Fury Jumps Off a Cliff

"Whoa, it's finally starting. JARVIS, remember to record it."

At the very edge of the crowd, Leon, freshly returned from space, held a bucket of popcorn and looked ready to enjoy the show.

Though the timing was off, he was still witnessing a major Marvel event firsthand.

"Mr. Leon, you seem to be looking forward to Mr. Tony's upcoming speech?"

A voice suddenly drifted over from beside him.

Leon frowned slightly and glanced at the speaker, stopping just as he was about to leave.

"And you are...?"

An acquaintance!

Leon recognized the suited, slightly balding, kind-faced middle-aged man beside him at a glance.

Wasn't this Coulson, Captain America's die-hard fan?

"I'm Phil Coulson, from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." Coulson smiled warmly as he handed over a business card.

"What a mouthful. What do you want with me?" Leon accepted the card.

"We are an agency independent of the FBI and CIA. We'd like to speak with you about certain events that recently occurred in the Middle East."

Leon glanced at the card, then stuffed it back into Coulson's hand.

"You don't need to ask me. What Tony is about to talk about is exactly that. Just wait."

Coulson looked toward Tony on the stage in surprise, sensing that something major was bound to happen today.

"Thank you." He nodded politely to Leon, then walked away and took out a communications device to contact his superiors.

"Mm... I'm sure you've all been following what's been happening in the Middle East recently."

Tony flipped through a few pages of his speech onstage, then tossed them aside.

"There are barbarians there wielding weapons they got from who knows where, slaughtering civilians at will."

"Of course, Obadiah used to secretly supply them with weapons."

"Now he's gone, but those people still have weapons!"

Tony was about to continue when a reporter raised a hand and asked, "Are you talking about the Ten Rings, who kidnapped you and were later wiped out by Superman?"

"Uh, more or less, but some details are different." Tony choked on his words.

Of course. These reporters could drag Superman into anything!

Tony chose to abandon the lengthy buildup and get straight to the point.

"You must also know that most of the Ten Rings' forces are in the Middle East."

Actually, Afghanistan.

"Recently, someone in an iron suit has been wiping out those bandits there."

"A lot of people have started paying attention to him and think he's a hero."

"What I want to say is, he has plenty of flaws, and he made many mistakes when he was young, but you still think he's a hero. This is actually..."

Another reporter raised a hand. "Are you talking about that iron kid who's been imitating Superman lately? You know him well?"

All of Tony's words got stuck in his throat.

He stared at that reporter for a long time.

Then he suddenly said, "That's Iron Man! Not Iron Kid!"

"And I am Iron Man!"

"..."

The venue fell silent.

Everyone looked at Tony, thinking he was trying to lighten the mood.

A few scattered people even forced out dry laughs to play along, showing that they had indeed been amused.

The only person in the crowd who was genuinely laughing—and laughing happily at that—was Leon.

Tony's face darkened.

He pursed his lips irritably, took a step back, and shook his hands, revealing two wristbands.

"JARVIS!"

Boom!

The next moment, an oval metal flight pod burst in from outside, streaking over the reporters' heads.

Amid cries of alarm and people scrambling aside, the pod broke apart and assembled itself onto Tony's body.

"I am Iron Man."

The armor finished assembling, its faceplate closing as crisp metallic clicks rang out in succession.

Tony announced his identity again, his tone calm yet resolute.

This time, everyone stared at him in shock.

The red-and-gold armor stood at the center of the podium like an industrial masterpiece, gleaming brilliantly from head to toe.

Everyone's hearts trembled.

Then the crowd surged forward, hundreds of arms raised toward the podium as people clamored with their own questions.

Evening.

"Honestly, you would've been better off showing up wearing the armor from the start. Then the reporters wouldn't have kept stumping you with questions."

Leon pushed open the mansion's front door and spoke to Tony behind him.

After the press conference.

Pepper had practically dragged both him and Tony into working at the company all day.

The mountain of documents seemed endless.

Even Super-Brain seemed to be protesting.

Leon decided.

Once Natasha had rescued all the Black Widow agents.

He would make her president of the internet company.

The work was exhausting, sure.

But it would show how much he trusted Natasha!

Surely Natasha would feel a great sense of accomplishment handling several multibillion-dollar deals every day!

As for building an organization, he would leave that to Yelena.

Young girls needed more training to grow quickly.

The more Leon thought about it, the more feasible the plan seemed. Another triple win!

There was no way he was going to work anyway.

He had worked before transmigrating, and he was still working after transmigrating. Wouldn't that mean he had transmigrated for nothing?

But that was all for later.

Right now, he only wanted to have a proper dinner.

To use good food to soothe away the exhaustion of work.

Yet the moment he entered, Leon stopped.

Tony's skeptical voice followed from behind.

"You really thought that? I saw it clearly. You were the one laughing the loudest in the whole place!"

"If I... Why are you just standing there?"

Tony leaned out from behind Leon.

Before the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows.

A figure in a black trench coat hanging to his ankles stood with his back to them, gazing aloofly out at the sea.

That bald black head, that deliberately mysterious style.

Who else could it be but Nick Fury?

"JARVIS?" Tony called.

"Welcome home, Mr. Stark and Master Leon," JARVIS immediately responded.

"Looks like localized electromagnetic shielding. Not bad technology." Tony offered a compliment, seeing that part of JARVIS's surveillance network had been blocked.

He looked at Leon. "What do you think we should do?"

Leon snapped his fingers. "JARVIS, blast the person standing by the floor-to-ceiling window out of here with the armor."

"Yes, Master."

The sound of machinery assembling immediately came from downstairs.

"Wait! Don't get worked up!" Nick Fury, who had been putting on a cool and distant act, panicked and hurriedly turned around.

"I'm the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick... holy shit!"

Before he could finish, JARVIS had already controlled Super Mark I up the stairs.

The blue-and-red armor raised both hands, its focused cannons charging up.

"Motherfucker! I'll be back! We need to talk!"

Nick Fury saw that the artificial intelligence had no intention of holding back, so he smashed through the floor-to-ceiling window and jumped off the cliff.

Boom!

After he leaped off the cliff, the focused cannons grazed past him.

"Nicely done!"

Tony praised it as he walked to the window and watched a parachute slowly unfurl beneath the cliff.

"That guy really has endless backup plans. He's exactly as you described," he remarked.

Leon also walked over. "JARVIS, looks like we need to upgrade you. Otherwise, anyone can break in."

"Master, if I were using the airborne fortress's mainframe, he probably wouldn't be able to block me."

"Whoa, you even know how to make requests now. Fine, we'll upgrade your mainframe!"

Tony looked at Leon then. "Come to think of it, if your Black Widow subordinate had come yesterday and you'd blasted her out too, we wouldn't have found the Red Room."

"Why didn't you make a move then?" he asked.

"Because there were some things I wanted to confirm." Leon blew at the floor-to-ceiling window, sending all the shards over the cliff.

"I planned to ask her for some information I wanted to know, so naturally I wasn't going to drive her away immediately."

"What information?"

"A secret."

"You've got secrets from me now? I think you just wanted her body!" Tony raised his voice.

"Of course, that was also part of it. I merely made a mistake all men make." Leon headed toward his room.

"...You have a point." Tony considered it from his own perspective. He couldn't refuse a beautiful woman who delivered herself to his door either.