Old John's bar wasn't exactly a hotspot. On most days, one man behind the counter was more than enough.
Still, he kept Henry around. Let him crash on the old couch in the back and put him to work bussing tables, sweeping floors, taking out the trash—whatever needed doing.
In return, Henry got three square meals a day.
Which… surprised even him.
He'd always known he had an appetite. But this? This was next-level.
Most folks measured steak in ounces. Henry ate in pounds. Whole pounds.
Mashed potatoes—the kind everyone else saw as filler or "pig slop"? He'd down an entire pot like it was gourmet.
Maybe it was the years of starvation. Maybe it was just biology catching up. Either way, the moment he had access to food, it was like a switch flipped.
Eat now. Question later.
And yet, John never said a word. He just kept the meals coming, same gruff silence, same tired shrug.
Eventually, Henry started feeling bad about it. Sure, he had no shame, but he wasn't a freeloader. Not completely.
So he worked. Even if the bar was a dusty ghost of its glory days, he made sure it stayed clean. Tables wiped. Ashtrays emptied. Wood floors swept.
He didn't complain.
And strangely enough, the longer he stayed, the easier things got.
Language, for one.
Back home, English was that subject you passed by memorizing vocabulary and praying for multiple choice. He'd been terrible at it.
Now? It flowed. Reading, writing, speaking it all came as naturally as breathing. Like the language center of his brain had received a god-tier firmware update.
Sure, he still had a weird accent. But even those were fading, fast. Between John's grumbling and the local townsfolk's idle bar banter, he was blending in faster than he expected.
And he wasn't exactly hiding, either.
In a place like this a nowhere town in the middle of Alaska every stranger was noticed. Working in John's bar? Made him practically family.
No one asked too many questions, but introductions were inevitable. And Henry didn't resist them. He figured it was safer to blend in than act suspicious.
As for the powers?
Yeah. He still had them.
Strength. Reflexes. Hyper senses. He was aware of every enhanced ability inside his body but he never flaunted them.
Years of being a corporate cog in his past life had taught him the ultimate survival skill:
Stay invisible.
Don't stand out. Don't draw attention. Just show up, do your job, and make sure no one ever learns your name unless it's on a paycheck.
Even now with strength that could probably rip through steel he moved with careful, deliberate restraint. No broken chairs. No bent doorknobs. No one ever saw anything unusual.
He walked softly, kept quiet, smiled when necessary, and always let others go first.
That wasn't just habit anymore. That was strategy.
His hearing could pick up whispers through walls. His vision could read receipts from across the bar. His sense of smell? Sharp enough to catalog every customer's shampoo.
But he ignored all of it.
Because real survival wasn't about power.
It was about knowing when not to use it.
As for taste?
Well… that was a mixed bag. Every bite was now an experience. He could tell what oil a fry was cooked in, how long it had sat under a heat lamp, and whether the ketchup had been watered down.
Sometimes? That sucked.
But hey—could be worse.
And speaking of worse… there was the question he hadn't stopped asking since he woke up:
What the hell am I?
He wasn't human anymore. Not really.
Sunlight made him stronger. Much stronger.
The more he soaked in, the more alive he felt. He could practically feel his cells humming, like batteries charging.
Hair still black. Eyes now a brilliant blue. White skin like fresh snow.
No tail. No full-moon transformations.
So… not a Saiyan. Damn.
But alien? Definitely. Probably.
He'd come from space, after all. Crashed in a pod. Strength tied to solar exposure.
The more he thought about it, the more one name echoed in his brain:
Superman.
Or more accurately: Kryptonian.
Which begged a horrifying question:
Did I end up in the wrong franchise?
Because everything so far pointed toward something else entirely.
He'd heard the locals talk. About the Super Soldier. About a man named Steve Rogers.
About Captain America.
And they weren't just rumors. They had photos. Old news clippings. Trading cards.
John had even shown him a yellowing photo—grainy but unmistakable: him in uniform, standing beside a tall, square-jawed figure in red, white, and blue.
No way that was fake.
This world… this was the real deal.
This was Marvel.
And not just Marvel with spandex and Saturday morning cartoons. No, this was the dark, gritty, Cold War shadow-ops Marvel. The kind where mutants existed and people disappeared into underground labs.
He'd read the papers. Listened to gossip.
The Brotherhood and the X-Men were real.
He remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis getting tangled up with mutant sightings. The Egyptian mutant war in '83. Headlines twisted by politics. Rumors dismissed… but never denied.
People talked about vampires and werewolves, too.
Not the sexy Hollywood kind. The kind that leveled entire towns, left fields full of bodies, and never made the evening news.
Or only made the weird news.
The government's response? Vague denials. Half-truths. Carefully crafted ignorance.
They weren't trying to suppress the truth.
They were managing panic.
Gun debates raged every year—and never went anywhere. Not because of the usual politics.
Because in this world? Guns were the only thing between civilians and monsters.
Henry took it all in. Piece by piece. He didn't panic.
He adapted.
This was Earth… Marvel Edition.
And just to put a cherry on top?
The year was 1990.
The location: some no-name Alaskan town.
The country: United States.
And just for fun, when Henry asked John where exactly they were, the old man had looked him straight in the eye and said,
"Alaska. Earth. Just in case."
Whether it was a joke or not, Henry didn't know.
Didn't care, either.
John wasn't dumb. Far from it. The man had buried two sons, outlived two daughters-in-law, and seen more war than Henry could imagine.
He didn't care what Henry was, or where he came from.
He just made sure Henry got fed.
And reminded him—every once in a while—that he wasn't invisible.
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