"So that's basically the situation."
After sacrificing an entire battlefield's worth of brain cells, Tony had finally managed to fabricate a relatively believable story.
"As for the exact details—"
"Okay, I get it now."
Coulson waved both hands and cut off Tony's endless rambling.
"So in the future, an AI machine apocalypse breaks out. Humanity is nearly wiped out. And you, Tony Stark, are the sole leader and savior of the human resistance."
"The machines couldn't kill you in the future, so they sent this assassin robot back to the past—our present—to eliminate you. Meanwhile, the guy in the red cape was sent back by the resistance to protect you. Correct?"
Tony immediately nodded along.
"Yep, exactly, that's totally—pffft!"
Halfway through agreeing, Tony completely lost control and burst out laughing on the spot.
Even he felt like coming up with a story like this was kind of insulting to Coulson's intelligence.
"Oh, come on, Tony, stop screwing with me!"
Even someone as patient and polite as Coulson now had a visibly dark expression on his face.
"If you're going to make something up, at least try to be original about it!"
"I'm a huge Terminator fan! There's even an Arnold Schwarzenegger autographed poster hidden in my bedside drawer!"
I'll could just have James Cameron sue you for plagiarism!"
Because if you replaced the rogue AI apocalypse in Tony's story with Skynet, Tony Stark with John Connor, and the assassin robot plus red-cape guy with the T-1000 and T-800...
Then how the hell was this not The Terminator?
If Coulson wanted to rewatch Terminator, he could have just gone home and turned on the TV.
Why would he waste government funded money driving over here just to listen to Tony improvise fanfiction for half the day?
Just as Coulson was preparing to deliver some extremely angry, extremely cautious, carefully considered criticism that also happened to align with Tony's feelings, his communicator suddenly rang.
"Sorry. I have to take this."
The moment he saw the caller ID, Coulson practically launched himself off the couch.
After apologizing, he hurried to a quiet corner and answered the call.
"Sir! Ah—sorry, I still haven't gotten anything out of him... understood! I'm on my way!"
"Your boss squeezing you for labor again?"
Seeing that respectful posture, Tony did not even need to think to know who was on the other end of the line.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s director.
That rude one-eyed bastard, Nick Fury.
"I swear, does S.H.I.E.L.D. have anyone else? Why does every damn job get specifically dumped onto you?"
"This isn't exploitation, and I'm not some sucker. It's the director's recognition of my abilities. You'd never understand."
Coulson straightened his tie and said goodbye to Tony.
"See you, Tony. And trust me—whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to know, you won't be able to hide it forever."
"The next people they send to question you won't be nearly as easy to deal with as I am."
"Fair enough. Guess we'll see."
If someone else had said that, Tony would have taken it as a threat.
But coming from Coulson—a man he genuinely trusted—Tony chose to interpret it as a warning.
"See you later, Calson. Drive safe."
"It's Coul—... forget it."
Now saddled with another massive assignment from his boss, Coulson was already in a rush to head toward New Mexico.
At the moment, he simply did not have the time or energy to deal with Tony deliberately messing with him anymore.
After finally getting rid of Coulson, Tony suddenly remembered that it was Christmas.
Under normal circumstances, he would have already prepared gifts in advance for Pepper, for Happy—his driver and bodyguard—and for the dozen or so temporary girlfriends orbiting his life.
Unfortunately, the mere few hours he had spent in Joey's world had cost him several days back here.
Maybe he should just hand Pepper a blank check?
...Nope. Terrible idea.
Pepper would absolutely roll her eyes hard enough to sprain something.
Just as Tony was agonizing over the problem of Christmas presents, Joey happened to walk in alone, perfectly missing Coulson on his way out.
Without warning, Joey tossed an irregular dark-golden chunk of metal onto the floor.
CLANG.
It smashed directly into Tony's priceless flooring and created a second massive crater.
"Ta-da! Look what I brought you!"
Tony turned to stare at this utterly unremarkable nerd wearing a winter jacket, jeans, and black-rimmed glasses.
His face filled with confusion.
"...And who the fuck are you supposed to be?"
Joey removed the glasses.
"Me!"
"Huh."
Now it was Tony's turn to get curious.
He walked over, snatched the glasses out of Joey's hand, and inspected them carefully.
They looked completely ordinary.
Just a plain pair of black resin-frame glasses.
Then Tony shoved them back onto Joey's face.
Instantly, Joey somehow looked like an entirely different person.
"That's weird."
Tony pulled the glasses off again.
The familiar Joey returned.
"...Okay, now that's really weird."
He put the glasses back on.
"How does this work?"
"Enough already!"
Joey quickly reclaimed the glasses before Tony could keep fooling around.
"The glasses aren't important. Look at this!"
Following Joey's gesture, Tony looked toward the second crater in his mansion floor.
"So today's mission was just redecorating my flooring, huh?"
"And what exactly is this lump of metal supposed to be?"
"...Wait. It's literally just half a ton of gold? Are you insane?!"
Tony genuinely felt that both Cyborg and Joey had severe mental issues.
"This isn't ordinary gold."
Joey immediately began explaining why this particular chunk of gold was special.
"Two supernovas collided somewhere else in the universe a little while ago. Some fresh material got produced, so I picked a little up on the way."
"I think you really just have nothing else to do, huh?"
Tony sincerely felt Joey might actually have a medical condition.
Those beatings he had taken over the last few weeks had probably knocked something loose in his head.
"You've got a body durable enough to survive two supernovas colliding..."
"And you're only using it to mine gold?"
"So what else was I supposed to use it for?"
Faced with Tony's disbelief, Joey answered with complete confidence.
"Conquer your Earth?"
"...Fair point."
Tony found himself speechless for a moment.
So after all that, why exactly had Joey dragged this massive lump of gold back from deep space?
Before Tony could even ask, Joey seemed to read his mind.
He bent down and drove a fist directly into the solid gold block.
"Honestly, I originally wanted to bring back one or two thousand tons."
"But this little piece ended up grabbing all my attention."
"Holy shit..."
Tony watched in astonishment as Joey casually peeled apart the outer layer of gold atoms with his bare hands, as effortlessly as someone stripping cabbage apart.
The true core hidden inside was finally revealed.
"This is..."
Looking at the chunk of metal glowing with faint blue light beneath the gold shell, the well-traveled Tony immediately recognized it.
"Vibranium!"
Joey nodded.
"So that's why its atomic structure looked so weird. It really is vibranium."
At least the trip had not been wasted.
Earlier, Joey and Starfire had made a bet.
The challenge was to see who could raise enough money to cover the hospital expenses for everyone there in the shortest amount of time—without violating Green Lantern ring protocols.
Now?
The competition was already over before it had even started.
Just imagining Starfire still painstakingly compressing diamonds by hand with her Green Lantern ring and high-energy radiation while he had already hauled back a chunk of vibranium from a supernova made Joey want to laugh.
"You went through all that trouble just for cash?!"
Tony had completely lost it now.
"If you needed money, you could've just said so!"
Though now that he thought about it...
Tony still owed Pepper a Christmas gift.
Looking at the huge block of vibranium, he suddenly had an idea.
"Can I take a small piece, Joey?"
"Maybe I could make Pepper some vibranium jewelry for Christmas. Smooth things over a bit."
"How much do you need?"
Joey immediately reached toward the vibranium block, ready to rip a piece off with his hands.
"What kind of jewelry? Necklace? Bracelet?"
"That's not going to work."
Tony stopped him.
"Vibranium is practically one of the most indestructible substances in the universe."
He needed to find the high-temperature cutting tool he had probably thrown somewhere during the move.
Even if Joey's body was absurdly tough, Tony still doubted it could compete with vibranium itself.
"Wait a second. This stuff becomes reactive under extreme heat. That'll make it easier to split apart."
CLANG.
Hearing the sound, Tony turned around.
Sure enough, Joey was already holding a palm-sized chunk of broken vibranium in his hand.
Tony instantly felt spiritually defeated.
"Does your interstellar barbarian body obey even a tiny shred of science?"
"That wasn't brute force."
Joey casually handed over the vibranium fragment.
"Remember gamma knife? That was my heat vision. Works the same way."
"There's nothing scientific about your gamma knife heat vision either!"
Tony fetched a pair of steel gloves before carefully taking the raw vibranium ore.
"I need to head to Stark Tower."
"When I moved out here, who could've guessed I'd someday need to process vibranium?"
Compared to his old headquarters, the equipment in this Long Island beach house was far from complete.
"Make yourself at home, Joey. If you need anything, just ask JARVIS."
"Oh, right."
Tony had already stepped into the elevator heading toward the underground garage before suddenly prying the doors open again and sticking his head back out.
"Cyborg sent over some kind of robot earlier. Help me take a look at it."
"I seriously doubt he made that thing just to scare the hell out of me."
"And if you're done resting, maybe you should start working on something useful and build that quantum harmonizer we talked about earlier. We need to fix the communication problems between our universes."
Communication between both sides really was a serious issue.
The unequal flow of time made real-time communication practically impossible.
Which naturally meant Cyborg could not remotely control drones from across an entire universe either.
As far as Joey was concerned, Cyborg randomly tossing over a drone that refused to respond to commands probably meant he was once again using the thing as a one-time delivery package.
As for the Terminator-shaped design and the confetti cannon rifle?
That was definitely just Cyborg indulging in his weird sense of humor again.
Imagining Tony panicking earlier made Joey grin to himself as he began examining the drone more carefully.
The drone's crimson eyes suddenly lit up again.
Its system detected the scan immediately and activated anti-scanning protocols.
"ID recognized—authentication confirmed—Superman."
The armor plating on the robot's chest unfolded outward, revealing two objects inside:
A lead-lined box.
And a perfectly spherical machine core.
Curiosity prompted Joey to open the lead box first.
The moment he did, a burst of green light nearly blinded him—far stronger than the kryptonite ring Batman had previously given him.
At least ten times stronger.
"FUCK!"
Joey instantly snapped the lid shut as his entire face visibly turned green.
"Goddammit, Batman! Why the hell did you refine the kryptonite this pure?!"
Stuffing the lead box containing the kryptonite into his pocket, Joey turned toward the second object.
It was something he had never seen before.
Its nanostructure was unbelievably intricate.
The arrangement of its molecules and atoms shifted constantly in endlessly changing patterns.
And yet despite such violent internal transformations, it still maintained the shape of a flawless sphere.
Even through the hyper-precise X-ray vision of a Kryptonian, it remained perfectly spherical.
Faced with such a bizarre object, Joey spent less than three seconds considering his options before reaching a conclusion:
Touch it first.
Cyborg would never intentionally harm him anyway.
And since no instruction manual had been included, touching it probably would not cause any problems.
That was the confidence of someone with a body of steel.
The instant Joey casually touched the spherical nano-core, his previously relaxed expression finally changed.
"My God..."
To ordinary people, the metallic sphere appeared completely unchanged.
But from Joey's perspective, the situation was entirely different.
The moment he made contact, the atoms inside the sphere began rapidly rearranging themselves.
Then they started imitating Kryptonian cellular structures.
Watching the sphere gradually emit a genuine Kryptonian bio-field, Joey immediately realized exactly what kind of monstrous weapon Cyborg had sent over.
"A.M.A.Z.O..."