"Is that... Robert Downey Jr.?"
No. Wait.
"Holy shit. That's Tony Stark."
Marcus Reid stared at the unconscious man on the stretcher, his brain doing cartwheels trying to process what he was seeing. The goatee. The blood-soaked gauze wrapped around his chest. The expensive watch still somehow intact on his wrist despite everything.
This wasn't some cosplayer at Comic-Con. This was the Tony Stark.
Which meant—
Marcus's gaze swept across the cave entrance where armed men clustered around the stretcher, their rifles glinting in the harsh Afghan sunlight. AK-47s. Body armor cobbled together from military surplus. And leading them, barking orders in Arabic, was a bald man whose face looked like it'd gone ten rounds with a belt sander.
The leader of the Ten Rings. Raza.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Marcus muttered under his breath, pressing his back against the rough stone wall of the cave. His heart hammered against his ribs. "I'm in the Marvel Universe. I'm in the opening of Iron Man."
The realization hit him like a freight train.
He'd transmigrated into the goddamn MCU.
The cave—if you could even call it that—was more like a dungeon carved into the mountain. Two hundred people, maybe more, crammed into a space that should've held fifty. The air reeked of unwashed bodies, stale water, and desperation. Old men huddled in corners. Women clutched crying children. Everyone wore the same threadbare, dirt-stained clothes that Marcus himself had on.
He'd been here for three days. Three days of hell.
Through the narrow windows and the cave's mouth, all Marcus could see was the Gobi Desert stretching endlessly—sand, rock, and the occasional scraggly bush that somehow refused to die. The Ten Rings had built their base in the Kunar Province, tucked into the mountains where drones couldn't easily reach and satellites couldn't see through the shadow of the peaks.
Smart bastards.
Marcus's memory of how he'd ended up here was still crystal clear, unfortunately. He'd been walking home from his soul-crushing job at the accounting firm—because of course he'd been an accountant in his previous life—when a semi-truck had decided traffic laws were more like traffic suggestions. One moment he was crossing the street. The next, everything went black.
When he'd woken up, he'd been in some nameless town in Afghanistan.
The town had looked like something out of a war documentary. Mud-brick buildings. Narrow streets. People in traditional clothing giving him suspicious looks because, yeah, Asian guy in Western clothes definitely stood out. He'd barely had time to process where the hell he was before Raza and his men had rolled in.
First came the gunfire. Pop-pop-pop, casual as anything, just mowing down anyone who looked at them wrong. Then one of Raza's lieutenants had started shouting in Pashto or Dari or something Marcus definitely didn't understand. The translator—some guy who looked dead inside—had repeated it in broken English:
"You work. You live. You fight, you die."
Pretty straightforward employment terms, really.
The townspeople had lined up like sheep. Marcus, not being an idiot, had joined them.
But Raza had noticed him immediately. Maybe it was the Asian features. Maybe it was the relatively clean jeans and button-down shirt he'd been wearing. Maybe the guy just had something against anyone who didn't look like they belonged in a war zone.
Whatever the reason, Raza had walked right up to Marcus and slammed the butt of his rifle into Marcus's stomach.
Marcus could still feel the bruise. Hell, he had bruises on top of bruises. His back was a patchwork of purple and yellow from where they'd beaten him for moving too slowly. His ribs ached every time he breathed. One of the guards had particularly enjoyed kicking him whenever he walked by.
"Discriminating piece of shit," Marcus had muttered more than once, though never loud enough for anyone to hear.
He'd spent the last three days hauling rocks, moving crates of weapons, and generally being treated like disposable labor. Which, to be fair, he kind of was. The Ten Rings didn't exactly have an HR department.
But now everything had changed.
Because Tony Stark had just arrived.
Marcus watched as the Ten Rings operatives carried Stark into the cave network. The man was barely conscious, his face pale beneath the dirt and blood. Shrapnel wounds. Probably from one of his own damn missiles, if Marcus remembered the plot correctly.
One of Raza's lieutenants—a bearded guy with a scar running down his cheek—stood up and started speaking. Marcus couldn't understand a word of it. The guy could've been reading the menu at Olive Garden for all he knew.
An interpreter stepped forward, a nervous-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses who cycled through several languages. When he hit English, Marcus caught a few words:
"—doctor—" "—save him—" "—skills—"
Marcus didn't need to speak the language to know what was happening. They were looking for someone who could keep Stark alive.
A middle-aged man stood up from the crowd. He wore glasses and a hat, and his clothes were slightly less filthy than everyone else's. He exchanged words with the interpreter, gesturing toward Stark, and then the terrorists hauled both the man and the stretcher deeper into the cave complex.
Yinsen.
Dr. Ho Yinsen, the guy who'd saved Stark's life by implanting an electromagnet in his chest. The same guy who'd help Stark build the Mark I armor. The same guy who'd sacrifice himself so Stark could escape.
"Poor bastard," Marcus whispered.
Yinsen was a good man. One of the best. And in about three months, he'd be dead.
But that was three months away.
Three months during which Stark would build his first suit. Three months during which the Ten Rings would continue to stockpile weapons. Three months during which Marcus would have to survive this hellhole without getting shot, beaten to death, or accidentally killed in the crossfire when Iron Man made his dramatic escape.
The key word there being survive.
Because Marcus had something now that he hadn't had before.
As the terrorists left, herding everyone back to their forced labor, Marcus slipped into a shadowed corner of the cave. The two guards at the entrance were busy arguing about something, which gave him a moment of privacy.
Time to check his ace in the hole.
The system.
It had activated the moment Marcus had seen Tony Stark's face. One second he'd been another anonymous slave in a terrorist camp. The next, a cold, mechanical voice had echoed in his head:
"Ding! Important character detected. System activation complete."
"The Heavens Plundering System is now online."
Marcus had nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd frozen mid-step, his eyes going wide, his breath catching in his throat. The voice had been so clear, so present, like someone was speaking directly into his brain.
Holy shit. Holy shit. It finally happened.
He'd read enough web novels to know the drill. Transmigrate to another world? You get a system. It was basically a law of the universe at this point.
He'd been starting to worry that maybe he was the exception. Maybe he'd just transmigrated without any cheat abilities and would die a slow, painful death as a background character. But no. The system was here.
Late, sure.
But better late than never.
Marcus had forced himself to stay calm, to not react, to keep his expression neutral. The last thing he needed was for one of the guards to notice him acting weird and decide he needed another beating to straighten him out.
But inside? Inside, Marcus was screaming with joy.
Because a system meant power. A system meant options. A system meant he wasn't just some random nobody waiting to get shot.
Now, tucked into his corner with the guards distracted, Marcus closed his eyes and thought the word clearly:
System.
Immediately, a translucent interface materialized in his vision—something only he could see.
[Movie Plundering System]
Host: Marcus Reid
Age: 19
Items: Miscellaneous junk (dirty clothes, water bottle, piece of stale bread)
Abilities: None
Origin Points: 2
Marcus's eyes locked onto that last line.
Origin Points.
Two of them.
He had no idea what they did, but he had a feeling he was about to find out.
Marcus stared at the interface, his mind racing. This was it. This was his ticket out. His chance to not just survive, but to actually do something in this world.
He thought about Raza, the bald bastard who'd beaten him bloody for the crime of existing. The guy who'd probably killed hundreds of people without a second thought. The guy who, in the original timeline, would eventually get killed by Obadiah Stane after Stark escaped.
But Marcus didn't want Stane to get the satisfaction.
He wanted to be the one to put a bullet in Raza's skull.
He wanted to watch the light go out in that bastard's eyes and know that he was the reason why.
"You're not dying in Stane's hands," Marcus whispered, his voice cold. "You're dying in mine."
The system interface flickered slightly, as if acknowledging his resolve.
Marcus allowed himself a small, grim smile.
He didn't know how the system worked yet. Didn't know what "Origin Points" could buy him or how to earn more of them. But he'd figure it out.
He had three months before Stark blasted his way out of this place. Three months to get stronger. Three months to prepare.
And when the time came?
Marcus was getting on that plane. He was getting out of this desert. And he was taking Raza's head with him, one way or another.
The mechanical voice echoed in his head one more time:
"Would you like to view the System functions?"
Marcus's smile widened.
"Hell yes."
The interface floated in his vision, clean and simple:
[Movie Plundering System]
Host: Marcus Reid
Age: 19
Items: Miscellaneous junk
Abilities: None
Origin Points: 2
Marcus stared at it, his heart pounding.
Two Origin Points. Whatever those were, they were his starting capital in this new world.
He didn't know what they could do yet. Didn't know how the system worked or what he could buy with them.
But he had three months to figure it out.
Three months until Tony Stark would blast his way out of this hellhole.
And Marcus was going to make damn sure he survived long enough to see it.
End of Chapter 1
Note:
First chapter of this story! Please let me know what you think. Updates will be regular. Thanks for reading!