“Later, I watched Tony fall from the sky in the middle of the desert, and that was how he appeared right in front of me,” Roger said calmly as he refilled Coulson’s coffee cup.
Then he gently shook the coffee pot, indicating that it was empty.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Roger. Can you guarantee that everything you’ve said is true? Hic—Sorry, I’m not… hic…” Coulson set down his now-empty cup, still clutching his recorder tightly.
He had drunk too much coffee and couldn’t stop hiccupping.
“I’m absolutely certain. Tony Stark personally told me all of this, after all. Alright, here’s the invoice worth three million dollars. Remember to transfer one million dollars to my account later.”
Roger smiled warmly as he shook Coulson’s hand and handed over an invoice covered in rows of zeros.
Coulson carefully put the invoice away, then asked in a rather embarrassed voice:
“Excuse me…”
“Where’s the restroom?” Roger pointed toward a corner with a smile.
As soon as Coulson left, Pepper found Roger and asked in confusion,
“What happened to that man who said he was from some kind of department?”
Roger smiled.
“I treated him to a cup of instant coffee. He finished it and went back.”
Pepper blinked in confusion.
What does that even mean?
But Roger simply waved and walked away.
Roger didn’t follow Tony to the giant arc reactor at Stark Industries to watch the show unfold.
Instead, he returned to the seaside villa ahead of time and began planning the destination of his next exploration.
“System, ten draws. Let me see your limits. Come on, golden light!”
[You have consumed ten Dimensional Crystals and performed ten draws. (10/100)]
[You obtained common rewards: …]
[Congratulations! A special exploration event has been triggered!]
[You have arrived in the world of One Piece. You are now a pirate hunter.]
[Your arrival point is Drum Island, a winter island covered in snow all year round.]
[You appear in a forest and see a strange deer sniffing around.]
[You approach the deer, frightening it away, and pick up a peculiar fruit from the ground.]
[Reward obtained: Human-Human Fruit.]
[The world’s timeline has undergone a special disturbance. Exploration terminated.]
Holding the oddly shaped fruit in his hand, Roger fell into deep thought.
“The Human-Human Fruit? Chopper’s?”
Just then, JARVIS’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Mr. Roger, a transfer of one million US dollars has been deposited into your account. The sender is unknown.”
That night, Tony returned home with Pepper after leaving Stark Industries.
The moment they entered, both of them stared wide-eyed at Roger, who was shirtless and lifting weights. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Wow! Roger? Is that really you?”
“How did your body become this good?”
The two spoke in unison, their faces filled with disbelief.
Roger struck several bodybuilding poses with exaggerated flair, proudly showing off his muscles.
“It’s all thanks to training in the desert. Even I didn’t realize my talent was this incredible. Come on, touch my biceps. Aren’t they harder than steel?”
Late into the night, Roger remained in the garage with Tony, watching him tinker with coils and wires.
“You really spent three months searching for me in the desert, Roger?”
Tony never looked up, his attention focused entirely on the parts in his hands.
“To be precise, twenty-nine days, fifteen hours, and forty-eight minutes. If you hadn’t fallen from the sky, I probably could have rounded it up to a whole number.”
Roger lay sprawled on the sofa while Dummy used a massage tool to rub his head.
“I feel like you’re hiding something from me, Roger. How did you just happen to appear in front of me like that?”
Tony set down his tools and looked directly at Roger.
Roger didn’t even open his eyes.
“Come on, I saved your life. Do you know how dangerous it was sneaking behind that convoy? I almost got turned into a human pincushion by those bandits. Finding you was simply luck.”
“And besides, you should think carefully about who sold those weapons to the terrorists. I have a bad feeling about it.”
Tony fell silent.
With his intelligence, uncovering the truth would be easy.
But he resisted.
He didn’t want to pull back the curtain.
As long as Stark Industries stopped making and selling weapons, then everything would surely get better.
Tony Stark desperately wanted to believe that answer.
Yet he instinctively avoided the cruel truth.
“I’m sorry. I misjudged you, my brother.”
Tony’s voice was low.
A sense of confusion suddenly took root in his heart.
He found himself growing suspicious of everyone, building walls around his emotions.
Even though the steel heart in his chest beat powerfully, he still felt cold.
A chill born from lies was slowly spreading through him.
Only by immersing himself in machinery and invention could he forget everything.
Forget all his troubles.
Roger walked over and gently patted Tony on the shoulder.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. I’ll always have your back.” Get faster updates on g.com.
After saying that, he left the garage and returned to his room.
The garage fell silent once more.
Only the sounds of metal being hammered remained.
Back in his room, Roger let out a quiet sigh.
He had never expected things to feel this oppressive.
For the audience, these events had only been a few minutes of movie footage.
For him, however, they had been three full months of living inside a pitch-black cave.
Being a hero…
Was never easy.
“So, are you ready to become a superhero, Roger Stan Lee?”
Roger looked at his reflection in the mirror and whispered softly to himself.
But the person staring back from the mirror was no longer the overweight lackey who used to follow Stark around.
In those eyes…
A faint flame had begun to burn.
A flame called desire.
Time returned to the moments just after the press conference.
Tony Stark’s announcement that Stark Industries would shut down its global weapons division shocked media outlets around the world.
The world’s largest weapons manufacturer suddenly declaring that it would stop making weapons?
It sounded like a joke.
Amid the flood of news reports, two groups of people were deeply troubled by the announcement.
One of them was the bald man audiences had seen in the movie:
Obadiah Stane.
One of Stark Industries’ founding executives.
In the film, he was the mastermind behind Tony’s kidnapping.
He was also someone who genuinely wanted Tony dead.
Tony Stark stood in the way of his ambition to seize control of the entire Stark empire.
Only if Tony truly died could Obadiah rightfully inherit the colossal company he had coveted for decades.
Tony and Pepper both called him “Obie,” a warm and intimate nickname.
It showed how sincere their feelings toward him had been.
Unfortunately…
Obadiah had never felt the same way.