BOOOM BOOOM~ The concussive blasts rolled through like thunder, each one rattling the windows and vibrating through the floor beneath his feet.
Luca Quinn turned his head mechanically, his gaze falling upon the indescribable mosaics that had, moments ago, been human beings sitting beside him.
His brain throbbed with a pain that had nothing to do with the explosions outside.
Could someone please explain why bombs were waking him up instead of firecrackers?
Just yesterday, his biggest concern had been surviving the annual family gathering… that ritualistic tribunal where seven aunts and eight grandmothers would descend upon him like vultures.
Their favorite topic of conversation being his perpetual bachelorhood at the creeping age of forty.
Forty and unmarried.
The family’s favorite disappointment.
Now, staring at the smoldering hole where his ceiling used to be and the…
remains…
of what were probably his parents in this timeline… He felt an overwhelming sense of relief so absurd it nearly made him laugh.
No family gathering today.
No pointed questions about why he wasn’t married yet.
No disappointed sighs.
The problem had solved itself rather dramatically.
His new problem was significantly more urgent, survival.
For most people, waking up to find themselves in an active war zone, seated next to human-shaped leftovers that used to be people, would trigger a crisis of sanity.
But Luca Quinn, former street novelist, former security guard, former disappointment to his own family, had been mentally preparing for scenarios like this his entire life.
Well, not preparing exactly.
More like…
writing about them in novels that nobody reads.
His previous life hadn’t been much to speak of.
A hack novelist whose work was too morally questionable, too derivative, and somehow simultaneously too mindless to attract readers.
If not for the security guard gig, he might have starved.
And now this.
Luca took a shaky breath and surveyed his surroundings properly for the first time.
Second-floor living room.
His body’s predecessor had been helping his parents prepare dinner.
Then… whoosh… a missile had apparently decided the ceiling wasn’t doing its job properly and had introduced itself rather forcefully to the dining room.
By all rights, he should be as dead as the others.
Basic physics suggested that being in close proximity to an exploding missile tended to rearrange one’s molecular structure into something unrecognizable.
But the gods of transmigration apparently didn’t believe in physics.
His body was untouched.
Not a scratch or even a broken nail.
Well, he amended, touching his temple, mostly untouched.
The soul had been swapped out, which counted as some kind of damage.
He closed his eyes and sifted through the fragmented memories drifting through his consciousness like ash.
The original owner of this body had also been named Luca Quinn.
Eighteen years old.
Half-Chinese.
Resident of Sokovia, a small Eastern European country, currently experiencing what sounded like a very enthusiastic military visitation.
“Depend on,” he muttered, the expletive slipping out in his predecessor’s native tongue as the full weight of the situation settled on him.
The memories painted an absurd picture.
Luca’s mother had been native Chinese, the kind who owned five courtyard houses in the imperial capital, houses that had been in the family for generations.
And then, three months before their son was born, they had done something so monumentally foolish that future generations would weep.
They sold all five properties.
To come to Sokovia.
To “seek a living.” The story was so ridiculous it could have been a cautionary tale, except that such suffocatingly stupid decisions had actually been distressingly common in that era.
The universe, however, had a strange sense of balance.
Luca’s parents might have made the worst real estate decision in modern history, but they worked like demons.
For eighteen years they had labored in this small Eastern European nation, and through the kind of relentless effort that made their terrible financial decision even more painful to contemplate, they had managed to acquire an entire building.
A whole building.
Luca Quinn… the new Luca Quinn was technically a Sokovian gentry.
A landlord.
Was.
BOOOOM Outside, another explosion lit up the sky, and Luca felt the building tremble around him.
Was being the operative word.
The second generation of building owners, it seemed, was about to come to a rather explosive end.
He shook off the daydream of being a landlord’s son.
Survival first.
Everything else could wait.
Outside, the symphony of destruction played on, gunfire staccato beneath bombing basslines.
He didn’t need to know the specifics, the missile embedded in his ceiling was context enough.
When ordnance started treating living rooms as landing zones, “chaos” became an understatement.
Staying put wasn’t an option.
Especially not with that thing hanging over his head.
The building was a six-story apartment block, his predecessor’s inheritance.
Ground floor: family restaurant.
Second floor: family home.
Third through sixth: rental units that had made the Quinns comfortable if not wealthy.
The missile had apparently entered through a third-floor window, punched through that floor and the ceiling below, before gifting his living room with an explosive surprise.
And now, approximately one meter of unexploded ordnance jutted from the third-floor ceiling at an angle that made his teeth ache.
A invitation to disaster.
It could detonate any second.
Even if it didn’t, gravity was patient but persistent.
He needed to leave.
The streets might be a warzone, but at least they didn’t have a bomb dangling overhead like some twisted chandelier.
Then he saw… Stark Industries.
The logo was stamped on the missile’s casing like a signature.
Luca’s brain short-circuited.
Sokovia.
Stark Industries.
The pieces clicked together with the sickening certainty of a puzzle box snapping shut.
Marvel.
He was in Marvel.
Of course he was.
Other transmigrators landed in New York.
They got Coulson cameos, Tony Stark handshakes.
They started in coffee shops, not beneath their parents’ remains.
And speaking of parents, if the missile was Stark-made, and it had just redecorated his living room with his predecessor’s family…
Did that make Tony Stark his parents murderer?
Technically?
“Woo…
woo…” The crying cut through his spiraling thoughts, somehow audible between explosions.
Someone was alive up there.
Luca’s head tilted upward instinctively.
The third floor was hidden from view, but the sound was… a child’s, maybe.
Or someone young enough to cry like one.
Don’t be stupid, he told himself.
That missile could go off any second.
You just got a second chance at life.
Don’t throw it away playing hero.
This was Marvel.
He was a nobody with no powers, no skills, no plot armor worth mentioning.
Heroes died in this universe.
Nobodies just died faster.
Besides, he knew himself.
Heroism wasn’t in his wiring.
The door was already gone, blown off by the blast.
The window was right there.
Second-floor drop, sprained ankle at worst.
Freedom at best.
He walked to the window.
He stopped… Wait.
Memories surfaced fragments of landlord small talk and casual observations about the tenants upstairs.
A couple with kids with a unique European surname.
Maximoff.
🐲𒈞⚜︎𒀱♛✶♛𒀱⚜︎𒈞🐲 TripleKings