"Ronan is dead!" The report crackled through the communication network with the finality of a funeral bell.
"Thor and Loki—both dead!" Another voice, this one tinged with rising panic.
"The Hulk's been killed too!" The third announcement came through strangled, as if the speaker couldn't quite believe what they were saying.
The constant stream of death notifications flooding through her earpiece threw Cancer Captain Marvel into a state of mounting hysteria. Each announcement felt like a physical blow, hammer strikes against the supposedly invulnerable foundation of their immortality.
It sounded like a death knell tolling across dimensions, each ring signaling another impossible ending.
Every time that terrible bell rang, another of her supposedly unkillable comrades was torn from existence. Permanently. Finally. With no promise of resurrection to follow.
But they were supposed to be immortal! The Many-Angled Ones had granted them eternal life when Lord Mar-Vell killed Death herself! How could they possibly be dying now?!
Initially, Cancer Carol had assumed a simple case of mistaken identity. Marvel must have arrested the wrong person—Thanos couldn't be the true Coroner, despite fitting the surface-level criteria of "being closest to death" that their intelligence had suggested.
But the current situation shattered that comfortable explanation into fragments that couldn't be reassembled into coherent theory.
There should be only one Coroner—a singular being with unique authority over mortality in a universe where Death had been eliminated. Yet Ben Parker and his entire crew were accomplishing the impossible feat of killing Cancer beings left and right, as if death's return was inevitable rather than theoretically impossible.
It was as if Death itself, eradicated from their universe through ritual and cosmic murder, had somehow followed these invaders back and resumed its fundamental purpose.
"Something's wrong! This shouldn't be happening!" Cancer Carol's voice cracked with panic, her tactical composure crumbling. "Something catastrophic must have gone wrong with the ritual! The Many-Angled Ones' blessing can't just stop working!"
At that moment, a memory surfaced with uncomfortable clarity—Tony Stark's almost mocking expression during their earlier confrontation, that insufferable smirk he'd worn even while bound and helpless.
"That bastard wasn't blindly trusting in rescue," Carol realized, her thoughts racing. "He knew all along this would happen! He knew this Ben Parker could kill us!"
The revelation expanded as she reviewed every captured prisoner's reactions. Not just Tony Stark, but all of them—Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff, Eunice, everyone—they'd been angry at their capture, frustrated by the situation, defiant in the face of threats.
But not one of them had shown fear. Not genuine, existential terror at facing beings who claimed immortality.
They weren't immortal themselves. There was only one explanation for such confidence: everyone on Ben Parker's team knew he was capable of doing exactly what was happening now. They'd believed in his ability to kill the unkillable with the certainty of people who'd witnessed his power firsthand.
"I understand now!" Anthony Stark's voice cut through the communication channel, his diseased genius brain arriving at the same conclusion through parallel reasoning.
Even with tumors consuming portions of his cerebral cortex, even with cancer cells replacing healthy neurons, he remained one of the smartest beings in existence. Watching the combat footage of his comrades being permanently executed had crystallized his understanding.
"Ben Parker was the Coroner all along!" Tony's declaration carried the weight of absolute certainty. "The target Lord Mar-Vell captured was a decoy! A fake! We've been chasing the wrong person while the real threat walked straight into our base!"
His corrupted mind assembled evidence with frightening speed. "That four-armed woman—she's killing us with weapons that bear his authority. Hela functions as a death goddess channeling power from an external source. But Ben Parker himself is something fundamentally different, uniquely special!"
Anthony Stark's voice gained intensity as his analysis deepened. "Even compared to Warlord and Benjamin, who also possess Omnitrix devices, he's operating on a completely different level. Orders of magnitude more powerful. Those two variants are like children playing with toys compared to what he represents."
The assessment was harsh but accurate. Anthony Stark viewed Mad Ben as nothing more than a muscle-bound idiot who solved problems by hitting them harder, all brawn and no brain.
Bad Ben registered as cunning and treacherous, possessing marginal intelligence and tactical acumen, but ultimately limited by his own selfish short-sightedness.
There was one more critical observation Tony kept to himself: the first time he'd encountered Ben Parker, even seeing him in Swampfire form, felt immediate psychological aversion.
A visceral wrongness that made his corrupted cells recoil.
He'd initially interpreted it as mutual repulsion between geniuses, the way two brilliant minds might instinctively compete for dominance. But now he understood the truth: his cancer cells, which had overwritten his original consciousness and transformed him into a servant of the Many-Angled Ones, had recognized a fundamental threat.
Ben Parker represented Death's return. His very existence contradicted the cancer's immortality.
"We need to contact Lord Mar-Vell immediately," Cancer Steve Rogers said, his voice carrying military urgency despite the fear bleeding through his words. "He needs to know the ritual target is wrong!"
"There's no time," Cancer Carol countered, her tactical mind already racing through scenarios and calculating probabilities. "Mar-Vell must already be performing the ceremony by now. The ritual is designed to be unstoppable once initiated—interrupting it could cause catastrophic backlash."
She forced herself to think strategically rather than emotionally. "If the ritual succeeds, the problem solves itself. Death gets murdered in Ben Parker's universe just like she was in ours, and everyone becomes immortal regardless of Coroner status."
Her corrupted logic pressed forward with inexorable momentum. "But if the ritual fails, Mar-Vell will notice immediately. The feedback will be unmistakable."
"So what's our play?" Anthony Stark demanded, his diseased genius already anticipating her conclusion.
"We need to capture the real Coroner," Carol stated flatly. "Before he can kill enough of us that our combat effectiveness collapses entirely."
"But he can permanently kill us!" Cancer Steve's protest emerged strangled with genuine terror, a emotion that shouldn't have been possible for someone who'd spent years believing himself invulnerable.
He should have been fearless. In the original timeline, before corruption, Steve Rogers had been willing to sacrifice himself without hesitation. A hero who stood against impossible odds because it was right, not because he expected to survive.
At least in a world where death existed naturally, he'd never been afraid of dying. The possibility of ending had been acknowledged, accepted, integrated into his very identity as a soldier.
But now, after years of immortality, after growing accustomed to resurrection as an automatic process, the return of genuine death filled him with existential dread.
The cruel irony wasn't lost on the Revengers: their immortality had transformed former heroes into cowards. The same power that should have made them unstoppable had instead revealed how much their courage had depended on accepting mortality's inevitability.
"He only possesses the potential to kill us," Cancer Carol argued, though her voice carried less certainty than her words suggested. "That doesn't mean he has the practical ability to do so successfully."
It had to be said: Mad Ben and Bad Ben's relatively unimpressive performances had badly skewed the Revengers' threat assessment regarding Omnitrix wielders.
Captain Marvel genuinely believed the only significant difference between Ben Parker and those two variants was his identity as the Coroner—like a child holding a knife. The knife itself was deadly, certainly, but the wielder's age and inexperience meant the weapon's lethality remained theoretical rather than practical.
"Are you absolutely certain about that assessment?" Cancer Steve's question carried obvious skepticism.
"Or do you honestly believe Thor and Hulk were weak opponents?" Anthony Stark added, his tone suggesting he thought Carol's judgment criteria were fundamentally flawed.
Both corrupted heroes felt considerable doubt about her strategic evaluation. Thor Odinson and Bruce Banner were legendary warriors, beings whose power had shaped countless battles across cosmic conflicts.
If they'd fallen so easily to Ben Parker's forces, that suggested the threat level was vastly higher than Carol wanted to admit.
"They were strong," Carol acknowledged, refusing to back down from her position. "But not strong enough. We have far more powerful warriors at our disposal. Have you forgotten?"
The answer crystallized in all their minds simultaneously.
The Cancer Celestials!
And the Galactus Engine!
Those two ultimate weapons represented power on scales that dwarfed anything the fallen combatants had possessed. Cosmic gods corrupted by cancer but retaining their reality-warping capabilities, backed by reverse-engineered technology from the World Devourer himself.
Steve and Tony immediately pictured those overwhelming assets, and their confidence began to rebuild.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Cancer Steve demanded. "Deploy everything. Crush them before they can kill anyone else!"
Meanwhile, in a location that existed outside conventional space-time coordinates, where reality itself grew thin and the boundaries between dimensions became permeable, Lord Mar-Vell prepared for his greatest triumph.
"Once the ceremony concludes successfully," he explained to Bad Ben with the condescending patience of someone explaining simple concepts to a child, "our power will increase exponentially. We'll no longer merely be immortal within our own universe—we'll spread that blessing across infinite realities."
His tumor-encrusted face twisted into something approximating sympathy. "Of course, I can't help your friend. He arrogantly rejected the gift we offered, and now he's reaping the consequences of that shortsighted decision. Natural selection favors those wise enough to accept evolution."
Bad Ben stood several paces away, his attention divided between Mar-Vell's preparations and the nightmarish environment surrounding them.
The atmosphere in this place made his skin crawl despite his considerable experience with hostile dimensions and reality-warping threats. His tactical instincts screamed danger with every breath.
Boundless darkness pressed in from all directions, absolute blackness that seemed to actively consume light rather than merely representing its absence. From that crushing void came whispers—mad, incomprehensible sounds that made his brain throb with pain, as if the syllables themselves were weapons designed to break human cognition.
The ground beneath his feet consisted of lumpy, organic masses that squelched with every step. Walking felt like treading on festering abscesses—the slightest pressure caused thick, yellowish-green pus to burst forth and splatter across his boots.
The smell was indescribable. Rot and decay elevated to cosmic principles, made fundamental to reality itself.
Upon hearing Mar-Vell's words about Mad Ben's supposed death, Bad Ben snapped out of his horrified daze and quickly composed his expression into something appropriately callous.
"He brought his fate on himself," Bad Ben agreed, injecting the right amount of casual dismissal into his voice. "And you've misunderstood our relationship entirely. We weren't friends at all. In fact, I'm delighted he died in such a miserable way. Saves me the trouble of killing him myself later."
The statement wasn't entirely false. Bad Ben genuinely disliked Mad Ben, viewed him as competition and a liability in equal measure.
But at the same time, beneath his words, a different thought process ran in parallel.
I don't think Mad Ben is actually dead, Bad Ben's internal monologue acknowledged with grudging respect for his variant's survival instincts. That muscle-bound idiot's favorite pastime is fighting and causing destruction. If he were genuinely trapped and dying, he would have made a massive scene—transformed into something huge and violent, gone down swinging.
Instead, he just... vanished. Disappeared without fanfare or dramatic last stand.
Something's definitely wrong with that scenario. He found an opportunity to escape, probably while everyone was distracted during the initial battle.
Bad Ben's analytical mind continued assembling theories. That time-controlling bastard Maltruant must have given him another assignment. Someone as paranoid as the TVA's leader wouldn't trust anyone completely. He'd have backup plans and contingency operations.
Mad Ben is probably halfway across the universe by now, accomplishing whatever secret objective Maltruant actually sent him to complete.
However, Bad Ben had absolutely no intention of revealing these suspicions to Lord Mar-Vell. Their alliance was purely transactional, built on mutual deception and temporary overlapping interests rather than genuine trust.
Mar-Vell believed Bad Ben had been corrupted by cancer cells, that the infection spreading through his body had made him a servant of the Many-Angled Ones just like all the other Cancer beings.
That's precisely why he'd granted Bad Ben the extraordinary privilege of witnessing this ceremony, of observing the ritual that would murder Death in another universe and spread immortality's "blessing" across infinite realities.
Cancer cells could erode brains and control thoughts with terrifying efficiency. As the infection spread, anyone—regardless of their original willpower or mental defenses—would eventually become a mindless servant of the ancient cosmic horrors pulling the strings.
But what Mar-Vell didn't know, what he couldn't have anticipated, was that the Omnitrix possessed built-in protection mechanisms against mental manipulation and consciousness hacking.
The device recognized such attacks as existential threats to its wielder and automatically deployed countermeasures. Ben's mind remained his own, uncorrupted and fully functional despite the cancer cells attempting to overwrite his neural patterns.
At this moment, there was no genuine awe for the Many-Angled Ones in Bad Ben's eyes. No religious devotion to incomprehensible cosmic entities or gratitude for their supposed gifts.
Only hunger. Pure, distilled greed for the power they represented.
"Very well, the ceremony will begin momentarily," Lord Mar-Vell announced, his voice taking on ritual formality as he completed his preparatory prayers.
From within the crushing darkness, from between those writhing tentacles covered with unblinking eyes and gnashing teeth, something emerged.
An ancient god manifested—a being whose form resembled Cthulhu but worse, more wrong, reality-breaking rather than merely reality-bending. Its twisted limbs existed in too many dimensions simultaneously, creating optical impossibilities that made Bad Ben's eyes throb with pain at a single glance.
His brain tried to process what he was seeing and failed catastrophically. Blood trickled from his nose as neurons misfired, struggling to reconcile sensory input with physical laws.
"Ancient and incomprehensible deities," Mar-Vell intoned, his voice gaining power as he channeled forces beyond mortal comprehension, "I offer you the death you crave! I present the Coroner, the being closest to Death in his universe, that you might feast upon his ending and spread your blessing further!"
Lord Mar-Vell strode forward with ritualistic purpose, approaching Thanos where the Mad Titan lay bound by reality-warping restraints. He produced a ceremonial dagger, its blade forged from materials that shouldn't exist, inscribed with symbols that hurt to perceive.
The weapon plunged deep into Thanos's chest, piercing through purple skin and alien physiology with supernatural ease. Mar-Vell chanted continuously as blood—darker than any mortal fluid—began to flow:
"In the ancient universe, nothing remains permanent! Not matter, not energy, not even Death herself! All things can be overcome through sufficient will and cosmic backing!"
As the blade completed its deadly work, Thanos let out a howl that mixed agony with something unexpected—a note of triumph, of satisfaction, as if his suffering was welcome rather than unwanted.
"I finally—AAAH!" His declaration cut off abruptly, the word "finally" hanging incomplete in air thick with cosmic significance.
A monster twisted from living darkness surged forward with impossible speed and swallowed Thanos whole—body, soul, and the very concept of his existence consumed without remainder or possibility of recovery.
Poor Thanos. He'd believed until his final moment that this death would reunite him with Lady Death, that his sacrifice would earn him eternal rest in her embrace after millennia of rejection and unrequited devotion.
Instead, he was devoured by incomprehensible horror without trace or dignity, his soul destined for torments beyond human imagination in dimensions where suffering itself became infinite.
The instant Thanos died, reality stuttered.
A woman shrouded in a flowing black robe appeared from nowhere—or perhaps she'd always been present, merely choosing to reveal herself now. Her face remained hidden beneath her hood, but the authority radiating from her presence was unmistakable.
Death herself had arrived.
She moved with fluid grace, her hand darting forward to snatch the ceremonial dagger from Mar-Vell's shocked grip. Before he could react, before his corrupted mind could process what was happening, she reversed the blade and plunged it deep into his chest.
In that single instant, as if time itself had been frozen and now resumed its flow, the terrible cancer progression that had sustained Mar-Vell's immortality accelerated catastrophically.
The disease that had granted him eternal life became the instrument of his destruction. Tumors multiplied exponentially, consuming healthy tissue, collapsing his physiology from within. The cancer that had made him invulnerable became the very source of his death.
Death had returned—not just to this location, but to the fundamental cosmic order itself.
She remained unmoved by Thanos's sacrifice, showed no acknowledgment of his millennia of devotion or his willingness to die for her. After killing Mar-Vell with clinical efficiency, she immediately turned her attention to the twisted Ancient God looming in the darkness.
The ceremonial dagger rose for a second killing strike.
At that precise moment, Bad Ben moved.