Bab 140: [139] : Crisis
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When a "person from the past," someone you've never met, addresses you by name in a recorded message, it triggers only one feeling:
A deep, spine-chilling sense of unease.
To Roger, Andrea was that person from the past. She had crossed worlds long before him, maybe over a hundred years prior, considering that Wonder Woman emerged during the World War I era.
Andrea had known Wonder Woman back then.
A figure from over a century ago, she had left behind this message, and upon seeing Roger, immediately called him by name, saying casually, "You're late."
This made Roger question if there were gaps in his own memory.
Could it be that he once knew Andrea but had his memories erased, as had happened with Odin?
Roger hated to think that, but the memory manipulation by Odin and Tony Stark made it hard to ignore the possibility.
After staring blankly for a moment, Roger finally asked, "Why... why did you say I'm late?"
Of course, he knew that sound couldn't travel through space; he was just mouthing the words. He used the Mind Stone to convey the message directly to her consciousness.
Roger wanted to know if he and Andrea were, in fact, acquaintances.
But the Andrea before him seemed only to be a projection. After her initial words, she closed her eyes again and said, "It doesn't matter now; anyway... this isn't my burden anymore. I've done all I could. The rest... I leave to you."
As Andrea's image faded, disappearing completely, only the Reality Stone remained, floating before Roger.
Roger couldn't fully grasp Andrea's words, nor did she give him time to dwell on them.
At the moment she vanished, the corpses of the Celestials began disintegrating like melting ice.
They dissolved into red, stardust-like particles, flowing swiftly into the Reality Stone in front of Roger.
It all happened too quickly. By the time Roger realized that the Reality Stone was absorbing the essence of the Celestials, it had already finished and re-attached itself to his chest as if it were a permanent fixture.
Simultaneously, a surge of energy from the Reality Stone flowed into Roger's body.
Along with this energy came a wealth of information, messages Andrea had embedded in the stone, providing Roger with insight into her actions.
The Andrea who spoke to Roger was indeed just a pre-recorded image, albeit one with a limited degree of intelligence.
Had Roger arrived even twenty years earlier, this projection would have held a conversation with him and revealed much more.
But as she had said, Roger was a bit late.
The energy for the projection had run out, and the functionality that would have allowed her to communicate with him directly had ceased. According to the remaining information, this suggested something had gone wrong with Andrea.
Why Andrea knew Roger or why she left this message specifically for him was left unexplained.
In fact, there was little information about Andrea herself; most of it was about the stones.
Roger had always suspected the Reality Stone he obtained from the Collector was fake, but this wasn't true.
The stone was real, or half-real. Before Andrea departed this world, she had used her considerable power to split all the Infinity Stones except the Time Stone, which protected Earth's dimension.
She took one half with her, leaving the other half in this world to maintain the original storyline.
So the Reality, Mind, and Power Stones that Roger possessed were all only partial stones.
Now, the Reality Stone had re-fused, returning to its full, original form. Roger's task now was to follow the coordinates Andrea left and search for the remaining stones beyond this universe.
According to Andrea's message, these stones seemed tied to the survival of the multiverse.
Andrea's own demise and the erasure of her existence in the Marvel Universe were due to a crisis threatening countless universes.
Now, she was passing the baton to Roger.
"So, how did she even know who I am? Can she see the future?" Roger couldn't let go of the question.
He wondered if Andrea had foreseen a future where a world-hopper like him would arrive to take up her mission, prompting her to leave preparations in other universes.
Roger's mind spun. He was even beginning to fear Andrea, wondering if every event he'd encountered since his arrival was somehow part of her calculations.
Then again, he figured it was unlikely.
If Andrea had such powers of foresight, she wouldn't have ended up dead.
And if she had died despite such foresight, how could Roger possibly handle this crisis? It seemed like she had too much faith in him.
"Well, in any case... rest in peace, Andrea."
Quietly, Roger paid his respects to the fallen Andrea. He looked down at the three Infinity Stones now embedded in him, realizing he had a lot on his plate.
From the moment Andrea discovered the multiverse crisis until now, when Roger had finally found her setup and taken up her work, at least a hundred years had passed.
If the flow of time differed between universes, this period could be even longer.
Andrea had distributed the stones with specific purposes: she gave the Mind Stone to Wonder Woman, the Reality Stone to the Celestials' graveyard to harness the Celestials' power in case of a cosmic crisis, and took the Power Stone with her.
Where she took it remains unknown; her message offered no clue, so Roger would have to find it himself.
Similarly, the Space Stone had merged with Andrea's own body, becoming a part of her. Only in the place where she met her end would it be found.
The Time Stone remained with the Ancient One to reset the Marvel Universe's timeline.
As for why no one remembered Andrea, she herself had used the Time Stone to reset the Marvel Cinematic Universe, creating a world where she didn't exist.
She had even separated this entire universe from the main Marvel universe before departing, which explained the absence of the Watchers.
This was Andrea's home; just as Roger viewed the world of The Boys as his base, Andrea had made this universe her sanctuary. She would not allow any interference within it.
The Time Stone would reset the universe if necessary, allowing events to start over from scratch.
As for the Soul Stone…
It lay in the X-Men universe.
Yes, in the world Jean Grey had recently traveled to, Andrea had been there too, connecting that world with this one.
The timelines flowed in sync, but after a reset, that world would replay its storyline.
Due to a slight temporal misalignment, the X-Men world's reset would align with the timeline of Phoenix's death, continuing its narrative from there.
Thus, that world's fate was unknown, even to Andrea or any other dimensional travelers.
It might follow the Logan storyline, take the Days of Future Past path, or venture down an entirely unknown road.
From Jean's description, Roger could easily guess that her world was on the Days of Future Past trajectory, where the Sentinels had reemerged. This time, however, there was no one to travel back and save the future.
The X-Men would be forced to fight the Sentinels or wait for a timeline reset.
In short, that world faced far worse conditions than the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
"First, I need to get the Soul Stone, then locate the scattered Power Stone, then find the Space Stone… and then tackle this multiverse crisis Andrea mentioned…"
After all this time, Roger finally realized that Andrea hadn't described the crisis itself.
She'd only briefly hinted that she had sensed the multiverse was collapsing, affecting not only the Marvel Universe but every universe she knew and had visited, all showing signs of disintegration.
She was searching for ways to avert this collapse and understand its root cause.
What caused the multiverse's collapse remained unknown, even to Andrea. At least, the projection of her didn't know.
And with the projection now active but Andrea herself not responding, Roger knew she had fallen somewhere along the way.
In any case, Roger would need to gather the stones she left behind before worrying about anything else.
A multiverse collapse wasn't trivial. If it involved every world he knew, Roger might have nowhere left to hide.
However, Roger wasn't blindly trusting Andrea's word.
After all, they'd never met. It seemed unrealistic for Roger to believe a stranger's message, but he would follow her leads for now.
As the saying goes, better safe than sorry.
Just in case.
"I'd better meet up with Jean."
Having absorbed the full weight of Andrea's revelations, Roger decided to first travel to the X-Men world and reunite with Jean, dealing with the Sentinels there.
To reach the X-Men world, he needed to return to Earth first.
The connection point between worlds was on Earth, in Andrea's former home, where she had built a teleportation device hidden beneath her house.
If Roger wanted to reach the X-Men universe, that would be the easiest way.
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