Chapter 347: Two Thanoses, Two Armies — Two Boss Runs, No Cooldown
The mysterious newcomer stood at the edge of the battlefield, his expression cold and detached, like an observer completely indifferent to the chaos around him.
His gaze drifted toward Ethan and Thanos, still locked in combat in the distance, and the corner of his mouth curled into a faint, dismissive smirk.
He spoke slowly, his voice low, dripping with mockery. "Isn't it obvious who I am? There's a man standing right over there who looks exactly like me."
Every Avenger on the field went pale with dread.
"There's no way there's a second Thanos!"
"That's it. We're done. Our world's over!"
"This is a disaster — that new Thanos just stole the Gauntlet, we need to get it back, now," Steve said grimly.
"Which universe's Thanos is this one? Damn it — is this seriously all fallout from us jumping through the Quantum Realm?" Tony swore.
"The future keeps getting hazier and hazier..." Doctor Strange muttered, his voice heavy with helpless exhaustion.
"The magical texts said crossing between parallel universes was supposed to be nearly impossible. So why does it keep happening, one after another?! At this point I might as well just die." Watching this scene unfold, Doctor Strange wasn't even panicking anymore — he'd moved straight past panic into total numbness.
All he understood was that their world had officially descended into complete chaos.
Carol, having just had the Gauntlet ripped away from her, couldn't have cared less about any of that.
"You're a Thanos too? I don't care who you are — hand the Gauntlet back, right now!" Captain Marvel said, and launched herself straight at this new, parallel-universe Thanos.
Her attack, though, might as well have vanished into the void — utterly ineffective against a Thanos already wielding three Infinity Stones.
He waved a hand almost lazily, and Carol dropped to her knees before him. He drove her hard into the ground with one foot, standing over her.
He looked down at the once-mighty Captain Marvel, contempt and mockery in his eyes.
"Stay down, useless thing," he said coldly, his gaze sweeping the battlefield, as if searching for something in particular.
"So this is a parallel universe? How dull." He shook his head, visibly unimpressed with this whole world.
With Carol about to be crushed underfoot, more and more Avengers rushed the mystery Thanos to save her.
None of them so much as landed a scratch. He put every one of them down in a single move.
If not for Doctor Strange, Thor, Wanda, and Strange combining forces against him, the rest of the group would have shared Carol's fate outright.
"Thanos. Why have you come to our timeline? What's your purpose here? And hand over the Gauntlet!" Doctor Strange demanded, deadly serious.
"Why have I come to your timeline? Isn't it obvious? I'm here to collect the Infinity Stones. And, while I'm at it, settle a score. Someone recently stole my Scepter — and reduced my Black Order from five generals down to two." Thanos looked directly at Strange as he answered.
The answer hit Strange like a shock. It didn't take much for him to piece together exactly who this "someone else's" Thanos actually was.
He leaned in and murmured quietly to Doctor Strange. "This is our universe's Thanos."
"I don't care which universe you're from. Hand over the Gauntlet, right now, or..." Doctor Strange issued the warning again.
This Thanos was, in fact, the one from Ethan's own home universe. For clarity, I'll refer to him going forward as Home-Thanos — Hell's Kitchen's own Thanos.
"Or what, exactly? What do you think you can actually do to me?" Home-Thanos swept his gaze over Doctor Strange and the others, entirely unimpressed.
In his own timeline, Home-Thanos remained undefeated, without a single loss to his name — and he'd never once encountered the Avengers or gauged their strength.
But from his perspective, the only two threats on the entirety of Earth worth taking seriously were the bald one and Odin — and even against either of those two, armed with three Infinity Stones already, he felt no fear whatsoever.
Then, something seemed to occur to Home-Thanos, and his expression shifted, turning playful.
Almost carelessly, he dropped the red Infinity Gauntlet onto the ground. The gesture left Doctor Strange and the others stunned. None of them could understand why he'd throw away something they clearly wanted so badly.
"Isn't this what you want? Go ahead, pick it up." Home-Thanos smirked mockingly. "Honestly, I never much cared for this color of gauntlet anyway. Red's not a good look. Gold suits it much better."
With that, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a second Gauntlet — gold this time. This was the one the Avengers already knew well: the authentic Gauntlet used for the original snap.
Strange could see clearly that this Gauntlet already held three Infinity Stones of its own.
Which meant: if Home-Thanos managed to seize the two Stones currently in Ethan's possession, plus the one Time Stone Strange himself carried, he'd have the complete set of six Stones — for his own home universe.
This is bad. Looks like this whole thing is aimed straight at me, Strange thought bitterly.
He'd never expected to go from comic relief on the sidelines to the actual main target in the span of a single scene.
"Hand over the Time Stone, kid." Home-Thanos, having donned the gold Gauntlet, turned his command directly toward Strange.
"Enough with the chit-chat! I don't care what universe you're from — you're all dying today, Thanos!" Wanda had zero interest in the specifics of which universe this Thanos hailed from — all she knew was that this was the man who'd cost her Vision his life. This was her revenge.
Having watched her original target get stolen out from under her by Ethan, Wanda was more than ready to redirect every ounce of her fury toward this newly-arrived Home-Thanos instead.
Chaos energy surged out of her body like a flood unleashed, crashing violently toward Home-Thanos.
The sheer force of her power warped the space around her, as if it meant to tear apart anything standing in its way.
"Oh, seems someone's eager to go first. Don't worry — you're all dying here today, one way or another." The instant Home-Thanos finished speaking, a massive wormhole tore open behind him.
Countless warships poured through it. Yes — Home-Thanos had brought his own alien army along too.
The sight sent the assembled Avengers spiraling into fresh despair.
Their numbers had already been thin to begin with, and they were running on fumes after grinding down the first wave of the alien horde.
And now a second army — identical in scale to the first — had just shown up.
"That's it. That's it, we're actually finished this time. Two Thanoses, two armies, same dungeon boss spawning a second time before we even finished the first run — and no cooldown timer either. How are we even supposed to clear this?!"
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