They stood face to face.
Two versions of the same soul—one born in fire, one tempered by it.
The Stark Sister stared at her older self—battle-worn, cosmic-lined armor shimmering with pulses of collapsed timelines. Her cape floated behind her like a galaxy unfurled, stitched with fragments of memories long erased. Her face was calm, unreadable.
But her eyes—those were stars that had seen too much.
"Who are you really?" the younger asked, stepping back, reactor whirring under her chest.
The older version replied, her voice like thunder wrapped in silk:
"I'm what you become when you stop trying to be human... and start trying to save them all."
Around them, time wept.
Broken shards of past, future, and possible flickered in and out like dying stars. The lab was gone. They now stood in the Forge of Null Time, where once the Watchers forged timelines like blades—until Oblivion shattered it in the First Fracture.
Floating platforms hovered mid-air, gravity bending and unbending with every breath.
And on the edges, echoes of the multiverse still burned—silent, distant, forgotten.
Oblivion circled them slowly.
His false Vision face began to crack—revealing more of what lay beneath. A writhing abyss, laced with veins of anti-light and fragmented reality.
"She thinks she can save you," he sneered at the younger version. "But she is the result of losing everything. You still have illusions to shatter."
He raised his hand. A fragment of a ruined timeline—a dying Peter Parker clutching a photo of Tony—floated between his fingers like dust.
The Stark Sister flinched.
"Stop," she whispered, voice trembling.
The older her didn't move.
"Let him speak."
Flashback Vision:
Suddenly, the space around them exploded in light.
They were inside an abandoned Stark safehouse, years in the future.
Peter Parker—older, bearded, broken—stared at a hologram of the younger Stark Sister.
"You were supposed to be better than us," he said. "You were supposed to save what we couldn't."
Behind him, a child—his daughter—ran across the room wearing a broken Iron Man helmet.
"You gave up, didn't you?" Peter said to the hologram.
"You stopped trying."
The scene burned to ash.
Back to Present:
The younger Stark Sister clenched her fists, chest heaving.
"What was that?"
The older her didn't answer.
Instead, she turned to Oblivion.
"You made your mistake the day you didn't kill me when I broke from your control."
Oblivion smirked. "You broke? Or were you always the error in the algorithm?"
Suddenly—he surged forward, faster than thought.
BOOM.
The shockwave cracked the Forge platform.
The sisters were thrown in opposite directions.
Mid-Air Combat:
The older Stark ignited her repulsor blades—twin arcs of quantum energy shaped like crescent wings.
She struck, each blow a memory weaponized:– Tony's death cry.– Peter's final "I'm sorry."– The silence of a world that never came back.
Oblivion absorbed, laughed, twisted time backward.
He made her strikes undo themselves.
"You fight with ghosts!" he roared.
She lunged. "Then let them haunt you."
The Younger Stark Sister's POV:
She floated above the broken platform, trembling.
Watching herself fight the impossible.
Watching the future play out like prophecy.
And then—
A faint voice crackled in her ear.
"Kid... if you're hearing this... run."
Her eyes widened.
It was Tony's voice.
From the reactor?
She pulled open her gauntlet's inner layer—revealing a buried file:
"Stark Protocol Omega: Voice Key – Project Nova Iron – Lockdown Override."
Her hands shook.
A line of code appeared across her HUD:
"Do you wish to initiate Prime Core?"
Before she could speak—
BOOM.
A scream tore the sky.
The older her crashed into the ground, bleeding, armor cracked.
Oblivion stood over her.
"You won't get to warn her."
He raised his hand to deliver the final blow—
Until the Forge of Null Time flickered.
And a golden portal tore open behind him.
From within it…
A fully formed army of fractured Avengers stepped out.
But they weren't whole.
Each one was a broken variant—scarred, wrong, dangerous.
And leading them—
A Steve Rogers who never gave up the shield.
With a suit of Ultron's armor fused to his body.
"We're not your heroes anymore," he said coldly.
The Stark Sister froze.
In front of her were two paths:
Initiate the Prime Core, become what she was built to be.
Or follow the broken Avengers, and risk the last fragments of her humanity.
And behind her—
The older her whispered, bleeding:
"If you choose wrong, you won't just destroy one future..."
"You'll erase every version of us—every one that ever tried to fight."