"The danger's passed for now. The captain just sent word that he was attacked this morning and only woke up in the suburbs an hour ago."
"Agent Rumlow and the others who were supposed to take custody of the evidence related to Loki were also attacked by unknown assailants. None of them are in danger of dying."
"Okay."
Tony Stark drew a deep breath and nodded. Looking at the wreckage all around him, he had a rough idea of what had happened.
If his universe was the one in the fourth Avengers film—the universe where the Avengers traveled back in time to borrow the Infinity Stones and created a branching timeline—
Then he had screwed up the normal course of events from the very beginning.
"It started at that awful barbecue place. They were already here by then."
The Tony, Ant-Man, captain, and Hulk who had come from the future had arrived in New York while the Avengers were assembling to fight the Chitauri army.
They had been watching from the shadows all along.
Without the Chat Group, five days ago, after that barbecue, he would have started cleaning up the aftermath with the Avengers.
Normally, he should have handed over the Mind Stone scepter that day, while the future Avengers secretly made their way to Stark Tower.
Then his future self would have had Ant-Man pull the plug on his arc reactor, setting off the chain of mishaps that let Loki pick up the Cosmic Cube.
But everything had gone wrong from the start.
The moment he got the Chat Group, he had returned to Stark Tower and found an excuse to postpone everything that came afterward.
From then on, those Avengers from the future had known this timeline differed from the history they remembered!
He had no idea