Tony Stark stood inside his seaside mansion on Long Island, directing JARVIS's mechanical arms as they cleaned up the disaster left behind by his cross-universe jump.
The crude teleportation device had become unstable shortly after Tony departed for Joey's universe and exploded violently.
If Tony hadn't been absurdly lucky, he probably would've been vaporized together with the machine.
During the two days he'd been missing, both Stark Industries and the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel responsible for liaising with him had practically gone insane.
Fortunately, Tony had returned alive.
A few more days, and his assistant, secretary, occasional date, and beloved Pepper Potts probably would've been signing legal documents through tears while inheriting the entire Stark Industries.
"Ah, you're alright, Mr. Stark. Good. Thank you. No alcohol. Goodbye."
S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson looked utterly exhausted.
He had rushed over aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. Harrier jet, personally confirmed Tony was still a living, unharmed human being, then immediately rushed off again like a man drowning in work.
Leaving Tony standing there awkwardly holding an extra wine glass.
"Well... more for me I guess."
Tony sometimes wondered whether S.H.I.E.L.D., as massive an organization as it was, actually employed anyone besides Coulson.
Every time he saw the guy, Coulson seemed absurdly busy, like every problem on Earth somehow ended up on his desk.
Speaking of problems—Tony had returned, but Joey had vanished during the transfer.
That absolutely shouldn't have happened.
Which meant Cyborg's side of the operation definitely had issues.
"So... why'd you move?"
Speak of the devil.
Just as Tony was wondering how to locate the missing Joey, the man himself appeared.
Joey casually floated in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, grabbed the wine glass from Tony's hand, and downed it in one gulp.
Then he frowned.
"This is basically just water."
Kryptonian metabolism had already rendered Joey completely immune to Earth alcohol.
Any liquor he drank was effectively wasted.
"Then stop wasting my precious collection!"
Tony immediately noticed that fact and snatched the glass back out of Joey's hand.
Only then did he finally notice the thick layer of blood and goo smeared across the glass.
"Joey, what the fuck?!"
Tony, who possessed an almost pathological level of cleanliness, instantly felt a wave of disgust shoot straight into his skull upon seeing blood all over his hands.
He nearly blacked out on the spot.
"So let me get this straight..."
"You accidentally killed a monster?"
After what was effectively three or four complete purification rituals involving showers, soap, and enough hot water to sterilize a hospital, Tony finally collapsed onto the couch in a bathrobe and immediately downed a full glass of alcohol to stabilize himself emotionally.
Only after pouring himself another half-glass martini did he finally have the mental strength to listen to Joey explain the origin of the mess.
After hearing how Joey had punched Abomination into a fine red paste with a single blow, Tony could clearly tell Joey was deeply bothered by it.
What he didn't understand was why.
"You're upset?"
"Why?"
"That monster was rampaging through an entire city block causing massive casualties and destruction. Accidentally killing him during combat isn't exactly a tragedy."
"That's not the problem, Tony."
What Joey feared wasn't that he had killed Abomination.
He had long since allowed the monster inside himself to run wild before.
There was already plenty of blood on his hands.
One more corpse changed nothing.
What truly worried him was how easily he had done it.
He had spent too long living in an environment so dangerous that restraining his power was usually unnecessary.
"Think about it this way, Tony."
"Imagine one day I try to give you a friendly hug..."
"And accidentally squeeze a little too hard..."
"...turning you into two separate people named 'To' and 'ny'."
The example Joey gave was intentionally extreme.
He obviously wasn't going to split Iron Man into Iron and Man with a hug.
But the mental image still made Tony visibly shiver.
Then, naturally, Tony immediately thought of a completely inappropriate joke for the current emotional atmosphere.
"Joey... now that you mention it..."
"What if one day you hook up with a girl..."
Tony formed a finger gun with his hand and added a little 'bang' sound effect with his mouth.
"...and when you let go...would that pose a lethal threat to the poor girl?"
"..."
Looking at Tony wiggling his eyebrows at him, Joey—who had been genuinely worrying about his own loss of control moments earlier—instantly got obliterated by the sheer catastrophic stupidity of the joke.
"I swear to god...."
Deep breaths, deep breaths.
After Tony's relentless nonsense derailed the entire mood, Joey honestly did feel considerably better.
Was this the legendary combination of Iron Man's IQ and emotional intelligence?
Unfortunately, Tony clearly had no intention of stopping there.
Having successfully broken Joey's tension once, he immediately continued bombarding him with increasingly inappropriate topics, launching repeated attacks against Joey's otherwise fairly solid moral standards.
"Seriously though."
"That face of yours is maybe only slightly worse than mine."
"You know how to date three girls in one day?"
"The breakfast shift, the lunch shift, and the dinner shift kind of schedule?"
Joey felt that letting a guy like Tony—someone who used money to bulldoze his way through life—talk about relationships probably meant hearing nonsense that no decent person would ever repeat.
Still, he was curious what kind of outrageous answer Tony would come up with.
"Let's hear it."
"It is actually pretty simple."
Slumped across the couch, Tony tilted his head back and downed another half glass of martini.
"You just need to reject the other ninety-seven girls trying to date you."
"Oh..."
Joey sucked in a breath.
For one terrifying moment, he actually felt like Tony's dog mouth had somehow managed to spit out a few ivory pearls.
Of course, while the logic technically made sense, Joey was still a man with morals, ideals, and self-restraint.
"I'm flattered, but I already have a girlfriend."
"So what?"
That sentence had wandered directly into Tony Stark's area of expertise. The playboy instincts buried deep inside him immediately reignited.
"Having a girlfriend ≠ being unable to briefly experience a new lifestyle."
Joey almost applauded.
"Wow."
Of course, he was only listening.
Not arguing with Tony didn't mean he agreed with him.
Under the influence of alcohol, what should have been a high-level discussion about saving the world rapidly nosedived into increasingly questionable territory.
Especially Tony, who had completely opened the floodgates.
"Tch. You're just acting like a gentleman. Let me tell you something..."
The endless stream of jokes pouring from Tony's mouth completely drowned out the anxiety Joey had been carrying around earlier.
At least for the moment, he couldn't even remember what he had been worried about anymore.
But good times never lasted long.
Just as the conversation was veering into territory that absolutely could not be broadcast publicly, a thunderous explosion interrupted the two men's extremely healthy exchange.
BOOM.
A brilliant light suddenly erupted from the ruins of Tony's old teleportation device.
Alongside the deafening blast, a figure wrapped in blazing radiant flames emerged from the center of the light.
Joey instantly recognized the energy signature.
He was extremely familiar with that spectrum radiation.
He had personally experienced it in depth.
As the flames faded away, they revealed bright orange skin and crimson-gold hair.
The newcomer's eyes swept across the living room before locking onto Joey.
"Hey there, Starfire."
Joey forced himself to greet her casually.
"How are your injuries?"
He had already expected that, besides himself, more people from the other side would eventually be sent over to handle matters here.
After all, with disaster looming overhead, everyone wanted more time.
What he absolutely hadn't expected was for Cyborg to work this fast.
And even less expected—
That the person sent over would be Starfire.
Seriously, what the hell?
Where was Batman?
No matter how you looked at it, he'd have been way more useful than Starfire, right?!
"Cyborg only realized during activation that there had been a calculation error."
Starfire noticed Joey's confusion and explained:
"The teleportation parameters designed specifically for you would cause massive damage to anyone transported from outside our universe."
"I forced Cyborg to recalculate everything before sending me through."
"That way, even if something happened to you, I could look after you."
Her left hand still gripped her not-yet-fully-healed right arm.
The old fracture still throbbed faintly with pain, making her brows tighten slightly.
But her concern for Joey had outweighed everything else.
Perhaps because Joey's physiology was abnormal, the teleportation itself hadn't caused any real problems for him.
At most, he had felt slightly dizzy upon arrival.
But very quickly, Joey realized there was still an accident waiting to happen.
It just didn't come from dangerous interdimensional travel.
It came from someone's goddamn mouth.
"Oh, you two know each other? Great."
Already thoroughly drunk, Tony lazily looked up at Starfire.
After realizing she seemed familiar with Joey, he immediately dropped all caution.
Completely ignoring Joey's increasingly desperate eye signals, Tony casually continued the earlier topic.
"Now where was I again... right!"
"Cough cough, Tony!"
Still half-drunk and completely oblivious, Tony ignored Joey's frantic coughing and carried on talking as if nobody else existed.
"So like I was saying—among all the cover girls featured in Playboy this year, whose contact information would you want the most?"
At this moment, standing face-to-face with Starfire, the thing Joey wanted most definitely was not some cover girl's phone number.
What he wanted—
Was for Tony Stark to shut his fucking mouth.
Under Starfire's emerald-green gaze, Joey felt like he was sitting on a bed of needles.
He barely suppressed the urge to grab a nearby pillow and smother Tony to death on the spot.
Instead, he silently finalized Tony's execution date in his mind.
"Tony... once you sober up tomorrow..."
"I'm going to kill you."