Faced with Ian's explanation.
The girl named Gwen did not respond.
"Gwen Stacy?"
Ian tentatively asked.
"Hmm?"
The other party seemed somewhat surprised, clearly indicating Ian had guessed correctly. Sure enough, this was the girl whom Peter Parker, across several generations of Spider-Men, had failed to successfully sleep with.
"Do you know me? Have we met?" The girl, Gwen, looked Ian up and down, her expression confused, as if trying to recall if she had ever encountered Ian before.
"No, I've only heard of you... and the story of Spider-Man. You just said the former superheroes all went crazy. Can you tell me what happened?"
Ian wanted to seize the opportunity to extract information.
"I woke up from a long sleep, and the world was like this." He told a slight lie again. After all, compared to explaining he came from another world, fabricating a story of being cursed by a witch and sleeping for a long time was clearly simpler. Do not underestimate a writer. No, since he was about to have a best-selling book, Ian felt he deserved the title of a writer.
"Spider-Man, huh."
Gwen seemed uninterested in Ian's "story," which disappointed Ian. Her expression looked a bit mournful, as if she were recalling sad memories.
"There hasn't been a Spider-Man in this world for a long time." The girl sighed heavily, her gaze melancholic, and she looked down at her fair right hand, which was gripping the gun.
She slightly flexed her wrist.
Staring at the slightly wrinkled pulse point, her expression grew sadder.
"Here, a tissue. Let me hold this heavy thing for you, let me bear the burden, and you can wipe the sleep from your eyes." Suddenly, a voice sounded beside Gwen, who was deep in memory.
Then.
Someone attempted to take the firearm from her hand.
"What are you doing!?"
Gwen was startled. She hadn't noticed Ian approaching at all. Realizing what was happening, she pushed Ian away abruptly and immediately retreated five or six steps, alert.
In the subconscious reaction, Gwen aimed the gun at Ian, but seeing Ian's eager expression, she felt a headache and reluctantly lowered the muzzle.
"Seriously, what is wrong with you?" The girl might not have realized how dangerous Ian was, so after putting down the gun again, she looked at the boy with an incomprehensible gaze.
"You have such great strength?"
Ian rubbed his chest, looking slightly stunned.
His eyes flickered.
"Don't try to take my gun again!" Gwen didn't respond to Ian's confusion, only issuing a stern but perhaps not very intimidating warning.
"Give me a chance... Seriously, trust me. I didn't have a choice before, but now I want to be a bad guy who gets shot." Ian was too covetous of the laser rounds in that full battery. Honestly, if he hadn't left the gold bars, which were hard currency even in the apocalypse, at home, he would have "leased" the girl's gun directly.
"..."
Gwen genuinely wanted to empty a clip into Ian.
However.
Her emotional regulation skills were quite good.
"To be honest, you remind me of a comic book I read when I was a kid." Gwen sighed helplessly. Her increasingly vague childhood made her feel melancholic.
"What comic book?"
Ian was curious.
Gwen, however, remained silent.
She turned her head and glimpsed a few swaying black shadows indistinctly appearing in the snow curtain.
The next moment.
"You like playing with guns so much, huh? Here!" Her attitude suddenly did a complete 180-degree shift, and she threw the gun in her hand toward Ian, who was not far away.
Ian caught it steadily.
As the firearm touched his palm, a light mechanical whirring sound came from it.
[Identity Verification Passed]
The electronic voice was exceptionally clear in the silent snowy landscape.
Ian was somewhat surprised.
Gwen's pupils, however, sharply constricted.
Her expression instantly changed drastically.
"How is this possible!?"
Her voice was filled with incredible shock.
"Uh... I'm pretty surprised too." Ian could naturally guess this was some kind of usage authorization identity check. Like Gwen, he just didn't understand why he could also unlock the gun's usage permission.
Unless.
Gwen was also secretly in love with him.
And had secretly authorized him just now?
Ian thought this was quite reasonable.
But not quite legal.
He was just a fourteen-year-old boy, while Gwen clearly looked like an eighteen or nineteen-year-old "old woman." Thinking this, Ian was about to empty the magazine to practice his bullet-catching technique.
*Creak*creak*
The sudden noise made him pause his action. He saw four fully armed soldiers and a woman in a white lab coat cycling toward them.
Betty Ross.
Bruce Banner's ex-girlfriend.
Ian felt he hadn't guessed wrong.
"What's going on?"
The female scientist Betty stopped, resting one foot on the ground. The legs of her lab coat were covered in snowy mud, indicating she must have fallen many times along the way. Ian knew exactly how slippery the streets were.
He could barely keep his footing.
"This person is the teleporter who mysteriously disappeared after appearing near the bodies before we took the Hulk and Homelander away. The system actually recognized him as a legitimate user of the weapon."
Saying this.
Gwen stepped forward and snatched the gun from Ian's hand before it could even warm up.
"Seriously, you can't play fair?"
Ian felt the other party was truly strange; her strength was even greater than his. Seeing that Ian no longer had the firearm, the four soldiers also lowered the weapons they had aimed at him.
They were all laser guns.
Ian looked at them with covetous eyes.
"It could be a remnant SHIELD agent, or a survivor from the SHIELD Academy." Betty, also surprised, pushed up her glasses. Ian's reflection shone in the lenses.
"Are you?"
Gwen looked at Ian.
"Uh, I don't know. I'm just a guy who was captured by an evil witch and was about to be taken back to..." Ian seized the opportunity to tell his story.
However, the scientist Betty had no intention of giving him a chance to showcase his talent.
"Let's head back first. We'll check the database to find out about his situation then." Betty gave Ian a deep look. The four soldiers immediately surrounded Ian.
"You have a base?"
Ian didn't resist.
His curiosity was instantly piqued. He had already wandered in this world for a while, yet he hadn't discovered any other living beings in the city before.
He hadn't expected so many people to emerge at once. Regardless of whether these people were echoes from the universe's past, Ian was genuinely curious about where they were hiding daily.
"Follow us, and you'll find out." Betty and Gwen exchanged a look. She suddenly pulled out a device and scanned Ian, then her expression visibly relaxed.
"A super-human retaining goodness is very important to us." Betty's tone also relaxed significantly. Not just her, but Gwen and the four soldiers were also less wary of Ian.
This was probably because the mysterious device was showing a green light?
"Of course, I'm good. I come from a legitimate family with high moral standards." Ian was not surprised by the test results. After all, consider the family environment and moral guidance he had grown up with.
Karl Marx in his past life.
Red underpants in this life.
Who could be more 'red' than him?
"Let's go."
Gwen didn't want to continue talking to Ian. She actively walked in the direction Betty the scientist had come from. Ian followed closely, and the others also pushed their bicycles instead of riding them.
They were likely all too traumatized by falling.
Soon.
Ian followed Gwen and Betty into a hidden alley. Gwen deftly pried open a manhole cover, looked back, and jumped down without hesitation.
"Leap of Faith?"
Ian didn't want to fall on his butt, so he seized the opportunity and jumped down quickly.
"..."
The landing Gwen saw the falling object above.
She sighed and caught Ian.
"Thank you, Gwen. You truly are a superhero."
Ian maintained his courtesy.
Next.
The others smoothly descended using ropes. Gwen put Ian down and led the way into the depths of the sewer. Only footsteps and dripping water could be heard in the damp tunnel.
Soon.
They reached the end of the tunnel, where there was a large metal door with a cold metallic sheen. The logo representing the Avengers was faded.
"Wait a moment."
Betty suddenly stopped Gwen, who was about to go up for verification.
"Let him go."
She looked at Ian.
Ian raised an eyebrow.
He walked to the door, curious.
[Identity Verification Passed]
The same thing happened again.
The door swung open with a bang.
Ian was thoughtful.
He wondered if the "setting" that he wouldn't be harmed in this world had anything to do with the special situation he was now experiencing.
"How can this be!"
Both Gwen and Betty's expressions were a mix of shock and uncertainty.
"He passed the verification for this too?"
Gwen's eyes widened in disbelief. "Could our system have been hacked? Is he a hacker who pre-registered his identity information into our system?"
This was the most likely conjecture in her mind. After all, she was genuinely unwilling to believe that Ian was a highly-authorized agent.
"That's impossible. No one can hack us."
Betty frowned deeply.
She couldn't figure it out.
But she still rejected Gwen's judgment.
"So confident?"
Ian didn't understand hacking methods, but he felt that in any world, there should be no information system that couldn't be breached. The strongest shield always exists only to highlight the strongest spear.
This was likely even more true in the Marvel Universe.
"You truly seem to know nothing..." Betty observed Ian's reaction carefully, her frown deepening. "Our system here is absolutely the safest in the world."
Saying this.
She led Ian through the opened door.
"Why?"
Ian asked as he walked.
Inside the door was an underground space the size of a football field. Dozens of personnel in white lab coats moved between various sophisticated instruments. A huge hemispherical computer stood in the center of the hall.
Data streams rolled across its surface like a waterfall.
"Because we have... the last superhero in the world." The words Betty spoke were full of confidence, yet the weight in her tone was significantly heavier.
She pointed to the computer in the center of the hall.
"Ultron?"
Ian stated his guess without hesitation. Since his "background" information was already perfected along the way, he knew there was no need to hide his "omniscience" in this world.
However.
The next moment.
Ian realized he might not be so "omniscient" after all.
"No, not Ultron."
A low, magnetic male voice suddenly sounded.
"It's me—Iron Man, Tony Stark."
The voice.
Came from the computer.
A handsome face, composed of countless characters, was pieced together on the screen.
***
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