Scene: The Shattered Nexus
The transit was not travel. It was un-being.
For a single, endless moment, Tony Stark was not Tony Stark. He was a scream of data torn across the void, a pattern disassembled and flung through a cosmic storm. There was no suit, no body, no ego—only raw, terrifying existence.
Then, with a lurch that slammed a heart back into a chest and air back into lungs, he was somewhere.
He landed hard on a surface that felt like obsidian, his Mark L nanosuit instinctively forming around him with a liquid shimmer. The air was thin, cold, and tasted of ozone and rust. Gravity was a fraction too light.
"Report," he gasped, his HUD flickering, systems rebooting.
Life support nominal. External atmosphere non-toxic but unbreathable long-term. Energy signatures… undefined. Gravimetric readings anomalous. Spatial geometry… does not conform to Euclidean physics.
"Of course it doesn't," Tony muttered, pushing himself to his feet. "Why would it?"
He was in a vast, cavernous space. The "sky" above was a swirling vortex of bruised purples and sickly greens, with no sun or stars. Jagged, impossibly tall spires of the same black, glass-like material thrust up from the ground, some connecting with archways that defied perspective. In the distance, a low, rhythmic THUMP echoed, like the heartbeat of a metal giant.
A scream tore through the unnatural silence. High-pitched and pure terror.
Tony's repulsors whined to life as he spun. Twenty yards away, Usopp was scrambling backward on his hands and knees, away from a… thing.
It was a biomechanical horror. It stood on six multi-jointed legs, its body a segmented carapace of polished bone and pulsating, copper-colored tubing. It had no head, only a torso that swiveled, topped with a single, massive red eye that glowed with malevolent intelligence. In place of arms, it had two enormous, brutal pincers that snapped together with the sound of shearing metal.
"What is that? What is that?!" Usopp wailed.
A flash of light. A beam of pure energy, condensed and precise, lanced from behind Tony and struck the creature's eye. It screeched—a sound like grinding gears—and stumbled back, its carapace smoking.
Noah Osmont landed gracefully beside Tony, his hand outstretched. He was clad in simple, elegant robes that seemed to drink the light, his eyes glowing with the power of a thousand consumed stars. He didn't even look at Tony.
"A crude construct," Noah said, his voice devoid of fear, brimming with academic curiosity. "Its energy signature is artificial. A puppet."
"Hey, thanks for the assist, Gandalf," Tony said, his repulsors still trained on the stunned creature. "You the guy who can blow up a sun by thinking too hard?"
Noah finally glanced at him, a flicker of assessment in his luminous eyes. "The energy required for stellar collapse is trivial. This thing, however, is interesting. It resists my mana. Its composition is… null."
A third voice, sharp with panic and outrage, cut through the air. "NULL?! Null is not a scientific classification! It's an absence of data! This is an affront to physics!"
Ves Larkinson was on his knees, not out of fear, but because he was frantically trying to scan the creature with a multi-tool that kept spitting out error messages. He was utterly exposed, his engineer's mind prioritizing data over survival.
The creature recovered, its eye glowing brighter. It lunged, not at Noah or Tony, but at the shouting, distracting Ves.
"Look out, you idiot!" Tony yelled, firing a repulsor blast that glanced off its carapace.
Usopp, in a blind panic, fumbled with his slingshot. "Green Star: Bamboo-Joint Spider!" he shrieked, firing a seed that hit the ground and sprouted into a tangle of weak, bamboo-like vines that wrapped around the creature's legs. It was a pathetic defense, but it made the monster stumble for a crucial half-second.
That was all Noah needed. He didn't cast a spell. He simply pointed a finger and uttered a single word. "Cease."
The Authority of an Archmage washed over the area. The laws of physics themselves bent to his will. The creature's internal systems, whatever they were, simply stopped. The light in its eye died. The pincers froze mid-snap. It toppled over, inert, a statue of dead machinery.
Silence returned, broken only by Usopp's hyperventilating sobs and Ves's furious muttering as he finally dared to approach the deactivated monster.
"Incredible. No power source I can detect. No circuitry. The joints aren't mechanical, they're… grown. This is biomachinery of a grade I've never seen. It's like a biomech without a pilot!"
Tony's faceplate retracted. "Okay. Magic Man. Tin Can. Panicky. And me." He looked at the swirling, unnatural sky. "We've been isekai'd. I hate this. FRIDAY, any comms? Anything to home?"
Negative. All signals are local. However, the anomalous chat interface remains active.
Right. The group text.
Nexus_Prime: Status update. We're in… hell's IKEA? Big, black, spooky, and the furniture is trying to kill us. Magic Guy just one-shotted a robo-crab with a vocabulary word. Engineer is having a mental breakdown over it. Long-Nose is… well, he's alive.
Oracle_Scribe: Received. Describe everything. The environment, the creature, your physical state.
Infinite_Archmage: The dimension is a wound. A place where reality has been sutured together poorly. The entity was a manifestation of that dissonance. It was not alive. It was a tool.
Mech_Pilgrim: A TOOL OF UNPRECEDENTED DESIGN! The material is non-reactive! The energy it used was coherent yet non-thermal! This could revolutionize servo-design! If we could reverse-engineer it—
Sogeking: WE COULD WHAT?! ARE YOU INSANE?! IT TRIED TO PINCH MY HEAD OFF! I FEEL SICK! I THINK I HAVE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL MOTION SICKNESS! I NEED TO GO HOME!
Anodite_Spark: Hang in there, Sogeking! Just stick with Nexus and Archmage. They seem like they know how to throw down.
Dance_of_Petals: This 'Null King.' The title implies a ruler of emptiness. A lord of voids. A foe that does not create, but unmakes.
Creation_Hero: That's… terrifying. How do you fight something like that?
Nexus_Prime: With big guns and bigger words, apparently. Okay, team. We're not alone. That heartbeat isn't a natural phenomenon.
The rhythmic THUMP was getting louder. Closer. And it was coming from multiple directions.
From around the jagged black spires, more of the creatures emerged. Dozens of them. Not just the pincer-types. Larger, bulkier ones with drilling appendages. Smaller, faster ones that skittered along the walls and ceiling, their single eyes blinking in unison. And at the center of the advancing horde, a new model: a towering behemoth with a massive cannon-like arm, its single red eye fixed on the four intruders.
Usopp fainted dead away.
Ves finally looked up from his scans, his face pale. "Oh."
Noah's expression tightened from curiosity to mild annoyance. "A swarm. Inefficient."
Tony's suit reconfigured, heavier weapon ports sliding into place. "Inefficient? They're about to be very efficient at turning us into paste! Plan?!"
Noah raised both hands. "I will erase them."
"Your magic didn't work on the first one for long!" Ves argued, his voice shrill. "It resisted! You said it was 'null'! You need a different approach! Its structure is biological! Target it like a disease, not a machine!"
Noah paused. Ves's frantic insight was correct. His overwhelming power had temporarily shut the first one down, but he'd felt a strange resistance, a void where magical energy should be. It wasn't a thing to be overpowered; it was a thing to be… corrected.
"A pertinent observation… Engineer," Noah conceded.
"The big one!" Tony yelled, targeting the cannon-behemoth. "It's powering up!"
The cannon-arm glowed with a sinister violet light.
"I'll handle the artillery," Tony said. "Magic Man, you're on crowd control. Engineer, wake up Long-Nose and find us cover! Now!"
To his own surprise, Ves found himself obeying. He slapped Usopp's face. "Get up! We need a distraction!"
Usopp's eyes fluttered open. "D-distraction?"
"You're a sniper, aren't you? Snipe something!"
The cannon fired. A beam of null-energy, a ribbon of screaming void, shot toward them.
Tony unleashed a full-power repulsor blast, not at the beam, but at the ground in front of it, throwing up a shower of black crystalline shards that disrupted and diffused the energy stream. It washed over his shields, which flared and dropped 30%.
"Shields won't take another one of those!" he shouted.
Noah wasn't throwing blasts of mana. Instead, he was weaving something more complex. He understood Ves's point. He wasn't attacking the creatures; he was attacking the connection. He whispered to the fundamental laws of biology, introducing a rapid, aggressive cellular decay command.
The smaller skittering creatures began to smoke and melt, their bio-mechanical systems turning against themselves in a violent orgy of apoptosis.
But the larger ones resisted. The cannon-behemoth's carapace glowed, resisting the effect.
Usopp, trembling, loaded a special star into his slingshot. "I… I am the great Captain Usopp! I have 80,000 men under my command! And I… I am not afraid of you!" It was a lie, but he shouted it with all his heart. "Firebird Star!"
The projectile flew in a high arc, exploding above the horde in a brilliant, blinding flash of light and sound. It was a flare, not a weapon.
But it worked. Every single creature, synchronized, turned their single eyes toward the sudden, intense stimulus.
It was the opening Tony needed. "FRIDAY, all power to the unibeam! Maximum yield!"
A massive, concentrated beam of arc reactor energy lanced out, striking the cannon-behemoth directly in its massive eye. It exploded in a satisfying shower of sparks and bio-organic matter.
The horde, momentarily disoriented, was being systematically dissolved by Noah's biological curse.
Ves wasn't fighting. He was watching, analyzing. "They're linked! A hive mind! The big one was a local controller! You took out the commander, the grunts are disorganized!"
The fight was turning. But the THUMPING grew louder still. The ground began to vibrate.
From the largest archway in the distance, something began to emerge. It was not a creature. It was a wall. A living, moving wall of flesh and metal, covered in thousands of those single, blinking red eyes. It was the source of the heartbeat. The Null King's Forge. It was manufacturing the army, and it was coming for them.
"Okay," Tony said, his voice hollow. "That's a problem."
Oracle_Scribe: The energy signature just increased by a magnitude of ten. What is happening?
Sogeking: A WALL! A WALL OF EYES! IT'S HORRIFYING! WE'RE GOING TO DIE!
Infinite_Archmage: The central nexus. Destroying the peripheral units is meaningless. We must strike the heart.
Mech_Pilgrim: How?! Its mass is enormous! Its energy signature is off the scale! We lack the necessary firepower!
Nexus_Prime: Firepower isn't the problem. I've got a nuke in my back pocket. The problem is delivery. That thing will have point defenses. I need a distraction. A big one.
Anodite_Spark: We need to get you one! Guys, think! We're your support! What can we do?
Dance_of_Petals: Sogeking. You boast of an army of 80,000. Now is the time to summon them.
Usopp stared at the chat text, then at the advancing wall of certain doom. They were words from a stranger in his head, but they carried an unexpected weight. An army. A distraction.
He thought of the Sunny. Of Luffy, Zoro, Sanji… of his friends who believed in the lies he told because they believed in him. He was Usopp, a coward. But he was also Sogeking, the hero of the stories.
He stood up. His trembling stopped.
"Nexus," he said, his voice steady. "Get ready with your big gun."
Tony looked at the sudden change in the sniper. "What are you going to do?"
Usopp grinned, a wild, confident grin that didn't quite reach his terrified eyes. "I'm going to summon my army."
He reached into his ammo pouch and pulled out a single, peculiar seed he'd been saving for a truly desperate situation. He loaded it into his Kabuto slingshot.
"This is a special pop-green… I call it 'Usopp's Greatest Lie: The 80,000-Strong Grasping Vine Army!'"
He fired. The seed soared through the air and smashed against the ground before the advancing wall. For a second, nothing happened.
Then the ground erupted. Not with vines, but with a massive, billowing cloud of thick, opaque smoke. It was a smoke screen star on a colossal scale, enhanced with chemicals that messed with thermal and sonar imaging. It was the greatest, most believable lie he'd ever told—an "army" hidden by the smoke, a threat that wasn't there.
The wall of eyes stopped. Thousands of red orbs focused on the impenetrable cloud, trying to identify the new threat. Every single one of its point-defense systems, every weapon, aimed into the smoke, waiting for a target that would never emerge.
It was the perfect distraction.
"NOW!" Usopp yelled.
"FRIDAY, Jericho!" Tony roared. A compartment on his back opened. A single, missile-like projectile launched, streaking over the smoke cloud and straight toward the heart of the eye-covered wall.
Noah didn't watch. He placed his hands on the ground. He wouldn't just rely on technology. He fed energy into the dimension itself, overloading the local laws of physics around the missile, creating a path of least resistance that would guarantee its penetration.
Ves watched, his mind racing, calculating trajectories, yield estimations, structural weak points. "Aim for the central cluster of eyes! That's likely its primary processing node! Its brain!"
The Jericho missile hit home.
The explosion was silent. For a moment, there was only a blinding white light. Then, sound and force hit them like a physical wall. The four of them were thrown backward.
When the light faded, the wall was gone. A massive, smoldering crater sat in its place. The thousands of red eyes in the smaller creatures all flickered and died simultaneously. The entire biomechanical army collapsed, inert.
Silence returned, this time complete. The THUMPING had stopped.
They had won.
Tony got to his feet, his suit scorched and dented. Usopp was whooping with hysterical relief. Ves was already scurrying toward the crater, muttering about salvageable data cores.
Noah stood, unruffled. He looked at the three others—the arrogant inventor, the frantic engineer, the cowardly liar who had found his courage. A most illogical team. Yet, they had functioned. They had adapted. They had won.
Nexus_Prime: Threat neutralized. Good job, team. And… good job, support squad. Glinda, your idea worked.
Oracle_Scribe: It was a calculated suggestion based on Sogeking's established psychological profile. Well executed.
Salamander: YOU GUYS ARE SO AWESOME! THAT SOUNDED LIKE A HUGE EXPLOSION!
Creation_Hero: You're all safe! Oh, thank goodness!
Eyes_of_Progress: You did it! I was so scared!
Anodite_Spark: Told you you could do it! Team DCC for the win!
Cowabunga_Dude: THAT WAS THE MOST EPIC THING I'VE EVER NOT SEEN! YOU GUYS ARE MY HEROES!
As they caught their breath, a new, softer light began to emanate from the center of the crater. A gentle, welcoming glow.
"The exit, I presume," Noah said.
"About time," Tony grumbled. "I need a drink. And a decontamination shower. In that order."
As they moved toward the light, a new series of pings echoed in all their minds, and in the minds of everyone back in their home dimensions.
Dimensional Convergence Stabilized. New User Integration Commencing. User: [Baggins_Of_Bag_End] has been added. User: [Byakugan_Princess] has been added. User: [Gourmet_Life_Academy] has been added. User: [The_Boy_Who_Lived] has been added. User: [Lion_Cub_of_Cintra] has been added. User: [Pokemon_Breeder_James] has been added. User: [Capsule_Corp_Heiress] has been added. User: [Slifer_The_Sky_Dorm] has been added. User: [Ultramarine_Sergeant] has been added. User: [Berkian_Inventor] has been added. User: [Ground_Sloth_Enthusiast] has been added. User: [Celestial_Royal_Chef] has been added. User: [Otaku_4_Life] has been added.
The chat log, which had been filled with relief, went completely silent for a full ten seconds.
Then, it exploded.
Baggins_Of_Bag_End: I do beg your pardon? This is most irregular! I was just sitting down to a spot of tea! Is this some elvish magic? It's terribly rude!
Byakugan_Princess: U-um… hello? Wh-what is this jutsu? I can't seem to dispel it…
Gourmet_Life_Academy: EEEEEEEK! A voice! In my head! Is this a new type of Fearow? A telepathic one?! Komatsu is scared!
The_Boy_Who_Lived: …Hello? Is someone there? This feels… different from Legilimency.
Lion_Cub_of_Cintra: What sorcery is this? Speak, specter!
Pokemon_Breeder_James: Goodness! A telepathic Pokemon? How elegant! And so many voices! Are you all friends of this Pokemon?
Capsule_Corp_Heiress: Huh. A new type of communicator? The bandwidth is weird. Who's the manufacturer? The tech is… primitive but the delivery system is advanced.
Slifer_The_Sky_Dorm: Whoa, this is wild! Is this a new Duel Monster spirit? Hey, everybody!
Ultramarine_Sergeant: +IDENTIFY YOURSELVES, XENOS SCUM! THIS PSYCHIC INTRUSION WILL BE MET WITH PURGING FIRE!+
Berkian_Inventor: Woah! Did everyone else just hear a really loud man? And… a turtle? And a girl who turns into aliens? This is… actually, this is kind of cool. Are you all dragons?
Ground_Sloth_Enthusiast: Voice? Head? Ooooh! New friend! You sound crunchy! I mean, friendly!
Celestial_Royal_Chef: How did this happen? I was just cooking a Century Soup! This energy… it's not from the Gourmet World. It's not from anywhere I know!
Otaku_4_Life: …no way. No. Freaking. Way. Usopp? Tony Stark? Momo Yaoyorozu? Rukia? This… this is a crossover fanfic. I've finally snapped. The isekai truck finally got me. I've died and gone to weeb heaven.
Tony Stark, stepping into the light that would take him home, put his head in his hands.
"It's getting bigger," he groaned. "It's a support group, a battlefield, and now a convention center. What's next? A petting zoo?"
The light swallowed them, returning them to their worlds, leaving behind a chat group that was now more chaotic, more confused, and infinitely larger than before. The Convergence was just beginning.