By the math, Joey had spent less than ten minutes crossing the portal into the Inheritors' universe and bringing the baby back.
So why, in that brief span of time, had the Earth of Universe 2099 become riddled with massive spacetime fissures that looked like shattered pieces of a mirror?
Lowering his voice, Joey leaned toward Tony's helmet and whispered:
"Don't tell me our dimensional jump caused this?"
Questioning yourself first wasn't exactly a healthy habit, but at the moment, the only unstable variables anyone could think of were the two of them.
"Impossible. I used the same portal technology as those Spider-Men."
Tony refused to take the blame.
The only possible flaw he could think of involved Leopardon—or rather, the possibility that the Marvel's internal systems were incompatible with the portal technology.
"At the very least, probably, maybe... there's a sixty-seven percent chance this has nothing to do with us."
Crack—
The fissures in the sky expanded further.
The damaged spacetime structure was rapidly losing stability.
Brilliant shards of dimensional debris rained down from above, refracting scenes that did not belong to this universe.
Joey's sharp eyes immediately noticed both that phenomenon—and what lay beyond the cracks.
Beyond them stood countless robots packed together like a swarming colony of ants, massing their forces and preparing to invade.
"We just ran into that other thirty-three percent!"
Throwing out that remark, Joey shot into the sky.
His eyes blazed, unleashing a sweeping heat vision that carved across the sky. Before anyone could react, the entire vanguard force attempting to enter the universe was melted into slag.
It accomplished nothing.
A second wave of robotic soldiers immediately filled the gap, pouring through the ever-expanding spacetime breach.
Joey fired another burst of heat vision.
The energy beam—powerful enough to incinerate all of New York—was stopped by an invisible magical barrier.
The crimson beam splashed against the defensive array, sending green ripples across its surface before being completely absorbed.
Then, behind that shield, the sea of robots parted.
The metallic tide split down the middle to make way for its master.
A crimson hood and cape.
Golden full-body armor.
A metal mask that even Joey could not see through, leaving only a pair of eyes exposed.
Had the color scheme been green robes and silver armor, it would have been Doctor Doom's classic appearance.
But the red-and-gold palette proved this was someone else entirely.
More importantly, Joey recognized those eyes.
"It's you!"
His words had not even finished leaving his mouth when his fist arrived first.
A punch traveling faster than sound smashed toward the armored figure.
Faced with the Kryptonian's assault, the so-called Doctor Doom merely willed his defenses into motion.
The rippling lights surrounding the barrier instantly reversed direction.
The heat vision energy it had absorbed moments earlier was amplified and reflected back at twice the speed.
Looking down at Joey, who had been forced back and sent crashing toward the ground, the armored man calmly denied the accusation.
"No. I am Victor von Doom. Doctor Doom."
Tony Stark, arriving a moment later, caught Joey's smoking body after the reflected heat vision had roasted him.
He looked irritably at the interdimensional visitor whose armor shared the exact same color scheme as his own.
"You know Stark Industries trademarked the Iron Man design, right? Did you even pay the licensing fees before copying it?"
Doctor Doom teleported in front of him in a flash.
"What? Planning to send me a cease-and-desist letter?"
The ghostlike movement startled Tony so badly that he reflexively dropped Joey.
Through their helmets, Iron Man and Doctor Doom locked eyes.
And suddenly Tony remembered the prophecy Joey had told him about.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Because he knew those eyes.
They were the same eyes he saw every morning in the mirror.
Even worse, within those identical eyes, he saw something unfamiliar.
"Oh God..."
And he knew exactly what had happened.
""Time dilation.""
Doctor Doom and Tony Stark spoke the words simultaneously.
One of the risks of traveling the multiverse was that the moment you stepped outside your native universe, you effectively stepped beyond time itself.
The temporal dimensions of different universes were not always synchronized.
Just as Joey had gained additional time to solve an otherwise urgent crisis while operating in Tony's universe and its neighboring realities, thanks to the mismatch between their timelines and his own...
Tony had encountered the same problem.
The Tony of the present and the Tony of the future had both arrived in the same universe—the universe of Spider-Man 2099.
Iron Man exploded in fury.
"What did you do?!"
The moment he realized who the man was, an endless rage followed.
Without hesitation, Tony raised his arm and fired a high-energy repulsor blast, intent on killing him immediately.
Doctor Doom calmly shifted himself into another phase of reality with a spell.
The attacks passed harmlessly through his phantomlike form.
"Why the anger?"
"Damn it! You know exactly why!"
Tony's emotions remained completely out of control even after exhausting his first barrage of firepower.
"You're not me! You're just some alternate-timeline variant or something!"
"If believing that makes you feel better..."
Doctor Doom replied slowly.
The mask distorted his voice into a metallic, emotionless tone, making it impossible to tell what he truly felt.
"I am Doctor Doom."
The eyes were the windows to the soul.
From that brief exchange alone, Tony finally remembered what the darkness inside those eyes represented.
Whenever he returned from Constantinople to Stark Industries in New York...
Whenever he looked into a mirror...
He saw that same shadow.
A shadow that never disappeared.
Long ago, weapons manufacturer Tony Stark had never minded being called a merchant of death by reporters or third-rate commentators.
Because deep down, he always clung to one final shred of hope—that the weapons he produced were being used for the right reasons.
That illusion lasted until he saw weapons bearing the Stark Industries logo slaughtering his own country's soldiers and nearly killing him as well.
After Joey rescued him from the desert, Tony found himself speechless in the face of Joey's accusations.
At that moment, the last psychological barrier protecting him from the label merchant of death finally shattered.
It had taken Tony a long time to avoid being crushed by guilt.
Only after years of struggle had he managed to crawl out from beneath that shadow.
He stopped selling weapons and shifted Stark Industries toward clean energy.
Then he spent years trying to do genuine good, desperately searching for proof that he could be better.
Like helping Joey save his universe.
Now, staring at the man before him, Tony repeated his question word by word.
"What. Did. You. Do?"
The power output of all twelve reactors in his armor had already been pushed to their absolute limits.
"I won't ask a third time."
He realized something with terrifying clarity.
This future version of himself had undoubtedly committed something far worse than selling weapons that ended up causing massacres in developing nations.
Doctor Doom remained completely unmoved by the threat.
He knew perfectly well that his past self possessed no means of harming him.
Still, there was time.
Time enough to explain things to his younger self.
Just as someone had once explained them to him.
"Imagine the multiverse as a great tree. Every universe is merely one of its countless branches."
Behind him, endless waves of robots continued emerging from the spatial rifts.
Their formations stretched across the horizon like magical arrays, cutting through the moonlight itself.
"All I'm doing is pruning a few harmful branches."
The scans returned by Iron Man's armor revealed the origin of the machines.
There was no doubt.
They were exactly what Tony feared.
Amazo robots.
And not just a handful of them.
The number was so absurdly large that the armor's counting systems were beginning to malfunction.
With an army of Amazos on this scale, their master could practically accomplish anything.
Whoosh—
Doctor Doom's form flickered.
Joey's surprise attack struck nothing but air, as though he had punched straight through a hologram.
A bolt of magical lightning descended from the void.
It instantly disabled Iron Man's armor as it attempted to analyze Doom's phased coordinates.
"The man who crushes all evil, Takuya Yamashiro has arrived! Leopardon, ap—"
Before he could finish his introduction, Doctor Doom casually pointed a finger.
Another spatial rift opened.
Takuya Yamashiro and his Leopardon were swallowed whole and banished into the endless void.
Among everyone present, only Joey remained capable of contending with Doctor Doom.
Millions upon millions of crimson optical sensors lit up simultaneously.
The sea of red lights overwhelmed the holographic advertisements and neon signs of the cyberpunk metropolis below.
Cold metal consumed the skies above New York 2099.
The self-programming Amazo robots crackled and buzzed as they evolved.
Blocked by the magical barriers, Joey could not observe the microscopic changes taking place within the robots.
But there was a Kryptonian standing right in front of them.
What their adaptive programming would choose to imitate was obvious.
[I've recalculated the coordinates of the phase he's hiding in. His intangibility won't work against you anymore. Shall I take over?]
The original Ultraman's voice echoed in Joey's mind.
Joey immediately rejected the suggestion.
Instead, he pulled out a Kryptonite ring glowing with emerald light.
"I don't care what you're trying to do. Leave this universe. Now."
At least Kryptonians had a weakness.
Kryptonite could keep them in check.
But an army of Amazo robots capable of copying Ultraman's physical traits?
Joey couldn't even begin to imagine how anyone would deal with that.
Doctor Doom examined the Kryptonite ring with interest.
"Interesting. So this is why I suffered a failure once."
He paused.
"No. Why I will suffer a failure."
With a simple command, he ordered the Amazo robots to halt their adaptation toward Kryptonian abilities.
At the same time, a far more dangerous idea took root in his mind.
His gaze settled upon Joey.
For the first time, he asked a question that neither his past nor future self had ever voiced.
"Tell me, Joey."
"Do you believe in fate?"
"I believe in my fists!"
Now immune to Doom's phasing trick, Joey launched his attack instantly.
His fist smashed directly into Doom's face.
But instead of striking flesh, he heard the sound of shattering glass.
Crack—
The space before him fractured like a mirror.
When the shards settled, Joey discovered that he and Doctor Doom now stood on opposite sides of the broken reflection.
Separated.
Isolated.
Trapped.
"AAAAAAAH!"
Nearby, Iron Man screamed as his downward fall suddenly became an upward ascent.
The entire region's gravity—and seemingly every physical constant—had been twisted and inverted.
"I've got you!"
Joey grabbed Tony before he drifted away.
His biofield rapidly adjusted to the altered gravitational orientation while he searched for an escape route.
On the opposite side of the mirrored dimension, Doctor Doom extended both hands.
Then he pushed.
The weight of the entire space itself came crashing toward them.
"JARVIS! Activate the backup power supply!"
Even without functioning sensors, Tony could tell with his own eyes that remaining trapped here would end very badly.
A Kryptonian might survive having an entire dimension dropped on his head.
Tony Stark definitely would not.
One hit like that would leave him either dead or crippled.
Fortunately, when he had installed teleportation technology into Leopardon, he had also built a temporary relay-mapping system into his own armor.
Tony grabbed Joey's arm tightly.
"Hang on, Joey—activate emergency teleportation!"