The fellow who couldn't resist making a big deal out of everything shifted positions again and hooked an arm around Henry's shoulder.
"Come on, tell me. Are Hollywood actresses really different from other women? Are they especially... interesting?"
A name that should have been forgotten by the entire world had unexpectedly become connected to him again.
Henry's face showed shock and bewilderment.
But he concealed those emotions quite skillfully, responding with a bunch of meaningless nonsense to fob off this group of hormone-addled men.
So this was yet another parallel universe?
He and that woman were still connected...
No, not exactly.
They were in the kind of relationship where she'd already dumped him.
What kind of world was he in?
Henry pondered the question.
After completing recruit training in the United States Marine Corps, recruits were given ten days of leave.
During those ten days, Henry didn't return to New York or Los Angeles.
Instead, he stayed in San Francisco to investigate his "past."
Everything had changed with the Sentinel battle in New York.
Unfortunately, news reports about that battle could only describe it indirectly. All kinds of rumors and fabricated stories had flooded the media.
In short, the rampaging Sentinels had been defeated, while nearly half of New York City had been destroyed by the rampage of two superhumans.
At the time, the girl had been filming The Matrix in Australia, so she hadn't been caught up in the battle.
As a result, Henry had never left Stark Pictures.
It wasn't until half a year ago that the two of them broke up.
A Hollywood golden couple had suddenly become a former couple.
How could the entertainment reporters not swarm them like sharks smelling blood?
All sorts of fabricated stories immediately flooded the tabloids.
For example, Charlize Theron had supposedly gotten pregnant by someone else, while Henry Brown had found a new lover.
There were even vivid stories about Henry Brown dating a third party and Charlize Theron furiously tearing into the "other woman."
In short, anyone who actually believed the tabloids would have to be an idiot.
Henry certainly wasn't going to call that woman and ask why the two of them had broken up, much less try to win her back.
Because the Kryptonian, with his super-brain, had discovered that everything in this world was simply too "reasonable."
It was practically developing according to the history he knew and the logical course he'd envisioned.
There wasn't a single deviation.
The only unreasonable part was that after leaving Stark Pictures, he had spent some time depressed before decisively enlisting in the military.
His stated reason was that he wanted to become one of the mutants and better serve his country.
Henry knew his own circumstances better than anyone.
No matter how many parallel universes he traveled through, joining the military was one of the least likely things he would ever do.
Let alone doing it as a mutant.
I was a human from Earth before transmigrating. After transmigrating, I'm an extraterrestrial—not a mutant!
An absurd deduction emerged in Henry's mind.
He had seriously considered the fact that the current social climate was extremely favorable toward mutants, which went against the interests of those who wanted to profit from them.
Those people would certainly find a way to cause trouble and destroy this hard-won peace.
Among the military's hardliners, there was someone both intelligent enough and powerful enough to cause such destruction.
Colonel William Stryker.
Henry suspected that most of the various brutal plans involving mutants were being carried out under Stryker's direction.
William Stryker himself was an ordinary human, posing no threat whatsoever to Henry.
At least until the military found a legitimate reason, they couldn't easily move against him.
After all, the military was still part of the government. Even it had to maintain some semblance of propriety in public.
But his son, Jason Stryker, was a mutant.
His codename was Mastermind.
And he was a powerful mutant capable of even fooling Professor X.
Could it be that these two followed the movie version of the setting?
Just because Henry hadn't gone to confirm their existence didn't mean they weren't here.
Although he had never personally met this world's Stryker father and son, what if the son had likewise been controlled by his father and turned into a puppet confined to a wheelchair?
If so...
Had Henry now fallen victim to Mastermind's abilities?
And if he really had, how could he escape?
When Professor X invaded his consciousness, Henry could rely on the computational speed of his super-brain to temporarily overload Professor X's human brain.
But the current situation seemed different.
It was more like his super-brain had become his opponent's accomplice, weaving an enormous and perfectly reasonable world that had deceived him.
Only this could explain how Charlize Theron had somehow become connected with him again after the Six-Infinity-Stone Snap.
In that Marvel universe, aside from Henry himself, no one knew that Henry Brown and Charlize Theron had once been lovers.
Traveling to a parallel universe seemed like a reasonable explanation.
But it still couldn't explain why he had enlisted in the military after being dumped.
That irrationality was the biggest flaw.
If his opponent wanted to control him, they would have to guide him actively, making him believe he was doing one thing while, in reality, he was doing something else entirely.
Something they wanted him to do.
As for breaking free from the world woven by his own super-brain...
It wasn't merely a question of whether he could do it.
Henry didn't have even the slightest clue how.
In other words, his greatest opportunity would come when the mastermind behind everything tried to make a move and introduced some unreasonable distortion.
Just like the fact that Henry, who would absolutely never enlist in the military, had somehow become a soldier.
Or the fact that he was clearly a Kryptonian, yet was now merely an ordinary mutant.
Only when his opponent tried to control him and another such unreasonable distortion appeared would Henry be able to locate the flaw in this world and find a way to escape.
So for now, the only thing he could do was proceed with extreme caution.
In particular, he needed to reactivate his no-killing rule.
Who knew whether he'd been placed in the military because it was the easiest place in the world to kill people?
If Henry killed some "enemy" in this world, the person who died in reality might not necessarily be an "enemy."
What a troublesome opponent.
After his ten-day leave ended, Henry returned to the mutant battalion.
He still didn't have the courage to try deserting to see whether he could break free from this illusionary world.
No matter what country you were talking about, desertion was a serious offense.
The Marine Corps recruit depot in San Diego really wasn't a place one could stay for long.
Even though Henry hadn't returned particularly late, he immediately saw a large group of people packing their belongings.
When Blair saw him, he immediately said, "We're being transferred to a U.S. military base in Kuwait. Pack your things."
"The orders came down?"
"Yes. Once we're sent away, this place has to receive the next batch of recruits."
"That fast?" Henry was surprised.
"Just look at Afghanistan. They've been fighting on and off all this time, and they're still fighting.
"Iraq has a larger territory, and there are oil fields that need to be occupied. It'll probably take even longer.
"If we don't have new recruits to replace us afterward, what happens if we get wiped out in one wave?"
"So you also think we're targeting the oil."
"Whether we are or not, once we've fought our way in, we'll obviously seize it while we're there."
"When you put it that way, I suppose you're right."
Henry sighed.
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