Chương 73: Chapter 73: Restrictions Lifted and Delicious Barbecue 

"What exactly is going on here?" Steve Rogers, clad in his white and red Quantum Realm suit, stared out from the dark alleyway. The bustling, perfectly intact streets of New York City lay before him. 

"Did we jump to the wrong point in time?" Scott Lang (Ant-Man) asked, glancing at the peaceful scenery. There wasn't a single Chitauri chariot in sight. 

"Let's get to higher ground and assess the situation," a significantly older, more mature Tony Stark suggested. With a thought, his sleek nanotechnology armor smoothly materialized over his body. 

The time-traveling team quickly ascended to the roof of a nearby building to get a better vantage point. 

"Damn it. I think we definitely screwed up the time coordinates," Steve sighed, rubbing his forehead. The others nodded in disappointment, assuming their mission had already hit a major snag. 

"No. I don't think we have the wrong time. I think we just have the wrong location." 

Hulk... or rather, Smart Hulk (Banner's mind in Hulk's body), pointed a massive green finger toward the distant skyline. 

"Why is the portal open all the way over there? And... forgive me if my memory is failing, but was the portal actually that massively wide the first time around?" Future Tony asked, staring in sheer disbelief at the apocalyptic, swirling rift hovering over Stark Tower. It was easily ten times larger than he remembered. 

"Did someone else travel back in time and change the past before we got here?" Steve asked, his brow furrowing. 

"No. It is simply a different era now," a familiar, yet somewhat strange voice echoed from behind them. 

"Uh, excuse me, who are you?" Future Tony turned around, startled that someone had managed to sneak up on them. He saw a man dressed in mundane, casual clothing, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. 

"I am you." The man slowly lifted his head, revealing an incredibly aged, wrinkled face that still bore the unmistakable features of Steve Rogers. 

"You're... me?!" Future Steve stared in absolute shock. 

"Hello to my past self, Tony, and the rest of you," Old Steve smiled warmly. 

"Did I... did I travel back and change the past?" Future Steve asked, trying to piece the timeline together. 

Old Steve shook his head. "No. The era changed itself. A brand new superhero appeared in this timeline. He is the one who completely altered the future." Old Steve walked over to the edge of the roof, looking out at the distant, chaotic battle. 

"A new superhero?" Future Tony asked, bewildered. 

"He is a friend of yours, Tony," Old Steve said, turning to look at his old friend with a soft smile. 

"This is incredibly bizarre," Future Tony muttered, deciding to trust the older Steve. "Did our presence here cause a butterfly effect that altered the timeline?" 

"Who knows?" Old Steve chuckled. "But the predetermined future has unequivocally changed. And from my perspective, it is a change for the better." 

"Are you absolutely certain about that?" Future Tony pointed at the monstrously large portal spewing an endless tide of aliens. 

"I am certain. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier, you would have witnessed a sight that would haunt your nightmares for the rest of your lives," Old Steve shook his head, still unable to fully comprehend the terrifying, Cthulhu-esque monstrosity he had seen earlier. 

"That doesn't sound very reassuring. So, the question remains... do we still need to acquire the Infinity Stones?" Future Steve asked. 

"That is not for me to decide. I merely came here to see you all one last time. The fate of your timeline rests entirely in your hands," Old Steve offered a knowing, slightly mischievous smile, turned around, and walked away. 

"You know, you develop a really twisted sense of humor when you get old," Future Scott muttered, watching Old Steve disappear. Future Banner nodded in solemn agreement. 

"Alright, back to the problem at hand. Do we go after the Stones?" Scott asked, shrugging his shoulders and leaving the heavy lifting to the big brains of the team. 

Future Tony stared intently at the distant portal. "Of course we do. That new guy might have changed his timeline's destiny, but our timeline still needs us." 

"Then we stick to the original plan. If everything is progressing roughly the same way, the Mind Stone and the Space Stone should both be near the portal generator. Banner, you head to 117A Bleecker Street to acquire the Time Stone from the Sorcerer Supreme," Future Steve quickly assigned the tasks. The team nodded and prepared to disperse. 

Just a few moments after they left the rooftop, another figure materialized in the exact same alleyway. However, unlike Tony's team, she didn't hesitate. She immediately vanished into the shadows, sprinting toward the epicenter of the battle beneath the portal. It was the only place she could effectively blend into the chaos. 

Back at Stark Tower... 

Loki stared in absolute, horrified disbelief as hundreds of thousands of Chitauri soldiers simultaneously collapsed to the ground, brain-dead. 

He rubbed his temples in sheer exasperation. He picked up the glowing blue Casket of Ancient Winters from the ground. 

"Why is every single army Thanos provides either completely useless or mentally deficient?!" Loki cursed aloud. 

Channeling the Casket's power, Loki transformed back into his towering, three-meter-tall Frost Giant form. Frustrated beyond belief, he violently smashed his fist into the portal generator's primary console, destroying the controls. He stood defensively on the balcony, glaring fiercely at the sky. 

'Hopefully, Corvus and Proxima manage to kill that disgusting octopus monster quickly so they can come back and assist me.' 

But his hopes were dashed the very next second. A massive green blur launched itself onto the balcony, effortlessly grabbed the massive Frost Giant by the throat, and brutally slammed him into the marble floor, forcing Loki to instantly revert to his normal Asgardian form to survive the impact. 

The Hulk grunted in satisfaction, staring down at the significantly smaller 'puny god.' The massive Frost Giant form had annoyed him, but since Loki had shrunk, he was much easier to punch. 1

Terrified, Loki scrambled backward, desperately aiming the Casket of Ancient Winters and unleashing a continuous torrent of absolute zero ice directly at the Hulk. 

"Ugh, this feels awful!" The Hulk casually raised a massive hand to block the freezing blast, finding it mildly annoying. However, Bruce Banner's soul, which was currently residing in the synthetic body linked to the Hulk, felt absolutely terrible. 

The ancient, magical cold radiating from the Casket actively clashed with the dark energy sustaining Banner's synthetic body. The rapid, continuous drain on his energy reserves made Banner feel incredibly sick. 

"Smash him, Hulk! Smash him!" Banner yelled from behind the Hulk, actively encouraging the green rage-monster to commit violence—a very rare occurrence. 

The Hulk, however, completely ignored Banner's nagging. Honestly, the freezing air felt kinda nice! It was cooling down his raging temper. He just found it annoying that the 'little air conditioner' was only pointing the cold air at his hand. He wanted to adjust the settings. 

The Hulk stomped toward Loki. 

Seeing that the absolute zero ice was completely ineffective, Loki broke out in a cold sweat and frantically scrambled backward on his hands and knees. 

"HULK... WANT!" The Hulk reached out with his massive hands. 

Loki was absolutely terrified now. He scrambled backward even faster. 

Seeing the 'air conditioner' retreat and stop blowing cold air, the Hulk immediately became furious again. He violently leaped forward, easily catching Loki by the ankle. 

"HULK... WANT!" The Hulk roared directly in Loki's face. 

"ENOUGH! I WILL NOT SUBMIT TO YOUR BARBARIC GAMES!" Loki shrieked in absolute terror. He grabbed a discarded Chitauri helmet from the floor and desperately hurled it directly at the Hulk's face. 

The helmet bounced harmlessly off the Hulk's nose, but the sheer disrespect instantly triggered the Hulk's absolute rage. 'Little air conditioner got an attitude?!' 

Grabbing Loki by the legs, the Hulk remembered seeing Banner aggressively hitting broken electronics to try and 'fix' them in his shared memories. Looking around the balcony, the Hulk spotted Loki's frozen throne. 

He casually walked over, dragging Loki along the ground, and began brutally, repeatedly smashing the 'puny god' directly into the solid ice throne. 1

SMASH! SMASH! SMASH! SMASH! 

The throne shattered into thousands of pieces of ice. The Hulk lifted Loki one last time, checking to see if the 'air conditioner' was working again. 1

But Loki was completely limp, staring blankly at the ceiling, utterly broken. 

"Puny god. Terrible quality," the Hulk grunted in disgust. He casually tossed the twitching, whimpering Loki onto the pile of shattered ice, shook his head, and walked away. 1

"I genuinely believe my little pet needs another round of upgrades. Did you see that? The moment I pumped more energy into K-Shadow, he became significantly stronger," Luke remarked casually as he and Tony landed on the balcony. 

"Please don't, buddy. Seriously, if you make that horrifying abomination any stronger, I think my sanity will permanently snap," Tony pleaded desperately, his face still pale. 

Luke looked over at the iconic pile of shattered ice where Loki was currently whimpering. "Did you record that?" he asked Megatron, who was hovering nearby. Megatron nodded affirmatively. 

"Excellent." 

Luke ordered two Shadow Ninjas to securely bind Loki with unbreakable shadow-ropes. He then signaled for Natasha and the rest of the team to join them on the balcony. 

Walking over to the unconscious Dr. Selvig, Luke ordered a ninja to gently shake him awake. 

"Hey, Dr. Selvig. Long time no see," Luke waved cheerfully. "When are we going to team up for some online gaming again?" 

Selvig groaned, rubbing his pounding head. "I really hope I didn't do anything incredibly stupid." 

"Don't worry about it. We handled the situation. There shouldn't be any significant civilian casualties," Thor said, walking over and gently helping the older scientist to his feet. 

"Thank god for that," Selvig nodded in profound relief. 

"So, how exactly do we close this thing?" Luke asked, pointing up at the massive portal still swirling in the sky. 

"Uh... I specifically designed a localized fail-safe into the generator. The energy signature emitted by Loki's scepter can safely pierce the Tesseract's shielding and force the portal to close," Selvig explained. 

"I have the scepter right here," Natasha said, holding up the two halves of the broken weapon. "I hope it still works." 

Selvig shook his head in dismay. "The energy required comes directly from the gem embedded in the head. As long as the gem is intact, it will work. However..." 

He looked at the broken, shortened haft of the scepter, then pointed at the massive, violently swirling dome of pure, volatile spatial energy currently shielding the Tesseract on the generator console. 

"Can you safely reach the Tesseract with a broken stick?" 

The group fell silent. Natasha looked down at the two halves of the scepter in profound frustration. 

"Should I... go find some superglue?" she muttered. 

"Whatever, I'll do it," Luke sighed, taking the top half of the scepter containing the Mind Stone. He walked directly toward the violently swirling energy shield. 

In the original timeline, the Tesseract's energy shield was entirely impenetrable, forcing the Avengers to rely on the scepter to safely bypass it. But Luke operated on a different level. 

He pulled out several Dark Energy Crystals, crushing them instantly. He completely coated his right arm in an incredibly dense, hyper-concentrated layer of pure dark energy, and boldly reached directly into the energy shield! 

The tip of the scepter easily penetrated the outer layer of the shield. As Luke pushed his hand deeper, the volatile, chaotic spatial energy radiating from the Tesseract violently attacked his arm, attempting to shred his atoms. However, the dense layer of dark energy fiercely repelled the spatial energy, engaging in a microscopic, chaotic war of attrition. 

Feeling his dark energy reserves burning rapidly, Luke gritted his teeth and forcefully shoved his arm deeper into the shield. 

Once his arm was elbow-deep in the chaotic energy storm, the tip of the Mind Stone finally made contact with the Tesseract's containment harness. 

Click. 

The fail-safe engaged. The violent, overwhelming surge of spatial energy instantly cut off. 

High above, the massive portal violently imploded, snapping shut and sealing the Earth off from deep space. 

"Wait... you aren't bringing your pet back?!" Tony asked, realizing K-Shadow was still out in space. 

"It's fine. K-Shadow is just a highly volatile, single-use energy construct. I can easily synthesize a hundred more whenever I want. Besides, I'm constantly tweaking the design; the current iteration was just a prototype anyway," Luke replied casually. 

He dismissed the remaining dark energy coating his arm, breathing a sigh of relief. He reached out and grabbed the Tesseract from the disabled console. 

With a practiced motion, he casually popped the Mind Stone out of the broken scepter housing and tossed it into his tactical pouch. He then looked closely at the glowing blue Tesseract. 

'Why didn't the System trigger a new modular unlock?' 

'Is it because I'm not directly touching the Space Stone itself?' 

Curious, Luke summoned a tiny, hyper-rotating drill of dark energy on his fingertip and carefully bored a small hole through the Tesseract's protective crystalline casing. 

He gently tipped the cube, allowing the glowing, brilliant blue Space Stone to fall directly into his bare hand. 

The absolute microsecond the Space Stone touched his skin, Luke's perspective violently shifted. His consciousness was instantaneously pulled into the astral plane, launching into the infinite expanse of the multiverse! Looking around the terrifying, swirling void of dimensional space, he easily pinpointed the exact cosmic coordinates of thousands of completely unknown dimensions! 

[DING!] 

[Dimensional Exploration Module Successfully Unlocked!] 

[The Dimensional Exploration Module will continuously and automatically locate and map the coordinates of new, unassigned dimensions for the Dark Dimension to assimilate!] 

Hearing the System's prompt, Luke was absolutely ecstatic. 

Recently, the only major bottleneck restricting his rapid power growth was the complete lack of new dimensional coordinates to conquer and mine. But with this module unlocked, the System would automatically hunt down new dimensions for him! He would never run out of energy sources again! 

'The Space Stone is incredibly useful!' 

Luke smiled happily. He felt the Space Stone aggressively rejecting his attempts to draw energy from it, acting like a stubborn, arrogant child, but he didn't care. He had what he needed. 

Remembering that Thor desperately needed the Space Stone to repair the Bifrost, Luke carefully slotted the gem back inside the Tesseract casing and handed it to the Asgardian. 

"Make sure you keep the hole pointed up so the Stone doesn't fall out. That thing is incredibly dangerous to hold bare-handed. It might accidentally teleport you to the other side of the universe," Luke warned. 

"Truly?" Thor hadn't fully understood Luke's bizarre analogy, but he didn't dare underestimate the legendary artifact. He held the Tesseract incredibly carefully, treating it like a live grenade. 

"Tony, find him a secure briefcase later. Watching him hold it like that is giving me anxiety," Luke muttered. 

Seeing Steve and the others walking out onto the balcony, Luke ordered the Shadow Ninjas and Nightbats to drag the battered, unconscious Loki over to them. 

"So... is the battle officially over?" Luke asked, looking around. 

"Does this mean we can finally go get shawarma... or throw that victory party?" Tony grinned, exhausted but victorious. 

Luke shook his head. "You're obsessed with partying." He looked out at the city below, noting the thousands of brain-dead Chitauri soldiers littering the streets. He turned to Natasha. 

"Doesn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have a dedicated clean-up crew for this kind of mess?" 

"They are already en route," Nick Fury's voice crackled over the comms. 

Fury was currently standing in a desolate, heavily fortified bunker on the outskirts of the city, utilizing Megatron's secondary communication relay (which was significantly more secure than S.H.I.E.L.D.'s compromised networks) to coordinate the cleanup. 

Fury breathed a massive sigh of relief as he reviewed the global situation reports. When the Chitauri had initially started pouring through the portal, the situation had seemed dire but manageable. However, the absolute second Luke had summoned that colossal, sanity-shattering, tentacled abomination, the World Security Council had immediately panicked and authorized a tactical nuclear strike on New York! 

If Luke hadn't sent the octopus-monster into deep space shortly after, New York City would likely currently be a glowing, radioactive crater! 

"Good to hear," Luke nodded. 

"So, where do we want to go? We need a clean spot. I've already ordered my ninja chefs to prepare the ingredients," Luke announced. 

Tony looked around the heavily damaged tower. He pointed toward a pristine, completely untouched lounge area a few floors down that had miraculously survived the battle. "Let's set up there." 

Several Shadow Ninjas quickly carried heavy oak tables, comfortable chairs, and massive barbecue grills into the lounge. 

"The chefs are cooking it fresh. Grab whatever you want," Luke said, stretching lazily and collapsing into a comfortable armchair. 

He pulled out his smartphone, ordered Megatron to wirelessly transfer all the high-definition combat footage he had recorded, and took a quick, chaotic group selfie with the exhausted Avengers. After expertly censoring Natasha and Barton's faces to protect their identities, he uploaded the entire album to his blog. 

Since he had uploaded dozens of photos, Luke scrolled through his feed to double-check that they had all formatted correctly. 

As he zoomed in on the final group selfie, he noticed a tiny, bizarre detail in the background. 

Luke frowned, his eyes narrowing. Several shadows silently detached from his feet, slithering rapidly out of the room. 

"So... how much longer are we supposed to just watch them?" Future Tony asked, staring in sheer exasperation at the scene unfolding in the lounge. 

The timeline had completely derailed! In his original timeline, they had all silently, miserably eaten subpar shawarma in a completely ruined, silent restaurant. Why was this timeline's team currently enjoying a luxurious, Michelin-star quality barbecue banquet prepared by literal magical shadow ninjas?! 

Smelling the incredible, mouth-watering aroma wafting from the grills, Future Tony swallowed hard. "Why does it smell so good from all the way over here?" 

Receiving no response from Future Steve, Future Tony turned around in confusion... 

Only to find several Shadow Ninjas silently pressing razor-sharp katanas directly against Steve and Scott's throats. 

And standing directly behind Future Tony, holding a massive skewer of freshly grilled meat and casually fanning the delicious aroma toward him with a mocking grin, was a very familiar face...