One month later.
Fu Qinghai sat in a cubicle by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the busy New York traffic with a pained expression.
Damn Stark Industries intern recruitment!
Looking up at the gleaming silver-grey building in the distance, he was still at least three whole blocks away from Stark Tower!
In his previous life, Fu Qinghai had heard of such situations: some subsidiaries and smaller companies under large conglomerates, due to their lack of fame, couldn't attract enough applicants, so they would recruit under the guise of the parent company, while the actual entity signing the labor contract was an unknown small company. Some large state-owned enterprises and private companies loved to play this trick.
But he never expected that Stark Industries, a company of its stature, would also resort to this!
The company Fu Qinghai was interning at, called Beckhart Light and Shadow Special Effects, wasn't even a subsidiary of Stark Industries; at most, it was a supplier with a close working relationship and some cross-shareholding.
And they could recruit under the name of Stark Industries?
Fu Qinghai recalled the unusually smooth interview process, having been so sure that his forged documents were flawless and his explanations watertight.
Turns out they didn't care if he was real or fake.
Society is simple; it's people who are complicated.
Turns out the clown was me all along!
Looking at the computer screen and piles of documents before him, at this simple, monotonous, boring, and repetitive work, did it really require “Dr. Stanford” Fu Qinghai? Even a graduate from Garleton University could do this.
Fu Qinghai's mood was extremely complex now.
He was one step further away from becoming the CEO of Stark Industries.
The only consolation, perhaps, was that the intern salary was decent enough for Fu Qinghai to barely survive in New York, rather than having to queue with the homeless for federal government unemployment relief meals.
The instant coffee had gone cold. Fu Qinghai, sitting idly at his desk, gazed fixedly at the entrance of Stark Tower in the distance, as if looking at an unattainable goddess.
The midday sun was as scorching as it had been on the day of his interview, with dazzling reflections on the glass curtain wall.
Suddenly, Fu Qinghai thought he saw a blurry shadow flash across the glass curtain wall.
"Hmm?" Fu Qinghai strained his eyes to look closer, but it was too far to see clearly.
"Did I see things?" The reflected sunlight was too intense, and Fu Qinghai wasn't sure what he had seen.
"Probably saw things. Hmm… I've been in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for over two months now, and I haven't found any other suspected Reincarnators. That voice in my head hasn't appeared again either." Fu Qinghai mused to himself, wondering how long it would take for his fake doctorate to get him into Stark Industries.
Not only had he not stolen Stark Industries' black technology, but the legendary assimilation points also seemed indefinitely far off.
"Tsk…" After thinking for a while, Fu Qinghai smacked his lips and got up to refill his hot coffee.
Suddenly, a loud "Boom!" echoed, and Fu Qinghai quickly turned to look out the window.
He saw a large hole torn open in the middle of Stark Tower in the distance, with thick black smoke billowing out.
The explosion was so loud that Fu Qinghai, three blocks away from Stark Tower, felt the floor shake.
A commotion and uproar broke out in the office, and Fu Qinghai's colleagues all stood up to look out the window.
"What happened?"
"Is it a terrorist attack?"
"Look, that's Stark Industries! It's smoking!" a colleague pointed.
"Oh God, those aliens haven't come back, have they?" Some employees began to pray; these were likely survivors of the Chitauri invasion of New York.
"Quiet! Quiet! Go back to your seats first." A short, stout supervisor was also alarmed and came out of his office to maintain order.
But the employees ignored his shouts, all crowding around the floor-to-ceiling windows to observe Stark Tower in the distance.
The Battle of New York a year ago was still fresh in everyone's minds, and to this day, many ruins in New York had not been fully repaired.
Fu Qinghai gazed deeply at the chaotic scene in the distance: traffic jams, people fleeing in terror, police in black "NYPD" uniforms rushing to the scene, and the wail of fire alarms already sounding in the distance.
I must go. A voice seemed to be urging him from within.
"I have to go see!" Fu Qinghai decided. Although he didn't know the situation, he felt that this incident was no small matter. He had experienced Stark Tower's security; it was extremely strict. Whoever could cause an explosion in the middle of the tower was certainly no ordinary person.
So, following that inexplicable urge, Fu Qinghai pushed past his colleagues, ran down the stairs, and emerged onto the street.
People on the street were all fleeing in panic away from Stark Tower; no one wanted to watch the spectacle. Living in the disaster-prone city of New York, this was the most basic safety awareness.
Fu Qinghai, moving against the flow of people, stood out conspicuously. Police were maintaining order by the roadside; the earlier explosion had caused several cars to rear-end each other.
"Hey, kid, you can't go…" The police officer pulling the cordon had just stopped Fu Qinghai and was about to speak.
"Boom!!!" Another loud explosion.
This explosion occurred near the top floor of Stark Tower. Thick smoke billowed out, and countless glass shards and concrete fragments rained down like raindrops. People on the street covered their heads and frantically dodged.
At the moment of the explosion, Fu Qinghai and the police officer next to him instinctively ducked. Fu Qinghai took the opportunity to suddenly stand up and run towards Stark Tower at an even faster speed.
As Fu Qinghai ran, he could hear his own heart pounding.
His rationality was warning him: This is dangerous! This is very dangerous!
But Fu Qinghai's inherent gambling nature overwhelmed his rationality. He had been in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a whole month, achieving nothing. He was a corporate drone in his previous life; was he going to be a mediocre drone for half his life again after entering the Reincarnation World?
"Besides, according to the information, shouldn't I have three lives?"
Fu Qinghai rushed to the tower's entrance. Injured and bleeding people were constantly crying and running out of the entrance. Fu Qinghai sidesteestepped inside and saw the once busy ground floor lobby in a state of disarray: collapsed pillars, unconscious people on the floor, and security guards busy rescuing bleeding casualties.
"Now isn't the time to save people, and besides, I don't know first aid." No one paid attention to Fu Qinghai. He stepped over the messy ground and rushed towards the elevators.
The explosion had spread to near the top floor; there was no time to take the stairs. Fu Qinghai pulled an access card from the chest of a blue-uniformed security guard's half-body corpse on the floor, not daring to look at the bloody, mangled lower half, and holding his breath to avoid the nauseating smell of blood, he swiped open the elevator door according to the location he remembered from his interview.
"Ding-dong!" This elevator was still working normally.
Fu Qinghai pressed the highest floor and then pressed downwards. He finally lit up the button for the 45th floor.
"Phew… It seems this security guard's clearance only goes up to the 45th floor." Fu Qinghai took a deep breath. The elevator doors closed and began to ascend slowly.
Standing in the slowly ascending elevator, Fu Qinghai forced himself to calm down and consider the situations he might encounter later.
"Someone has invaded Stark Tower, a violent invasion, but for what?"
In the original movie plot, this period was Thor's time; there was no indication of what the other Avengers were doing.
Then it's very likely not a plot character, but a Reincarnator like me! Fu Qinghai's heart tightened. A Reincarnator who dared to violently invade the Avengers' New York office must have strength far beyond a weakling like him, who had just entered the Reincarnation World.
And judging by the situation, their chosen faction was highly likely to be opposite to his own.
Another explosion came from an upper floor, and the elevator shook, its lights flickering on and off.
Fu Qinghai quickly gripped the handrail to steady himself.
At this moment, he remembered the blurry shadow he had seen flashing by in the distance from the building earlier. Could it be related to this?
"Ding-dong!" The elevator doors opened.
Fu Qinghai first cautiously peered out. Damaged furniture, bullet holes in the walls, and a few scattered bodies—not as many as on the first floor—but there were many radial bloodstains on the walls. Besides the signs of battle, the entire 45th floor was empty.
Compared to the chaos on the street outside the tower, there was an eerie silence here.
Having arrived here, Fu Qinghai was no longer in a hurry. He had rushed to the upper floors of the tower on an impulse, but now he could observe and think carefully. Fu Qinghai went to a headless corpse in a suit slumped on a sofa. The cut on the neck was neat and smooth, and semi-coagulated blood hung like a waterfall on the back of the sofa. The head had fallen behind the sofa. From the relaxed posture of the body, it seemed that he had not realized the danger before death. There was also a Stark Industries badge on the chest of the suit, stained red with blood.
Another body lay at the entrance to the stairwell: a bearded white man in a shirt and jeans, wearing a desert camouflage GEN2 bulletproof vest over them. In his hand, he still clutched an AR-15 assault rifle covered in modifications and custom paint. Fu Qinghai's intuition told him this was not the attire of a Stark Industries security guard.
Moreover, the charred, ten-centimeter-diameter hole in the bearded man's chest also hinted at something.
Could this be a penetrating wound caused by Iron Man's repulsor blast? Fu Qinghai thought to himself. If so, this bearded man was likely also a Reincarnator.
After a thorough search yielded no further useful information, Fu Qinghai spent a lot of effort prying open the bearded man's tightly gripping fingers from the rifle's grip. He first familiarized himself with the trigger and safety, then, mimicking someone playing CQB, he held the gun, crouched low, and moved up to the upper floor through the large hole blown open in the stairwell.
46th floor, 47th floor, 48th floor.
Along the way, Fu Qinghai touched every electronic device he could find.
"Please enter password."
"Facial recognition in progress."
"Insufficient permissions, access denied."
The electronic devices gave him almost uniform answers.
"Fuck!" Fu Qinghai couldn't help but curse.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enter the top floors of Stark Tower, yet it yielded no gains. Fu Qinghai was, at most, a widely knowledgeable white-collar worker; he didn't have the persona of a genius hacker. Moreover, to break through Stark Industries' firewall, it would probably require more than just an ordinary genius hacker.
During Fu Qinghai's exploration, explosions and vibrations occasionally came from the top floor, indicating the intensity of the battle.
"Someone who can fight Iron Man back and forth probably isn't just a few mercenary-looking Reincarnators…" At this point, one more floor up was the top floor of Stark Tower, and Fu Qinghai hesitated again.
He had infiltrated Stark Tower, but hadn't gained anything.
The unwillingness in his heart was one thing, but most crucially, he still remembered that his main quest, chosen a month ago, was "A. Avengers Faction Plotline"!
If… just if, Iron Man really died on the top floor, even though it was Thor's plot point now, Iron Man, as one of the MCU Avengers' Big Three, would absolutely affect the entire Avengers faction's plot progression.
The group of Reincarnators daring to challenge Iron Man clearly wouldn't come unprepared…
Fu Qinghai then thought about the "Reincarnation Life x3" that voice in his head had told him…
"Let's do it!" Fu Qinghai steeled his resolve.
No matter how ingenious your plans, no matter how powerful you are, no matter how weak I am… Today, I, Fu Qinghai, must come to help!
Despite saying that, Fu Qinghai still maintained a near-snail's pace as he slowly moved up the spiral staircase.
Fu Qinghai tried his best to mask his sounds, moving and holding his breath to listen.
The battle upstairs seemed to have subsided, and faint voices could be heard.
"So, Mr. Stark, even if not for your own life, you should consider the lives of your woman and friends. Now, hand over the Tesseract isotope." The voice sounded like a young man.
A weak voice said, "I don't know what you're talking about… What damn Tesseract, there's nothing you want here."
"That's your father's legacy to you, how could you not know!" The young voice grew angry. "Look at this face, Virginia 'Pepper' Potts, your poor little secretary, in the next second this face will be blown to smithereens by a .44 caliber Magnum bullet!"
That was a very typical villain's monologue.
"You should go find Nick Fury, not me, ha… Just do it. I didn't expect to die here, not in the Battle of New York, but at the hands of a stupid mutant."
"Mutant? I'm not one of those mutated mongrels, Mr. Stark. You know nothing of the will of the Earth, you know nothing of the great power of Orochi!" The young voice was full of arrogance.
Will of the Earth? Power of Orochi? Hearing this, Fu Qinghai began to ponder…
Could it be… The King of Fighters?
Hiss… Fu Qinghai secretly took a cold breath. He had been wondering what kind of Reincarnator could fight Iron Man back and forth, but if the opponent was the fully manifested reincarnation of Orochi from The King of Fighters, then according to the power settings in the King of Fighters world, that would be far beyond what Iron Man in his Mark 42 armor could handle. At the very least, it would require Iron Man in his Mark 4 armor to even stand a chance.
Conversely, the fact that he could fight Iron Man back and forth now indicated that the opponent was not the full manifestation of Orochi's will, but merely a temporary medium for Orochi. Fu Qinghai continued his analysis.
"Merely" a temporary medium? Listen to how arrogant that sounds.
"Murakami, stop wasting time with him. The other Avengers are coming. Just kill him and get the assimilation points." A rough voice said.
Fu Qinghai had already moved to the top floor and was now sitting by the glass door, listening to the voices coming from behind the wall.
"No, the other Avengers won't arrive that quickly. It's rare to force Iron Man into such a situation. We can play with Mr. Stark slowly…" The young voice sneered, clearly not satisfied with the huge assimilation points gained from killing Iron Man, but harboring even greater ambition and greed.
"No, I have to do something, or Iron Man will die here today." Hearing this, Fu Qinghai decided to quietly peek out and see the situation.
So he slowly extended his head past the door.
And saw the scene beyond the door.
With just one glance, Fu Qinghai's blood nearly froze.
…………