Superman from the comics: Starting with the Black Robe

Chapter 40 Heroes Gone Home

"Fa...wait, what's your name again?"

Tony desperately wanted to launch a verbal attack on the other person and their entire family, but then he realized he didn't even know the name of his savior.

"What's your name?"

"Joey, Joey Joseph Kent."

"Okay, I got it—Fuck you, Joey!"

"Fuck you, Tony!"

Just as the two were exchanging curses, a team of plainclothes officers stormed into KFC, heading straight for Tony Stark.

Just as Joey said before, in Constantinople, besides having a lot of cats, there are also a lot of CIA agents.

"I'll come find you later, remember to pay for me."

Tony only heard one sentence before Joey vanished in a gust of wind.

····

By the time Tony Stark, surrounded by a group of CIA agents who seemed to be facing a formidable enemy, completed all sorts of health and security checks, and finally boarded a plane from Istanbul, transited through Lisbon, and arrived in New York, almost 24 hours had passed.

Although it was late at night in New York, he was not sleepy at all after sleeping on the plane. He declined his uncle Obadiah's invitation to meet and Pepper Pepper's pre-booked physical examination, and went straight to the laboratory.

He was able to escape from terrorists during the Yuezhi period thanks to what is now embedded in his chest: a small, hastily constructed ark reactor.

It can output nearly 10 billion joules of energy per second, which, when converted to electricity, is enough to kill the Hoover Dam, power its own heart for 500,000 years, and power its Iron Man suit to create a better future.

At this moment, he needs to reproduce his creation to verify the feasibility of his previous ideas and pave the way for subsequent actions.

"You really went out of your way, Tony. I should have just brought you back to New York."

The sudden voice from the dark laboratory startled Tony: "Fuck you, Joey! How did you get in? Jarvis didn't call the police to kick you out?"

The lights in the lab didn't automatically turn on as Jarvis had always done; Joey reached out and switched them on.

"Jarvis is rebooting right now, Tony, I need your help."

"What kind of help requires starting with illegal trespassing? Are you going to pull out a gun next and make me hand over all my possessions to help you escape poverty and become rich?"

Tony casually grabbed a whiskey from the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass.

"Hunter Liang Single Malt Whisky, not too expensive, but very delicious, would you like a glass?"

"Drinking alcohol is bad for your health, and whiskey is especially bad for your heart, but it doesn't matter to you."

Even without his super vision, Joey knew Tony's current physical condition:

"The catalyst in that reactor on your chest is palladium. Heavy metal poisoning can kill you within two or three years, but if you don't use that reactor, the metal shrapnel lodged outside your heart will kill you within two or three days."

"How did you know that?"

Tony had barely uttered the words when he remembered Joey saying that the other person could see very far, and suddenly it dawned on him:

"Oh, you can even see through things? Are there any distance or material limitations to this ability? Have you ever used this ability to see a girl naked?"

"Probably not. For example, I can see that Stark Industries' weapons killed 13 innocent villagers in the country you fled from."

"Oh my god, Joey, I'm so fucked..."

Tony was speechless and could only plead with Joey not to bring up anything that might offend him.

"Please, I rushed to the lab to solve this problem, so please stop attacking me, okay? Also, what do you need me to do for you?"

Tony figured it out: this guy was just there to annoy him. He figured he should just give him whatever the guy needed and get rid of him.

Joey stared at Tony's chest, his eyes gleaming red: "I won't let you help me for nothing."

Tony felt a sharp pain in his chest, near his heart, and then groaned as he collapsed to the ground. The pain came and went quickly; he was about to call for Pepper when he felt no pain at all.

"What did you just do? Were you really trying to murder me and take my inheritance?"

"It was just a precise laser surgery."

Ignoring the other's objections, Joey stepped forward, reached out, and ripped the arc reactor from Tony's chest, throwing it back into his hand.

"The metal shrapnel in your body has completely disappeared, so you don't need to carry this thing with you every day anymore."

Tony was skeptical, but then he reasoned that the other party needed his help, and if they really wanted to kill him, they wouldn't go to such lengths: "How did you do that? Some kind of magic?"

"My eyes can emit high-energy rays that directly annihilate the metal fragments inside your body. You can understand the principle behind something like a gamma knife."

Tony Stark felt his years of hard work and study had been insulted: "This is a load of rubbish! This claim is completely unbelievable and unscientific!"

Joey pulled out the time-travel watch and handed it to Tony: "Then come and see something even more absurd."

Joey now needs someone to help her with her watch's charging function and her getting lost.

I initially used this thing only to travel back a week, but now I'm lost outside my own universe.

"You don't look like a 'local,' Joey. Don't tell me your watch can travel through time or jump between dimensions or something..."

While Jarvis was back online, Tony had already secretly scanned Joey and discovered that his body was surrounded by an unknown energy field, preventing him from scanning further.

At this moment, he could only scan the watch in his hand, and the result was beyond his expectations:

"WTF... I was just joking! This is impossible!"

Tony's hands were trembling slightly as he held the watch. He quickly put the reactor in his other hand back into his pocket, holding the watch with both hands, afraid that he might accidentally drop it and damage it.

A device capable of constructing closed timelike curves; in other words, a proper time machine.

Tony had also thought about time travel, especially after his parents died in a car accident, this idea often lingered in his mind.

But he was a rational scientist, and he knew how far-fetched this idea was. He had read Dr. Hank Pym's early journals and thought about realizing the idea through quantum tunneling, but ultimately failed to build a feasible model.

Moreover, time travel is not a rational and responsible choice. On the contrary, in Tony's cognitive system, if time travel in this timeline were real and feasible, it would be an absolute path to self-destruction.

In the absence of parallel universes, traveling to the past means that your past becomes your future, and your future becomes your past. You will be like an ouroboros, forever lost in an endless Möbius strip of time and space.

Tony stared at the time machine in his hand, his thoughts drifting—what kind of movie is this, Terminator?

"You're a complete madman... You used this thing to travel to the present, your past?"

"That explains why you have so many strange abilities; you're from the future! Was my rescue from the Yuezhi Kingdom also a result of you altering history?"

Joey felt that the idea of ​​Iron Man was a bit too far-fetched:

"You're overthinking it, Tony. All you need to do is figure out how to power this thing up. This thing's broken; it not only traveled through time, it traveled directly through the universe! I never expected to run into you in the first place!"

"Charging? Isn't it already charging?"

Tony flipped his watch over in confusion, showing Joey the lit-up screen:

"It says 'Charging' on it."

Joey scanned the watch with his eyes and then realized that the thing automatically absorbed energy from the surroundings. His previous two failed time travel attempts had made him panic and he hadn't noticed this feature of the watch.

At this moment, the watch is remotely drawing energy from the Arc Reactor in Tony's pocket. Because the distance is close enough, the efficiency of the energy draw is so high that it can be fully charged in just a moment.

Joey snatched the watch from Tony's hand and also borrowed the Arc Reactor from his pocket:

"Lend me your cold fusion core, you'll have to build a new one eventually anyway. Goodbye Tony, see you the fuck!"

Before pressing the button on his watch, Joey almost forgot about something else:

"Oh, right! There's another gift. Your uncle named Obadiah wanted to kill you. He was the one who orchestrated the attack on you in the Yuezhi Kingdom."

The evidence is on the USB drive on your desk. I've already sent him to a vacation in the South American rainforest.

···

A flash of light, and Joey was back in the same universe, at the Kent family farm.

After confirming the cosmological constant, Joey was certain he had returned to his previous universe. Meanwhile, he was greeted by his adoptive father from a parallel universe, Jonathan Kent's pitchfork.

"You think I won't recognize you just because you've changed your clothes? Don't think I'm afraid of you superpowered bastards. Get out of my territory, young man!"

"Of course, of course, don't be angry! Getting angry is bad for your health. This is Kent Farm, you're in charge here. I'll leave right away..."

With a pitchfork pointed at his waist, Joey looked at Jonathan, whose temples were already gray, and Martha, who was clearing the table inside the house, and felt a mix of emotions.

He knew these weren't his adoptive parents; they had never even known him. He had to find a way home.

Time travel seems to be more complicated than Joey initially anticipated. Right now, he just wants to return to the world he started from, the world that belongs to him, the world with Laurie.

The time-travel watch in his hand flipped its parameters again, a flash of light, and Joey returned to a familiar place—Tony Stark's office.

Tony Stark had just finished his second whiskey when he saw Joey return, and he rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

"Uh, am I drunk or what? It's only been two minutes since you said goodbye, and you're back already? And... are you crying?"

"Fuck you, Tony! That's not true at all!"

Joey quickly used his heat vision to evaporate the tears in his eyes; his heart had sunk to the bottom.

Something went wrong, and I'm trapped between these two worlds, unable to find my way home.