Stark flinched—reactor pulsing cobalt—but snatched the floating alloy. Gauntlet jets flared blue-white, slicing precise arcs. Sparks showered the ice as Madara's hand poured amaterasu-black flames onto the plating—not destruction, but controlled fusion. The fire hissed, a sound like screaming stars, its heat contained in a gravitational bubble inches from Stark's face. Finn's cop-mind recoiled: Nuclear-level energy inches from flesh! Madara's focus narrowed—Rinnegan micro-adjusting the flame's quantum dance—melding alien metal to Earth-tech at the atomic level. Ozone and scorched titanium choked the air. Stark welded furiously—grunting—as the black flames licked the seams without burning. "Jesus, keep it steady—!" Madara didn't blink. Gravity bent the light around his hand—a black sun forging armor in hell's kiln.
Hashirama watched, silent. His Mokuton roots coiled tighter around Barnes' unconscious form—cedar scent thick against the stench of superheated metal. Below their feet, reality shimmered—Central Park's phantom grass bleeding through Siberian ice. Stark slammed the final plate home—armor humming fresh power. "Done!" He gasped, sweat freezing on his brow. Madara extinguished the flames with a flick—silence crashing back. Stark inspected the weld: seamless, impossibly smooth, glowing faintly violet where chakra met circuitry. He flexed—repulsors flared clean cobalt. No spark. No tremor. "Huh," Tony breathed. "Not bad for a demigod with a blowtorch." Madara's gaze swept past him—Rinnegan locking onto Barnes. "Repairs completed. Objective unchanged." He raised his Gunbai—steel-capped tip aimed at the cryo-pod's shattered remnants. "Wake him. Gently."
Stark's gauntlet hissed—diagnostic scans bathing Barnes' frozen face in sapphire light. Heart rate rising—slowly. Synapses flickering online. Bucky's glacial eye snapped open—instantaneous predator-awareness—vibranium fingers twitching toward Madara's throat. Tony jammed a repulsor against the Soldier's chest—cold light bathing frost-etched scars. "Barnes! Stand. Down." The command cracked like ice—authority Stark rarely used. Bucky froze—muscles coiled—gaze darting: Madara's cosmic stillness, Hashirama's roots binding him, Stark's battered armor repaired with alien fire. Recognition flashed—fragmented, furious. "Stark?" Barnes rasped—voice raw from centuries of disuse. "Where—" His gaze locked on Madara. "Who's the warlock?"
Madara stepped closer. Boots crunched ice millimeters from Barnes' bound form. Rinnegan blazed—not threatening, but dissecting: neural pathways, trauma fractures, vibranium resonance. "Designation: Winter Soldier," Madara stated—tone colder than Siberian winds. "You exist where timelines fracture. Zetsu's poison spreads." Barnes snarled—vibranium straining against wood fibers. "Don't know your magic words, pal." Stark tensed—gauntlet charging. Hashirama's roots groaned. Madara merely tilted his head. "You will." His palm opened—not for attack, but projection. Chakra coalesced—holographic glyphs swirling: Hydra bunkers superimposed over spectral Konoha streets, Zetsu's viscous shadow seeping through Manhattan sewers, Thanos' silhouette darkening fused horizons. Finn-Madara's voice cut through Barnes' confusion: "Recognize this parasite?" Bucky's breath hitched—eyes widening. A flicker—not memory, but sensation. Zetsu's essence—cold, clinging—identical to HYDRA's ice in his veins. Survival instincts screamed: Same enemy.
Barnes' vibranium fist unclenched—barely. Stark lowered his repulsor—reactor pulsing steady cobalt relief. Madara nodded—once. Rinnegan dimmed. "Alignment confirmed." He pivoted toward the shaft—Gunbai humming spacetime resonance. "Move. Zetsu's remnants fester deeper." Hashirama's roots withdrew—Barnes dropping to his feet, unsteady but lethal. Stark threw Bucky a battered pistol—salvaged from Chitauri wreckage. Barnes caught it—familiar weight calibrating shattered nerves. Madara didn't look back—obsidian coat swirling as he ascended toward spectral waterfalls bleeding into Manhattan's skyline. His final command echoed—gravity itself bending to its weight: "Follow. Or perish here." Survival demanded formation. The hunt resumed.
Smoke coiled upward—greasy gray plumes twisting through flickering streetlights as Madara's team breached the shaft's terminus. Tony's enhanced helmet HUD scanned the ruins: Central Park's Bethesda Terrace lay shattered—angel statue decapitated—but the real horror bloomed beyond its fractured arches. Where Fifth Avenue once gleamed? A jagged canyon yawned—paved not with asphalt but obsidian. Stark choked—repulsors stuttering: "—tectonic plate upheaval? Im—"
Madara halted—boots grinding grit atop the terrace's highest stair. Below, Manhattan's bleeding heart pulsed wrong. Across the chasm, Rockefeller Center's golden Prometheus statue leaned drunkenly against a mountain. Not skyscraper rubble—no. Stark's scanners screamed isotopic mismatch: granite. Dolomite. Quartz veins signature: Iwagakure geological strata. And swarming across its slopes? Not Chitauri. Hulking silhouettes carved from living stone—Golems. Their fists hammered Rockefeller's bronze facade, each impact ringing like cathedral bells fused with grinding tectonic plates. Above them? Leviathan carcasses impaled on crystalline spikes—Chitauri skiffs darting like flies between dripping ribcages. Fusion complete. Invasion merged.
Barnes hissed—vibranium arm flexing beside Madara's Gunbai. "Intel gap: rocks weren't on Hydra's apocalypse bingo card." Stark's gauntlet flared defensive protocols: "Chitauri signatures… hybridized. Bio-stone fusion?" Madara's Rinnegan dilated—cosmic rings dissecting the horror. Not mere occupation. Synthesis. He tasted ozone sharpened by powdered limestone and alien ichor. Heard the wet crunch of Golems pulverizing steel girders—felt the tremor-rhythm sync to distant drums echoing from Iwa's spectral cliffs. Saw Chitauri energy-lances grafted onto stony forearms—pulsing sickly blue. Zetsu's final gambit: weaponize the merger. Survival demanded scorched earth. Madara raised his hand—singularity coalescing violet-bright—
A landslide of granite exploded upward—not toward them. Beyond. A Golem the size of a subway car vaulted Rockefeller's corpse—heading east. Toward the flickering arc-reactor glow still bleeding from Stark Tower's wounds. Toward containment. Toward the Scroll. Hashirama's breath hitched—cedar scent spiking alarm: "They seek the anchor-point!" Madara's singularity winked out. Strategy recalibrated instantly: Konoha's defenses were worthless against merged horrors. Only Hashirama's Wood Release could shield the Scroll—its temporal algorithm the only key to unraveling this fracture. Stark's repulsors flared, tracking the Golem's trajectory. "Target locked! But the rift's widening—" Barnes' pistol snapped up. "Cover fire's ready. Go." Madara's Rinnegan locked onto Hashirama's panic-stricken eyes.
"Hashirama." Madara's voice cut through the seismic roar—a glacier grinding bedrock. Stark froze mid-flight-prep. Barnes' finger eased off the trigger. Every syllable resonated with absolute authority, cracking the air like Shinra Tensei: "Return to Konoha." Hashirama flinched—roots instinctively coiling toward Manhattan's core. Madara didn't gesture—didn't need to. His Rinnegan ignited, mapping phantom paths through crumbling dimensions straight to the Hokage Tower's Scroll Room. "Protect the Scroll." Stark's scanners screamed—temporal resonance spiking around Hashirama as Madara's command lensed reality, warping space-time into a shimmering corridor back to Konoha's illusory gates. "We purge this infection." Madara pivoted—Gunbai humming with condensed gravitic fury—already dismissing the First Hokage. Survival hinged on that scrap of alien-paper. Hashirama hesitated—millennia of leadership warring with raw terror—eyes darting between the Golem and Madara's glacial certainty. Trust fractured, then fused. Cedar-chakra erupted—Hashirama dissolved into a storm of swirling wood-dust, vanishing down the light-bent tunnel.
Stark's repulsors ignited—cobalt glare slicing ash-fog. "Sage left. Now what? Wrestle mountains?" Madara didn't answer. Rinnegan locked onto the granite Golem charging Stark Tower's fractured spire. Obsidian dust swirled as Madara slammed his Gunbai into bedrock—steel cap screeching against Manhattan's bones. Black flames erupted—not from his palm, but from the Gunbai's core—Amaterasu igniting the ancient oak like a hellish torch. Flames licked skyward—lightless, hungry, devouring photons. Madara's grin split his face—a predator's crescent moon against the blaze. Ash drifted like funeral petals across his teeth as he hissed: "I hope this Golem… likes to dance." Stark choked—Was that a joke?!—before realizing: Madara meant it literally. The Gunbai swept downward—a conductor's baton dipped in void-fire—painting gravitational glyphs in burning air.
Amaterasu-coated wind screamed. The charging Golem faltered—mid-vault—as Madara's Gunbai twitched. Not Shinra Tensei's blunt force. Precision. Terrible, elegant precision. Hyper-dense gravitic anchors—each wrapped in Amaterasu—hammered the Golem's joints: knees, elbows, spinal plates. Stone shattered. Molten limestone sprayed. But the Golem didn't collapse. It spun—limbs wrenched into a grotesque pirouette by pinpoint singularities. Stark's scanners blared: Kinetic override! Chitauri energy signatures redirected! Barnes emptied his pistol into its flailing torso—bullets vaporizing against superheated rock. Madara advanced—boots crunching fused glass—Gunbai swirling like a dancer's ribbon. Each gesture carved spacetime: the Golem's left leg snapped upward in a brutal high-kick… crushing its own skull. Ribs imploded inward. A final, shuddering dip—kneecaps grinding to powder—before gravity released it. Ten thousand tons of fused granite and alien tech collapsed into a smoldering cairn. Madara lowered his Gunbai. Amaterasu winked out. Silence fell—heavy with ozone and powdered mountain.
"Next." Madara's voice scraped bedrock. Not arrogance. Checklist. Stark tracked eight more Golems scaling Rockefeller's corpse—Chitauri lances pulsing venom-blue. "Barnes. Distract the flankers." Barnes vanished—snow-camouflage cloak billowing like a ghost—vibranium arm already priming grenades scavenged from Leviathan wreckage. Frag-shrapnel sliced ozone seconds later—stone shrieks echoing as Golems turned. Perfect. Madara's Rinnegan never wavered from the prime target: a siege-engine Golem hefting a skyscraper-sized granite maul toward Stark Tower's trembling spire. Temporal static screamed—the Scroll's ward flickering. No time. "Stark. Draw its gaze." Tony rocketed upward—repulsors flaring cobalt-bright—straight into the monstrosity's eyeless face. "Hey Rocky! Enjoy hell!" Incendiary rounds peppered its brow—worthless against stone, but brilliant as a flare. The Golem reared—maul lifting—chitauri veins blazing fury.
Madara pivoted—boots grinding Central Park's phantom grass into fused glass. Not aggression. Alignment. Wind whipped Gunbai ash into cyclones. Barnes' explosions lit the eastern flank—geysers of shattered dolomite. Stark danced cobalt death inches from crushing stone. Madara inhaled—nosebleed sharp with powdered quartz. This demanded precision beyond Shinra Tensei's brute wave. Finn-Madara's fusion crystallized: fracture the kinetic chain. Let gravity shred it. His hand lifted—slow, deliberate, palm open skyward. Rinnegan rings contracted—cosmic gyroscopes locking onto the Golem's elbow joint, wrist pivot, maul's center mass. Stark's armor alarms screamed proximity—twenty meters from impact. Barnes emptied his pistol—slide locking back. Time dilated. Copper taste flooded Madara's mouth.
"Shinra Tensei." The words felt detached. Surgical. Gravity twisted—not outward, but inward—hyper-focused singularity anchors hammering the Golem's armature. Elbow ligament (quartz-fused chitauri tendon) snapped. Wrist servo (hydraulic piston grafted to living rock) imploded. The granite maul didn't fly—it folded—compressed into itself by collapsing spacetime, stone screaming as it compacted into a dense sphere the size of a subway car. Momentum arrested. Utterly. Stark banked hard—repulsors scorching air—as the sphere hovered, impossibly, where the maul once threatened annihilation. Madara's palm clenched.
A sound like mountains dying. The gravity-sphere detonated—not outward, but directional—viciously precise. Granite shrapnel screaming eastward like stellar shrapnel. Not at Barnes. Not at Stark. Through the gap Barnes' grenades tore in the flank. Through seven Golem skulls—puncturing quartz cortexes, shearing chitauri spines—before embedding deep in Rockefeller's spectral cliffside. Silence crashed. Powdered rock rained like gray snow. Stark landed hard—cracked lenses wide. Barnes lowered his smoking pistol—breath clouding frozen air. Madara lowered his hand. Gunbai untouched. "Regroup," he ordered, Rinnegan already scanning deeper shadows—where Zetsu's viscous laughter seemed to drip from shattered sewers. "The parasite retreats."