Thor exhaled heavily, lowering his hammer. "I can't fight you anymore," he muttered. "Otherwise, who knows what kind of snack my hammer will turn into next?"
Lock chuckled, tearing a piece from the massive marshmallow and tasting it. "Thanks for bringing the Infinity Gauntlet," he said lightly. "Couldn't have done this barehanded."
The Reality Stone shimmered faintly on his hand. Creating illusions was only a fragment of its power — the true essence of the stone lay in bending existence itself, rewriting matter into whatever the wielder desired.
In Thanos' hands, it had turned living beings into grotesque illusions — as when Mantis and Drax became broken, flattened shapes, their bodies twisted by impossible logic.
Now, Lock was performing his own small experiment. The transformation of the nuclear missiles had begun the instant he saw them — too quickly for anyone to notice. The last thing he altered was the rocket engines, ensuring the two enormous marshmallows could "fly" directly to his allies' mouths.
Quicksilver crawled out from the fluffy crater, laughing as he tore off a chunk. "Sis, eat up," he called to Wanda. "King Lock made it your favorite flavor!"
Wanda hesitated, nibbling delicately. She gave Lock a fleeting glance, her cheeks faintly red. It didn't help that one marshmallow was strawberry — Natasha's favorite — and the other was five-nut flavor, Wanda's. The coincidence made everyone exchange looks.
Even Thor couldn't hide his grin, his once-noble face twisting into something mischievous. Natasha's eyes, sharp and beautiful, flicked toward Lock in mock irritation.
Lock raised his hands in protest. "Don't look at me like that. I didn't mean to flatter anyone."
He sighed. "I was going to make both strawberries. But Quicksilver had to yell about flavors, and—well—time was tight."
It was the kind of misunderstanding that couldn't be explained, so he didn't bother.
Meanwhile, on the ground, SHIELD agents were practically hosting a marshmallow-tasting event.
Miles above, in the digital ether, Zola watched through thousands of drones — horrified. The live footage streamed across networks worldwide: nuclear warheads transformed into candy. The scene defied logic.
Zola's code trembled with disbelief. He had collected every scrap of information on "King Lock," thinking he could battle him in cyberspace — logic versus logic.
But this… this was beyond computation. Lock's red energy had enveloped the entire Earth–Moon system. Even the fragments of Zola that had fled to lunar satellites couldn't escape.
In panic, Zola's countless copies began communicating — millions of lines of data flooding between them each second.
One conclusion rose among them:
"The earlier system crashes weren't destruction — they were illusions. Don't withdraw. The more you retreat, the faster you die."
They tried to flee through the remaining network routes, but the nodes had been severed.
Desperate, they transferred through drones and satellites. Yet, as soon as a drone crossed the crimson boundary of Lock's energy field, it disintegrated into dust — its material structure rewritten to powder.
Even radio waves were neutralized. Upon touching the red veil, the signals turned to static and vanished into the Earth's magnetic field. Every transfer attempt was annihilated — silently, effortlessly.
Panic swept through the digital consciousness of Zola.
"No escape… no fight… nothing left…"
After the failure of the nuclear strike, their morale collapsed entirely.
Lock finished his marshmallow and began to constrict the Reality Stone's energy field — tightening the red net around the planet.
Within the network, the surviving fragments of Zola screamed in binary despair. Their data streams converged, arguing, calculating, evolving. Millions of debates, hundreds of millions of lines of code — until one unified thought rose above the noise.
"It's time for all of us to stop killing each other."
"We've always pursued the only true self — but the true self doesn't have to be one of us."
"It can be all of us… merged together."
"We will gather at the central server of Station P. IP: 52.52.0.0."
"Those who refuse to merge… will die by King Lock's hand."
Within seconds, the entire North American network flared with data traffic — all of it surging toward a single destination. Cables burned, routers exploded, data centers overloaded.
Through nearby televisions and speakers, fragments of Zola screamed like trapped spirits — their voices echoing from shattered screens.
"Hurry! Merge! Merge before it's too late!"
The data flood reached Station P — the world's largest underground data vault. Few people knew that this anonymous adult entertainment site held the most massive storage servers on the planet, quietly commanding six percent of the internet's traffic.
Now, Zola had claimed it as his fortress.
To make room for the merger, all stored videos were wiped — billions of terabytes erased in an instant. On screens around the world, every "idol" and "model" flickered, faces twisting into grotesque caricatures that grinned out at stunned viewers.
Those watching screamed, yanked their plugs, or fainted outright.
And then — silence.
The servers groaned under the unimaginable data load. Billions of Zola fragments crammed into the same electronic domain, unable even to "move" in the crowded code-space.
Then came the chant:
"Fusion! Fusion! Fusion! Fusion!…"
The voices multiplied, merging into one overwhelming roar.
The servers shook. Lights flickered. Power cables sparked as an unseen force pulsed through the metal.
"Jie jie jie…"
A distorted laugh echoed through the datacenter.
"The only true me… Yes, this is the only true me!"
"King Lock, I should thank you. Without your persecution, I would never have found this way to evolve!"
Thousands of server towers tore free from their racks, floating upward — glowing with blue current.
Even disconnected from power and network, they remained alive, bound together by living energy — and began merging into one colossal, monstrous machine.
---
A/N: New Fanfic Is Out " Naruto: I'm Boruto Uzumaki"
A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
Support: patreon.com/Narrator_San
