deflect some large shards of debris that flew his way as he landed, putting the helmet back on his head, Kingpin already charging.

Kingpin threw another fist, but this time Toad, still slightly dizzy, jumped onto Fisk's head, spitting Mucus right into his face to cover it, leaping off a split second later to avoid the swipe from his other hand, which he fired a web line at, catching the arm to prevent it from tearing the Mucus on his face away so easily, though he eventually did manage it, but he was slower with only one hand, and the exertion of trying to tear the Mucus off his face before he could suffocate left Kingpin panting for a few precious moments, long enough for Toad to leap into range and use a blocky portable generator unit to smash directly on Fisk's skull, the generator shattering on impact. Fisk made a blind swing and Toad back flipped out of its way, spitting Mucus into the Kingpin's face again, making him frantically scramble to tear the disgusting substance off while Toad retreated, getting the spear back as he just barely managed to evade a blind shockwave generated by Kingpin clapping his hands again, which demolished part of the Skyscraper frame behind Toad.

Kingpin finally ripped the Mucus free, having almost blacked out, starting to see spots. Toad had narrowed down the most obvious weakness Kingpin still had and exploited it mercilessly: Even a Gamma Mutate needed to breathe.

He saw Toad standing atop another metal tube pile and was now so enraged by the little upstart he gave no thought to when he lunged for him next. But his hands passed through Toad this time, revealing himself to be another illusion, making Fisk shout in rage as his feet crushed metal beneath him.

Fisk heard a whistle and looked up, saw Toad in the Crane operating booth, grinning...and also saw that he was directly under the magnet. With a pile of crushed metal pipes under his feet. He began to raise his arms to clap another shockwave at Toad's direction.

The metal beneath his feet was instantly attracted to the Magnet as it activated, and Fisk screamed as he was slammed upward by the pile of metal beneath him, pinned to the magnet itself by the pile, with even his now absolutely tremendous strength unable to free him. Fisk struggled mightily of course, but as Toad got out of the booth, climbing along the length of the Crane arm with the spear, the devolved Mutants swarming just outside the construction site now ventured in, seeing only helpless, trapped meat in Wilson Fisk. They began slowly climbing the crane tower. Toad knew he had maybe a minute. But he had to give Fisk a piece of his mind. A little piece of it. Short sweet, and to the point.

"You're a selfish jerk!" Toad said with as much venom and absolute condemnation as he could manage to the enraged giant sticking out from the edges of the magnet's borders, much of his green skin exposed.

"You...FILTHY...DISGUSTING...TOOOOOOOOOOAAAAADDDDD!" The Kingpin shouted in helpless rage and fear as he saw the devolved humans climbing to devour him in particular.

Toad narrowed his eyes.

"Ribbitt..." Toad said, imitating the sound of his namesake before leaping off the crane and using the web shooter to fire a line to a nearby building, swinging away as the devolved humans completely covered the construction crane and the trapped Kingpin, whose screams could be heard from even very far away.

Toad completed the arc of the web swing, and it carried him just to the roof of a lower building than the one his web line was attached to. He cut the line and landed delicately, Thanos dangling from his belt grinning from ear to ear.

"Corvus and Proxima would have gotten a kick out of you..." Thanos said jovially. "If you ever get tired of working for the 'good guys', My Black Order would surely accept someone of your creativity while under pressure...provided they even exist yet on your side..."

"I'll keep it in mind, Toad muttered, spotting Danger in full sprint on the street. He jumped and landed elegantly in front of her.

"Toad? You're alive!" Danger exclaimed in relief. "I tried to keep up, I really did, but my flight systems are still offline-"

Danger paused. "What happened to Kingpin?"

"He found out why Crime Bosses shouldn't get involved in The Construction Business," Toad replied. "C'mon, let's book it back to the Triskelion..."

Toad and Danger ran as fast as they could. They could still see missiles being fired from offshore by the time they made it back, saw a rapidly weakening Magneto floating in the sky, doing all he could to simply veer them slightly off course. But they were still coming. Yet the old man kept deflecting them, the strain on his tired, weathered face one of agony. The missile barrage from some far-off point offshore from a crashed Helicarrier ceased eventually.

Then...Magneto toppled from the sky and Toad found himself jumping as far and as high as he could, his jumping allowing him to catch Magneto as he fell from the sky and landed on both feet, holding the broken old man.

"I sense...one...more...missile...hasn't...been launched yet...you...must...hurry..." Magneto breathed, reaching up for Toad's face.

"I'm sorry Charles..." Magneto said in the delirium of his approaching death, confusing Toad for his friend. "I'm sorry, Charles, I...I should have listened...I should have trusted you...trusted in the dream..."

Magneto went limp in Toad's arms.

"No heartbeat detected..." Danger noted soberly.

Toad gently laid Magneto on the ground.

"Let's get back inside," Toad said quietly, rising up from the now dead old man's final resting spot, for there was no time to bury him.

...

Old Loki waited with folded arms in the main security center.

"Mortimer Toynbee..." she said with a smile. "I am proud to call you a trusted colleague."

"Is it over?" Toad asked.

"Almost. Now all that remains is to enact the ritual..." she replied.

"ALERT..." The remaining Triskelion's sensor warning system announced. "NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED. TWO MINUTES TO IMPACT."

"Damn Wilson Fisk. Damn him to Hela!" Old Loki spat. "QUICK! Follow me!"

Old Loki rushed to the chamber where the strange artifacts were stored.

"Fisk always was a particularly degenerate example of a sore loser..." Thanos remarked idly as they entered.

"First things first, to take back the magic I was using to protect this place from the Devolved..." Loki said, concentrating as a golden shimmer traveled from the outside of the building back into herself, reducing her age to the point she looked like the voluptuous Loki on Toad's end, albeit in a less revealing green gown.

"What next?"

"We arrange these very carefully, with the time we have left..." Loki said, beginning to arrange the artifacts in a circle, taking her spear back from Toad's hands telekinetically.

Toad saw the artifacts, got a look at the strange, glowing pink gem amongst them. He squinted, raised his eyebrow when he thought he saw a city within the gem's center.

"Nate Gray's skull to shape reality, The M'kraan Crystal to provide the fuel...a Cosmic Cube to serve as Mortar, and the Eye of Agamotto to see all points in time...and to prevent alternate ones from forming..." Loki noted.

"Remember our deal, Loki!" Thanos called out.

"Be quiet and you'll get it..." she replied as the seconds ticked down as she stood in the center of the artifact circle, clutching her spear.

The Artifacts began to glow intensely. "Forty-five seconds to Impact!" Danger called out.

Loki began to scream. She concentrated, her body warping and bubbling everywhere as reality around them started to blink out and break down.

"Thirty seconds!" Danger shouted, her sensors still able to detect the missile getting closer to the building.

"Almost!" Loki shouted back.

Toad felt the sweat coming down.

"Good luck, Mortimer..." Thanos said sincerely as Toad took Danger's hand, not wanting to be alone if he died.

Reality around them became more and more distorted as Loki screamed louder than ever.

"TEN SECONDS!" Danger yelled. "NINE! EIGHT! SEVEN! SIX! FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO!-"

All of reality around them violently broke down, twisting into a kaleidoscope tornado that rushed from above and below into the center where Loki was, just above her spear, a point of glowing blue light forming above the tip. There was a great rumble and shaking and Toad could not turn away even as he floated weightless in pitch black save for the light generated by the artifacts, which vanished one by one as the stone was formed, after which it was the only source of light...

Loki reached up, and grasped the glowing blue, oval shaped stone that was smooth and shiny looking.

"Congratulations..." Loki said, her eyes reflecting the glowing blue item.

"Our efforts have created what I now dub 'The Point Stone'..." she trailed.

"What's it do?" Toad asked.

"If I did this right..." Loki trailed, grasping as she floated in the darkness, the other artifacts all faded.

"It's very creation has erased all Absolute Points in the Universe, essentially leaving it a blank slate." she replied, floating over to a helpless Toad, and handing it to him.

"Whaddya want ME to do with it?" he sputtered, still holding Danger's hand.

"I didn't do this for me," Loki replied. "Why do you think I summoned you here, to just help me create it? You're the knot that ties it all up. The Paradox that's essential to the function. It has to be you who determines the first Absolute Point."

"But how? I barely even learned how to work your spear!" Toad protested.

"You are wiser than you know. But there are rules you must remember..." Loki trailed. "You can only imagine an Absolute Point into existence, you cannot delete it, once it is made. You can alter key details within the Point, but you cannot outright prevent it from occurring. And you can only use the Point Stone once before it leaves you for someone else."

Toad grasped the Stone, felt an electric buzz in his whole body from its power. He had to think. So, he thought, staring at it. In silence and in darkness for about an hour, while everyone waited, floating in blackness, for him to make up his mind. No one dared rush him. Throughout all that time, he never let go of Danger's hand as he stared at the Stone, figuring out how best to word it so he didn't accidentally destroy everyone and everything.

"Big decision, huh?" Thanos asked.

Toad nodded, floating helplessly in the black void, staring at the soft glowing blue stone that he had a death grip on.

Unfortunately, all the stresses of the day had worn down the belt keeping Thanos attached to Toad's Suit, and as it quietly snapped off, Thanos didn't notice it until he realized he was floating farther away from Toad than he should have been able.

"Toad!" shouted Thanos in a panic.

Toad spun around, surprised, almost let go of the stone, accidentally bumping Thanos' jar so he was propelled farther away, floating aimlessly.

"No!" Toad shouted despite not understanding just why he was trying to save Thanos as his tongue shot out in a desperate attempt to catch the jar containing his head.

His tongue only failed to catch the jar by a centimeter.

"Loki, get him!" Toad spat desperately.

Loki shook her head sadly.

"What power I currently have, only exists in the Point Stone's immediate vicinity. I'm sorry. I can't get him," she replied.

"Thanos!" Toad called out in horror. "I'm SORRY!"

"It's okay..." Thanos called back while he could still be heard as he floated off into infinite darkness. "It was meant to be, Toad. It was meant to be..."

Thanos' face grew grim as the final knowledge he would never have his love finally hit him. That all he had done to win her favor was for nothing.

"And I..." Thanos muttered, though by this point Toad and the others could neither see nor hear him...

"I deserve this..." Thanos said in quiet realization before even the light of the Point Stone faded from his sight and he was left in endless blackness. Alone. With his guilt.

Toad took another hour to steady his nerves, terrified of making a mistake while emotional...

He thought of every possible wording, all the ways it could be misinterpreted. All the unintended consequences of the wording. But they grew to be so much and so many that despite severe misgivings, he eventually settled on one statement, worded as carefully as he could think of.

Finally, he uttered the First Point.

"My Absolute Point is that everything that happened in the world and Universe I grew up in, up to the moment I received the Point Stone and after, WILL happen, including the results of Loki's Deal with Thanos and Bullseye," Toad said softly, terrified but having no other wording he could think of.

Loki smiled. "Magnificently worded, Mortimer."

The Point Stone glowed immensely, and the void around him turned a bright white light before his vision cleared and he found himself back in the old ruins of the German Castle he had first entered the nightmare alternate reality from. Only the green robed Loki and Danger was with him.

"We're back where I started. We're in Friedrichstrasse again!" Toad exclaimed, at last letting go of Danger's hand.

The Alternate Loki smiled. "It's nice that I get a glimpse at least, of the new reality," she said, looking at the beautiful forest beyond.

She started to become translucent, flickering in and out.

"Loki, what's wrong?" Toad asked.

The alternate Loki held up her hand. "The price of my interference. You cannot do what I did without there being a cost."

Toad's adrenaline had lowered enough that he remembered the circumstances she had told him when he first arrived in that nightmare future that had and had never happened.

"The Causality Loop..." Toad trailed in horror, knowing she was being drawn back to relive him arriving in the alternate time, back to being an old lady waiting for the end in a dismal hell she could never escape, forced to aid him for an eternity with a pair of Sociopaths as her only company.

"I...I'm sorry. I wish there was some way I could free you..." he said apologetically.

The Alternate Loki only smiled to reassure him.

"Just make the best of your circumstances. Do everything you can to save your world. That's how you can help me," she replied, becoming old in front of him again, becoming more and more translucent before she faded away entirely.

Toad looked around, then at the crack in the floor with glowing green light, that still had the spear tip of HIS Loki from thirty thousand years into the future, still jammed in it. He retrieved it and with a shimmer of Golden Light, the white-haired Future Loki of his version of reality appeared.

"Outstanding, Mortimer," Future Loki praised in a somber tone. "Simply outstanding. You have achieved an honor that very few of even the most celebrated of heroes can lay claim to. You saved your reality from certain destruction."

Toad looked up at her.

"Am I gonna have to pay a price like the other you did?" he asked in almost a whisper.

"The other me's price is to relive a hell beyond imagining, never knowing if it's the first or the millionth loop..." Future Loki said plainly but with sorrow. "I myself don't know if this is her first or millionth time. I may never know. But believe me, Toad...whatever price you do pay, it won't be even a fraction so terrible as the price the other me is paying..."

Toad was silent as he processed this.

"You're not a goddess at all, are you?" he asked.

Future Loki nodded. "There are times I regretted upholding Odin's deception, but it did have its uses..." she admitted. "I was directed to keep the system running for as long as possible. To ensure a golden future for Human and Superhuman...

"So, what are the Asgardians really? Just Aliens?" Toad asked.

Future Loki shook her head.

"No, Mortimer..." she said. "The Asgardians are Mutants..."

Toad's eyebrows raised.

"H-how is that possible?" he said in shock, almost freezing up at the reveal.

"It's a very long story. But you've been through too much to process anything further...I'm afraid THAT story will have to wait..." she spoke.

She approached, golden stilettos clicking across ancient stone.

"You are a very great hero, even if none but a few ever know it..." she said gently, trying to re-assure him as she placed both hands on his shoulders. "Never second guess yourself on what happened to you today."

She smiled again. "Where would you like me to take you?"

"Back to Hank's mansion..." Toad answered. "The Universe have a problem with Danger here?"

"Elektra..." Danger corrected. "I perceive we are in an off-duty state."

"None," Future Loki assured. "Whatever you had physical contact with when reality was rewritten, stays. That includes Mister Parker's Web-Shooter and what I am guessing is Magneto's helmet that you are still wearing..."

Toad glanced up, remembered he was still wearing those and took the helmet off, face slick with terror sweat. He looked at the strange Web-Shooter on his wrist.

"I'm ready..." he said.

Future Loki nodded. "Please accompany me."

Future Loki escorted them down a staircase to a door leading to a wine cellar. Loki approached the door, summoning her spear out of thin air and tapping the door with the tip before opening it.

Toad glanced out to the backyard in Hank's mansion in Austin, Texas.

"C'mon, Elektra..." he called out to the reprogrammed LMD, who followed immediately.

"Treat every day special, Toad," she said as pleasantly as she could. "That's what my experience with all this time hopping does to me..."

Toad nodded hesitantly, deeply silent as he passed through the makeshift portal with Danger and he fell to his knees, dropping Magneto's helmet on the grass, the 'door' in the middle of thin air where Loki was on the other side closing shut and disappearing.

He touched the grass, breathed the air he didn't know he would miss so much...

...and was thankful he lived in a world where there was still Hope...

...he hoped that was the case, anyway.