"Leone, I hope you'll take care of yourself from now on. I don't know if your brother will make the breakthrough tomorrow..."
Another morning.
Leone woke to a familiar voice. Golden sunlight poured over his body, as though a dreamlike knight was being bathed in holy light. His black hair stood on end slightly, his long lashes trembled, and his eyes slowly opened. A brilliant light seemed to rise from the darkness of his pupils—radiant and sharp like the sun.
"Tony!" he blurted instinctively.
Tony Stark, the biological son of his adoptive parents—his brother—had just spoken to him with a farewell-like tone. But Tony was nowhere in sight.
Something was wrong.
"Tony's in trouble! No… Did he ignore my warning and still go to Afghanistan? Damn it, that arrogant guy—I told him again and again!"
Without hesitation, Leone tapped the electronic display floating nearby. The spacecraft's intelligent system responded immediately. With a soft click, the restraint belt around his waist released. The next moment, Leone drifted gently into the air.
He wasn't the only one.
Around him, tissues, plates, tools—all kinds of miscellaneous objects floated freely like plankton in water, drifting in zero gravity.
But this wasn't water.
It was the interior of a manned spacecraft.
His "bed" was a titanium-alloy plate fastened to the cabin wall. He had been tied to it for half a year, exposed constantly to direct sunlight.
When hungry, he consumed fruit puree and meat sauce. When thirsty, he drank nutrient solution. For basic hygiene, the intelligent system managed everything remotely. His life had been confined to that titanium plate.
"Half a year of sunbathing is more than enough," Leone murmured, clenching his floating fist and feeling a power unlike any he'd known.
Every cell in his body pulsed with energy. Blood surged like glacial melt into rushing rivers. The sunlight poured over his bare body, illuminating well-defined muscles, his chest and arms outlined in gold.
He could almost hear his body rejoicing.
"This… is the power of a Kryptonian."
Through the transparent porthole, Leone looked at the distant, blazing sun—hundreds of millions of kilometers away—and sighed. He had been in this world for nineteen years, never expecting to one day wield such unimaginable power.
He turned his gaze outward to the vast cosmos and star-speckled void.
Memories came flooding back.
His name in this world was Leone Stark. But in his past life, he had been Li Ang, a regular office worker. He'd assumed he would live and die in quiet obscurity—until the day he was stabbed while stopping a man with a knife on a subway train. He bled out trying to protect strangers.
When he next opened his eyes, he had become an infant—just under one year old.
He had transmigrated.
Or rather, he was reborn, though he didn't recover the memories of his past life until he was nearly one. Any memories before that were lost, his brain too undeveloped to preserve them.
In this world, he was an abandoned baby, adopted by none other than Howard Stark.
When he awakened to his memories, the first thing he saw was Tony Stark's tear-streaked face.
Tony had held him silently, his red eyes filled with sorrow.
Leone would later learn that the Stark couple had died in a car crash on the very day he regained consciousness. He had been the sole survivor, hidden beneath layers of baby blankets beside the wreckage of the burning vehicle.
The doctors called it a miracle.
To Tony, it was more than that. Leone was the final gift left behind by their parents—a symbol of hope. Tony raised him like a younger brother.
In truth, Tony had played both roles: brother and reluctant guardian.
Though, to be fair, he hadn't done a great job.
What kind of parent takes a toddler to cocktail parties, dangling him like a purse around his neck while flirting with models, then dumps him on the couch at night to entertain guests?
Thankfully, Pepper Potts eventually entered Tony's life. With her help, Leone was finally saved from sleepless nights and chaotic living.
Even as a baby, Leone kept mental notes of Tony's misdeeds. When you go to Afghanistan, he thought grimly, we'll see how many models still line up for you.
He already knew Tony would eventually go—just as in the movies.
From the moment he heard the names "Howard" and "Tony Stark," he knew what world he was in: the Marvel Universe.
A world of chaos, power, and constant peril.
One wrong move, and he could've been pruned by the Time Variance Authority, if they were still active. Luckily, the Sacred Timeline seemed to no longer exist—perhaps the multiverse had begun to spiral already.
Still, Marvel was no place for ordinary people.
Even being related to Tony Stark wasn't much of a shield. Leone knew that all too well.
For eighteen years, he waited.
No superpowers. No mutant genes. No genius IQ. No cheat system. Nothing.
Just memories.
He comforted himself: at least I got a second chance at life.
And hey, this wasn't some grimdark nightmare world. It could've been Lord of the Mysteries or Perfect World. Compared to those hellscapes, Marvel—even with its problems—was survivable.
So he made the most of his knowledge.
In 2006, at age sixteen, he began shaping the future.
Using his foresight, he guided Tony's projects—starting with tech that hadn't yet hit the market, like smartphones and tablets.
Thanks to Leone, Stark Industries pivoted from strictly military contracts to cutting-edge consumer tech.
Stark Industries became more than a weapons manufacturer—it became the world's top tech conglomerate.
He even pushed Tony toward developing the Arc Reactor.
But Tony wasn't interested.
He brushed it off, claiming, "That kind of tech is still impossible."
Truthfully, Tony was just lazy. When inspired, he could whip up game-changing inventions in a day. When Leone casually suggested, "Wouldn't it be nice if phones had touchscreens?" Tony scoffed—and then invented one by the weekend.
Yet he refused to budge on the Arc Reactor. Leone couldn't force him.
That was the limit of Leone's influence.
Still, he tried. He quietly looked for Bucky Barnes, hoping to avenge the Stark couple. He also tried to gather evidence against Obadiah Stane.
Unfortunately, Obadiah was cautious, leaving little to no trail. Leone eventually found a lead and told Tony.
But Tony was too emotional. Despite his suspicions, he still trusted his "uncle."
After one conversation, he was convinced Obadiah was innocent.
Leone urged him to stay alert, to avoid war zones—especially Afghanistan.
But there was only so much he could do.
As an ordinary person, Leone was helpless against organizations like Hydra. Investigating them openly would only bring death. He couldn't tell Tony either—not without revealing too much. Tony, with his arrogance, would have hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. on a whim, drawing Hydra's attention and ensuring both their deaths.
He didn't need to guess who would do the killing—probably Bucky again. The same Bucky who'd already "taken care of" the Starks once.
In Marvel, ordinary people were powerless.
Even Leone Stark, a "Stark" in name and blood, was nothing more than a rich nobody—unless he became something more.
Everything changed on his eighteenth birthday.