Thea spared a glance at the Iron Man flying toward them from a distance, then turned her attention back skyward.
Beyond Earth's atmosphere, the Watcher had returned to this Earth alongside the Grandmaster.
But the Grandmaster's response bothered her. By rights, when a projection returned to its home universe, there should be at least some flow of information and energy between the main body and the projection. Thea felt nothing. That should be impossible.
Unless the Grandmaster ranked two tiers above her. Thea was solidly multiversal-tier now; above her were multiversal apex and omniversal. Did the Grandmaster have that kind of power? She didn't buy it.
Another possibility was that the Grandmaster was an outright fraud, a Marvel-flavored impostor pretending to be more powerful than he was. But if he could cross into her own universe, that didn't quite track either.
The third possibility she gave the highest odds: his real body was dead.
Before she could press him on it, Iron Man had reached them.
Tony Stark was Marvel's resident genius and a marquee superhero, with a track record roughly comparable to her own back home. He'd publicly outed himself as a superhero too. In combat, he relied on an arsenal of tech and his Iron Man armor, and could handle eighty percent of his enemies in the suit alone.
He'd been in the middle of an experiment when several warning signals went off in low chimes. The monitors showed five unidentified targets in New York.
Aliens. That was his first thought. But on closer observation, the newcomers carried no hostile aura. They'd dropped in, looked around, and shown no aggression in the immediate term.
After a moment's thought, he'd messaged a few of his teammates, then suited up and flown out to meet them.
"Who are you? Why have you come to Earth?" Iron Man hovered a couple meters off the ground, palm repulsors charged but not yet firing, fully on guard as he sized up the strangers.
Thea wasn't in her Goddess of Death getup this time. She'd switched into one of her regular outfits: a red wool coat, cropped trousers showing pale ankles, pointed-toe heels. She'd brought a handbag too, but had put it away after Diana frowned at it.
Her outfit was unremarkable on its own. Next to the rest of her crew, it stood out hard.
Superman, Batman, and Diana were in their combat suits. The Grandmaster wore a gold robe trimmed with silver edging that might've looked fashionable on his home planet but on Earth read as flamboyantly bizarre.
Iron Man's gaze moved across the group. The Grandmaster looked like a clown; not a promising conversation partner, so he ruled him out immediately.
Diana had her shield slung across her back and a long sword at her hip, dressed for war. Thea, in city-girl clothes among a group of probable aliens, was equally strange. Both women were strikingly beautiful and built to draw the eye. Any other day he wouldn't have minded chatting them up, but today he needed to focus on the actual problem.
Batman, no need to comment. All in black, instinctively standing in the shadows. Iron Man muttered to himself: that guy isn't a bad guy, is he?
He finally settled on Superman. Instinct told him: sunny-looking type, probably the good guy.
Thea had no idea what point Marvel was at on its own timeline, and she didn't particularly care whether Thanos was alive or dead. She nudged their resident face of justice. Why don't you speak for the Justice League.
"We come from another Earth," Superman said, lifting into the air to meet Iron Man at eye level, voice measured. "We have an urgent matter that concerns both our worlds, and we need to discuss it with you."
The red-caped powerhouse in front of him could fly without any equipment whatsoever; this confirmed Iron Man's alien hypothesis. He'd been around long enough to read intent, though, and Superman carried a sense of justice that wasn't a step below Captain America's. Iron Man relaxed slightly.
"What's the matter?" He showed no intention of heading back to base, apparently happy to talk right here on the street.
Superman gave a condensed version. He didn't trust Iron Man enough to dump everything; both sides were still feeling each other out.
Iron Man listened, half-believing, half-skeptical. But his gut said the situation was big, bigger than he could decide on alone.
"Come back to HQ with me and we'll talk properly." He paused. Can these people fly? If not, did he need to call a car over from base? They had seen cars before, right?
He looked at Batman's Kevlar and Thea's outfit, ran a quick assessment from human clothing to polymer composites, and decided their world's tech was no slouch.
Then he watched both women lift casually into the air. The Grandmaster, a suspicious-looking old coot with a gloomy face, drifted up after them. All three flew as easily as breathing. Even Batman put on a ring and rose into the air trailing yellow light.
Huh? Iron Man was a little thrown. They can all fly. He hit the team channel immediately, calling the Avengers to assemble. Whether or not these people were heroes, he wasn't going to be outgunned on his home turf.
The trip was a long one. New York in this world was massive, easily a megacity, and pretty much eighty percent of Earth's heroes and villains made their names here. Sometimes a single crashing plane attracted seven or eight different rescuers. Thea swept the city with her senses and picked up several strong signals.
Three caught her attention. One was a pure, calm psychic field; she guessed it was Professor X. Another, contained inside a pocket dimension, gave off vast magical energy unlike anything in her DC universe, but still recognizable in pattern. That had to be Doctor Strange at the New York Sanctum.
The third was their actual destination. For a moment she couldn't place who it was.
They angled away from the city center and flew toward the outskirts. After half an hour they reached a sprawling complex.
An irregular pentagonal building anchored the compound, doubling as residential quarters and offices. Sky bridges connected to military facilities and a training ground in the rear. On the helipad, Thea spotted two Quinjets, those famously sleek transports.
Both the main building and the training ground had a large letter A painted on top.
Curious, Superman asked what the A stood for.
"We call ourselves the Avengers. It's the first letter of Avengers," Tony answered easily.
"We call ourselves the Justice League," Superman said with a touch of pride. Avengers implied revenge, an eye-for-an-eye kind of violence. By comparison, Justice League sounded a lot brighter.
Walking into the main building, they passed plenty of regular staff going about their work. And Thea spotted the third "person" who'd caught her interest.