After Schiller and Stark returned to the Galactus Engine, T'Challa smiled, patted Stark on the shoulder, and said, "Honestly, I used to wonder how our universe ended up where it is today."
"I always believed that humanity's inability to understand one another made it nearly impossible for us to pool our wisdom and strength, to truly work toward the same goal. Yet our universe almost managed it."
"Now it seems it wasn't that we wanted unity. We had no choice but to unite." T'Challa pressed a hand to Stark's shoulder and looked down at him over his eyes. "Some people are like moths drawn to a flame. Give them ten thousand chances, and they'll still fall for it."
Stark folded his arms and snorted coldly, clearly still upset. After a brief pause, Schiller wore a smile everyone present found rather familiar.
He covered his mouth with his fist and coughed lightly twice, then turned to Nick, who was rapidly typing on his phone.
Eddie craned his neck for a look and discovered that Nick was chatting in a group chat. The messages were flying by at an incredible rate, but there was no need to read them. Just looking at that sea of red and blue profile pictures made it obvious that this was Spider-Man's private group.
As Eddie watched long blocks of text race across the screen, his head began to ache again. Then a particularly distinctive black-and-white spiderweb avatar sent a short message:
"We've arrived in the target universe. Where's that unlucky bastard?"
Silk put down her phone, raised her head to look over the ruins of New York City, and let out a deep sigh.
She turned to see Peter from the Central Universe still fiddling with his pile of reagents. With no choice, she walked over,