When Leander's consciousness finally returned, he was hit by the scent of disinfectant and the dull ache of generalized bruising. He was in a bustling Manhattan hospital. His arms were encased in cumbersome, rigid splints, strapped firmly to his side.
The surrounding beds were full of the genuinely unfortunate, their groans echoing the chaotic night. Looking around at the missing limbs and bandaged heads, Leander mentally checked the "Lucky" box. His System's self-preservation response, while painful, had saved him from becoming just another statistic.
A nurse entered, clutching a clipboard. She was a vision of professional efficiency: short, neat golden hair, a scatter of tiny, almost invisible freckles across the bridge of her nose, and a figure that, despite the unflattering scrubs, was certainly curvaceous enough to temporarily quiet the groans of the adjacent wounded men.
Spotting Leander awake, the nurse offered a tired but genuine grin. "Well, hello there, little guy. You must have a guardian angel working overtime. To be wandering near the hottest zone where those two monsters were rampaging and only end up with basic fractures? You're a miracle case."
She glanced down at the medical report, then leaned over and patted Leander's head with a gentle hand. "The police have been trying to track down your next of kin since you came in last night, but no luck so far. Seems like you're on your own for the moment. Maybe you can give them a call? They need to come pick you up and, oh yes, settle the bill while they're at it."
Leander blinked, already calculating the logistics of immediate flight. "Miss Nurse, what time is it exactly?" He peered out the window, but the perpetual glow of the city made it hard to judge the darkness. It was still pitch black.
The nurse, whose name tag read Penny, glanced at her wrist. "It's 4:15 a.m. You came in around ten last night, so you only missed about six hours. Not bad for a head injury scare!" She leaned down, her voice dropping kindly. "But your final bill is two hundred and thirty-seven dollars for stabilization, X-rays, and the splints. There's a phone at the nurses' station if you need to call home. I've got to run a few vitals. Bye for now!"
"Okay, Nurse Penny, bye!" Leander replied, making sure to read her name.
Penny's departure drew the appreciative eyes of the male patients, but Leander was already in motion.
He was barely 1.2 meters tall, a detail that always grated on his transmigrated adult consciousness. Yet, he moved with the swift, silent efficiency of a seasoned operative. He slid off the bed and padded over to the window. Outside, the flash of ambulance lights was still constant, ferrying victims into the triage area. The scale of last night's destruction was immense.
He patted the pocket of his blood-stained jeans. He felt the reassuring crinkle of US currency—around three hundred dollars, salvaged from his meager earnings. He was solvent, if barely. He quickly navigated the chaotic ward, slipped downstairs, paid the exact fee at the empty payment office, and made a fast exit.
As he reached the entrance, he caught a scrap of conversation from the Head Nurse furiously speaking into the phone at the front desk:
"Yes, the beds are completely full! If they're seriously ill, send them anywhere else! Don't look for the nearest one! Are you kidding me? Those... those two things leveled half a block! We've got over a hundred critical patients here alone! The police said eighty people died and thousands were hurt! We're drowning!"
Leander hailed the first unoccupied taxi he saw. "Queens, Forest Hill Road!"
The burly black driver, observing the small, splinted figure in the back, eyed him with suspicion. "Hey kid, that's way out past the bridges. You got the fare for that kind of trip?"
"You'll get your money. Just drive," Leander snapped, irritation bleeding into his voice. He turned to stare out the window, his mind already miles away.
As the car began its slow crawl out of downtown chaos, they passed the still-smoking, wreckage-filled area of 121st Street. The scene was now marked by flashing blue and red police lights and crisscrossed with bright yellow tape.
Leander leaned back, sighing deeply. Five years. Five years had passed since he landed in this world. The plot—the real, major Avengers plot—was officially accelerating, heralded by last night's destructive brawl. But he was stuck.
"Why am I only ten years old?" he muttered, rubbing his splinted arms. "Everything is so inconvenient! I have the mind of a thirty-year-old, the power of an elemental master, and the body of a pint-sized squirt!"
He remembered the cinematic betrayal that had landed him here. Five years ago, he was comfortably seated in a movie theater, waiting for the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Instead of Nick Fury, he got fate. A disgruntled man, brandishing a homemade firearm, stormed in and shot a couple next to him.
Leander never moved an inch, and the stray bullet found its way straight into his head. His last, chaotic thought wasn't about the pain, but the plot point: "So, what was the final surprise... and man, I wish bullets could just curve!"
Next thing he knew, he was a five-year-old child named Leander, adopted into a quiet American family in Queens, and staring at a floating, three-line text screen only he could see.
He conjured the mental interface now, focusing past the dull throb of his broken bones:
Control Points: 49
Strength: 7(Normal Adult Male: 10)
Defense: 5
Speed:8
Spirit: 17(This is the stat governing Metal Control)
Skill: D-Rank Metal Control
The System. It was his salvation, his curse, and the reason he was forced to spend five years relearning English, accepting his new, shrinking body, and grappling with the terrifying reality that he could control metal.
Twenty minutes later, the taxi pulled up to a modest house on Forest Road. "Alright, kid, twenty-nine bucks. Fork it over."
Leander fished out a thirty-dollar bill. The driver snatched it with speed. "Hey! Consider the dollar a tip. Next time, take a friendly piece of advice, smart guy: don't wander out at night." The taxi peeled away quickly, clearly satisfied with the unexpected cash.
Leander watched the receding taillights, suppressing a powerful, petty urge to telekinetically wrench the lug nuts off the rear wheels. Self-control. Need the CP.
He walked toward his house. He glanced at the bulky splints on his arms. With a subtle flick of his injured fingers—a movement barely perceptible—the last silver throwing knife (the second one was still lodged somewhere in Blonsky's massive head) flew out of its hidden pouch in his trouser leg. The sharp edge sliced through the fabric bandage with surgical precision. He tossed the splint and bandages into a roadside garbage can.
"Only one knife left," he sighed, shoving the blade back into its sheath. "What a catastrophic loss of assets. Nothing gained but a massive hospital bill and a couple of shattered ulnae."
He slipped quietly into his house and straight into the sanctuary of his room.
First, the essentials. A massive, cardboard box, heavy with compressed rations, chocolate bars, and canned beef, floated down from the top of his closet. Leander tore into the high-calorie feast, stuffing his mouth relentlessly.
The food was a necessity, not an indulgence. As noted in his stats, his unique physiological state meant that any organic matter entering his stomach was instantly converted into energy and fed into his System. He had to eat constantly to maintain his Control Power and keep his metabolism running.
While chewing the last bite of canned beef, he turned to the makeshift weights rack. A solid, two-meter-long, twenty-kilogram iron rod, six centimeters thick, levitated off the rack. He placed it carefully across his knees.
He gently positioned his broken arms onto the iron rod. The intense, agonizing pain flared instantly. His arms shook uncontrollably, and his hands, lacking the support of the splints, couldn't even close fully, relying on a few strategically floated metal plates nearby to hold them steady.
As he concentrated, something strange began to happen to the rod beneath his arms. The metal surface where his broken bones rested began to slowly, visibly sink and dimple. Though he couldn't see the internal process, he could feel a strange, powerful, corrective energy engulfing the shattered bone fragments in his arms, meticulously guiding them back into place.
This process was his dark secret—a horrifying, efficient healing method he had discovered five years prior.
He was eight years old then, reckless with his newfound power, attempting a low-altitude flight without proper Control Points. He plummeted from a three-story roof, completely shattering his legs. Barely conscious, driven by pure instinct, he used his last ounce of will to drag a heavy iron frame over and put his mangled legs on it.
That night, he lay in the yard, absorbing half of that massive iron frame to fully regenerate his legs. The pain was so intense and relentless that he developed a fever and didn't sleep for three days. It was a mistake he never repeated.
The sky outside the window was finally turning white, the first fragile light of dawn filtering through the glass. The clock read just past five in the morning.
The iron rod on his knees was now perceptibly lighter. Half of the metal was gone. It hadn't dissolved or melted; it had simply vanished into thin air.
Absorbed? Exchanged? Leander still didn't have the definitive answer for the mechanism. It felt like the consumed metal was being converted into a dense healing energy that his System prioritized, bypassing his normal Control Point expenditure. But how? That was a question for a higher Control Rank.
Noise drifted up from downstairs—the faint sounds of his uncle and aunt beginning their day. Time was up.
Leander pushed his ability to the maximum. He sat in a rigid posture, his entire body glowing with a faint golden light. The remaining iron rod trembled violently. Then, tiny, visible golden specks—the concentrated essence of the iron—emerged from the rod's surface and streamed rapidly, like a column of focused light, into Leander's luminous body.
In just over ten excruciating minutes, the golden light faded. Leander slowly opened his eyes. The room was dark again, save for the early morning gloom. He casually tossed the iron bar behind him into the large, heavy storage box.
CRACK!
The remaining half of the metal rod, hitting the bottom of the iron box, shattered cleanly into two pieces, like a fragile piece of glass. Its structural integrity had been utterly ruined by the process of essence extraction.
He stood up. He flexed his hands. The pain was gone. The fractures were gone.
I feel... stronger, he thought, testing his grip. He checked his System status.