Chapter 1: A Rude Awakening in the Sands of Afghanistan
The last thing Adam remembered was the searing, blinding white. It wasn't some spiritual, ethereal light, mind you. No, this was the kind of white that came from a semi-truck doing eighty in a blizzard, heading straight for his very un-superhero-like sedan. One moment, he was humming along to some questionable 90s pop, debating if he had enough milk for his morning coffee; the next, a symphony of screeching tires and shattering glass. Then, nothing. Just… white. And silence. A truly, utterly boring end for a guy who spent most of his life wishing for something interesting to happen.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," he thought, or tried to think. The thought itself felt… fuzzy, like trying to recall a dream you just woke up from.
Then, the silence shattered. Not with a celestial chorus or the booming voice of God, but with a cacophony of guttural shouts, the metallic clang of tools, and the distant, terrifying crackle of gunfire. His eyes, which he hadn't realized were closed, snapped open.
And what a sight to behold.
No pearly gates. No fiery pits. Just… sand. Lots of it. And rock. Dim, flickering lights from bare bulbs strung precariously from a cave ceiling. The air was thick with dust, the smell of burnt metal, and something else… something vaguely like despair. He blinked, trying to clear the grit from his vision, and then his gaze landed on the two figures hunched over a workbench, bathed in the sickly yellow glow.
One was a scrawny, older man with kind eyes and a weary slump to his shoulders. The other… oh, the other was unmistakable. Even covered in grime, with a bloodied shirt and a wild, haunted look in his eyes, that goatee was iconic. Tony. Freaking. Stark.
Adam's brain, still trying to process the whole "death by semi-truck" thing, promptly short-circuited. He was in a cave. With Tony Stark. And a shrapnel wound that looked suspiciously like the one from Iron Man. His internal monologue, usually a well-oiled machine of sarcasm and self-deprecation, sputtered to a halt.
"Wait. No. This isn't… this can't be…"
Before he could even fully form a coherent thought, a blinding, shimmering blue interface slammed into his vision, overlaid directly onto the dusty cave wall. It was like a video game HUD, but instead of a health bar, it had text. Glowing, ethereal text that seemed to mock his very existence.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED: WELCOME, HOST. WISH SYSTEM INITIALIZED.]
Adam stared. Then he blinked again. The text remained. He pinched himself. Hard. Nothing. He tried to rub his eyes, but his hands felt strangely… not his own. A jolt went through him. He looked down. These weren't his hands. They were… younger. Cleaner. Less prone to carpal tunnel.
[CURRENT WISH DAYS: 0]
[IN-UNIVERSE LOCATION: AFGHANISTAN, TEN RINGS CAPTIVITY, IRON MAN (2008) EVENT START]
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Adam muttered, the words feeling foreign on his tongue, yet perfectly natural. His voice was… different. Less nasally, more resonant. A bit like a radio announcer, but with a hint of a perpetual smirk. "So, I died. And now I'm… a side character in a superhero movie? And I have a 'Wish System'? What, am I supposed to wish for a bigger cave or something? This is just… rude."
Tony Stark, who had been meticulously tinkering with a car battery and some wires, paused, his head snapping up. His eyes, sharp and suspicious even through the haze of pain, narrowed on Adam. "You got something to say, pal? Or are you just going to sit there looking like you just won the lottery and lost your pants?"
Adam opened his mouth, then closed it. What could he say? "Oh, just contemplating the existential dread of being reborn into a fictional universe with a magical wish-granting system that currently has me in the red before I've even had my morning coffee, Tony, old boy. Nothing much." Yeah, that would go over well.
He glanced at Yinsen, who merely offered a small, knowing smile, as if he'd seen weirder things in this cave. Which, considering Tony Stark was currently building a mini-reactor out of scraps, was probably true.
Suddenly, a loud THWACK! echoed from the back of the cave. A stray piece of rock, dislodged by some distant explosion, whistled through the air directly towards Adam's head. He braced himself, a pathetic whimper escaping his lips. This was it. Reborn for five minutes, then splattered like a bug on a windshield. "Seriously? This is how my second life ends? By cave-debris? The universe has a sick sense of humor."
But the impact never came. Instead, his foot seemed to catch on an invisible snag. He stumbled forward, arms flailing like a marionette whose strings had been cut by a drunk puppeteer, and landed with a loud CLATTER into a pile of discarded scrap metal. A rusty barrel toppled over, narrowly missing his head, and a shower of nuts and bolts rained down on him. He lay there, slightly bruised, covered in dust, and utterly bewildered.
Tony Stark flinched, then glared at the pile of metal. "What in God's name was that?"
Yinsen merely chuckled softly, shaking his head.
And then, the blue text flashed again, right in Adam's line of sight, making him groan internally.
[DANGER DETECTED FOR HOST! INITIATING RANDOMIZED LIFE-SAVING PROTOCOL.]
[HOST SAVED! CURRENT STATUS: SLIGHTLY BRUISED, TRIPPED OVER A LOOSE BARREL, AVOIDING STRAY DEBRIS. COST: 10 WISH DAYS.]
[DAILY WISH DAYS ACCUMULATION: +1]
Adam pushed himself up, spitting sand. "You're telling me," he muttered, dusting himself off. "That was a 'funny save'? I almost broke my nose on a rusty pipe, and you call that 'funny'?" He looked around, as if the System itself was a sentient entity he could argue with. "This is going to be a long… whatever this is."
He glanced at Tony, who had gone back to his tinkering, muttering about "idiots" and "clumsy oafs." Yinsen, however, was still watching him, a faint, intrigued smile playing on his lips.
Adam sighed. Zero wish days, minus ten for a "funny save," plus one for passive accumulation. He was already in the hole. And he was stuck in a cave with a genius, a saint, and a bunch of terrorists.
"Well," he thought, a new, pragmatic cynicism settling in. "At least it's not boring anymore."