The words hung—rusted iron and Siberian frost—as Hashirama's Wood Release roots groaned and solidified beneath their boots. Spectral mist coiled upward from crimson-stained earth—Konoha's superimposed Valley of the End bleeding through Central Park's shattered meadows like a wound refusing to scar. Stark's hologram flickered out—one last glimpse of Bucky Barnes' shadowed glare etching itself onto Finn-Madara's tactical cortex: *Lethal. Contained. Potentially retrievable.* Madara's Rinnegan pulsed—absorbing layered landscapes—alien wreckage fused with phantom Uchiha banners. Stark shifted—armor grinding—eyes locked on Madara's unreadable stillness. Finn calculated Barnes' utility: enhanced assassin, fractured loyalty, *Zetsu-level threat if corrupted*. Hashirama's cedar scent thickened—an anchor against temporal decay. Survival demanded a scalpel… not Shinra Tensei.
Stark's armored finger jabbed toward the hologram's last coordinates—Siberian tundra superimposed over a spectral waterfall crashing miles below. "Barnes is… sequestered," Tony rasped—voice scraped raw by strategic admission. "Underground cryo-stasis. Fury's failsafe." His reactor flickered—brief cobalt glow illuminating Madara's armored silhouette against bleeding realities: *Trust withheld. Leverage offered.* Madara tilted his head—Rinnegan dissecting Stark's micro-tremors—Finn cataloging every flinch in Tony's gauntlet triggers. "Sequestered…" Madara echoed—words colder than Barnes' stasis pod. "Or buried?" Stark stiffened—Finn tasted ozone and desperation. Hashirama's knuckles whitened—roots snapping taut beneath temporal pressure. The Valley's ghosts wailed—Izuna's phantom blood whispering betrayal beneath the wind. *Fractures deepen*, Finn-Madara fused. Barnes was both weapon… and trap.
Hashirama stepped forward—boots sinking into fused mud-ash—his palms radiating ancient moss scent. "A soldier sleeps…" he murmured—eyes scanning spectral kunai scars etching the cliffs. "…not dead." Stark exhaled—sharp—scanning Hashirama's calm. "Sleeping dogs bite, Tree-Man." Madara's Gunbai shifted—imperceptible—gravitational pull humming against Stark's armor. Finn's logic crystallized: *Barnes holds keys.* Zetsu's essence leaked sewer-grates—time bled—Thanos loomed. Retrieval outweighed risk. Madara's voice sliced Valkyrie-cold through spectral waterfalls: "Coordinates. Now." Stark hesitated—reactor pulsing frantic cobalt—before gauntlet sparks etched corrupted GPS glyphs onto crumbling rock: *65.0441° N, 117.027° E*. Depth: *2.4 kilometers*. Hashirama's roots twitched—subterranean awareness flaring. Madara's Rinnegan blazed—piercing Siberian permafrost layers—pinpointing Barnes' icy tomb. Finn-Madara's borrowed muscles coiled—dimensional jumps demanded precision Stark couldn't fathom. *Next move:* ***Extraction***.
Reality groaned as Madara raised his Gunbai—not to strike, but to *unfold*. Steel-clad fingers traced spacetime seams leaking neon-Konoha lanterns beside Manhattan's fractured avenues. Below their feet, Central Park's muddy grass thickened—birch trees dissolving into Valley of the End's obsidian cliffs. The bleeding cityscape stretched—seamless—skyscrapers bursting through Hokage Mountain's stone face—Konoha's gates welded to Broadway billboards flickering *Ramens of Asgard: All You Can Eat*. The merger wasn't jarring; it flowed like water carving bedrock—natural as tectonic drift. Stark gasped—stumbling as asphalt softened beneath him into Senju-cultivated moss. "Stabilization?" Tony rasped—scanners flatlining against organic fusion. Hashirama breathed deep—cedar and exhaust fumes—wood-knuckles pressed to asphalt gone loamy. "Acceptance…" he murmured—eyes tracing phantom hawks circling Stark Tower's mangled spire. Madara stood unmoving—Rinnegan mapping the valley's waterfall cascading perfectly over Bethesda Fountain's cracked angel—a convergence point humming with chakra and ley-line static. ***Anchor*** *achieved*, Finn-Madara assessed. *No more tears. Only battles—here*.
Wind whipped Madara's armored coat—gusts smelling of pine resin and Queens' burnt trash—as the Gunbai hummed louder. Stark flinched—gauntlets sparking—"Barnes' bunker's shielded! Quantum encryption—you can't just—" Madara's Rinnegan pulsed violet—ignoring Stark's tech-babble—a singularity blooming between his palms. Not chakra—raw spacetime compression. Siberian permafrost coordinates *pulled* toward Central Park's Valley simulacrum—distance collapsing like origami. Hashirama's roots surged downward—anchoring reality—as concrete buckled upward. A glacial mound erupted violently beside the spectral waterfall—tundra ice grinding against faux-granite—exposing a corroded hatch etched with Hydra's skull emblem. Stark choked—"That's…not possible!"—reactor flashing panic-bright. Finn-Madara inhaled deep—ozone and frozen iron—the shrieking resonance of Barnes' cryo-pod sensors audible through meters of ice and steel. Madara's armored knuckles clenched tighter around spacetime's frayed seam. His voice dropped—deadly calm slicing through temporal static:
**"Anything is possible with the Rinnegan."**
Cold vacuum replaced air as Madara's palm pressed against Hydra steel. Gravity inverted—metal screamed—then sublimated instantly into iron-scented vapor. No detonation—just perfect negation. The hatch dissolved…revealing a vertical shaft plunging into arctic darkness. Stark stumbled back—scanning the impossible precision—"Physics…doesn't…"—but Madara was already descending—boots crunching frozen rungs. Below, blue cryo-light pulsed weakly—Barnes' stasis pod buried like a cursed artifact. Finn registered biometric alarms—heart rate comatose, synapses ice-locked—while Madara's Rinnegan dissected the pod's quantum shields: Stark-tech layered over Soviet brute-force. Temporal fractures stained the energy signatures—Barnes' prison existed simultaneously in Siberian frost and Sokovian rubble. Survival demanded extraction *now*. Hashirama's roots snaked past Madara—ancient wood weaving containment seals against dimensional seepage. Madara's gauntlet slammed onto the pod's viewport—frost shattering instantly—exposing Barnes' frozen face. Bucky's left eye snapped open—glacial blue and utterly feral. No confusion—only predator-instinct. Vibranium fingers clenched—frost fracturing—as the Winter Soldier inhaled his first breath of bleeding reality.
Stark shouted down the shaft—"Barnes! Stand down!"
The Winter Soldier's vibranium arm shattered the cryo-pod's restraints, hydraulic fluid spraying like frozen blood. Ice-crusted eyes locked onto Madara's Rinnegan—no fear, only feral threat-assessment. Bucky's muscles coiled, a panther exploding from glacial stillness—his fist a vibranium meteor aimed at Madara's sternum. Stark's repulsor whined impotently above; Hashirama's roots surged too slow. Madara's gaze didn't widen—Finn's tactical overlay synced with millennia of Uchiha instinct: *Lethal vector. Non-lethal countermand.*
A micro-shift. Madara's left hand snapped up—not blocking, not evading—*intercepting*. Fingers splayed wide, catching Barnes' vibranium wrist mid-strike. Kinetic force detonated—air cracking like a glacier splitting—but Madara absorbed it, boots grinding ice into diamond dust. Barnes snarled, breath fogging crystalline—his flesh hand darting for a thigh-knife. Too late. Madara's right palm slammed forward—a piston-drive of condensed spacetime—impacting Bucky's solar plexus. Not Shinra Tensei's annihilation—precision as surgical as a scalpel. Bone didn't break; nerves simply *shorted*. Vibranium fingers spasmed, knife clattering. Barnes' eyes rolled back—consciousness extinguished like a blown fuse—before his body even registered the blow.
Madara didn't catch him. He *guided* the collapsing form—gravity bending at his will—Barnes' limp frame floating sideways onto a waiting lattice of Hashirama's freshly woven oak. Stark gasped, repulsor flickering out—"One…*shot*?"—as Bucky landed softly, frost melting on warm wood. Finn cataloged: Barnes' heartbeat steady, neural activity suppressed but stable. Madara flexed his fist—steam rising from gauntlet joints—Rinnegan sweeping the cryo-chamber's flickering shadows. *Containment achieved. Asset secured.* Hashirama's roots coiled tighter—cedar scent thick with relief—binding Barnes to the platform like living chains.
Above, Stark descended shakily, boots crunching ice shards. His cracked visor scanned Barnes—vitals stable but suppressed—then flicked toward Madara, reactor pulsing frantic cobalt against the cryo-chamber's frozen gloom. Madara's Rinnegan lingered on Stark's armor: the fractured chest plate spiderwebbing around the arc reactor, left repulsor gauntlet sparking erratically, hydraulic fluid weeping from a shredded knee joint. Tony followed his gaze, gauntlet instinctively covering the reactor's flicker. "Don't start, Sage Mode—" Madara cut him off, voice colder than Siberian permafrost: "Your plating's compromised." A gloved finger jabbed toward the sparking repulsor. "That misfire destabilized your descent trajectory by 2.7 degrees." Stark's helmet snapped up—indignant—"Hey, I recalibrated mid—" "Recalibration failed," Madara stated flatly, Rinnegan dissecting every fractured circuit. "Next impact? Your femur shatters. Or worse—reactor breach." He stepped closer, armor grinding loose ice to powder, shadow swallowing Stark's flickering light. "Fix it. Now." His gaze, void-black and absolute, locked onto Tony's cracked visor. "*You're useless to me as dead weight.*"
Silence choked the shaft—only Barnes' shallow breaths and the whine of dying electronics. Stark flinched—not at the insult, but at the *precision*. Finn-Madara's fusion crystallized: Stark's genius was kinetic, unpredictable—a scalpel in chaos. But shattered armor made him a liability. Hashirama descended silently, roots sealing the hatch above—cedar scent warring with ozone. He said nothing, but his eyes traced Stark's battered suit, moss-green chakra already whispering toward the deepest cracks. Stark bristled, gauntlet slamming against his chest plate. "Dead *weight*? I just handed you a cryo-frozen super assassin!" Madara didn't blink. "Barnes is contained. You're decaying." He gestured at Barnes' inert form. "*He* functions. You malfunction." Tony's reactor flared—indigo brilliance against Madara's obsidian contempt. "Function? I'm running on espresso and shrapnel! You try merging realities with—" "Excuses," Madara hissed, the word vibrating with gravitational pressure. "Zetsu's essence still leaks sewer grates. Thanos looms. Multiversal collapse accelerates." He leaned in, Rinnegan blazing. "Your suit is your *mind* made manifest. And right now?" A scornful glance at the sparking gauntlet. "It's *broken*."
Stark's gauntlet clenched—circuits sizzling—before going limp. His helmet retracted with a hiss, revealing bloodshot eyes and gritted teeth. Raw exhaustion etched lines deeper than armor scars. "Fine." The word scraped out, hoarse. "But I need parts. Tools. A *minute*—" Madara's hand snapped up—not in threat, but demand. Palm open, chakra swirling violet. "Your schematics." Stark blinked. "You serious? You can't just—" "I perceive molecular decay," Madara interrupted, tone glacial. "I'll stabilize the framework. You reinforce it. *Now*." Tony hesitated—pride warring with pragmatism—then tapped his temple. A fractured hologram sputtered to life: wiring diagrams, stress fractures blooming across virtual plating. Madara's Rinnegan dilated, cosmic rings spinning as he absorbed terabytes of data in microseconds. His free hand gestured—a sharp twist of spacetime—and a chunk of Leviathan alloy *ripped* from the chamber wall, hovering molten-bright. "Carbonadium infusion point-seven," Madara commanded, voice devoid of doubt. "Weld it here." He indicated a holographic weak spot—a hairline crack Tony hadn't noticed. "*Move*."