Tony cleared his throat.
“Hey, man.”
No reaction.
“Can you hear me?”
Tony raised his voice.
The rider was still staring into the crater, even pulling out his phone to take pictures.
Frowning, Tony floated in front of him, face-to-face.
“Hey!”
The rider finally looked up.
Their eyes met.
Time froze for two seconds.
“AAAHHH—!!!”
A blood-curdling scream pierced the night air.
The rider scrambled backward on his hands and knees, flopping onto his butt and pointing a trembling finger at Tony.
“G-G-G-Ghost…”
“I’m not a ghost,” Tony tried to explain.
“I’m just experiencing…
a temporary separation of soul and body.”
“Stay back!”
The rider scrambled backward with all four limbs.
“I quit weed!
I swear!
I quit last month!
I didn’t mean to have these hallucinations!”
Tony rolled his eyes.
Looking at the rider’s terrified expression, a prankish idea popped into his head.
His soul form intentionally flickered beneath the moonlight, spreading the icy-blue chill around his body.
The cold touched the ground, condensing into a line of icy text:
HELP
The frozen letters floated up and spun around the rider.
“AAAAHH, the words are flying!” The rider curled up, clutching his head.
“Mommy, I wanna go home…”
“Stop.” Tony drifted in front of him, the chill carving fresh letters on the ground:
PHONE
The rider froze, looking at the words, at Tony, and then at the dismembered body in the crater.
His brain finally caught up.
“You…
you want me to call someone?”
Tony nodded.
“Call who?”
Tony carved Pepper’s phone number, adding a sentence:
SAY “TONY SHATTERED, NEXT TO SUBURBAN ROUTE 47”
Trembling, the rider pulled out his phone, his hands shaking so violently he misdialed three times.
Finally, it connected.
“H-Hello…” His voice quavered.
“There’s a…
guy named Tony.
He shattered…
next to suburban Route 47…”
A two-second silence on the other end, followed by Pepper’s frantic voice: “Exact location?
Is there a fire?
Is he…
intact?!”
“H-He’s in pieces…” The rider was about to cry.
“But a blue ghost is making me call…”
“I’m on my way.”
The line went dead.
The rider looked at Tony, forcing a smile uglier than crying.
“I-I made the call…”
Tony nodded with satisfaction, floating close and condensing an eerie whisper in his ear with the cold aura:
“If you tell anyone about tonight…
I’ll sit at the edge of your bed every night and count your eyelashes.”
The rider rolled his eyes back and passed out cold.
Tony shrugged, floating back to the edge of the pit to wait for rescue.
Twenty minutes later, an Audi R8 sped up and screeched to a halt beside the pit.
Pepper scrambled out of the car.
Seeing the scene at the bottom of the crater, her knees buckled, and she had to grab the car door to keep from collapsing.
“Tony…?”
“Over here.”
The icy-blue soul floated before her.
Pepper gasped, but quickly composed herself.
Having experienced Devil Fruit powers and an undead boyfriend, her psychological resilience was vastly higher now.
“Are you…
okay?”
“Aside from looking like a jigsaw puzzle, I’m fine.” Tony pointed into the pit.
“Can you patch me together?”
Pepper looked down at the scattered limbs and took a deep breath.
She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers.
*Hum—!*
The pink spherical domain expanded instantly, widening to a three-meter diameter to cover the entire crater.
Inside the domain, every object shimmered with a soft aura.
“ROOM: Scan.”
Pepper closed her eyes as all information within the domain flooded into her mind.
The shape and position of every piece, the fracture planes of bones, the severed cuts of blood vessels…
“It’ll work.”
She opened her eyes, letting out a breath of relief.
With a thought…
The body fragments in the crater hovered simultaneously.
The left arm flew to the torso, the severed ends aligning with pinpoint accuracy.
Pink light enveloped the connection, bones, muscle, and skin healing at a visible rate.
The right leg detached from the tree and returned to position.
The head rolled back atop the neck.
Fine sweat beaded Pepper’s forehead, but her movement didn’t stop.
Her hands moved like she was manipulating invisible threads, steering every piece back into place.
Tony’s soul watched from the side.
He noticed that when Pepper stitched him together, the pink light penetrated deep into the wounds, not only rejoining tissues, but repairing cells at a microscopic level.
This was the synthesis of medical knowledge and Devil Fruit capability.
Five minutes later, the final wound healed.
The pink domain dissolved.
Tony’s intact body lay at the bottom of the pit, the Arc Reactor at his chest glowing steadily.
His soul form floated down and reentered the body.
He opened his eyes, gave a habitual cough, sat up, and stretched his neck.
“Flawless!” He flexed his wrist.
“Not even a scar.
Pepper, you should open a plastic surgery clinic.
You’d make a fortune.”
Pepper didn’t laugh.
She jumped down into the pit, walked right up to Tony, raised her hand…
*SLAP!*
She delivered a sharp slap across his face.
It didn’t hurt.
Tony felt no pain right now.
But it was loud.
“Are you insane?!”
Pepper’s voice quivered, tears finally spilling over.
“High-altitude icing is basic physics!
You charged up there without even finishing tests!
You think because you can’t die you can just court death whenever you want?!”
Tony froze.
Looking at Pepper’s bloodshot eyes and trembling shoulders, he suddenly couldn’t bring himself to utter any witty comebacks.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Pepper glared at him, then turned and climbed out of the pit after a few seconds.
“Get in the car.”
***
On the drive back, silence filled the vehicle.
Tony rebooted the main controller chip inside the armor wreckage, and JARVIS’s voice echoed through the car speakers:
“Sir, I have recorded the data from three seconds prior to the crash.
Analysis indicates ice accumulation exceeded expectations by 247 percent.
I recommend optimizing the anti-icing coating and…”
“Shut up!” Tony snapped irritably.
“You failed to give me an advance warning about the icing risk!”
“However, I alerted you three times, sir, and you responded with ‘continue climb.'”
“…I was testing your obedience!”
Pepper rolled her eyes beside him.
Glancing at the glowing reactor on Tony’s chest, she suddenly asked, “When I was stitching you back together, I ‘saw’ a blue energy inside your body…
protecting your soul from dispersing.
Is that a fruit ability?”
Tony paused.
Looking inward, he indeed discovered that the Revive-Revive Frost had undergone a new change after his soul returned.
The previously scattered energy now seemed to possess a connection with his soul, acting like a protective membrane.
“Looks like it.”
He clenched his fist, a wisp of icy-blue cold emanating from his fingertips, condensing into a small spectral outline in the air before dispersing.
“Astral projection…
isn’t just for staying alive?”
“We’ll research it when we get back,” Pepper turned the steering wheel.
“Right now, shut up and rest.”
“But I don’t need to sleep—”
“Shut.
Up.”
Tony dutifully closed his mouth.
***
At the same time, the Afghan Desert.
The sandstorm had just cleared, and a Ten Rings patrol unit was advancing across the rocky desert.
The squad leader in front raised a hand.
“Halt.”
He hopped off the vehicle and walked over to a sand dune.
A twisted piece of metal protruded from the sand.
Clearing away the sand…
More metallic parts came to light.
A crude outer shell, heavy joints, and half-melted flamethrower remains.
“This is…” The squad leader’s eyes went wide.
“That steel monster!”
A few weeks ago, Tony had broken through their siege and blown up half their camp in this very suit.
“Quick!
Dig it up!” He gestured excitedly.
“Find every last piece!
Not a single component left behind!”
His men set to work digging.
Two hours later, the major components of the Mark I were cleared out and loaded onto trucks.
The squad leader pulled out a satellite phone and dialed a number.
“We found it,” he lowered his voice.
“The steel monster’s carcass.
It’s smashed up, but many parts are still usable…
Yes, we can replicate it.”
A deep chuckle came from the other end: “Excellent.
An extra bonus will be wired to your account.”
“Thank you, Boss!”
The trucks drove off into the night, kicking up clouds of dust.
Shortly after they left, deep within the sand heap, a micro-camera flickered with a red light.
***
4:00 AM, Dragon Pavilion backyard.
Shaun Vance stood bare-chested under the moonlight, practicing Iron Body.
His muscles tightened, his skin taking on a bluish-gray hue.
He raised a hand and chopped down against his own arm.
*Thud!*
A dull thud like striking solid wood.
Compared to his previous localized hardening, he could now achieve full-body hardening.
However, he still couldn’t move while in a full-body hardened state.
[Ding!]
A system prompt echoed in his mind.
[Revive-Revive Fruit Synchronization Update: 42% → 55%]
[Ability Branch Progress: – Undead Call: 3% (Unactivated) – Revive-Revive Frost: 18% → 26% – Will of the Dead: 35% → 48% – New: Astral Projection (15%), Soul Frost Shaping (8%)]
[Warning: Synchronization target experienced “Deep Shattering-Reassembly” event.
Ability development rate accelerated.
World Line Fluctuation Rate +5%, Cumulative: 20%.]
Shaun Vance broke his stance and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
He looked toward the western sky, as if he could see that massive crater in suburban California.
“Shattered to pieces and still put back together…” He chuckled softly.
“The Op-Op Fruit and Revive-Revive Fruit really are a match made in heaven.”
Turning back into the house, he glanced at the calendar on the desk.
It was May 2008.
According to the “original plot,” Iron Man should officially debut in a few weeks and take on Iron Monger.
But now, Tony had become an undead armor, Pepper was a surgical master, and Obadiah had gotten the Arc Reactor ahead of schedule…
“It’s a total mess now.”
Shaun Vance laid down on his bed and closed his eyes.
The system panel expanded automatically, displaying the current synchronization list:
**Tony Stark (Revive-Revive Fruit): 55% Pepper Potts (Op-Op Fruit): 12% Carl Miller (Mirror-Mirror Fruit): 7% Nick Fury (Possesses Chop-Chop Fruit, Unconsumed)**
“Who will Fury give the fruit to…” he murmured to himself, “or will he eat it himself?”
As his thoughts drifted, his consciousness gradually faded.
Outside the window, the New York skyline began to flush with the pale gray of dawn.