Ethan Stark leaned back in his chair, spinning a pencil between his fingers like it was a dagger. At fifteen years old, he was everything his father, Howard Stark, hated in a son. Loud. Sarcastic. Flippant. A prankster who knew exactly when to crack a joke and exactly how to make himself seem like he wasn't paying attention.
"Ethan," Howard snapped, slamming a file onto the table in the study. "Do you have any idea how much money you wasted last week?"
Ethan smirked. "Define wasted. Because from where I'm standing, the party was a success. No casualties. No lawsuits. And, hey—girls had a good time. Shouldn't that count as an investment?"
Maria Stark tried to stifle her laugh behind a teacup. Howard glared harder.
"Why can't you be more like your brother?"
Across the room, Tony—already enrolled at MIT before he was old enough to drive—glanced up from a notepad full of sketches. He gave Ethan a sympathetic shrug.
"Sorry, Dad," Ethan said, hands raised. "I'm just not cut out for the whole 'future of Stark Industries' gig. But I'm excellent at making people laugh. That's gotta be worth something, right?"
On the surface, he was the clown. The playboy-in-training. The forgotten son.
And that's exactly how he wanted it.
The truth was much less funny.
At night, when the manor was quiet, Ethan locked his door and trained. Push-ups until his arms shook. Squats until his legs burned. Running laps around the estate in silence. He built his body slowly, methodically, knowing the System could come back at any time. He wasn't going to be caught weak again—not in this world.
He studied, too. Howard thought he was wasting his time with comic books and car magazines, but Ethan was dissecting them, memorizing physics formulas and metallurgy advancements years ahead of schedule. His Stark blood gave him the tools. His memories of battlefields gave him the drive.
But in public, he made sure to hide it.
The only one he allowed himself to slip around was Tony.
One evening in the garage, Ethan leaned over Tony's shoulder as his brother cursed at a design sketch. "What are you even trying to build?" Ethan asked, feigning ignorance.
"Portable power," Tony muttered. "But the damn thing overheats every time I scale it down. It's like trying to put a nuke in a lunchbox."
Ethan grinned. "Maybe don't think of it as a box. Think of it as a circle. Heat disperses better in symmetry."
Tony froze. He stared at the page. Slowly, he began to redraw.
Ethan whistled and backed away, tossing a wrench in the air like he hadn't just planted the seed of the arc reactor.
Later, when Tony tested the prototype and it worked better than any of his previous attempts, he'd chalk it up to genius inspiration. Ethan would play dumb.
Lucky guess.
Ethan learned to dance in both worlds: the surface and the shadows.
To the kids at school, he was the funny Stark, the one who skipped homework but never skipped a party. He flirted shamelessly, cracked jokes at teachers, and carried himself with reckless charm. The kind of boy who never seemed to take life seriously.
But when no one was looking, he memorized the faces of classmates who might one day matter. Hope Van Dyne, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued. A scrawny, awkward boy named Hank who already tinkered with machines like his life depended on it. A girl with a fiery temper and sharper fists who called herself Carol.
Connections. Allies. Future heroes who didn't yet know their roles.
And Ethan, with all his foreknowledge, had to smile and laugh like he knew nothing at all.
The System still hadn't fully awakened. Some nights, he dreamed of it. Blue windows flickering, updates running like a machine grinding back to life.
[System Synchronization: 41%...]
Other nights, he dreamed of fire. Of hooves on stone. Of chains dragging across hellfire. He woke sweating, the smell of sulfur still in his nose.
But he kept those dreams buried.
Because for now, Ethan Stark had one job.
Play the fool.
And wait for the shadows to come home.
📖 Chapter 1 – Status Window
[SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION: 41%...][WARNING: System initializing. Functions limited.]
Name: Ethan StarkLevel: [N/A] (Locked)Job/Class: [N/A] (Locked)HP: 100 / 100MP: 5 / 5
Stats:
Strength: 9
Agility: 9
Vitality: 10
Intelligence: 20 (⚠ Stark Lineage + Future Knowledge Modifier)
Sense: 12
Skills:
[Locked]