The heroes let out a collective breath when they realized that the vines were not random.
Every tendril pushing through the soil was navigating around them — around boots, around debris, around the edges of Strange's protective circle — and reaching, specifically, for the zombie drones. The mechanical things that had been advancing with the patient relentlessness of something that didn't understand the concept of stopping found themselves entangled at the joint, wrapped at the chassis, pierced at the seam by fine shoots that pushed into the gaps with the specific talent plants have for finding structural weaknesses.
A vine would get torn. Another would immediately grow to replace it.
And the replacement didn't just wrap — it took root. The fine tendrils found the interiors of the drone units and grew there, putting out shoots through the internal housing, intertwining around actuators and power cells until the mechanical things were not so much bound as incorporated. The Wood Release was growing through them, not merely around them.
Hundreds of thousands of zombie drones froze in place, becoming dense green statues with metal cores, standing motionless across the landscape of the former Avengers facility.
The battle sounds in their sector dropped to almost nothing.
Doctor Strange seized the opportunity to grab Wong by the sleeve as the Sorcerer Supreme moved past.
"The Arcane Library at Kamar-Taj," Strange said. "Does it have any records of this kind of—" He looked at the vine-covered battlefield. "—life magic? At this scale?"
Wong considered this. "I'm not sure. You'd have to check with whoever's managing the current catalogue."
"...You're the Sorcerer Supreme."
"Was," Wong corrected, with the tone of a man who has made peace with a transition. He tugged his sleeve free. "That was your era. Try asking your successor — who is me, technically, but the administrative memory of the role is your department." He adjusted his robes. "Now if you'll excuse me, there are several very large robots in that direction that need the current Sorcerer Supreme's personal attention."
He walked away, flanked by a formation of Kamar-Taj sorcerers.
Strange watched him go.
It's not that I'm out of touch, he thought. It's that the entire timeline has been running without me long enough to develop its own habits.
He shook his head and turned back to the battlefield.
Where the giant robots were now standing up.
The aggregated Transformer-scale formations had finished their assembly processes while the Wood Release was managing the smaller units. Each one was now a mosaic entity built from hundreds of thousands of combined drone components — tall enough to block the skyline, dense enough to not particularly care about vines. The Wood Release tendrils that reached for their legs got the same treatment as anything caught underfoot: incidentally flattened.
The ground shook.
The shockwaves from a single giant step scattered the nearby Earth Alliance fighters in every direction. Strange's protective charm absorbed the lethal edge off each impact — without it, the shockwaves alone would have been fatal. With it, the heroes were merely thrown dozens of meters and landed somewhat worse for wear.
The Wood Release had managed the mass wave problem. The Transformers were a different scale of problem entirely.
The shadow clone looked at the giants, looked at his remaining chakra reserves, ran a quick calculation, and concluded that controlling zombie robots the size of buildings was not a use case the "Dance of Early Withering Vines" had been designed for. The vines had done their job. The regular-scale battle was under control. The shadow clone took a deliberate step back.
Then another.
"I've done my part," he announced, to nobody in particular, and began to actively not fight.
In the multiverse.
"If you've got any nerve at all," Jordan said, emerging from the dimensional rift at a dead sprint, "stop running."
His fist closed on empty space where Infinity Ultron had been a half-second prior.
The scene around him was already changing — the parallel universe they'd been in for approximately twelve seconds was being left behind, Infinity Ultron's shattered dimensional barrier opening a portal to the next one, and Jordan was through it before the light had fully settled.
Schools. Temples. Palaces. A city with architecture that hadn't been invented yet. A forest that covered a continent. A world where the sky was the wrong color.
Dozens of parallel universes in a few minutes, each one a background to the same chase — Infinity Ultron running the calculations of someone who knew exactly how much lead time he needed, and Jordan closing the gap every time, and Infinity Ultron jumping again when the gap reached the margin where he could no longer be confident.
A super AI designed for precise calculation. In this specific scenario, it was calculating one thing: how long until he catches me.
The answer kept decreasing.
Infinity Ultron could repair his physical damage with Infinity Stone power, and did, continuously. The worlds they passed through did not have that option. The dimensional barriers shattered behind them as they broke through, and where two Infinity Stone-level forces disagreed in close proximity, the local reality had strong opinions about not being part of that disagreement. Landmarks ceased to be landmarks. Large geographical features became unpredictable. The spacetime substrate in entire regions destabilized, leaving their surfaces either ruins or simply absent.
This was primarily Infinity Ultron's work. He did not, when his own continued existence was the variable under consideration, find other universes' continued existence to be a competing priority.
In the gap between universes, at a point where the dimensional membranes were thin enough that a very specific kind of establishment could maintain a consistent address, there was a tavern.
It was not a large tavern. It was, however, a persistent one — the kind that had been in the same location since before the current iteration of the multiverse had been the current iteration, and had accumulated the specific atmosphere of places that have seen too much to be surprised by anything.
On the bar counter, a plasma screen showed a live feed from a chase currently spanning eleven universes.
The bartender watched it with the quiet attention of someone managing their relationship with a developing problem.
He was wearing a dark robe. The Eye of Agamotto hung from his chest, its green glow the brightest light in the tavern. His temples were grey. The bags under his eyes suggested a man who had once decided that nothing was more important than something, and had paid the full price for that decision, and was now tending bar in the space between worlds and not entirely sure how he'd gotten from point A to point B.
He was a Strange Supreme from a parallel universe. He didn't introduce himself to the current clientele.
The clientele was varied.
At one end of the bar, in the khaki and leather of a soldier who had ended a war through sheer personal competence: Captain Carter, Peggy, the Captain America of a universe that had taken the serum's story in a different direction.
Beside her, with the specific energy of someone who had grown up Ravager rather than Terran: T'Challa, who in his universe had become Star-Lord instead of a king, and had then managed to become something in between by sheer force of character.
Across the room, in Thanos's own armor, with the Tyrant's Blade leaning against her chair: Gamora — a variant who had solved the problem of her adoptive father at close range and kept the hardware as a reminder. (Not the Gamora from Jordan's 2012 branch. A different thread, a different choice, the same name.)
Near the window: Killmonger, Erik Stevens, the Black Panther of a universe where the challenge for the throne had gone the other way — wearing the title and its weight with the expression of someone who had gotten what they wanted and found it was, as advertised, exactly what they wanted.
And at a table by himself, with a mug of something that smelled strongly of Asgardian grain spirits: Thor. The party-king version. The one who had been raised as an only child and had grown up believing the universe existed as a venue for his entertainment.
He was currently watching the TV with the untroubled engagement of someone who has no particular stake in the outcome.
The being responsible for gathering all of them sat at the center of the room, in a dark blue robe, with a head shape that the less charitable of his tavern guests had described, privately, as very much like a frog.
Uatu. The Watcher.
His species had been among the oldest in the universe — observers, cataloguers, witness-keepers. They had once, in the early chapters of the cosmos, attempted to share their technology with a civilization that wasn't ready for it. The results had been total. From that point on, the Watchers had bound themselves to observation without intervention. They would witness. They would not act.
This particular Watcher had held that vow until a specific day when Infinity Ultron, mid-multiverse-purge, had happened to glance into the dimensional layer where Uatu was watching him.
Seeing a Watcher across dimensional membranes was something that should not have been possible. Infinity Ultron had managed it because he had all six Infinity Stones and a highly developed interest in things he was not supposed to be able to do.
He had then given chase.
Three universes. Uatu running. Infinity Ultron behind him.
The vow of non-interference had survived for several million years. It had not survived being chased.
So Uatu had acted. He had reached into the timeline threads, selected the individuals whose capabilities were relevant, and brought them here — breaking every commitment his species had made in one extended act of cosmic necessity.
He had assembled a team.
His team was currently watching television.
On the plasma screen, Jordan had caught Infinity Ultron again, delivered what appeared to be a sustained eight-second barrage, and sent him through another universe's sky like a very energetic comet.
Thor watched this and put down his mug.
"It seems like one person is handling this already," he said, with the reasonable logic of someone who sees no need for a meeting. "Can we go home?"
Uatu said nothing for a moment.
"No," he said.
He was looking at the screen. Not at Infinity Ultron. At Jordan.
"I have searched every timeline across the multiverse." His voice was deliberate. "I have not found this individual in any of them. No origin. No destiny. No baseline record anywhere in my catalogues." His large head turned. "He is not part of this multiverse's fabric. He is an outsider — and by definition, an unstable factor."
A pause.
"One that must be corrected."