37: A One

  Pietro was a simple man, born Italian and raised as a rancher. His life in the tryside was always straightforward and, in a sense, even a bit b.

  At some point, the monotony began to wear on him, and like any young man with desires greater than himself, leaving his home became tempting. He loo be something more, to explore other options.

  His father, of course, hadn’t been too pleased wheold him. There were arguments, fights, and shouting.

  “You o learn to appreciate what you have here, Pietro! Many men would kill for this, don’t you see?!” his father had said, pointing at their home. And like a fool, Pietro had ughed in his face.

  It wasn’t until ter, when the war began, that he uood his father had always been right.

  He wished he could apologize to him.

  “Hey! It’s your turn!” The words interrupted Pietro’s thoughts, snapping him back to reality. He quickly pulled himself together and oward his panion. The maurhe gesture, and sooro assumed his duty as one of the base guards.

  As he walked through the hive of activity that the pce had bee, Pietro couldn’t help but tighten his grip on the on in his hand, his bloodshot eyes carefully sing his surroundings.

  Joining the Italian army had never been his desire, but, as with so many things in his life, the choice had been beyond his real trol.

  Even so, he couldn’t pin too much. Uher, less fortunate bastards, one could say the cards had bee in his favor. Having a post as a guard, while not gmorous, was undoubtedly much safer than beio the front lines.

  Or so it should have been.

  “This should be good enough, right?” he muttered through ched teeth, looking around to make sure the area was clear enough.

  He had been told he o get as close as possible to the base where the team of the new iional anization called Sword was stationed, but that wasn’t as easy to aplish as some might think.

  The location, though close to the allied army base, had its own indepe security measures. If he were caught getting too close, things would undoubtedly go badly for him.

  “But it’s not like I have another choice,” he muttered to himself with a bitter ugh, letting out a long sigh.

  Swallowing hard, Pietro rummaged through his clothes until he finally pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it to reveal a very peculiar drawing.

  He didn’t know what it was or why “they” wanted him to do what he was about to do, but ohing he did know was that he couldn’t refuse.

  He had already lost enough thanks to this war. He didn’t want to lose anything else.

  “I’m sorry...” Somehow, he felt pelled to say it.

  Then he uhed his knife and looked at the palm of his hand. He hesitated for a sed but finally went through with it, letting the bde pierce his flesh, drawing a long line across his skin, and causing blood to drip out.

  “Damn it!” he grimaced at the pain but didn’t want to dey any longer. Kneeling dowudied the strange drawing on the paper, analyzing its position. Once he was fident he uood it well enough, he begaing a rger version on the ground using his blood.

  “Damn lunatics,” he cursed as his work slowly took shape.

  It wasn’t perfect, of course—Pietro was far from being anything like an artist—but his steady hand made the replie remarkably close to the drawing on the paper.

  He wondered if that was why they had chosen him and not someone else.

  When he finished and looked at what he had created, he couldn’t suppress a twist of uhin himself—a primal instinct telling him he should undo it, that he should stop it. But he was too much of a coward to do that. Instead, he stood up, ed his still-bleeding hand, and began to walk away, his steps growing faster with every moment.

  And with no ohere to witness it, the blood-drawn symbol began to glow in a sinister, ethereal shade of blue.

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  “It seems the time for our meeting has finally e, Captain,” The A Ohe guardian of the world’s safety, Master of the mystical arts, and the greatest danger John had ever faced.

  “I thought... you’d e sooner,” he admitted, rexing the defeance he had instinctively taken. He didn’t know how their voices were carrying across the vacuum of space, but that seemed irrelevant at the moment. No, the truth was that tless other questions began flooding his mind in rapid succession.

  Hearing him, the A One allowed a faint smile to touch her lips before her expressiouro its initial stoicism.

  “I sidered it. I should have done so the moment you set foot in this world. But I couldn’t...”

  Her words caused John to furrow his brow.

  “You know about me?” he asked, a tinge of uainty and doubt creeping into his voice despite his effort to suppress it.

  The A One shrugged and replied, “Not as much as you might think. I noticed your arrival, of course—after all, my duty is to prevent forces from beyond this world from affeg Earth. But this time, the situation has pletely overwhelmed me.”

  She then looked at him—not a normal gaze but one filled with open curiosity, as though she were analyzing something she could barely prehend.

  “I tried to prevent it, you know? Your existehe future I had foreseeure I knew was the corree—was suddenly corrupted, destroyed. And even with all my power, I couldn’t do anything to fix it.”

  Her voice carried a trace of exhaustion, as though recalling that moment was like reliving a grueling battle.

  And in every se had been. Correg the course of time, after all, wasn’t something that could be doh a siempt. No, erasing the existeanding before her had bee an impossibility that trapped her in a temporal loop for more years than she could t.

  “And is this atempt?” John couldn’t help but ask, his doubt evident. From the sound of things, it seemed she wasly a fan of his. If a fight was about to break out, he wasn’t sure he could win.

  “No... no,” she said, shaking her head. “I realized that trying to eliminate you is impossible. Perhaps it took me too long, but I finally accepted it. And when I did, many things ged.”

  The A Ohen shifted her gaze to Earth, as though looking at something priceless.

  “The future I onew ceased to exist, and even I have begun tet it. It’s not something that be helped, for this is beyond merely a temporal shift. And that... is more dangerous than you imagine.”

  John furrowed his brow at this expnation. He didirely uand it—he had never been a big fan of anythied to time. Hell, the most he knew about it was from watg 'Back to the Future' as a kid, and he doubted that was reliable information.

  As if sensing his fusion, the A One eborated further.

  “If you like, you imagi as a tinuous, unbroken line, with key points in time—events that, one way or another, must happen to preserve the universe’s stability.”

  The A One raised her hand, and with a fsh, a yellow light glowed at her fiip. She drew a straight line in the void of spad theed points along it that shone brighter.

  “Of course, it’s not as linear or strict as it may seem. This path tolerate some ges, as long as the events that are meant to occur still happen. But if things deviate too much, well... that’s when the brang begins.”

  As she said this, something happened. Lines upon lines began splitting off from a midpoint in the inal line, f a structure that grew like a tree full of budding branches.

  “Like... parallel timelines?” John asked. He had heard about that cept, though not i detail.

  The A One nodded.

  As much as he tried, John couldn’t see why this worried her so much. Sure, a new reality might be created, but was that really such a bad thing? As if reading his thoughts, the A One sighed.

  “You don’t uand, though it’s not your fault. Not many people know this, after all, but the universe, while stantly expanding, is not truly ‘infinite’ irictest sense of the word. This existence has a fi of fual resources, and with each fragmentation, those resources are ‘divided.’ "And if the growth isn’t trolled, it bees expoial aually unsustainable, leading to aable degradation and colpse of the fual structures that uphold reality."

  To demonstrate, the golden “tree” that had been growing before them began to colpse from the initial point mentation, as if the weight of its tless branches had bee unbearable.

  “Now I get it,” John said, a worried expression f on his face. Though it would be a lie to say he fully uood, he grasped the key points well enough to realize why this roblem.

  “Normally, I ehis doesn’t happen. While it’s impossible to trol every branch, it is possible to limit their o a sustainable amount—or at least, it was, until you arrived. Or more precisely... until 'it' brought you here.”

  John's eyes widened as an image rojected before him—the image of a figure he instantly reized, as that person was responsible for his arrival in this world.

  V

  "I have dealt with tless extradimensional invaders, dark and profane gods, creatures from unnameable existential pnes, but of all of them, that thing has been the worst," the A One's voice was deep yet tense, with a trace of fear buried within it.

  "He was here?!" John asked in arm, as he had believed V had simply abandoned him in this world without further interference. But then he remembered that letter and its tents, which he had not paid enough attention to.

  "He did more than just be here. Not only did he modify the future, but he also tampered with the past, pletely alteriy to his will. By the time I realized and tried to stop him, the damage was already done. In an instant, the universe branched into millions of parallel timelines a growing out of trol…”

  The A Ohen fell silent, her expression being distant and somber, her eyes clouding over as if recalling that moment brought forth an inexplicable mencholy.

  " you imagig the universe die before your very eyes?"

  No, John could not.

  The A Ohen ughed, a joyless and weary ugh.

  "It was horrible, so terribly horrible, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."

  John frowned; he could sehat the A One did not seem to be in the most stable state of mie her outward appearance. In her eyes, he caught a glimpse of something unfamiliar, something manic.

  But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.

  "I’m probably the only one who remembers what happened because I was the only one who survived—though not by my own skill. After that... well, I’ll let you see for yourself."

  She then turoward him, and only at that moment did John fully notice the most powerful mystical object the A One had hanging around her neck.

  The Eye of Agamotto.

  She performed a series of hand movements, activating the artifact so it would open. But when it did, he did not see a magnifit green light.

  Instead, only a gray, cracked gem was revealed.

  The Time Stone was broken.

  "How...!" John asked, pletely taken by surprise, disbelief clear in his eyes.

  The A One ughed again, then sighed and shook her head.

  "I don’t kly, but I have an idea. Do you remember what I said earlier? About how I tried to prevent your existehat was after that 'thing' finished what it came here to do. When it finally left you 'alone,' I thought... I thought that even if I couldn’t stop the first event, I could at least do something to keep everything on the right path," the A One grimaced.

  "Clearly, I was wrong." She then pulled out the gray, cracked gem, holding it between her fingers with visible regret.

  "When the universe came to its end and, in a manner of speaking, 'reset,' I didn’t realize at first that the only reason I survived was because of the Time Stos power protected me, but not without a price. The future, the past, and everything tied to them were forcibly altered, leading to its destru and the birth of something new. If I’m not mistaken, there must be aime Stone—a new one born from the ge, lost somewhere in the universe. Meanwhile, this one was merely a remnant, and its power was nothing more than the fragments of what was onething almost limitless..." She then ched her fingers, causing it to shatter into pieces like fragile crystal, which began to fall toward the p.

  "Fragments of power I used carelessly."

  At that moment, she had been so angry, desperate, and perhaps even a little unhinged.

  She wao sh out, to make the one responsible pay, but he was gone. So she directed her a something else—someone else.

  That’s how she found herself trapped in an eime loop. No matter what she tried to remove John from the equation, everything always ended up going catastrophically wrong one way or another. If he didn’t bee Captain America, humanity iably faced extin.

  If it wasn’t nuclear ons, it was Hydra. And if it wasn’t Hydra, it was some other force. But regardless of the means, the oute was always the same.

  It took time, but she eventually accepted that John had to take on the role. When she did and finally broke free of the loop, the Time Stone lost all its remaining power.

  And without its strength and prote, the A One began to fully ie into this new reality. Her memories of the previous universe started to blur, though irely. She still retained some fragments—mostly memories of the past—but her visions of the future, the events she knew 'should' happen... those began to fade away, as if they had been false from the very beginning.

  She no longer even remembered who was supposed to have been the real Captain America.

  Although knowing that no longer made much se this point.

  "But I didn’t e here just to tell you all this. I actually came because something else is happening," the A Oheuro the present and looked at John with a serious expression.

  "When I said I should have spoken to you earlier but couldn’t, I meant it literally. That 'thing' pced a sort of ‘prote,’ so to speak, around you. I don’t fully uand its nature, but its purpose is clear—to prevent me from helping you."

  Hearing this, John blinked in fusion. Why would V do that? He couldn’t uand it right away, but as he thought about it, a reason came to mind.

  "He wants me to do this alone, doesn’t he? Wait, no… that doesn’t seem right," he shook his head and spoke again, still somewhat unsure of his dedu. "If that were the case, I wouldn’t have been able to form my team. He wants me to do this the way Captain America would have do, doesn’t he?"

  The A One nodded.

  "More or less. I don’t know him as well as you do, so I ’t say much. But if there’s ohing I’ve learned, it’s that this ‘prote’ isernal. Its duratioo have a time limit, and if my calcutions are correct, that should be around the time the Sed World War ends."

  Huh?

  "If that’s the case, how are you talking to me now?" His question was valid. After all, as far as he khe war was still ongoing—unless Germany had somehow imploded while he was traveling through space or something.

  "It’s because you’re no longer oh," she replied simply, and John uood—or at least deduced.

  The prote seemed to be limited to events on the p and didend beyond it. Why this was the case escaped his uanding, but it robably because V didn’t anticipate him leavih while World War II was still underway.

  After all, his mission was for him to assume the role of Captain America during the war and do it "better," so to speak—something obviously impossible to achieve off-phere would be no reason for him to leave Earth unless he wao be dragged to hell for failing.

  A fate that was clearly not part of his pn.

  "I see. It seems this whole situation is more plicated than I initially imagihank you for telling me."

  He hadn’t thought his arrival in this world would bring so many sequences and ges. In some ways, he felt a little guilty, but not overly so. What was done was done. All he could do now was move forward and fulfill his role as it had beeablished.

  "Maybe you'll take back yratitude when I tell you the mess you've gotten yourself into," her words made John, who had just started to rex, tense up once again.

  "When I sensed you leavih, I decided to speak with you immediately to warn you. Hydra… or rather, the Red Skull, is dabbling with forces he doesn’t uand—or perhaps he does but simply doesn’t care. The point is, he’s begun using the power of the Tesseract to tact dark beings, primordial forces that could ultimately destroy the world. And while it is my duty to stop such threats, you now know I ’t interfere."

  The Sorcerer Supreme, protector of Earth, master of the mystic arts, reduced to watg helplessly from the sidelines.

  Anyone aware of her immense power would have been utterly horrified to withis.

  And Joh because that was exactly how he felt.

  "Well... shit," John could only mutter as he pihe bridge of his ightly, w how he was supposed to deal with this.

  Although he had gained new powers, it was ohing to hit something hard enough until it gave way, but dealing with mystical beings? From other dimensions? That required more than just brute force, and ah a bit of "on sense" would know that. John had never po face such threats, so at this moment, he had no idea what to do or how to prepare.

  He was freaking Captain Ameriot freaking Dumbledore!

  How was he supposed to fight beings like these if, for example, his eurned out to be a damn ghostly entity capable of being intangible and possessing people to fight?

  And that was just a cheap example. The beings the Red Skull nning tain with were probably far worse. .

  Or at least that's what he imagined, because of course, his damn brain decided to start being paranht now, juring up the worst possibilities.

  He swore to God, if he had to face fug Cthulhu, he'd make V pay for it, even if it was the st damn thing he did.

  Seeing his , the A One sighed and turned her gaze back to Earth.

  She herself had beeremely stressed since being forced into this situation.

  "Is there really nothing you do? What if you teach me a few things ive me some talisman or ented artifact?" John asked suddenly, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  The A One smiled faintly before shaking her head.

  "If it were that simple, why would this be a problem? If I give you anything—a talisman or an artifact—the prote will re useless the moment you return to Earth, at least until the war is over. Oher hand, while teag you is an option, time is not on my side this time. By the time I finish instrug you ihe most basicepts of the mystic arts, the Red Skull could already have annihited or quered the world."

  Of course, she couldn’t give him even a sliver of hope, could she? John thought bitterly, but then his eyes lit up as another idea came to mind.

  "What about other sorcerers? If you ’t help me, what if you lend me some of your apprentices?"

  Hearing his suggestion, the A One nodded.

  "That idea had already occurred to me, but it won’t be as beneficial as you might think. While skilled, they ck the experiend strength I possess. Many would likely only serve as on fodder, and those who could truly make a difference would likely find themselves in a fierce battle and outnumbered at the same time."

  It wasly what John wao hear, but he supposed it was better than nothing.

  "The only option you have to prevent this battle from being the end of humanity is to end it quickly. You must destroy Hydra before the Red Skull ma ienething strong enough to defeat you. For now, he’s still testing the waters, probing some limits, but he won’t do so forever. So, we must..."

  The A One abruptly fell silent, cutting off her words as her brow furrowed deeply. Then, an expression of disbelief formed on her face.

  "You must leave!" Her urgent voice startled him, But before John could ask what was happening, she moved her hand in a circur motion and in the emptiness of space, a portal began to open before them.

  Seeing a demonstration of real "magi person was incredible, but when John saw the image oher side, his pupils shrank to the extreme, and without a sed's hesitation, he dashed through the portal at full speed.

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  Note:

  Well, well, this chapter took a while because it was very difficult to write! Probably one of the chapters that has been the hardest for me to e up with and pn, to be ho. But finally, after a great effort, I mao finish it in a way that makes me feel satisfied.

  Of course, it’s not perfect, but I think it’s det enough.

  So… you know the drill! ent a me know what you think—I’ll be reading your feedback closely. ;D

  If you want to support me you do it through my Patreon ( patreon.maCruzader )