The Moon.
Atilan Prison.
"Do you people from Marvel still think you're heroes?"
"Do you even deserve that name, with behavior like this?"
"Bah!"
In his cell, Aquaman from the DC Universe, Arthur Curry, furiously pounded on the door, shouting at the top of his lungs.
The only response he got was the mad laughter from the neighboring cell, where Supergiant was still babbling nonsense.
"Hehe… did you come here to hunt jellyfish too?"
"Shut up! Don't bother me!" Arthur yelled, his voice full of rage and humiliation.
But from another corner came a tired groan.
"Hey, you're new here, right?" a hoarse voice said.
"Just a bit of advice, don't provoke her unless you want to end up like me."
Red Skull leaned against the wall of his cell, exhausted, thin as a skeleton.
His eyes were empty, his face gray from fatigue.
"You be quiet!" Arthur snapped back.
"Damn Marvel scum!"
Red Skull only sighed. Even though he had tried to help, his kindness was not appreciated in the slightest.
...
Not long before that.
Atlantis.
Arthur had tried to prove that he was the mightiest king of the sea, the true Aquaman, by challenging Namor, ruler of Marvel's depths, to a duel.
He wanted to show that he was the king of all seven seas.
"You're Arthur from the DC Universe, right?" Namor said with a smirk.
"You want a fight? Fine. Let's change locations, one on one, no audience."
Arthur, of course, agreed. He had no idea that Namor had already contacted Aron and the other Avengers.
Although Aron didn't show up, Namor still brought Black Widow and Hawkeye as witnesses to the duel.
At first, Arthur didn't pay them any attention.
He knew them from comics, two ordinary humans without any superpowers.
But what he didn't know… was that these weren't the characters from his stories.
This Black Widow and Hawkeye wore armor designed for them by Tony Stark.
A suit that could withstand pressure a thousand meters underwater and take a projectile straight to the heart.
At that moment, Arthur realized that the differences between comics and reality were immense.
This wasn't a world where heroes wore capes and preached about honor.
This was a world where every hero carried a weapon capable of destroying planets.
And that enraged him.
"I'm not convinced!" he roared later, locked in his cell.
"Namor! You don't deserve to be called King of the Sea! If you have any courage, free me, let's fight again!"
His voice echoed through the metal corridors of Atilan Prison, but Namor paid no attention.
His hologram only watched the furious sea king coldly.
After all, the one locked in a vibranium cage wasn't him.
Namor leaned back in his chair and sighed calmly.
"The more time you spend with them, the more you become like them," he murmured.
These days, Marvel's heroes were no longer slaves to their ideals.
They had become pragmatic and dangerous.
And Namor was proud of that.
"Now that the collision of universes has begun," he said during a holographic meeting with the others, "our task is to preserve life. No pointless duels, no honor, only survival."
Tony Stark and the other members of the Illuminati agreed.
"Exactly," Tony said. "This isn't a time for ego. In a war like this, honor doesn't save worlds."
Arthur may have shouted from his cell, but no one heard him.
A war between universes had no place for pride.
During the meeting, Namor suddenly turned to Tony.
"Does anyone know where Aron is?" he asked.
When DC's King of the Sea began his invasion, Namor had been the first to send a message to Aron, but he never appeared.
Tony sighed and looked up.
"I know," he said. "He went to Nidavellir, the land of the dwarves. He said he needs to find a smith who can forge him an Infinity Gauntlet strong enough to hold all six stones."
As soon as they heard those words, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
So Aron hadn't disappeared.
He wasn't hiding just to watch the chaos.
"With our main trump card still in play, how can we lose?"
Even though the DC Universe had powerful warriors, everyone, without hesitation, put more faith in Aron, the hero of their own world.
According to the information he left before leaving, this cosmic collision was supposed to last three days.
"Our mission is simple," Tony said, scanning the holographic map.
"Within those 72 hours, we must infiltrate the DC Universe and retrieve the Power Stone from the hands of the Justice League!"
"When we gather all six stones, we gain the power to erase their universe or they erase ours!"
"Steve!" Natasha shouted.
Captain America already knew what she was going to say.
"I know what you're thinking, but this isn't the time for sentimentality!"
Tony immediately continued:
"According to Aron, this collision has only three possible outcomes, either you destroy their universe to save your own, or they destroy you, or we all vanish together!"
There was no other choice.
Aron had set it all up deliberately.
He used the concept from Marvel's Secret Wars, the multiverse crisis, to spark fear and resolve among the Avengers.
In reality, he knew that even if the worlds continued to expand and collide, the result didn't have to be destruction.
It was much more likely that the Marvel and DC Universes would eventually merge into one.
But why not take the opportunity to fight?
What's the point of war without battle?
---
The Temple in New York.
Aron, unlike what the others thought, hadn't gone to the land of the dwarves to forge an Infinity Gauntlet.
He didn't need one.
In his hands was already one of the most powerful artifacts in the multiverse, All-Black Necrosword .
That sword alone was enough to contain the energy of all six Infinity Stones, so he had no need for a gauntlet like Thanos's.
"I just have to wait for Tony and the team," he muttered to himself.
"Let them retrieve the Power Stone. I'll oversee things from here."
Aron felt like a puppeteer in the shadows, the one pulling the strings while others fought the battles.
---
Meanwhile, on the other side of the cosmos in the DC Universe, the battles were becoming fiercer.
Without tricks or help from other dimensions, the Justice League could only rely on their strongest members: Superman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, and a few others.
The fight against Mephisto, the hellish lord of the Marvel world, was brutal.
The once all-powerful ruler of the underworld was now reduced to a shadow of his strength.
Ironically, the final blow came from her, Wonder Woman herself.
Her volcanic sword, forged from divine fire, slashed through Mephisto's torso.
"It's finally over," Diana said, stepping off his body, sweaty and breathless.
"No," Batman's cold voice came from behind her.
"It's not over yet."
"Cyborg just found something important," he added.
"While analyzing the Promethean metal implanted in Aquaman's arm, he discovered a stable cosmic rift."
Diana turned, confused.
"A rift?"
"Yes," Batman said. "Through that connection, Cyborg determined that Arthur is in another universe, on the Moon, in the Marvel Universe."
He paused and looked at them seriously.
"We have to save him."