Fast Runner? Sorry, I Just Happen to Be Faster Than You

New York, a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. rehabilitation center.

The place had been disguised as a hospital ward from the 1940s. An old-fashioned radio was broadcasting a baseball game that had ended long ago.

"Dodgers versus Philadelphia... the score is 4 to 4..."

On the hospital bed, a burly blond, blue-eyed man slowly opened his eyes.

Steve Rogers, Captain America.

He had slept beneath the ice for a full seventy years, and now he had finally awakened.

He sat up and looked at the familiar yet faintly strange surroundings. His Super-Soldier instincts immediately sounded the alarm.

Something was wrong.

The air smelled wrong. It carried the chill of air conditioning, not the natural breeze of the 1940s.

The game on the radio was wrong too. It was a game from May 1941, and he had been there in person!

"Good morning, Captain Rogers."

A woman in a vintage nurse's uniform walked in, a professional smile on her face.

"This game is a recording." Steve stared at her, his gaze instantly turning sharp as a blade. "I was there. Tell me, where am I?"

The atmosphere immediately grew tense.

The disguise had been exposed.

The agent reached for the alarm at her waist, but Steve moved far faster. Two agents lying in ambush rushed in, only to be instantly subdued with grappling moves and hurled through the fake wall.

He burst out of the soundstage. Outside was a modern corridor, flashing LED lights, and agents in bulletproof vests.

Everything was telling him one thing: the world had changed.

"Stop him! Don't shoot!"

Nick Fury's anxious voice came over the loudspeaker.

But who could stop a Captain America determined to escape?

Like a lion breaking free from its cage, he smashed through the sturdy glass doors with sheer physical force and charged onto the bustling streets of New York.

At that moment, inside the command vehicle outside the building.

Nick Fury watched the unstoppable figure on the surveillance screen and rubbed his aching temples.

"Damn it, the act failed. His physical condition hasn't declined—it's gotten even stronger. Ordinary agents can't catch him at all."

"Need my help, Director?"

Jiang Li sat in the passenger seat, leisurely holding a milk tea with double pearls.

"Stark Industries consultant fees are charged by the hour, but I can give you a twenty percent discount."

"Go stop him." Fury sighed. "But don't hurt him. He's a symbol of that era, and also... an asset to all humanity."

"Don't worry. I'm best at respecting the elderly and caring for the young."

The corners of Jiang Li's mouth lifted slightly as he pushed open the car door and stepped out.

By then, Steve had already rushed onto the main street.

Before his eyes stretched a steel forest unlike anything he had ever seen. Skyscrapers piercing the clouds, massive LED billboards, and streets packed with traffic.

Was this the future?

Or... some illusion created by Hydra?

Steve had no time to think. He sprinted through the dense traffic at an astonishing speed. The Super-Soldier Serum allowed him to easily reach sixty kilometers per hour, making the cars around him seem slow.

"To his left! Cut him off!"

Several black S.H.I.E.L.D. SUVs tried to intercept him, but Steve made a nimble leap, stepped on their roofs, and vaulted right over them.

Too slow! Steve thought. In this world, there should be no one faster than him.

However, just when he thought he had shaken his pursuers.

"Whoosh—!"

A blue-black blur suddenly swept past him.

The gust it kicked up even tousled his blond hair, nearly making him lose his footing.

Steve froze.

What was that?

Before he could react, the blur circled back.

This time, Steve saw it clearly.

It was a blue-black alien with a streamlined, conical helmet and black high-speed wheels for feet.

The alien was skating backward—still keeping pace with Captain America's full-speed sprint—while casually holding the cup of milk tea steady in his pincer-like hands!

"Kineceleran—XLR8!"

"Hey, old soldier."

Jiang Li's voice, distorted by XLR8's electronic tremor, rang out through the wind. It sounded incredibly punchable. "Running so fast? Rushing off to reincarnate? Or desperate to find a bathroom?"

Steve's pupils shook.

He was already running at full speed! Yet this monster was running backward beside him while chatting? And not a single drop had spilled from the drink in his hand!

"Move! Hydra monster!"

Steve threw a fierce punch, trying to drive the unknown creature away.

"Too slow."

Jiang Li lightly turned the wheels beneath his feet.

"Whoosh!"

He instantly vanished from where he stood and appeared at Steve's left.

"On your left."

Steve spun again and drove an elbow at him.

"Whoosh!"

Jiang Li appeared on his right.

"On your right."

"In front of you."

"Behind you."

In less than a second, Jiang Li shifted through more than a dozen positions around Steve, leaving countless afterimages behind. Steve felt as if he were fighting a ghost—he could not even touch the other party's shadow.

"Enough!"

Steve abruptly stopped and assumed a defensive stance.

But he discovered that Jiang Li had unknowingly forced him into the center of Times Square.

On the enormous electronic screens around them played Coca-Cola advertisements and Stark Industries news reports. Countless modern people in strange outfits held glowing rectangles—phones—up to photograph him.

That overwhelming sense of being severed from his era left Steve feeling more lost and lonely than ever before.

"Where... exactly is this?" Steve panted heavily, watching the alien before him warily as it closed its visor.

"This is Times Square, New York. Welcome to 2012."

A flash of black light passed over him.

Jiang Li released his transformation and returned to the appearance of a black-haired boy in casual clothes, taking a sip of his pearl milk tea.

"Tastes pretty good. Want a sip? It's called pearl milk tea. You couldn't get this in the '40s."

At that moment, more than a dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles finally arrived and completely surrounded the area.

Nick Fury stepped out of a vehicle, his signature black leather trench coat swaying in the wind.

"Soldier." Fury looked at Steve. "Stand at attention."

Steve instinctively straightened his back, but then caught himself. His eyes grew complicated as he looked at Fury and Jiang Li.

"How... long was I asleep?"

Fury was silent for two seconds.

"Nearly seventy years."

"Seventy years..."

Steve looked at the flourishing world around him, and an indescribable sorrow flashed through his eyes.

That meant everything he knew was gone.

Carter, Bucky, the Howling Commandos... all gone.

"Then I missed a date." Steve murmured softly, like a child abandoned by the world.

"Actually, you didn't miss all that much."

Jiang Li stepped forward. Rather than raising a gun like the agents, he patted Captain America's broad shoulder like a friend.

"You missed the moon landing, the internet, and this delicious milk tea. But the good news is, the world is still a mess, and there are still plenty of bad guys waiting for you to beat up."

Jiang Li pointed at the Omnitrix on his wrist.

"And being a hero is way more exciting now than it used to be. Look—even an alien like me can be a consultant."

"An alien?" Steve looked at the young Asian boy, then recalled the blue-black figure whose speed had left him in despair.

"You're... S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new weapon?"

"No."

Jiang Li held out his hand and gave him a brilliant smile.

"I'm Stark Industries' chief consultant. You can call me Jiang Li."

At the mention of "Stark," the guarded look in Steve's eyes instantly wavered.

"Stark? Are you related to Howard?"

"No, I'm Howard's son's... nanny."

Jiang Li shrugged. "Come on, Captain. There's someone you should meet. His name is Tony Stark. His personality is even more obnoxiously smug than Howard's, but he has the best aged liquor around. It'll definitely get you properly drunk."

Steve looked at Jiang Li's outstretched hand and hesitated.

In the end, the old soldier from World War II took the hand of the boy from the future.

Meanwhile, in the far reaches of space.

The Chitauri leader was reporting to the purple Titan overlord.

"Earth is ready... the Space Stone, the Tesseract, has been activated..."

Thanos sat upon his floating throne, a cold smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.