Marvel: Quest System

In a small apartment in Queens, New York.

"My head hurts so much... Shouldn't have drank so much last night...." Thought Alex, opening his eyes. What greeted him was an unfamiliar ceiling. 

"Huh? Where am I? What happened?" Alex hurriedly got up from his unfamiliar bed and looked around. The dim glow of a flickering ceiling light barely illuminates the cramped, musty apartment, casting long shadows over the scattered mess. Empty takeout containers and half-crushed soda cans litter the coffee table, their contents long since dried up. A stained couch, sagging in the middle, is buried under a pile of wrinkled clothes, some clean, some definitely not. On the far wall, the blinds to the window are taped shut.

The air is thick with the stale scent of old books, dust, and something vaguely burnt from the nearby kitchenette, where a sink overflows with unwashed dishes. A cracked laptop sits on a cluttered desk, surrounded by notebooks filled with half-finished thoughts and scribbled plans. The walls are bare except for a few crooked posters, their edges peeling.

Alex gets up and walks over to the posters, trying to find out anything about the owner of this apartment or why he's here. He walks over to the wall and straightens out the poster, only to see worn-out posters of Iron Man and Captain America. "This guy must be pretty cultured, but Marvel's kinda fallen off..." Alex thinks to himself. 

Being an orphan, Alex always had no friends. Both his parents died when he was 3 after being held hostage in a bank robbery, or so they told me. Honestly, I don't remember. Even still, since as far back as he could remember, he hated criminals with all his heart. They were the sole reason why he was picked on as a kid and lived his entire life alone. 

This was the reason why he always loved Marvel. Starting with the big names like Spiderman and Ironman, to the smaller names like Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, he loved them all. Whenever the heroes defeated a villain in the comics, it felt like he was taking revenge on those criminals who took his parents and his normal life away from him. 

Anyways back to the bigger problem, what was he doing in this room? The last thing I remember doing was... Then it hits him.

Flashing lights. Heavy rain on my skin. Red. The cold hard pavement underneath me. Blood. Pain. So much pain.

A strong throb of pain hits Alex's head and entire body. "Did I... die?"

Just then. [Ding!] "huh?" Alex turns his head just to be blinded by a bright blue light and a floating blue tab in front of him. Words slowly materialize themselves onto the blue screen.

[Welcome to the QUEST SYSTEM!]

?????? Did I hit my head? Oh right, I did. I hit it so much that I died... Does that mean that I was reborn with a system?!?!?! Since I was a diehard Marvel fan, I didn't just watch all of the movies, but I also read all of the fan fiction, so I have a small concept of what systems are. However, I'm not so sure about whatever this "quest system" is though...

[Well asked, Host! The QUEST SYSTEM is a system that gives the host challenges and rewards the host for completing them!]

Did the system just read my mind? Nevermind that's not important. What is important though, is what world I'm in. I could just be back in my original world, but it's never that easy. Considering the fact that I'm in an apartment, it's gotta be a relatively modern world, unlike worlds like Naruto and One Piece. 

[Quest alert: Bearings]

[Figure out what world you are in!]

[Reward: 250$]

[Accept/Deny]

Of course, I accept! Free money! I reach out with my finger and tap the accept button on the floating screen. I head over to the cracked laptop on the desk. Luckily it's unlocked, so I get on Google and start researching the history of the world, trying to find any different major events.

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2 hours later.

I couldn't find anything. Virtually every event in history that I looked at was the same as what I know, other than the fact that it was currently 2011 instead of 2025. Frustrated, I decided to take a break from researching and decide that it was time for my monthly rewatching of The Avengers. I search it up on Google, only to find nothing appearing. Huh, that's strange. Oh right, Avengers came out in 2012 and it's currently 2011. Unlucky.

Alex looks for his secondary option, Ironman 1. However, when he googles Ironman, instead of the movie, all he gets are news articles. "Huh? there shouldn't be any big news about Iron Man recently..." I skim over the articles. Then I notice.

My eyes widen, and my stomach drops. I read it again. And again. I quickly scroll down, and down, and even farther down. No matter how far I go, one thing is clear.

"Stark corporations stocks continue to rise after Tony Stark revealed himself to be Ironman!"

"Rebuilding efforts after the last attack at the Stark Expo still going strong!"

"Tony Stark, also known as Ironman, was seen flying around New York City today!"

"Why didn't Iron Man help defeat the green monsters of Harlem?"

[Ding! Quest Cleared! Received 250$!]

Fuck. I'm in the MCU.