Marvel x Genshin: Mavuika, The Sun Goddess Rules Asgard — Chapter 117

Chapter 117: Are There Still Cheeseburgers?

Los Angeles, Malibu. The Stark Villa.

Pepper Potts felt herself fraying at the seams.

It was 2:17 AM on the third night since Tony Stark had vanished. She was sunk into the plush depths of an eighty-thousand-dollar Italian leather sofa in the villa’s cavernous living room, nursing her third cup of coffee. It had long since gone cold.

A laptop rested on her thighs, its screen displaying the latest satellite scan report forwarded by S.H.I.E.L.D. through their “special channels.” The result was the same as all the others: nothing.

The coffee table beside her was a mountain of paperwork. Stark Industries stock analyses, minutes from a series of emergency board meetings, progress updates from the military’s search and rescue teams, and dozens of media inquiries that all required her careful, measured response.

She hadn’t closed her eyes in nearly seventy-two hours.

Her vision was blurry, her eyes burning with a dry ache, and a dull, persistent throb had taken up residence in her temples. But sleep was an impossible luxury.

Tony was gone. Howard and Maria were waiting by the phone in Florida, their anxiety a evident weight on every call. And Obadiah Stane, while appearing to coordinate the entire response effort on the surface, moved with a certain… strangeness that set her teeth on edge.

The entire Stark empire was hanging by a single, tenuous thread, and she was the only one left desperately clinging to the end of it.

“Miss Potts,” the calm, gentle voice of the AI, Jarvis, connected through the villa’s integrated sound system. “Colonel Rhodes is on the secure line, channel three. He insists on speaking with you.”

Pepper drew a ragged breath, set the mug down on the table with a soft clink, and reached for the landline receiver. “Put him through.”

“Pepper.” James Rhodes’ voice crackled through the line, highlighted by the rhythmic thumping of helicopter rotors. “We swept the Gami area again, expanded the radius by fifty kilometers. We found some… traces, but nothing that points to Tony.”

“What kind of traces?” Pepper’s knuckles went white as she gripped the receiver.

“Some tire tracks, heading northeast. They vanished once they hit the mountains. The terrain is too complex out there; the satellites can’t get a clear picture, and the drones can’t handle it.” Rhodey’s voice was thick with exhaustion and a frustration that mirrored her own. “Pepper, I’m so sorry. We’ve thrown every resource we have at this, but…”

“But he’s still alive!” Pepper cut him off, her own voice trembling but sharpened by an unyielding conviction. “I can feel it. A man like Tony… he doesn’t die that easily.”

A few seconds of static-filled silence stretched across the line. “I hope so too,” Rhodey said, his tone softening. “We’ll keep looking, I promise you that. But Pepper… you need to be prepared. It’s been three days. In that environment, if he was taken…”

“He won’t die,” Pepper repeated, the words more a prayer to convince herself than a statement for him.

After hanging up, she collapsed back into the sofa, burying her face in her hands.

The tears finally came, not from a place of weakness, but from the crushing accumulation of fear, pressure, and utter helplessness that had defined the last three days. Tony Stark—that arrogant, conceited, infuriatingly willful man—was also the man she had known and worked for for years. In a way she rarely admitted even to herself, he had become the most important part of her life. Now he was missing, his fate a terrifying unknown.

And there was nothing she could do but sit here and wait for a phone call that might never come.

Outside the vast, floor-to-ceiling windows, she could hear the faint, rhythmic sigh of the Pacific tide. The villa was perched on a cliff’s edge, an eighty-foot drop of sheer rock face to the churning black water below. Tony loved it here. He said the view helped him think.

Pepper looked up, her gaze drifting past her own reflection to the world outside. The night sky was clear, the stars sparse. A waning crescent moon hung low over the horizon, casting a shattered trail of silver across the dark surface of the sea.

And then she saw it. A single point of light.

At first, she dismissed it as a hallucination, a cruel trick played by her overtired mind.

But the point of light grew, swelling from a distant spark into a glowing orb, streaking silently from the horizon directly toward the villa. It wasn’t a plane. It wasn’t a helicopter. The object made no sound and had no navigation lights, only a warm, golden radiance that carved a graceful arc through the night.

Pepper shot to her feet, the sudden movement sending her coffee mug tumbling onto the carpet. Dark brown liquid bled instantly into the priceless Persian rug, but she didn’t notice. Her entire being was focused on the approaching light.

The orb decelerated as it neared, hovering for a moment above the villa before slowly descending onto the wide terrace that overlooked the ocean.

The light pulsed once, then gently faded, revealing three figures standing within its dissipating glow.

Pepper’s breath caught in her throat.

Standing in the center was Mavuika. Pepper had known her true identity for years; it was a secret Tony couldn’t keep from the person closest to him besides his own parents. Pepper had thought he was insane at first, until the day Mavuika had visited the villa and, to help Tony with a project, had casually summoned a plume of fire from her bare hands to smelt a piece of metal.

Now, Mavuika stood there in simple casual clothes, her golden-red hair stirring in the night breeze, with faint, lingering sparks of gold dancing around her like fireflies. Her left hand supported a thin man with broken glasses, and her right hand… her right hand was propping up…

“Tony!” The name was torn from her, not the respectful address of an assistant to her boss, but the raw, instinctive cry of someone seeing a loved one returned from the dead.

She scrambled toward the terrace, wrenching the heavy glass door open. The cool night wind rushed into the living room, scattering documents and whipping her hair across her face, but she didn’t care.

Tony Stark stood beside Mavuika, and he looked like hell itself.

His favorite Armani suit was reduced to tattered rags, smeared with grease, sand, and the dark, flaking stain of dried blood. His face was a canvas of new and old bruises, the corner of his mouth was split, and his eyes were sunken into dark hollows. He was so gaunt he was almost unrecognizable.

But the most horrifying detail was his chest. A circular metal device was embedded directly into his flesh, its surface gleaming with a cold, hard luster in the moonlight. The skin around it was swollen, red, and festering, a sight that made Pepper’s heart seize in her chest.

But he was alive. He was breathing.

His eyes were open, and though they were webbed with bloodshot veins, they were still the same familiar brown eyes, glinting with that impossible mixture of arrogance and cynicism.

“Hey, Pepper,” Tony said. His voice was a raw rasp, like sandpaper scraping over stone, but his tone still held a ghost of his usual teasing lilt. “I’m back. We still got coffee and cheeseburgers? I haven’t had a decent meal in three days.”

Pepper rushed to his side, her hands trembling as she reached out, wanting to embrace him but terrified to touch him. He looked so fragile, as if the slightest pressure might make him shatter. Her gaze darted between the wreck of his face and the horrifying device in his chest, and the dam of her tears finally broke.

“Tony… your chest… oh my god, you…”

“I’m fine, Pepper. Really,” Tony tried to smile, but the expression pulled at the gash on his lip, making him hiss in pain. “This is Ethan. He saved my life. Mavuika, you already know. She’s the one who pulled me out of that hellhole. Alright, think you could let us in? I can barely stand.”

The words finally snapped Pepper out of her shock. She quickly stepped aside. “I—I’m sorry, come in! You need a doctor. I’ll call a doctor right away…”

“No doctors,” Tony said, leaning heavily on Mavuika as he shuffled into the living room, each step a visible effort. “I have Jarvis. Jarvis, scan my vitals, formulate a treatment plan. focus on infection control and nutritional replenishment.”