Chapter 1
"This planet is nothing. Take me instead," Gene Khan proclaims heroically. He's standing in a huge arena three times the size of the coliseum surrounded by Makluan aliens.
The Makluan overlord turns his-uh-head? "That was heroic and stupid, half-breed. Perhaps I will keep you as a pet after I eradicate all life on this planet," the overlord muses.
"No! I mean no, uh, your lordship," Gene wheedles. "I'll do anything to save my planet, anything!" He desperately takes a fighting stance, weight evenly distributed throughout his body. He is still in the arena, thousands of the creatures watching him.
"Anything, anything? Well what do you think?" The monster turns to the people, 'face' in a bemused expression. There are shouts from the crowd, some for dissection, decapitation, electrocution, and generally unpleasant ways to end the young (not-completely-)human's life.
"We should hold a competition every other cycle," one particularly nasty alien addresses the ruler. "Whoever comes up with the best torture that cycle wins the boy for the coming cycle. Only rules would be no killing him, otherwise every Makluan can take out their frustration on him for a whole cycle for a chance to have him as their own punching bag. What do you say, my lord?" he asks.
"Accepted," the Makluan emperor smiles. Gene holds his ground, but his expression loses its steady calmness. "What do you say, Halfling? A cycle would be 4 human days, the amount of time our sun circulates my planet. I shall be judge of this competition. I'll judge by his screams." The overlord cackles.
Gene says nothing, contemplating the point of his life now, a torture toy for s&m hungry aliens. If it saves the planet, he sighs to himself. Before he can speak, he gets a small blast from the BlueBurst ring© (yes, he did name the rings). It's a small blast, but it hurts more than iron man and his little brigade's blasts combined.
"I asked you a question, slave!" Another blast. "Oh, and if you try to escape, you can say goodbye to your little planet. This includes suicide. Now answer, boy!"
"Yes, I surrender myself to your torture," Gene says defeated. He gets hit again, this time by a longer and higher powered blast from FiraBlast©. Instantly understanding, he sarcastically gets down on one knee and bows, saying "Yes, one and only ruler." Honestly, life would not have been much different under his stepfather Zhang. All the prostrating and submitting to whatever abuse the man decided to inflict him with. He honestly thought Zhang got a rise from seeing him on his knees. His response was perfect, which annoyed the supreme whatever into blasting Gene again. 'yay for me,' Gene thought as his body spasmed in pain. 'hip freaking hooray.'
"You belong to me, slave-boy. And whoever wins you. But ultimately me. Our planet Maklu-IV is the proud torture chamber of Thanos and his Chitauri army. (Maklu-IV is not responsible for the death of intended victim. If said victim dies, we can offer a cryogenic-ally frozen slave from a variety of galaxies for different prices. All torture materials are sold separately.) You will stay in the slave chambers or wherever your masters have you stay. I will check on you sporadically and have any amputated limbs or organ losses healed every night. I wish you an unpleasant time. Now get out of my sight!"
Gene hurries off, head bowed, into the room the warriors had come from. As the triply-barred door came down, he could feel a certain sense of foreboding. 'I wonder what could cause that,' he thinks sarcastically. A guard had followed him into a large hallway. The spaceship had an ancient yet extremely futuristic architecture to it, limestone walls embedded with intricate glowing patterns. Gene doesn't have much time to speculate as he is thrown into a surprisingly large and well lit cell. It looked more like a classroom than a prison cell. It was empty except for some chains on the walls, pods containing some poor frozen humanoids, and two other chained creatures who were having an argument. After his guard chains him(wrists, ankles, and midriff-they were taking no chances), he tries to pay attention to the disagreement around him. Neither of the life-forms seem to notice him.
"This is all your fault." Grumbles a pissed off Makluan. The chains rattles as he brings up his hands for emphasis.
"My fault! You're the one who brought me here, mate. If you weren't an idiot, youd've seen that I wasn't the bloke you were looking for. Then neither of us would be here! Ever heard of surveillance on your target?" The speaker is a pale, tall, thin, weirdly dressed man. He is wearing a black and green leather outfit and a huge silver reindeer helmet. He has dark hair that reached his shoulders.
"How was I supposed to know we were in a different dimension. You looked just like the guy in the picture. Why would you be wearing the garb of an Asgardian prince, Loki!" The reptilian monster responds.
"It's Tom first of all, and second of all, I'm a bloody actor! That's why I was dressed up as the character you were looking for. You think if I was really Loki I'd come quietly with the stupidest bounty hunter this existence has seen, Bob!" Tom retorts.
"I told you not to call me that," whines-yes, whines the Makluan named Bob. "It's Bobliskserpa'chchchchsssser! Bobliskserpa for short." He sniffs. "There's another human in here, but he is half Makluan."
"Very, astute, Bob. Tom/Loki, I am Gene Khan, last of the Khans. I presume this ship can travel through dimensions. Have you an iron man in your dimension, Tom?"
"Robert? In my dimension, we made a movie about a superhero group and I was the villain, Loki. Robert Downey Jr. is the actor who plays Tony Stark."
"So the fool managed to be a superhero in more than one dimension. What about Pepper Potts? Is she a crazy energetic agent of shield?"
"I have watched the Iron Man movie. Pepper is Tony's secretary turned CEO turned girlfriend. I suppose she must be energetic to put up with Tony's crap, but in what dimension is she crazy?"
Gene narrows his eyes. This Pepper sounds boring. He started to miss Pepper and wondered where she was.
A guard came by and said "lights out, literally," zapping Bob and Tom into sleep. He set his zapper-thingy on low for Gene to prolong the pain and whispered " see you at the torture-off, slave" into Gene's ear (and actually licked it!) before suddenly raising the power of the beam. His last thought was wondering what Pepper was doing now.
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Meanwhile at the Hall of J-Avenger's Tower:
"Tony look at what's happening," Bruce says. "Through crazy-author science, a dimension traveling spaceship is giving us memories that never happened. Basically, we're having memories from an alternate dimension. I'm remembering a smart hulk and being in control of him. Amazing!"
Tony looked up. "Wow, that Pepper. And here I thought she couldn't get any hotter." he sighed dreamily.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen Steve was staring open-mouthed at the microwave. "Ah the wonders of modern technology. Hup hup hup." The microwave started smoking and exploded in his face. "Med booth for me, hup hup hup." He said, and went to treat his blackened face.
"Let me get this straight, the parallel worlds collided and now we have new memories! That's so cool!" A now red-haired Pepper exclaimed as she entered the room. "I remember a Gene Khan, you know, the Mandarin. The last thing I remember was that he sacrificed himself to save us from invasion or something. I wonder if he's even still alive. I know!-"
"-You're making that face, Pepper. I don't like that crazy-plan face" Tony said.
"We have to save him! Who knows how time goes in different dimensions! I hope he isn't dead, or evil, or crazy, or..." She stopped talking when her voice lost the energetic tone and broke. Tony hugged her.
"Fine, we'll save him 'cause we're the good guys. But I don't have to like it. I'm setting up a Makluan energy reading signal. Huh, they popped over here for a while yesterday." Tony flicked through some holo screens. Suddenly there was a crash as some windows broke. "Thor! Doors exist for a reason!" whined Tony.
"'Tis indeed I," thundered the huge god. "I've come with grave news. Loki has been kidnapped from the Asgardian prison. We must rescue him!" His face had that adorable sad puppy look to it. He widened his eyes.
"Great, now I have to rescue TWO people I don't like, just great!" Tony explained to Thor all of that stuff authors are too lazy to rewrite.
"A rescue it shall be! Let us assemble, avengers!"
"Hey, you just stole and botched MY line. Look at what you started, Cap!" Tony whined again. "Avengers Assemble!"
Clint and Natasha joined them. They were holding hands, which for them meant "I love you more than life itself".
"let's rescue our frenemies from the hands of our enemies!" Tony said unenthusiastically.