It was a pitch-black, windy night outside a secluded manor.
The door to the master bedroom slowly creaked open, and a lone figure swaggered right in.
He was bundled up in a thick, floral-patterned puffer jacket, paired with obnoxiously bright Barbie-pink board shorts, and topped off with a pair of puke-yellow Crocs on his feet.
Calling the outfit completely hideous would be an understatement—it was uniquely, spectacularly ugly.
But the most eye-catching part of the ensemble was the massive, yellow doge mask shoved over his head. Its smug, punchable expression radiated an inexplicable aura of pure mockery.
The dog-headed man strolled straight over to the office desk, booted up the computer, and fished a USB drive out of his pocket. He jammed it into the port, and a loading bar instantly popped up on the monitor.
As he waited, he felt the cell phone in his pocket start to vibrate.
"Yello?"
"Dean, it's Nick Fury. What's your current status?"
"I've infiltrated the target location. Currently securing the mission item."
"You haven't been spotted, have you?"
Dean was just about to answer when the master bathroom door suddenly clicked open. A bearded man in a bathrobe froze, staring at him in absolute terror.
"Dammit! Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?"
"Guards? Guards! Gua—"
Bang!
A single, clean gunshot rang out.
The dog-headed man calmly holstered his pistol and spoke back into the phone. "Relax, no one's gonna spot me."
"..."
Nick Fury stayed dead silent on the other end of the line for a few seconds before his voice dropped to a low growl. "Once the mission is complete, report back to HQ."
"Okey-dokey!"
Dean hung up the phone just as the progress bar on the monitor hit one hundred percent, and he smoothly yanked the USB drive out.
The very next second, a cold, mechanical voice echoed inside his mind.
——————————
[Daily Quest: "Steal Classified Intel" Completed!]
[Rewards Distributed: +500 EXP, +10 S.H.I.E.L.D. Reputation, C4 Explosive x1]
——————————
"Not bad..."
Dean curled his lip, his gaze sweeping over the corpse bleeding out on the floor. "Gotta hand it to them, though, this game is ridiculously well-made," he muttered in awe. "Look at the death physics on this NPC. It looks so insanely realistic, you couldn't convince me the devs haven't actually murdered someone."
The truth was, he was currently fully immersed in a state-of-the-art, holographic virtual reality game called Marvel World.
In the year 2065, fully-immersive VR tech was old news, allowing players to dive into digital worlds that felt practically one hundred percent real.
As a hardcore, veteran gamer with over a million subscribers, Dean had beaten countless titles and even built up a solid reputation in the international gaming community.
Two months ago, a game studio operating under the Marvel brand reached out to him. They invited him to beta test their brand-new, supposedly "limitless open-world" title, with a massive promise attached: beat the game on a single playthrough, and he would walk away with a multi-million dollar grand prize.
To be perfectly honest, Dean didn't know much about Marvel.
After all, in his era, the Marvel storylines had been rebooted and passed down through so many generations that the original roster of characters had completely faded into obscurity.
Currently, the most popular superhero was the seventh-generation Iron Man, going by the moniker Iron Blackheart—a single Black mother struggling with gender dysphoria, rampant alcoholism, morbid obesity, a history of multiple transition surgeries, three divorces, and five kids.
She had settled down with the eighth-generation Captain America—a gay, vegan, eco-activist, feminist trailblazer, and devout Catholic who was exactly one-eighth Native American—and the two of them spent every issue preaching about the power of family.
This particular superhero duo, practically over-encumbered with every politically correct status buff imaginable, might have been a massive hit with the Western crowds, but Dean couldn't care less about them.
Even so, Dean had signed the NDA without a second thought, and hopped right into the top-of-the-line VR pod they provided that very same day.
He really couldn't help himself.
They were just paying him way too damn much!
At the start of the game, the system offered him a choice of several starting backgrounds: HYDRA Spy, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, Stark Industries Employee, Hell's Kitchen Resident, or Midtown High School Student.
Dean had clicked one at random and instantly loaded into the game.
After two straight months of grinding, Dean had to admit—the level of freedom in this game was absolutely off the charts.
There was no tutorial, no objective markers, and zero guidance. Figuring out the controls and advancing the plot was entirely up to the player.
The craziest part was that after all this time, he hadn't seen so much as a glimpse of the main questline!
If the system hadn't repeatedly promised him that a main storyline actually existed, Dean would have started to think he was just playing a spy simulator.
"Come to think of it, there isn't a log-out button in the menus," Dean muttered, suddenly suspicious.
Right on cue, the system chimed in:
——————————
[We sincerely apologize. A minor issue occurred during startup resulting in a system bug. Our development team is currently working around the clock to patch it.]
——————————
"Wait, am I going to be okay?" Dean felt his stomach drop.
——————————
[Please do not panic. The VR pod monitors your real-world vital signs twenty-four hours a day. Any detected anomalies will instantly trigger an emergency forced-log-out sequence.]
[Additional Note: The time dilation between the game and reality is operating at a 362:1 ratio. The premium VR pod and high-efficiency IV nutrient drip you are currently using can sustain your body's basal metabolic rate for over ten years. There is absolutely no need to worry about time or physical safety.]
[If you insist on logging out, you may do so via a manual override at any time, but you will permanently forfeit your eligibility for the one-time clear grand prize.]
[Would you like to initiate a manual log-out?]
——————————
"Hell no!"
Dean instantly rejected the prompt.
Are you kidding? Until he beat this game and secured that multi-million dollar bag, there was absolutely no way he was logging out!
Right at that moment, the heavy, rapid thud of boots echoed from the hallway outside. Clearly, the gunshot had alerted the manor's security detail.
Shaking off the last of his lingering doubts, Dean immediately pulled up the world map and locked onto the coordinates for S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters.
He clicked. Fast Travel initiated!
By the time the guards kicked the door in, all they found inside the master bedroom was a cooling corpse—and a blinking, ticking block of C4.
"Holy shit!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
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The Triskelion, Director's Office.
Nick Fury was currently seated behind his massive executive desk, aggressively stamping his approval on a thick stack of paperwork.
"A S.H.I.E.L.D. budget reallocation report?"
A voice suddenly chimed in out of nowhere.
Fury's head snapped up, only to find a gigantic, yellow doge mask hovering right over his classified files.
Dean: (乛ᴥ乛)
"Motherfucker!"
Fury nearly jumped out of his skin, the expletive tearing from his throat purely on instinct.
But he recognized the intruder almost immediately. His face darkened into a scowl. "Dean! How many times do I have to tell you? When you are at headquarters, you dress normally! Or at least look like a damn human being!"
Dean took instant offense to that. "Are you kidding? This fit goes hard! Plus, the base stats on this gear are actually insane."
Fury's eye twitched.
Did you leave your sense of fashion in the womb when you were born?
He was just about to tear into the agent when Dean suddenly pointed a finger at a specific line on the document.
"By the way, Director, this report looks a little sketchy. Why are there several massive, untraceable expenditures listed right here? Don't tell me... someone in the agency is secretly embezzling funds?"
"Ack—cough, cough!"
Fury broke into a sudden, violent coughing fit. He quickly slammed the file shut and shoved it into his desk drawer, instantly putting on a stern front. "That is classified information, which I am handling personally. It is far above the clearance of a Level 5 Agent such as yourself."
"Right."
Fury kept a poker face, aggressively steering the conversation in a new direction. "I have a highly-sensitive mission for you."
As he spoke, he pulled a manila folder from a different drawer and slid it across the desk toward Dean.
Clipped to the front of the file was a photograph of an arrogant-looking man with a goatee. Below it, his name and title were printed in bold.
Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries.
"Three months ago, Tony Stark was ambushed by an unknown militant group in the Middle East. He has been MIA ever since."
"I need you on a transport to Afghanistan immediately. Track down Stark's location, and if he's still breathing, you are to bring him back in one piece."
The moment the Director stopped talking, the system chimed in.
——————————
[NPC Nick Fury has offered you a new Quest!]
[Quest: The Birth of Iron Man]
[Objective: Travel to the Middle East, locate Tony Stark, and extract him safely.]
[You have successfully triggered the Main Storyline Quest! Complete the objective to earn massive rewards!]
——————————
The Main Questline?
Dean's eyes widened in sheer excitement.
It was finally here!
The main quest he had been grinding for all this time had finally dropped!
"Iron Man? That definitely sounds like a superhero alias. Is he an important NPC?" Dean wondered to himself.
While he didn't know much about Marvel lore, he did know it was a comic book franchise centered entirely around superheroes. Naturally, the plot had to revolve around them.
It was just that up until this exact moment, Dean hadn't heard a single peep about any heroes in the game, let alone actually met one.
If anything, Nick Fury kind of gave off that whole superhero vibe.
'I wonder what his hero name is?'
Captain One-Eye?
Or maybe... Motherfucker-Man?
"DEAN! ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?"
Fury glared at the zoned-out agent, practically feeling his blood pressure spiking by the second.
Dean blinked, snapping back to reality. "My bad, boss. What were you just saying?"
"I said..."
"Actually, whatever, it doesn't matter. SKIP CUTSCENE!"
Nick Fury: "..."
...
Drop some powerstones~