[Morning – Quarantine Level, Starfire Base]
Ben woke up with a loud groan, one hand rubbing his face, the other pressing against something oddly hard and uneven.
He blinked.
Everyone was staring at him.
Tony, Sue, and Johnny were standing nearby. All with the same weird look: part surprise, part disbelief.
Johnny had a soda in hand and was clearly trying not to laugh. His cheeks were puffed, mouth twitching.
"What?" Ben grumbled, his voice deeper than usual. Rougher.
No one answered.
Ben pushed himself up, and that's when he noticed it.
The couch beneath him, correction, what used to be a couch, was now a shattered pile of splinters, bent metal, and torn fabric. It looked like it had gone ten rounds with a wrecking ball. The floor underneath groaned slightly as he stood.
And then he noticed the change, saw his hands.
"...What the hell?"
They were huge. His fingers were thicker than soda cans. His skin was no longer skin. It looked like stone. Not just rough or cracked, but solid, as if sculpted from burnt-orange granite, with thick ridges and seam lines across his knuckles and forearms.
He looked down at his body. His shirt was torn apart, and his skin was stone with cracked lines all over. He ran his fingers over his chest.
Panic kicked in.
His breath came faster. He looked down at his arms, chest, legs... all of it was transformed. Massive, solid, and strangely symmetrical. His entire body had changed overnight, and he hadn't even felt it.
"What the hell is this?!" he shouted, stumbling back into the wall, which cracked from the impact.
Sue stepped forward instinctively, but Tony raised a hand, keeping everyone back.
"Ben," Tony said, calm and direct. "Look at me."
Ben turned, chest heaving. His new form towered over the others, but his eyes were wide with fear.
"Whatever's happening, it's part of the change. That's why we are here, aren't we?" Tony said. "Just stay still. Let me scan you. No one's hurt. You're okay. You're going to be okay. I promise."
Ben swallowed hard and nodded, barely.
"Alright, just take a seat on the floor and let me arrange the scanner," Tony said calmly.
"Alright. I trust you, Stark," Ben just sat on the floor, his eyes never leaving his arms.
Behind him, Johnny finally lost it and burst out laughing. "Oh man... You look like a walking brick pizza oven!"
Sue elbowed him. Hard.
"Ow! What? He does!"
Tony wheeled over the portable bio-array scanner, a nanite-forged medical rig that unfolded in front of Ben with soft hydraulic hisses. He tapped a few commands on his wrist, and the scanner activated with a gentle pulse of blue light that washed over Ben from head to toe.
The room fell into complete silence.
Tony's eyes narrowed as layer after layer of internal data scrolled across his HUD. Molecular structure, organ maps, cellular patterns… all rendered in rotating 3D. Johnny leaned in over his shoulder, but Sue pulled him back with a glance.
Sue narrowed her eyes after seeing the scan results.
COSMIC SIGNATURE: ACTIVE
MOLECULAR STRUCTURE: ALTERED
SKELETAL STRUCTURE: CRYSTALLIZED COMPRESSION MASS
INTERNAL & EXTERNAL ORGANS: STABLE – COMPOSITION: UNKNOWN MINERAL BIOFORM
NEURAL LINK: UNINTERRUPTED
VITAL SIGNS: GREEN
Both of them looked back at Ben with a curious glance.
Ben noticed their glance and quickly asked, "How bad is it? Just so you know, I used to smoke in my college days."
Tony stayed quiet for a moment, staring back at the data.
Finally, he looked up at Ben again.
"Alright. Here's the truth," he said, his voice level. "Your physiology has been fundamentally rewritten. Every cell in your body now operates like a living mineral structure. Your entire biology is reinforced with a crystalline matrix I've never seen before."
Ben frowned. "So I'm a rock monster."
Tony exhaled, standing straight. "You're not a monster. You are a living proof of cosmic evolution. A superhuman."
Ben looked down at his hands again, turning them slowly, the stone creaking faintly as his fingers flexed.
"Is it permanent?" he asked quietly. "Am I stuck like this?"
Sue leaned forward. "Ben..."
"I need to know," Ben said, cutting her off. Is it permanent? Is this gonna kill me in a week, or what?"
Tony stepped closer, meeting his eyes.
"No," he said simply. "You're not dying. It's the opposite." He did some quick calculations and rescanned Ben. "In simple words. Super strength, stamina, endurance, and your body doesn't rely on oxygen the same way anymore. Hell, you could probably survive the space vacuum without anything."
Ben blinked.
"Seriously?"
"Yup!" Tony nodded.
Silence settled over the room again.
Ben looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers. They moved just fine, but he still looked like he didn't trust them.
"Still feel like me," he said quietly. "Just… heavier."
Johnny chimed in, grinning. "Heavier? Dude, you dented the floor just standing up."
Ben gave him a slow look. "You wanna be next, pretty boy?"
Johnny snorted. "Yup, that's definitely still you."
Tony gave Ben a slight smile. "Look. This might not be what you expected, but it's not the end of anything. It's a start. And I have a solution."
Ben raised a brow. "Solution?"
"Yeah. If I can somehow control that cosmic energy in your body, then you should be able to transform back and forth between your human and rock form," Tony said with an amusing smile as he was already formulating a solution in his head.
"Alright," Ben said. "I trust you, Tony."
Tony gave him a quiet nod. "Just leave it to me."
Johnny finally spoke again, this time with a little less joking in his voice. "Dude... you know you just survived a direct hit from a cosmic storm and woke up stronger than ever, right? Like... you're literally built different now."
Ben rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but my couch didn't make it."
"So… what about us?" she asked, eyes flicking to Ben's new form. "Do you think we'll change too?"
Tony was still looking at the scan data when he answered.
"Probably."
He looked up.
"That storm didn't just rewrite Ben. It passed through all of us. We don't know how or when it'll show up. Could be slow. Could hit all at once. But whatever's happening… It's not done."
Johnny lowered his soda can. "Okay, now I'm listening."
Sue crossed her arms, her voice tight. "And the people here? Contamination risk?"
Tony shook his head. "Already checked. No radiation leaks, no airborne particles. The energy is embedded at a cellular level. We're not contagious."
They let that sink in.
Ben sat quietly, arms resting on his knees. He wasn't panicking anymore. Just thinking.
Tony continued, "But we're still pulling out. This level's no longer enough."
Johnny looked up. "Wait, pulling out where?"
Tony's expression shifted into something sharper, more focused.
"Horizon Island."
Sue raised an eyebrow. "Horizon Island?"
Tony nodded. "Yup! That's my home and island. Sealed, secure, off-grid, and equipped for high-level field testing. We've got full containment protocols, training environments, diagnostics, deep lab access... everything we need."
Johnny leaned back on the wall. "So we're moving into the cool house?"
"Exactly," Tony said. "Until we understand what's happening, we keep this tight. No leaks. No outsiders. Sooner or later, the rest of us will awaken powers. So, we'll train, adapt, and find a way to use these powers to do some good. Of course, if anyone wants to back out, they are free to do so. There'll be a cure ready soon. Well, we'll move in 2 days."
...
The quarantine had ended.
Well, mostly.
Tony, Sue, and Johnny stepped out into the base's main corridor, dressed in clean, casual gear. The nanite armor was deactivated, stored for now in their bracelets.
But Ben?
Ben stayed behind.
The quarantine chamber had been repurposed. Reinforced. Stocked with high-density protein meals, gravity-tested furniture, steel-framed recliners, and concrete-reinforced bathroom flooring.
It looked more like a tactical bunker than a break room.
Tony had outfitted the place personally.
'He needs time,' Tony thought. 'And a place that won't collapse under him every time he breathes.'
Johnny had tried to bring him a stack of comics and snacks, but the moment he started messing with Ben, his access was revoked.
Now it was just Ben, his new body, and a slowly building peace.
...
[Around noon]
Tony walked into the base's high tower chamber, where floor-to-ceiling glass panels overlooked the desert horizon. Natasha was already there, arms folded, standing beside a floating HUD that displayed real-time surveillance data.
She turned as he entered.
"You look like hell," she said. "In a good way."
Tony gave a faint smile. "Takes one to know. Any drama while I was kissing solar flares?"
Natasha's jaw tightened. "We need to talk."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "That's never a good opener."
Natasha didn't waste time. She brought up a live feed of the containment vault beneath Starfire Base. Inside, suspended in cryo-lock, was a naked man.
"That's Ghost," Natasha said. "He tried to infiltrate the base while you were gone."
Tony's eyes narrowed. "He tried to steal the arc reactor."
"Exactly. Fool walked straight into the trap. Yelena led the takedown. Contained him in an adaptive nanite cell. He was… decaying. Literally rotting from the inside out. Phasing tech screwed up his DNA. Well, as you can see, Yelena fixed him. But he was too dangerous to let go, since he knows too much."
"Did he speak?" Tony asked.
"After interrogation," she said. "He cracked. Told us who sent him."
The air between them shifted.
Tony's voice was flat. "Who?"
Natasha looked him dead in the eye.
"Howard Stark. Senior."
Tony didn't react at first.
Then he blinked. Once.
"That's not possible. He died years ago, like 50 or more."
"No," Natasha said. "He faked it. Hid underground. Built an exo-shell prototype and used himself as the baseline for some experiment called Project Tomorrow. He survived the explosion and kept upgrading himself. Barely alive. Half machine. Obsessed with beating death."
Tony didn't speak.
He just turned away, hands at his sides. He looked outside.
Natasha continued, slower now. "Ghost said he needed your arc reactor to power a full resurrection. His old tech was failing. So, we attacked his base. But we didn't get to kill him."
Tony turned his head. "Why not?"
"Because Magneto showed up."
Tony's stare sharpened.
Natasha brought up the next clip, footage of a metal storm exploding outward from an Arctic crater, followed by Magneto himself, hovering above the wreckage, flanked by Blink, Azazel, and Pyro.
"They took Stark Sr.," she said. "Right before we could finish him."
Tony took a breath, then walked forward slowly.
"Good call. Is the bug still working?" He asked.
"Ha! You knew we bugged him?" She asked.
"Duh! With the armor you two have, killing them on the spot would've been easy. But you let them go because you wanted to find their base, and the other with him to take them down together. Just like fish in a barrel," Tony turned back with his signature smirk. "Am I right?"
"Cocky as usual," Natasha said.
'First Skrulls,' he thought. 'Now zombie grandpa and Magneto's band? Well, things are finally getting interesting.'
He took a deep breath, calmed his thoughts.
'Let's go one step at a time. First, find out my evolved power, train, find those bastards and fuck them up. Humm... I guess, I need to create an official superhero team, huh?'
"Oh, by the way," Natasha said, opening the public news. "Social media is a mess. Are you going to make a public appearance and you know... Give a speech, maybe? And those NASA scientists are breathing down our neck for data, always bringing in the President as if they did all the work and we were just sucking our thumbs."
"Yeah, tomorrow evening. Call Dad, let him know. We are going to New York," Tony said.
...
[Starfire Base – Garage, Same time]
The garage echoed with the rhythmic clank of tools and the low thrum of an energy calibrator. Yelena was crouched beside her bike, sleeves rolled, fingers stained with nanite gel as she adjusted the energy intake on the fusion core. Her bike was a lean, matte-black beast—part street predator, part military tech. The kind of machine that growled even when idle.
Johnny Storm walked in, sipping the last of a smoothie he'd found in the base cafeteria fridge, because of course he did.
He spotted her instantly.
"Well, if it isn't the blonde," he said with a grin, tossing the empty cup into a bin. "Didn't think you were the grease-under-the-fingernails type."
Yelena didn't look up.
"And here I thought you'd still be passed out from button-mashing in the gaming room."
Johnny stepped closer, eyeing her bike. "Nice ride. You built it yourself, or Tony gift-wrap that for you with a 'Don't scratch the paint' note?"
Yelena clicked a panel shut and stood, wiping her hands on a rag. "I built it. Unlike you, who probably can't even change a tire without asking Ben for help."
Johnny smirked. "Please. I built my first bike when I was fifteen. Outran a cop on it, too."
"Let me guess," she said. "Downhill?"
He laughed. "You're fast with the mouth. But I bet that pile of metal wouldn't last three miles in the desert."
Yelena raised an eyebrow. "You want to test that?"
Johnny tilted his head, the challenge gleaming in his eyes. "Desert sprint. No rules, no limits. First one to reach the town and then come back to the base... wins."
Yelena crossed her arms. "And the loser?"
He shrugged. "Posts a public video on their personal feed declaring, and I quote, 'I am the supreme loser, and the better rider spanked me into the dust.' Unedited. One-take."
She grinned, slow and dangerous. "Deal."
He grinned back. "Try not to cry when you're eating my dust."
Yelena walked past him, casually tossing the rag over her shoulder. "Dust doesn't scare me. Only thing I'm worried about… is how much crow you can swallow."
Johnny clapped his hands together. "This is going to be fun."
Outside, the desert waited. Endless sun and open terrain, and no one to stop them.
Inside the base, Tony's voice echoed faintly over the intercom.
"Any unauthorized use of Stark vehicles for racing will result in mockery and memes. You have been warned."
Johnny grinned wider. He got Melina's bike after nearly going to his knees and begging her to let him borrow it. Johnny begged. That was new. No one saw, so it's all good.
"I'll risk it."
[From the upper level]
Tony stood on the balcony, looking down. 'I wonder if you are gonna awaken your power now, or I have to arrange ice skating...'
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