A couple of figures, one large and one small, descended from the sky, crashing heavily on the rooftop of a building, kicking up a cloud of smoke and dust.
One figure, clad in a red and blue suit, leaped up from the ground with caution, then stood perplexedly in the middle of the rooftop. Looking around, he realized that this wasn't the universe he was familiar with.
An angry yet somewhat immature female voice came from behind him: "I told you not to push me, not to push me. Now, are you happy? The teleportation went wrong, didn't it?"
Helen, fuming, placed her hands on her hips and glared at Spider Man in front of her. Spider Man scratched his head and said, "I was just trying to give you a hand. Who knew that would interfere with the transport? Besides, if you hadn't overeaten and gotten so fat, you wouldn't have been stuck during the teleportation."
The story traces back to after their journey to the Apocalypse Star ended.
Darkseid's army and the Green Lantern Corps were in a heated battle in the cosmos, and Helen, as Doomsday, naturally would not pass up such a grand buffet. She dived headfirst and began to gorge herself.
On the other hand, Shiller was organizing the list of Marvel characters that had come over. After gathering everyone, he started to arrange for everyone to go back to their own homes.
Those like Dark Strange or the Scarlet Witch, who had only their psychic selves transported over, were easy to deal with. Shiller had obtained some control over the Psychic_Battlefield, so he could simply kick them out of it.
However, the likes of Spider Man or Helen, who had their physical bodies transported, were more troublesome. They needed to return through the hole punched between the two worlds.
The portal that Shiller brought Strange through was created by Oblivion of Marvel, and the portal that the kids used to go to Karmatige Magic Academy was opened by Bruce by asking Lucifer.
However, these two portals were fundamentally different. The hole created by Oblivion is a real hole, like a tunnel from point A to point B. But the path which Lucifer put out is a converter, equivalent to converting file A into file B, then displaying it in Universe B based on the path information in file B.
Shiller didn't know the difference between these two paths, so he randomly chose one, specifically, the one created by Lucifer.
In his opinion, Lucifer's status was higher than Oblivion's, so it should be more reliable. But precisely because Lucifer's method was too sophisticated, it caused a bloated Helen to get stuck.
As we know, Helen was originally native to this place. She was whisked away to Marvel by Shiller when she was still an egg. After wandering around Marvel for a bit, she returned to the DC world.
When Helen was taken to Marvel as an egg, she went with Shiller to his world within the ring. She had become part of Shiller's code. Given that Shiller's fundamental code exists outside of these two worlds, the transition went off without a hitch, including for Helen.
When she returned to the DC World, although the door was opened by Yog, she still traveled through the tunnel from Oblivion. Because it's a basic physical passage, she did not get stuck.
But when Shiller was planning to send her back to Marvel, he chose the path from Lucifer. Lucifer's method was a bit too advanced. He needed to have system administrator access to carry out file decoding and editing.
Lucifer had set up an automatic helper program on this system administrator level to carry out these operations and was too busy looking for God to take notice.
When Helen entered the portal, the program began to run automatically. Then Helen's complicated history caused the program to fail.
In order to compile, reading is required, but reading the infinitely evolving Doomsday was a bit difficult for this program, let alone most of her evolutions were not completed in this world, making many parts of the file unreadable.
Originally, Helen was a native, her foundational code was of DC. But Doomsday's evolution in Marvel led her to carry a lot of files not belonging to this world, and she ate a lot of things in the DC World, which led to more redundant files.
Yes, it's a mountain of messy codes. While the helper program was trying to mine gold from them, Helen was stuck in the portal.
Spider Man was supposed to return after Helen. But he was impatient. Seeing that Helen was stuck, he thought she was in trouble.
Helen wasn't sure how she was stuck, she was checking her state when Spider Man reached out and patted her shoulder, wanting to ask what was wrong.
Helen was getting stuck due to her massive data. While the data was being read, a series of Spider Man's data was inserted, causing the program to go haywire.
Fortunately, Lucifer knew that cross-world teleportation was a life-and-death matter. At the critical moment, Lucifer appeared and halted the two people who were about to be randomly euqthrusted by the program.
Just like the saying 'Send Buddha to the West', since they had come this far and given that they were both still quite young, Lucifer decided to directly send these two to the universe where Shiller was.
Lucifer's own program had some problems, so he simply used the hole previously created by Oblivion. The biggest problem was that Oblivion anchored the exit in the Marvel universe on Shiller for safety reasons.
"Where are we?" Helen looked around the rooftop of the building, puzzled. "Am I back in New York? But why does it feel different? "
"This is New York, but..." Spider Man seemed to sense something, and walked towards the edge of the building. He cautiously looked down and happened to lock eyes with a zombie gnawing on a car owner.
"Ah!!"
Spider Man let out a loud scream, retreated a few steps, and fell to the ground. He rubbed his eyes through his mask, thinking he had seen wrong.
Helen approached with slight confusion, wondering what had scared Spider Man. She walked to the edge of the building as well, and screamed the instant she looked down.
"What's going on??? A zombie siege?!"
Helen's eyes widened as she watched the stumbling corpses below. She took a deep breath, then looked up at the identical sky above. After backing up a couple of steps, she tugged at Spider Man's arm. "Bad news, this isn't an illusion; we might have crossed over to a zombie horror movie scenario."
"No, it's not a horror movie." Spider Man leaped up from upright position; he swiftly turned his head towards the skyline and raised an arm pointing at a specific building, "Look there, Stark Building! This is a parallel universe that has encountered a zombie crisis!"
Following Spider Man's gaze, Helen spotted the familiar mark on the skyline. Just as she instinctively engaged her super sight for a closer look, she suddenly jumped and landed near the edge of the rooftop.
Spider Man was somewhat taken aback by her unexpected movement. He didn't react in time to understand what had happened, and neither did Helen.
Helen looked down at her own feet and then touched her eyes. Suddenly, a large pile of disordered files bubbled up from the depths of her consciousness.
"Damn it," she raised a hand towards Spider Man who was making his way towards her. "Don't come any closer. My control system might have a slight malfunction!"
Then, she bit her lip and cursed, "Who dares meddle in my world of consciousness? The basic instinct mapping is wrong!"
"Are you okay?" Spider Man asked with some concern.
"I... don't have any major issues." After checking the state of her mental world, Helen sighed in relief.
The files were intact, meaning the evolutionary capabilities she had painstakingly developed in the two worlds were not lost. However, due to the previous program malfunction, the mapping between control program and ability files were incorrect.
Simplest way to put it - it was like the steering wheel of a car breaking where turning it left makes the car turn right, and turning it right turns on the front lights.
Helen said to Spider Man, "I guess I'll have to stick with using my divine power for now. Also, you better keep your distance. If my evolved super strength goes out of control, you'll be smashed into the ground."
Spider Man recalled the massive creature he had once seen, which gradually overlapped with the cute little girl standing before him. He swallowed hard as an afterimage faded out from his mind.
Once again, Helen focused on Stark Building. This time she enhanced her vision using her divine power and saw two silhouette entering the building through the rooftop entrance. However, due to her late observation, she couldn't discern the features of the two individuals. Yet, instinct told her they seemed familiar.
Stark, having suddenly been plunged into darkness, back-pedaled with fright, and by chance crashed into Schiller who was descending the staircase.
The moment he made contact with Schiller, Stark felt like he had encountered boiling water. In more fear, he rushed into the darkness, only to be tripped over by an unseen object and fell to the ground.
Schiller walked casually into the darkness with light behind him. He stopped in front of Stark and the rooftop entrance closed with a "bang". All Stark could see were the scattered grey pupils in the darkness, flickering with a faint light.
Stark's throat tightened as he demanded from Schiller, "Who are you really? Where did you take Doctor Schiller? And where is this place?!"
"You should be quite familiar with this place," replied Schiller. "Isn't this your home?"
Stark abruptly stood up and backed against the wall. The line that could have been directly pulled from a horror movie made his heart sink.
"Please take a closer look around. This place is indeed your home. Mr. Stark, this is Stark Building."
Stark was taken aback. He looked around, and noticing the familiar experimental equipment, he let out a sigh of relief. This place seemed like a lab he had set up at the top floor, which he hadn't used in a while, hence it had turned into an equipment storage room.
But Stark wasn't at ease at all. He kept his eyes on Schiller, cautious as if Schiller was a wild beast, saying, "You still haven't answered my questions. Who are you? Where's Dr. Schiller and where are we?"
Schiller was just about to speak when Stark raised his voice: "And you didn't answer my final question! I asked, what happened to this universe! When I was falling, I saw zombies from the sky!"
"In that case Mr. Stark," Schiller nodded, "that's what happened. This is a universe full of zombies."
"Are you like a damn artificial intelligence or something?!" Stark shouted, "Why do all your statements sound like beating around the bush? Even Hammer Arms Industry wouldn't develop an A.I. this idiotic!"
"That's how it is." Schiller said with a light smile and stroked his umbrella, "I heard that you attempted a detox treatment on your esteemed doctor."
"As a surgeon myself, I am not averse nor do I fear medical treatments. I fully understand your good intentions, it's just that we have a misunderstanding in the method of treatment,"
Stark stopped again, sizing up Schiller, "Oh, I know who you are."
Then he wailed, "Really? Are all Schillers this petty? Did you guys get it wrong? That was a long time ago!"
"History does not change its weight because of its duration..."
"Don't give me that line!" Stark abruptly interrupted Schiller, "Time, place, people, motive, method! Say anything other than these and I'll accompany your talking with experimental apparatus playing a heavy metal soundtrack!"
"Mr. Stark, I believe you need to be a bit pati…"
"Check your group's chat history and you'll know I've never been a patient person! Hurry up! Believe it or not, in three seconds, I can make the world's most horrible noise with a round-bottom flask?!!"