Marvel & DC: Nexus Breach

"Good evening, everyone."

"I'm Eddie, special correspondent. Stark Industries' recent decision to shut down its weapons division has triggered military unrest in several developing nations. Reactions are already pouring in from around the world..."

"We're attempting to reach Iron Man himself. Mr. Stark, if we can get a word, we'll bring you updates as soon as they come in..."

The broadcast kept rolling on the television, covering the biggest story in the country. Mason Hale barely heard a word of it.

His attention was fixed on the empty air in front of him. Something was there. Something no one else could see.

[Multiverse Invasion System]

[Unlock Progress: 99%]

The pale-blue progress bar had nearly reached the end. Only a sliver remained.

"My..."

"My lifeline is finally online."

Mason stared at the bar as it crawled toward completion, and for the first time in days, he let out a breath.

No one knew how terrified he had been after waking up in a fused superhero universe.

This was not a normal world. Superheroes were everywhere, villains were almost background noise, and half the people with power seemed capable of leveling a city on a bad day.

A world where destroying a planet barely qualified someone as a serious threat was not exactly friendly to ordinary people.

Doctor Manhattan. The Ancient One. Odin. Superman. Thanos.

And behind them, the cosmic entities that made even those names feel small: God, the Watcher, the One Above All...

This was not a place for someone without power.

To an ordinary person, life here was a lottery with terrible odds. A stray shockwave from a superhero fight could kill you before you even understood what had happened.

Once Mason realized where he was, he had barely dared to leave his apartment. Go downstairs for dinner, get caught in the fallout of some cape fight, and die in an alley? No, thank you.

Hell's Kitchen was right below him. "Public safety" was more of a rumor there than a guarantee.

Luckily, whatever force had thrown him into this world had not left him completely empty-handed.

He had a system.

"The Multiverse Invasion System?" Mason murmured. "Anything that calls itself a system should at least be useful, right?"

He pressed his lips together and watched the screen with open hope.

Whatever it was, this system was his only real chance. He was tired of living like one unlucky headline away from death.

The worst part was that he had arrived in his own body. There was no convenient dead predecessor to inherit from, no old bank account, no family fortune waiting in the wings.

The system had given him a random legal identity, a small stack of cash, and this apartment. The cash was almost gone after days of takeout. Without the apartment, he would already be on the street.

[Ding.]

[Unlock complete.]

[Multiverse Invasion System activated.]

The mechanical notification rang in his ear. The system was online.

"Multiverse Invasion System?" Mason's eyes narrowed. "Please don't tell me I'm supposed to invade the multiverse myself."

For one awful second, his mind went completely blank.

That had to be a joke. He could barely cross Hell's Kitchen without worrying about getting flattened. Invading other worlds wouldn't be ambition. It would be suicide with extra steps.

He was not a mutant. He did not have superpowers. He was not secretly built for this.

The panic lasted only until he read the explanation that unfolded before him.

Opening a Nexus Breach did not mean he had to go personally.

The system would randomly summon people from this world and send them into other worlds. Once inside, the summoned participants could trigger missions, complete objectives, and earn rewards.

Magic. Technology. Mystic arts. Divine weapons. Bloodlines. Immortality.

In some cases, they could even bring back treasures from the worlds they entered.

For Mason, that was the real prize.

Because every reward earned by a summoned participant would also be granted to him with a hundredfold amplification.

Mason drew in a sharp breath.

"So I get stronger while other people do the hard part?"

The fear that had been sitting in his chest vanished so fast it almost felt unreal. Excitement replaced it, bright and impossible to contain.

Other people would risk their lives on the front line. He would sit behind the scenes and collect the rewards. And every reward would be amplified a hundred times over. Hard to complain about that.

"And this is a superhero universe," Mason said, his thoughts racing. "A fused Marvel/DC world full of heavy hitters, multiverses, and people who break physics whenever they get serious."

In another world, the system might have been useless. If the local population was weak, then sending people into other worlds would barely matter. Without strong participants, every invasion would collapse the moment it met real resistance.

But here?

This world was packed with monsters, geniuses, gods, aliens, sorcerers, and walking disasters.

What should have been a drawback had just become the system's greatest advantage.

At the very least, finding strong candidates wouldn't be a problem.

Across countless realities, this place was close to the top of the food chain.

"So... lucky me?" Mason's mouth twitched.

[Ding.]

[System unlock complete.]

[Search for a world and open the first Nexus Breach?]

[Yes] [No]

The sudden notification cut off his thoughts. A luminous screen hovered before him, waiting for a decision. It felt less like a menu than an invitation.

"Of course..."

"Yes."

He was done living as prey. The choice wasn't hard. The instant Mason selected [Yes], every electronic screen on Earth went dark. Phones. Computers. Televisions. Billboards.

Every device tied to modern technology lost its signal at the same time.

Then the darkness lit up.

Strange words appeared across every screen. Species, language, or origin did not matter. Any intelligent being who looked at them understood their meaning.

Nexus Breach.

"Nexus Breach?" Nick Fury's expression hardened as the classified file in front of him vanished, replaced by the same impossible message. "What kind of organization thinks it can pull this?"

The phrase was not what bothered him. It was whoever was behind it.

"Coulson."

Fury's voice dropped into a hard command. "Trace the source. Now. Notify Hawkeye and have senior field agents on standby. If this is a hacker, I want them in custody."

His hand was already on the secure line.

Someone had broken into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal network as if it were a public kiosk. Whoever had done this possessed technology Fury wanted under his control yesterday.

"Talent like that doesn't stay out in the wild," he said, closing his fist. "Not if S.H.I.E.L.D. can help it."

...

On the West Coast, Tony Stark sat in a luxury villa with a glass of red wine in hand and one ankle resting lazily over his knee. Behind him, two curvy blondes lay sprawled across the enormous bed.

The floor-to-ceiling windows should have shown the coast. Instead, they had become a screen.

Images flashed across the glass in rapid succession: ruined worlds, immortals streaking across the sky, medieval sorcerers stumbling into miracles, the silhouettes of gods vanishing between bursts of light.

The images looked impossibly real, as if the window had stopped showing a view and started opening onto other realities.

Tony tilted his wineglass.

"Interesting trailer," he said. "High budget. Very dramatic."

A movie. That was the obvious answer.

Special effects. Viral marketing. Some studio's attempt to make the internet lose its mind.

What else would it be?

It was the twenty-first century. No one could seriously expect him to believe in magic, gods, and other worlds just because a screen told him to.

"Sir," JARVIS said, his calm synthesized voice filling the room, "after five thousand two hundred and sixty-eight separate checks, I detect no evidence of video editing."

Tony's smile froze. JARVIS paused for half a beat.

"The footage appears to be real."

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