64°40′ West Longitude

"Maria Hill requests entry."

"..."

"Maria..."

"Fine, they're obviously not letting us in!" Kino said with a smile, holding Hill in his arms.

The Quinjet had already dropped its stealth mode and was hovering in the air, yet the two of them had been "standing" outside for half a minute. Maria Hill had called once as well, but the hatch still had not opened.

Maria Hill was one of their own.

Obviously, the target was him...

Kino smiled and directly carried Hill toward the fighter jet, "crashing" into it.

Maria Hill froze. "Hey—you, what are you do..."

Before she could finish, the scene before her eyes changed. She... was already inside the Quinjet's cabin. After climbing down from Kino's arms, she still looked somewhat dazed.

"Hello, Mr. Marcus," Coulson said awkwardly. Though he was not the one who had deliberately ignored Kino, still...

"Oh, Coulson. Just call me Kino."

"Then call me Phil."

"Phil? Oh, no, no, no. That sounds too feminine. Coulson is better." Kino shook his head.

Back on Earth in his previous life, during his first year of middle school, he had had a deskmate named Sun Feifei. She had been gorgeous. During summer, he had nearly been unable to control himself. After putting in some effort, Kino had successfully started calling her by the affectionate nickname "Feifei," but unfortunately, their homeroom teacher had cruelly separated them by changing their seats.

Just like that, their romance died because of a seat change.

Calling Coulson "Phil" just felt strange.

Coulson looked even more awkward. "Whatever. You're not the only one who's said that."

Kino smiled, walked around him, and looked at the old acquaintance in the pilot's seat. The expression on his face became even more teasing. "Oh, so it's Natasha. Were you... jealous?"

"What?"

Black Widow turned her head, wearing an expression usually reserved for idiots.

"Seeing me hold Ms. Hill, did it remind you of your former self? Wasn't that jealousy? Then why didn't you open the hatch and let me in? Come on, we're all adults here. I understand!"

That punchable expression.

"Passenger, please take your seat. The bus is about to take off."

Black Widow did not waste words with Kino. She turned back, put on her headset, started the engines, and—whoosh—

"!"

Bang—

Black Widow had originally wanted to jostle Kino around, but instead of knocking him off balance, she sent Maria Hill sprawling onto the floor. Coulson beside her nearly took a tumble as well.

"See, Hill? She really is jealous of you. She did that on purpose," Kino teased again.

"!" Hill shot him a vicious glare and pushed herself up while holding onto a seat.

Not responding would be a little awkward, huh.

"Coulson, aren't you going to introduce us?"

"Oh, right. Sorry. This is Melinda May."

"Hello, Ms. May."

"Hello!" Melinda May, seated in the co-pilot's seat, merely turned around politely, gave him a token smile, then turned back.

They were both Asian, yet Kino felt that Melinda May did not particularly like him. They were both Asian, after all. It seemed that after joining S.H.I.E.L.D., she had been somewhat Westernized.

Though she belonged to the Carter faction.

"These are..."

The other two men looked like assault team members. Who cared what their names were? Kino merely nodded politely. Aside from Hawkeye, it seemed he had met all the notable S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

"Take a seat first. It'll take at least twelve hours," Coulson said.

The Quinjet was very fast. Departing from New York and crossing the Atlantic to Afghanistan, roughly twelve hours would be enough.

"Oh."

Kino sat down. No, he lay down.

His motto was—

If I can sit, I'll never stand. If I can lie down, I won't sit.

Coulson looked awkward.

Closing his eyes, Kino considered how to rescue Tony Stark. Saving him was not actually difficult. Colonel James Rhodes, the future War Machine, had surely surveyed the site of the incident countless times already.

With the strength of his Observation Haki, finding the hideout of a small group of Freedom Fighters in the vast desert would not be difficult.

There were relatively few people in the desert. A cluster of people gathered densely together, combined with the corresponding mountainous terrain... Heh, that had to be the place.

Even if he got the location wrong, it did not matter. He could just check them one by one.

Even without Observation Haki, his Book of Kino had tracking experts.

It was just—

When had Tony designed the Iron Man Armor Mark I? Had he already conceived of it before being captured by the Freedom Fighters, or only afterward?

Kino was not sure.

Judging from the way Tony had taken out three blueprints that only revealed what they were when overlaid, though... there was over a ninety-nine percent chance that he had thought of it after being captured.

If Kino rescued him before he had even conceived of the Iron Man suit, then... would Iron Man disappear altogether?

Terrifying!

So Kino decided that after arriving in Afghanistan, he would wait a few days first!

That Dr. Yinsen looked like a good man!

But sorry. For the sake of keeping Iron Man from disappearing, he would have to let him die...

"What are you thinking about?"

Kino paused. "Were you talking to me?"

"If not you, then a ghost?" Maria Hill said.

"Oh, no, no. It just feels new."

To be honest, Maria Hill had never proactively spoken to him except for matters related to missions. Her suddenly speaking up now really made him a little unaccustomed to it.

"I was thinking... Oh, right. How long until we get there?"

Coulson said, "Twelve hours until we arrive at the Afghanistan airport."

"Too slow!"

"Slow?"

Coulson was somewhat stunned. Commercial flights would take nearly nineteen hours at the fastest. The Quinjet was already extremely fast, all right?

"That's right, too slow! Watch this!"

Kino sprang up. Mysterious black runes shone in his hand as he muttered something under his breath, though no one knew what he was chanting.

Then—

"What is this?!!!"

"This is bad!"

"We can't avoid it! We're going to be sucked in!"

Black Widow, who was piloting up front, had no idea what was happening behind her. About a hundred meters ahead of her, a massive sphere of dense fog roughly a hundred meters in diameter appeared.

The Quinjet was extremely fast. A hundred meters vanished in an instant. Even though she reacted in time and turned the controls... they still plunged straight into it.

The aircraft began to jolt as though an earthquake had struck. The cabin instantly went dark as well, like a train entering a tunnel, pitch-black all around.

What Black Widow saw was: a tunnel?

She seemed to see a spiraling, twisting "tunnel" made of clouds?

It immediately made her think of one term—

Space-time tunnel.

Then—the Flight 914 disappearance.

Although the internet had endlessly spread rumors about it, and there had been debunking and investigative reports, she knew the truth: it had been a real incident.

Yet the darkness only lasted for an instant before her vision returned to normal. Everything before her was bright... as though the train had burst out of the tunnel.

Just then, Melinda May suddenly cried out, "64°40′ west longitude, 40°39′ north latitude... Th-this is impossible!"