HOURGLASS

One

Charlie blinked and blearily opened her eyes.

Then all her senses suddenly kicked in. The nasty smell of copper was quite fresh in her mouth, which she tried to spit out. Blood. 

She was bleeding. 

From what?

Then it came back to her. 

They lost.

Her hand, which moments ago had been held by Thanos's large purple hand, closed. She looked down at herself, finding no dusting happening. Sitting up, she saw a crowd of people appearing. She immediately got up and started climbing up the building. 

"Costa, is there a Project New Arachnid laying around at the Compound?" She asked, then realized her mask was gone and therefore her AI couldn't hear her. "Great." she muttered. 

Suddenly, a ring of yellow light formed in front of her. She instinctively took a defensive stance, ready to punch the crap out of whoever was on the other side. A tall man poked his head through.

"Are you the one they call Hourglass?" He asked, and when she nodded but didn't move from her fighting stance, he chuckled. "Relax. I'm on your side. Save it for the son of a bitch who temporarily killed you."

He extended a hand out to her. Charlie took a moment to think. She was still trying to make sense of what was happening. "Where are you?"

The man stood back slightly, showing a menagerie of strange objects that told her literally nothing about where he was. "This is the Sanctum Sanctorum. You know, Doctor Strange?"

"Yeah," Charlie said hesitantly, cautiously lowering her guard. Her spider sense wasn't going off, so there wasn't anything about to kill her or put her in danger. "Where is the fight?"

The man said something but Charlie wasn't listening to him because at that moment, she turned her head to the side, looking at the horizon. Her sensitive hearing heard a very faint but very violent explosion from where the-

"Oh my god." Charlie muttered, then looked back at the man. "I'm in."

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Over the course of half an hour, the sorcerer, who said his name was Daniel, had gathered a diverse group of people; doctors, baristas, restaurant workers, even a man wearing a bootleg Mickey Mouse costume presumably from Times Square, into the Sanctorum. She watched as, one by one, they made a gesture with their hands and their civilian clothes seemingly vanished and their simple robes appeared in their place. Daniel himself was a pizza delivery man. 

Daniel looked at Charlie. 

"You ready to kick some space ass?" He asked while jokingly cracking his knuckles while wearing a tough guy face. Charlie smiled.

"You bet. The aliens won't know what hit them." She said, summoning her time warp to one hand. The raw time was barely visible so Daniel leaned in to get a better look.

"Your power is very impressive but be careful when you use it. If mishandled it could lead to dire consequences." Daniel said. "Time is not one to be meddled with. It can be a powerful ally but it can destroy you."

Charlie looked at her hand. The waves of time still rippled and danced about on it. Frowning, she experimentally extended her pinkie of her other hand towards it as Daniel continued. 

"When used on others they are temporarily paralyzed. But they have the potential to kill you if you use them on yourself for too long. I have a scientific background and I believe I may have a device that can help you by taking just a tiny bit of your powers away so they don't overwhelm you." Daniel explained.

"You, a pizza delivery guy, are a scientist who happens to have a device that can partially remove my powers so they don't get out of hand?" Charlie asked skeptically. "Seems a little too convenient, Dan."

"Convenient? I call it coincidence. The pizza thing is just my side hustle." Daniel said with a gleam in his dark eyes. Around them, the various sorcerors started to make orange portals that seemed to lead to the same place: a destroyed wasteland by a river.

Charlie looked in disbelief at the destruction ahead of her. She could see a large brute of a man who her muddled brain identified as Thanos in the distance. Some of the sorcerors started making their way into the portals.

"I'll think about the offer. But for now I'm pretty sure we can find a way to pass the time." Charlie said, seeing aliens around Thanos. 

"After you, madam," Daniel said, holding his arms to the side of the portal. Charlie smiled faintly and nodded before stepping towards it.

When she passed through, her long hair whipped around from the portal for a split second before falling back down once she got to the wasteland. She put on a determined face and balled her fists. Daniel summoned ornate orange shields behind her.

Not long after that all hell broke loose.