The explanation that followed took time and patience.
Domino moved to one of Hank's holographic displays, her fingers dancing across controls with practiced ease. The simulation updated, showing Earth's core, Tiamut's position, and the complex network of chains they'd constructed.
"These here are the Pym Particles, which work by accessing the Quantum Realm," Hank Pym explained, falling into lecture mode. His voice carried the enthusiasm of a man who'd spent decades perfecting this science. "They don't actually change mass; they change the space between atoms. Make that space smaller, objects shrink. Make it bigger, they grow. The mass stays constant, which is why Ant-Man hits like a truck even when he's tiny."
He pulled up another layer of the simulation, this one showing quantum strings in crimson.
"Now, here's where it gets interesting. Domino's power channels quantum energy at a very fundamental level. She can amplify the effect of Pym Particles, making them work on scales they normally couldn't handle. We're talking about shrinking something the size of a planet, which should be impossible."
Janet looked up from his station long enough to nod confirmation. "The mathematics are sound. We're operating at the absolute edge of what quantum mechanics allows. With Domino amplifying the effect, we can reduce Tiamut to manageable size. Small enough to extract without cracking the planet open."
Ajak's hands trembled as she processed this information. "And Tiamut? Will this harm him? Will it delay his awakening?"
"No harm whatsoever," Hank assured her. "The Pym Particles are temporary unless we specifically make them permanent. Tiamut will shrink for the extraction, then return to normal size once he's safely clear of Earth's core and is ready for his 'Emergence'. His development won't be affected at all."
"And humanity?" Sersi's voice was small, hopeful. "Everyone lives?"
"Everyone lives," Domino confirmed. "Earth survives. Tiamut gets born. The Celestials get their new god. It's a win-win-win scenario, assuming you all stop trying to fight us and actually help."
The Eternals exchanged glances loaded with uncertainty, hope, and desperate desire to believe this could actually work.
Ikaris, predictably, was the holdout.
"Arishem commanded the Emergence to proceed naturally," he said, his voice carrying stubborn conviction despite the fear he'd felt moments ago. "Interfering with divine will..."
Domino's gaze fixed on him with intensity that made his words die mid-sentence.
"Ikaris. Buddy. Pal." Her voice went dangerously soft. "I'm going to say this once, and you're going to listen very carefully. You can either get with the program and help us save seven billion lives, or you can stand there while I turn you to rust. Slowly … very slowly."
Ikaris's jaw quivered as every instinct screamed at him to submit, to accept and acknowledge the fundamental power difference between them.
Finally, he looked at Ajak.
She nodded slowly, permission and command rolled into one gesture.
"We'll help," Ikaris managed, each word pulled from him like teeth.
Domino's expression softened marginally. "Good. Now, here's what we need from you..."
The next three hours passed in frantic coordination.
Phastos and Hank worked together at the main control station, their combined genius solving problems faster than either could have managed alone. They built fail-safes and redundancies, triple-checked every calculation, and generally did everything possible to ensure the plan wouldn't catastrophically explode. Their collaboration had an almost musical quality, each anticipating the other's needs, finishing each other's equations.
"This is incredible," Phastos muttered, his hands flying across holographic interfaces that Hank had designed. "You've essentially built a quantum harness that can contain and redirect Celestial energy. The engineering alone should be impossible."
"It was," Hank admitted. "Until Domino showed up and made the impossible merely improbable. Her quantum manipulation lets us bypass about seventeen different laws of physics that would normally make this equipment destroy itself. Watch this."
He pulled up a simulation showing what would happen without Domino's amplification. The Pym Particles destabilized after point-zero-three seconds, creating a quantum cascade that would have vaporized everything within thousands of kilometres, destabilizing the earth's core, destroying earth even before the baby celestial could.
"And with her?" Phastos asked.
"Perfect stability. It's like having a quantum tuning fork that keeps everything harmonized." Hank's voice carried genuine awe. "I've been working with Pym Particles for decades, and I've never seen anyone interact with them like this."
Janet coordinated the medical side of the extraction, explaining to Ajak exactly how they'd position Tiamut for the shrinking process. "We need to be careful with his positioning. If he's tilted wrong when the particles activate, he could end up compressed unevenly. That would be... bad."
"How bad?" Ajak asked.
"Imagine a Celestial with one arm the size of a building and the other the size of a toothpick. That kind of bad."
"Noted. We'll be very careful with positioning." Ajak's voice came out terrifyingly nervous.
She was going to deliver a god, and she'd be damned if anything went wrong.
The other Eternals helped where they could.
Gilgamesh's strength proved invaluable for positioning the massive chain segments. Makkari's speed let her run quality checks across the entire system in seconds. Kingo's cosmic energy helped power some of the equipment when the generators started struggling under the load.
Even Sprite contributed, using her illusions to create visual guides that helped everyone understand the complex three-dimensional positioning required.
Sersi worked alongside Domino directly, the two of them forming a strange partnership. Sersi's matter manipulation complemented Domino's quantum control in ways neither had anticipated.
The mercenaries, having nothing useful to contribute to the science, set up a perimeter defense. They positioned themselves around the lab in case any other threats decided to show up, though honestly they mostly just relaxed and told jokes.
Deadpool kept trying to get Thena to laugh, which resulted in increasingly elaborate and inappropriate stories about his proposal.
"So there I was," Wade began, his voice carrying theatrical flair, "making love to Vanessa, right? And let me tell you, the bed while having sex is NOT a good place for a proposal. Ring boxes and vigorous activity don't mix well. So I had to get creative and agreed to her fantasy of pegging, and I hid the ring up my..."
Thena and Gilgamesh both shouted in horror "SHUT UP!!!"
"What? I was going to say 'up my sleeve'! Get your minds out of the gutter!"
Surprisingly, Karun, throughout all of this, documented everything.
His camera never stopped rolling as he captured scientists working with Eternals, mercenaries bantering with cosmic guardians, and the slow, methodical process of preparing to deliver a god.
"Oscar, Oscar, Oscar," he whispered to himself periodically, already imagining the awards ceremony.
Finally, after three hours of preparation that felt like three days, after every system had been checked and rechecked and checked again, after every Eternal had taken their position and every chain segment had been aligned with micrometer precision, Hank and Ajak stood together at the main control console.
"This is it," Hank said quietly. "Once we activate this, there's no going back. Are you sure?"
Ajak looked at her family, at the Eternals who'd followed her through seven thousand years of lies, service and sacrifice.
"I'm sure," she said firmly.
Their hands moved together, pressing the activation button simultaneously.
The chains blazed with crimson light so bright it temporarily drowned out even Tiamut's golden radiance. Pym Particles surged through the system, amplified by Domino's power as she poured everything she had into making this work.
Her hands wove crimson strings through the air, each one connecting to a different part of the harness, each one guiding Pym Particles with accuracy measured in angstroms. The quantum manipulation that Jay had gifted her now served its ultimate purpose.
Making the impossible merely improbable.
Tiamut began to shrink.
Slowly at first, barely perceptible. A mountain-sized being reducing by inches that looked like nothing against his cosmic scale. Then faster as the Pym Particles reached critical saturation throughout his body. His massive form compressed, the golden light concentrating as his physical size decreased.
The sensation was indescribable. Like watching creation run backward, guided and safe. Tiamut's dreams continued undisturbed, his consciousness floating in that space between waking and sleeping, unaware that his physical form was shrinking from planet-killer to planet-saver.
The Eternals watched in awe as their god, the being they'd been created to serve and protect, reduced from planet-sized to mountain-sized to building-sized to finally, impossibly, the size of an actual infant.
The harness adjusted automatically, Phastos's engineering ensuring it maintained perfect positioning even as Tiamut's dimensions changed. The chains became threads, the threads became filaments, but they never lost their grip. Every attachment point remained secure and every quantum connection stayed stable.
Domino's face ran with sweat as she concentrated, her entire being focused on maintaining the quantum amplification. This was the most delicate work she'd ever attempted, threading the needle on a scale that made brain surgery look simple by comparison.
One mistake, one fluctuation in the quantum field or one moment of lost concentration, and they'd crush Tiamut or rip him apart or create a quantum singularity that would devour the planet from the inside out.
But her luck held.
Her probability manipulation guided every particle, ensured every connection remained stable, bent chance itself to make success the only possible outcome.
And finally, after what felt like an eternity compressed into minutes, it was done.
Tiamut, the Dreaming Celestial, the being meant to crack Earth open like an egg, floated in a specialized containment field no larger than a human newborn.
He was perfect.
Golden skin pulsed with inner light that seemed to contain the entire sun. Miniature hands curled against his chest, each finger perfectly formed and radiating warmth. His expressionless face carried peace that came from dreams uncorrupted by violence or awareness of the controversy his birth had nearly caused. The cosmic power that had threatened to destroy Earth now resided in a form small enough to cradle.
"Holy Cheese Macarony," Deadpool whispered with genuine reverence. "He's born the messiah is born without a father, just like the prophecies foretold."
Massacre's voice joined in, thick with religious fervor. "Behold, the miracle of new life. Even in this form, even in this way, the divine makes itself known. Praise be to the second coming of our Lord."
Phastos approached the containment field with trembling hands, his brilliant mind still trying to process what they'd accomplished. "He's stable. The quantum readings are perfect. And according to this..." He checked a display. "He's still channeling Earth's population energy. The connection wasn't severed. He'll continue developing normally."
"Will he remember this?" Sprite asked quietly, her voice carrying wonder at seeing something smaller than herself for once. "When he wakes up fully. Will he remember being born this way?"
Ajak moved closer to the containment field, her maternal instincts overwhelming. She reached out but stopped short of touching, afraid of disturbing the miracle before them.
"Celestials exist outside normal time," Ajak said softly. "His memories of this moment are probably already written. But I'd like to think... I'd like to think he'll understand why we did this."
Beneath their feet, Earth itself responded to the successful delivery.
Flowers bloomed in the core chamber despite the heat and pressure that should have made such growth impossible. They sprouted from Tiamut's chains, from the laboratory equipment, from the very rock itself. Golden flowers with petals that gleamed like captured sunlight, Gaea's blessing made physical, each one a prayer made physical. Gaea's blessing made manifest, her gratitude for saving her children while honoring the cosmic child growing within her.
The scent was overwhelming. Spring condensed into essence, hope given fragrance, life asserting its right to exist.
Domino's knees buckled.
The pressure she'd been carrying since accepting this mission, the promise Jay had made with Gaea, the weight of seven billion lives riding on her success, the strain of bending reality for three hours straight, finally released all at once. Her body, pushed beyond its limits even with her enhanced durability, gave out.
She would have hit the ground if Wade hadn't caught her.
"Easy there, Goddess," he said, his usual humor tempered with genuine concern. "You just did the impossible. You're allowed to collapse a little."
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