Three Things

"Ah, now I remember!" Tony pretended to have a sudden realization. "So you can travel to other worlds too?"

"Yeah, that's right." Leon ignored the old man's act. The guy had simply forgotten.

"My God, you're a little genius. The theory of parallel worlds—or other worlds—has just been proven by you!"

Tony made a big fuss, then turned earnest. "When you travel between worlds, you have to take me along so I can experience it at least once!"

"And! If you're going to look for Kryptonite, you have to take me with you too!"

Knowing he could no longer persuade Leon, Tony simply chose to join him. "At least when Kryptonite turns you into an ordinary person, I can take the chance to kick you a few times."

Leon had grown used to this awkward sort of concern. After thinking for a moment, he did not reject him outright. "We'll talk about it when the time comes."

"Enough about pursuing power for now!"

Seeing that Tony still wanted to say something, he changed the subject. "Let's go back inside first. We still need to talk about the things I mentioned before—the things I've wanted to do for a long time!"

Half an hour later.

Leon and Tony sat around the workbench in the laboratory.

Wearing a bathrobe, Tony listened to Leon, his expression growing increasingly grave.

"There are only three things I want to do now that I'm back."

Leon raised his fingers, as though he were asking Tony to help him take three lives.

"The first is dealing with Obadiah."

"That goal has already been accomplished. I kept telling you there was something wrong with him, and this time proved it."

"The second is dealing with the Ten Rings! They kidnapped you, so I'll help you wipe them out! I'll start tomorrow."

"The third is investigating the truth behind our parents' deaths!"

The first two were fine, but when Leon mentioned the third, Tony could no longer sit still. "The truth? What truth? Didn't they die in a car accident?"

Leon could not directly say that he already knew the murderer was Bucky, the Winter Soldier.

There was no basis for it, and he had no evidence.

Besides, his target was not merely Bucky.

Only Hydra as a whole was worthy of making him show his strength.

"I've always had my suspicions." Leon clasped his hands beneath his chin, looking deeply contemplative.

"If it really was a car accident, why did I—the most fragile one—survive while they died?"

"Leon, it was because the car caught fire and they couldn't get out. You were thrown from the vehicle, and the baby wrap was still wound around your neck twice." Tony's thinking was unexpectedly clear at this moment.

Yet deep down, he had a faint impulse to believe everything Leon said immediately.

Perhaps he had been waiting a long time for someone to tell him, 'Your parents' deaths were not an accident.'

Eighteen years ago, when the couple died, he had been away from home, still having a spat with Howard.

When he received the news of their deaths, he had even thought that he could go back to Los Angeles after a while. The old man's face at home was too irritating to look at.

It was not until someone handed him that sheet of paper bearing the death notification.

That he realized some things had left him forever.

How badly he wanted to vent. He felt endless anger toward himself, and even anger toward that death notification.

Over the years, Tony had accepted the fact that his parents were dead, and he had also developed the strange habit of never taking anything from anyone's hand.

But deep in his heart, perhaps he had always longed for someone to tell him.

—His parents' deaths had not been an accident.

Then perhaps he could rightfully seek out the murderer and take revenge.

All the anger toward his former self hidden beneath his playboy facade could finally be released.

But precisely because of that, Tony understood even more clearly that he had to investigate everything thoroughly and could not implicate innocent people.

In the cave in Afghanistan, he had learned more than how to build armor. He had also learned respect for life.

"That's how it looks on the surface, but there's another possibility!"

Leon stared into Tony's eyes. "That baby was supposed to die too. The cloth around his neck should have taken his life long ago. But the murderer who left after staging the accident did not know that this baby carried dormant Kryptonian Bloodline!"

Leon had once been unable to understand why he had survived that accident.

The controlled Winter Soldier could not possibly have any notion of respecting the elderly or caring for children—unless he had missed.

But how could such a killing machine possibly miss?

It was not until Leon awakened his Kryptonian Bloodline that he suddenly understood. It was not the Winter Soldier's mistake that had saved him, but the bloodline dormant within his body.

Though it had not awakened yet, it had still given him greater vitality, allowing him to survive the ordeal.

Leon's words struck through Tony's mind like lightning.

"You... you mean..." His mind roared.

Leon did not care about Tony's loss of composure and continued, "When I was young, I also thought this guess had no basis."

"Every investigation had concluded that it was an accident, so why would I make such an unfounded guess?"

"But after awakening my abilities, I knew that guess might have been right. It was the truth I had subconsciously believed!"

"Although my young brain did not retain those memories from the accident, they still left traces in my subconscious."

That part was true.

After awakening Super-Brain, Leon gained vague impressions of certain things from before he was one year old, though they were not clear.

Human memory was a marvelous thing. The brain relied on neurons transmitting impulses to imprint scenes within its memory-storage regions.

Before the age of one, Leon's brain had been extremely immature. His neurons were underdeveloped and could not preserve complete memories.

So even after awakening Super-Brain, he could not recover memories that had never existed in the first place. At most, vague glimpses of scenes and images flashed through his mind.

However, that was merely the physical explanation.

In a world like Marvel, where mysterious powers existed.

Perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps someday in the future, Leon would always have a chance to recover all his memories from before he was one year old.

Leon's tone suddenly changed. "In the days since I came back, I haven't stopped investigating this... I've already found the truth, Tony!"

"Are you serious!?" Tony shot to his feet, his pupils slowly widening as shock and fury surfaced in his eyes.

Leon's tone remained unchanged. "My Super Hearing found them! The murderers were their people!"

"Who are they!?" Tony already believed him, his voice cold as a blade.

"Hydra!" Leon finally gave him the answer.

"Impossible! Hydra has already perished. That's a final chapter of history!" Tony questioned it instinctively.

He completely believed Leon, yet still found it unbelievable.

"They did perish, but only temporarily. Cut off one head of Hydra and two more will grow back. They've already 'come back to life'!"

Leon gave away the answer directly. "Over the past few days, I looked through classified records from many secret departments."

"I found that behind the world's major international official organizations."

"There is a secret organization unknown to the public, one that answers to the International Security Council."

"They are called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. I abbreviate it as S.H.I.E.L.D., and its headquarters are in New York."

"This organization's predecessor was the Strategic Scientific Reserve, founded by our father and his partners."

"During Operation Paperclip after World War II, they absorbed some of the talent left behind in Germany after Hydra's downfall."

"And those people never lost their loyalty to Hydra!"

Tony could already guess what came next. "So those people later latched onto S.H.I.E.L.D. and brought Hydra back to life?"

Leon nodded. "That's right. Hydra wanted to assassinate our father because they needed to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dad was one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s leaders. He was in their way!"

Tony slowly sat back down, pressing his lips together. "How many Hydra people are in S.H.I.E.L.D. now? Does the director know?"

Leon's next words made him immediately stand again:

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has more than ten thousand people. The vast majority are Hydra. The former director was Hydra too. The current director isn't, but he's more Hydra than Hydra itself."

"What?" Tony cried out. "So that organization basically belongs to Hydra?"