-Broadcast-
Strange raised his eyebrows slightly. "Let me guess. Your home?"
At the mention of his homeworld, Thanos stopped completely. He stepped carefully onto a particular stone, lowering his head. A sound escaped him—not quite laughter, but close. He was pleased by Strange's perceptiveness, his ability to understand without being told.
Thanos raised his head, his eyes distant with memory and loss. "It was. And it was beautiful."
He raised his left hand, fingers spreading. The Reality Stone blazed with crimson light, its power washing across the dead landscape like a wave. In an instant, the shattered ruins transformed. Broken spires became whole. Dead soil sprouted vegetation. The red sky shifted to blue. Water flowed in channels that had been dry for decades.
Titan as it had been—a paradise of technology and natural beauty—stood revealed for a single perfect moment.
"Titan was like most planets," Thanos continued, his voice heavy with the weight of history. "Too many mouths, not enough to go around. And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution."
"Genocide," Strange said flatly, his tone making clear what he thought of that solution.
"But random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike." Thanos's voice held absolute conviction. "They called me a madman. And what I predicted came to pass."
With a gesture, he released the Reality Stone's power. The beautiful illusion dissolved like morning mist, and dead Titan returned—a monument to what he claimed could have been prevented.
Strange's lip curled in disgust. "Congratulations. You're a prophet."
"I'm a survivor," Thanos corrected simply, no pride in his voice—just statement of fact.
Strange's expression hardened, his voice growing deadly serious. "Who wants to murder trillions."
"With all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers," Thanos said, raising the Infinity Gauntlet and demonstrating the gesture. "They would all cease to exist. I call that mercy."
"And then what?" Strange demanded, taking a step forward.
Thanos looked down at the ground beneath his feet, his voice growing almost wistful. "I finally rest. And watch the sun rise on a grateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest wills."
Strange began walking toward Thanos, his hands moving in precise gestures. Twin shields of orange light materialized around his fists—the sacred geometry of the Tao Mandalas. His voice was ice. "I think you'll find our will equal to yours."
"Our?" Thanos's head snapped up, confusion crossing his features for the first time. That word—our—meant he wasn't alone.
That's when Thanos heard it—the screaming whistle of something massive falling toward him.
He looked up just in time to see an enormous piece of spacecraft hull—easily fifty tons of metal and machinery—plummeting directly at his head. Behind it, visible through the atmospheric glow of re-entry friction, was Iron Man in his bleeding-edge armor, repulsors flaring as he pushed the makeshift projectile faster.
Thanos raised the Infinity Gauntlet instinctively. The Power Stone flared purple—
Tony slammed into the debris with everything his armor could generate, driving the massive metal slab down like a hammer of the gods.
The impact was tremendous. A shockwave exploded outward in a perfect sphere, flattening rubble and kicking up a dust cloud that obscured everything. The ground cratered beneath the point of impact, cracks spiderwebbing outward for dozens of meters.
Tony hovered above the settling dust, his armor's scanners trying to penetrate the debris. He opened a comm channel to Star-Lord, his voice almost casual. "Piece of cake, Quill."
"Yeah, if your goal was to piss him off!" Star-Lord's response was immediate and worried. He was already moving, his jet boots igniting as he launched himself into the air. His mask deployed across his face, HUD coming online.
The building fragment that had buried Thanos suddenly exploded outward. Purple light—the Power Stone's energy—detonated through the debris, shattering it into thousands of pieces. Each fragment hung in the air for a split second, suspended by cosmic power.
At the center of the explosion stood Thanos, completely unharmed. Dust fell from his shoulders. He roared with fury—"AAARGH!"—and the purple light of the Power Stone transformed to the crimson glow of the Reality Stone.
"Hah!" With a casual wave of his hand, Thanos rewrote physics itself. The debris floating around him—tons of broken metal and stone—transmuted in mid-air. Matter became life. Each fragment transformed into a bird, their forms solidifying from impossible transmutation.
Tony stared in horror as thousands of metal birds suddenly surrounded him in the air. His mind raced, trying to process what he'd just witnessed. Matter couldn't just become life. It violated every law of physics, every principle of—
The birds attacked before he could finish the thought. They swarmed him like a living cloud, their metal beaks and talons striking his armor from every angle. Tony raised his arms to defend himself, repulsors firing, but the flock was too dense. They carried him backward through the air, overwhelming his defensive systems.
"What the hell—?" Tony fired his palm repulsors repeatedly, each blast disintegrating a bird, but more took their place instantly. The flock bore him away from Thanos, separating him from the group.
Just as Thanos turned to finish what the birds had started, a web shot through the air and plastered across his eyes, blocking his vision.
As Peter swung clear, Drax the Destroyer dropped from a ruined structure above, war cries erupting from his throat. He landed with his dual blades drawn, immediately slashing at the back of Thanos's knee—trying to hamstring the giant.
The blades struck armor-like skin and skittered off without drawing blood. Drax's eyes widened in shock, but he didn't stop. He kept slashing, kept attacking, his warrior's pride refusing to accept that his weapons couldn't hurt this enemy.
Thanos, his vision still obscured by webbing, relied on centuries of combat experience. He heard Drax's breathing, felt the displacement of air, predicted each strike with preternatural accuracy. He blocked attacks he couldn't see, his free hand catching blade strikes that should have been impossible to anticipate.
An orange portal materialized beside Thanos, and Doctor Strange emerged at close range. He'd conjured the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak—energy whips that wrapped around his hands like extensions of his arms. Strange struck with surgical precision, his magical constructs seeking vulnerable points.
From above, Star-Lord dove toward the melee, a specialized gravity mine in his hands—something he'd been saving for exactly this moment.
Thanos saw an opening in Drax's relentless assault. He slammed his fist into the destroyer's exposed chest with pile-driver force. Ribs cracked. Drax flew backward, his body tumbling through debris before crashing to a stop meters away.
Strange's magic blade came at Thanos's throat. The Titan caught it bare-handed, his other hand tearing the webbing from his eyes. His vision cleared just as Star-Lord came flying in, gravity mine ready—
Strange realized his blade was trapped. He dismissed it, letting the magic dissipate. Thanos's leg came up in a devastating kick aimed at Strange's midsection.
Strange conjured a Tao Mandala shield barely in time. The shield shattered under the impact, magical fragments dissolving in the air, but it absorbed enough force to keep the kick from being lethal. The remaining energy still sent Strange flying backward, the Cloak of Levitation spreading to arrest his momentum.
He slid to a stop, boots digging twin trenches in the ground. His hands were already moving again, conjuring twin shields for the next exchange.
-Real World-
Scott Lang watched Thanos transform debris into living birds with his jaw hanging open. "The Reality Stone can do that? Why do I feel like Thanos isn't using it to its full potential?"
Doctor Strange's expression was grim as he nodded. "Because he's had it for less than an hour, and he's using it in the most crude, straightforward way possible. He's not thinking about what the stone can truly accomplish."
The others looked at him, confused. Strange continued his analysis, his tone that of a teacher explaining a particularly dangerous lesson.
"Rewriting reality requires imagination and will. The user must envision the reality they want to create, then impose that vision onto existence itself. Thanos is thinking too small—too literally."
"What do you mean?" Natasha asked.
"He's turning rocks into birds," Strange explained. "But he could simply rewrite reality so that everyone opposing him on Titan never existed in the first place. Or he could use the Space Stone to expand the battlefield infinitely, trapping everyone in endless distance. Or create a pocket dimension—like my Mirror Dimension—where time and space have no meaning, where we'd be frozen forever while he casually walks up and kills us one by one."
Rhodes felt a chill run down his spine. "Jesus."
"The Space Stone could lock down the entire area," Strange continued, his voice clinical. "Prevent me from opening portals, prevent any movement through space at all. My magic would be useless. And the Time Stone—" He gestured to his chest where the Eye of Agamotto would normally hang. "I have to physically open the Eye before I can access it. That's a critical weakness. Any of the stones could prevent that."
Tony's face had gone pale. "So what you're saying is..."
"Any single Infinity Stone, used with imagination and strategic thinking, could defeat everyone on Titan effortlessly," Strange confirmed. "But Thanos is a warrior, not a sorcerer. He thinks in terms of direct force, not creative application. That's the only reason they have a chance."
War Machine let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Thank God you're not Thanos. We'd already be dead."