(2/2)
I already apologized for the quality of the fight if it's not up to your liking, but enjoy anyway.
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Nozomi slowly set Hiro down onto the broken asphalt, her own breath coming in shallow, heavy hitches. Her legs gave out a fraction of a second later, and she slumped directly onto the ground beside him, sitting cross-legged as her five black, glossy tails dropped heavily into the gray dust.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The silver fire in Hiro's eyes had completely cooled, leaving only a deep, bone-weary exhaustion behind. The red mist of London's fractured sky swirled lazily above the ruined plaza, but the crushing spatial pressure of the Mirror Warden was entirely gone.
Just as their racing heartbeats began to settle, a sudden, cold shift rippled through the atmosphere.
The twins tensed up instantly, Hiro's hidden ears twitching beneath his glamour field as his right hand instinctively clawed at the pavement. The shattered bricks and concrete dust around them didn't just stop moving—they froze in time. The distant sirens and the hum of Tony Stark's lingering thrusters vanished into absolute, dead quiet. Before either of them could pull a single burst of soul-flux to defend themselves, the ruined landscape of Westminster melted away like water.
They weren't in London anymore. The weightless, silent chill was instantly recognizable.
'Well,' Hiro sent through their mental link, letting out a ragged sigh as he relaxed his posture. 'Looks like we've been summoned back to the boss's desk.'
Back in the physical reality of the London plaza, the silence was broken by the sharp clank of metal boots.
Tony Stark landed directly beside the massive, smoking crater where the Mirror Warden had been shattered into lifeless stone. His visor snapped open, his wide eyes staring blankly at the space. Captain America, Thor, and Black Widow crowded into the perimeter behind him, their weapons slowly lowering as they looked around the deserted clearing.
"Where did they go?" Cap asked, his brow furrowing as his eyes scanned the rubble. "They were right here. I didn't see a rift open."
"My sensors completely lost them," Tony said, his voice entirely stripped of its usual sarcastic edge as he looked at his armor's running diagnostic displays. "No residual heat signature, no energy tracking data, nothing. One millisecond their vital signs are red-lining right in front of us, and the next, they just... vanish from the physical grid."
Thor gripped Mjolnir tightly, looking up at the healing clouds with a deep sense of respect. "The young wolves fought with the fury of a winter storm, Stark. They broke a beast that defied the very laws of our world, yet they did not leave a single trace of their departure."
"Yeah," Tony muttered, closing his visor as he shook his head in absolute bewilderment. "We didn't even get to do anything but play crossing guard. S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to have a literal aneurysm when we report that the two most powerful teenagers on the planet just blinked out of existence."
The void was vast, monochromatic, and completely locked outside the laws of the universe.
Hiro and Nozomi sat together on the featureless, smooth floor of Death's domain. Standing directly in front of them was a slender, pale young woman draped in flowing black garments, her dark hair framed by a distinctive, looping silver ankh hanging around her neck. She didn't look like a terrifying, skeletal grim reaper; she radiated a calm, ancient serenity that completely cut through the lingering trauma in their systems.
"Welcome back, champions," Death said, a warm, genuine smile lighting up her pale features as she looked down at them. "You both look like you've been through a literal blender."
Hiro groaned, leaning his back against a phantom wall that appeared out of the void. "That thing really didn't appreciate our energy signature. It took everything we had just to crack its shield."
Death giggled softly, a light, melodic sound that seemed to chase away the freezing chill of the room. "Oh, I know. I watched the whole thing. And honestly, I am thoroughly impressed. When I granted you the perks of being my champions, I explicitly wove a failsafe into your souls—allowing you to automatically resurrect within twenty-four hours anywhere inside my domain if things went completely sideways."
She stepped closer, her dark eyes gleaming with approval as she tilted her head. "But you didn't even need it. To dismantle a Category Omega temporal anomaly on your very first deployment without dying a single time? That is an exemplary performance."
Nozomi let out a tired chuckle, her five black tails swishing lightly against the smooth floor. "We had seven years of focused training in the mountains to prepare for a handicap, boss. We weren't planning on letting a giant kaleidoscope take us out before the main plot back home even starts."
"Good attitude," Death cheered. She casually raised a slender hand, and a wave of soft, silver-tinted light washed directly over the twins' broken bodies.
Instantly, the deep, violet burns from the Mirror Warden's strikes vanished. The fractured bones in Hiro's left arm snapped cleanly back into alignment with a gentle hum, and the deep, bleeding laceration across his chest sealed completely, leaving nothing but pristine, unblemished skin behind. The suffocating exhaustion in their soul-flux reservoirs vanished, replaced by a warm, overflowing surge of pure energy.
"There," Death added cheekily, winking down at them as she lowered her hand. "I can't exactly drop you back to your mother with broken bones and torn clothes. Akihime-san would personally march into the underworld to hand me an absolute lecture on child care, and I really don't need that on my schedule."
Hiro laughed, stretching his completely healed arm over his head with absolute relief. "Yeah, Mom does not play around when it comes to her kittens. Thanks for the quick fix."
"Don't mention it," Death smiled, her form starting to ripple with a soft, golden light as she prepared the dimensional relocation matrix. "Your work in the MCU is officially concluded for now. The timeline is stable, and the Avengers can handle the rest of the local cleanup. It's time for you two to get back to high school."
"Let's just hope U.A.'s syllabus is a little less physically intense than London," Nozomi joked, standing up alongside Hiro as their ten black tails stabilized behind them.
"Oh, you'll be fine," Death teased as the void began to unspool around them. "Go have some fun, kids."
With a soft, instantaneous fwoosh, the monochromatic void shattered.
The cool, sterile air of Death's domain vanished, instantly replaced by the warm, familiar scent of leather polish, fresh flowers, and expensive mahogany furniture. The twins blinked against the sudden shift in light, finding themselves standing perfectly healed and upright directly in the center of their massive, high-end living room in Musutafu.
The clock on the wall read exactly late Sunday evening. Only two days had ticked forward in their original world, and the quiet comfort of home welcomed them back.
X X X
Some of you might be wondering why death is cheery and not gloomy in this text. Well, it's quite simple. When I was writing the chapters before. When they met her before, I had the Marvel version in mind. But now, I changed my mind and decided to use the DC version because I like her better.
Not that difficult. Just accept it. Author's order.
Peace!