Thanos: I Killed Iron Man from the Start, and You Call That Saving the World?

The vibranium blood scabs in Thanos's palm have not yet dried, and fragments of Tony's nanotech armor are still embedded between his fingers. The System's cold "Merit +100" burns like a brand against the killing instinct the Titan race holds so dear.

"Save the world?" Thanos crushes the remnants of a shield beneath his feet. Metal dust and blood droplets splash across his bewildered pupils. When the System packages "killing the Avengers" as "pruning branches of causality," he sees the starving children of Titan overlapping with the defiant eyes of Stark in his final moments every time he snaps a neck.

With every skill he unlocks - "Vibranium Body," "Lightning Resistance"... - another shackle, carved by streams of data, appears beneath his purple skin. He stares into Hulk's furious green eyes and suddenly realizes that he is the hunting machine raised by the System. Those killings, touted as "balance," are merely sacrificial wounds carved into his soul by a higher dimension. When he throws his next punch, will he shatter his enemy's skull, or the last trace of humanity still alive within himself?

But in the end, he discovers... he really is saving the world.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.