Tony Stark was missing.
Not drunk, not arrested, not faking a press scandal to pump up stock prices before the next arc reactor release.
Missing.
Where and why was anyone's best guess, it could be anything from Obadiah Stane feeling a bit backstabby or a legitimate cult depending on how this world decided to play its cards.
A convoy attack. A blown-out photo of a cave entrance. Grainy, conflicting satellite footage. Every news station was lighting up like it was the fourth of July. Everyone else saw a billionaire arms dealer go dark.
Ethan saw an opportunity, this was starting to become a theme.
He stood in Midtown High's computer lab, fluorescent lights buzzing above, Peter hunched next to him scribbling code like he was channeling ancestral wisdom through a Bic pen.
"Tell me again why we're using this crusty iMac to debug the Android build?" Ethan muttered, half-listening to a broadcast on his phone in his jacket pocket.
"Because this is the only one that doesn't crash if you breathe too hard near it?" Peter offered without looking up. "Also, Ms. Warren thinks we're 'mentoring' the underclassmen."
"Mentoring them in the fine art of capitalism," Ethan whispered, smirking.
A pause.
"You do know Tony Stark is missing, right?"
Peter looked up at that, blinking. "Like—gone missing?"
"Kidnapped. Possibly dead. Stark Industries is tanking already and it's only been three days."
Peter's face creased in concern. "But he's... he's like the smartest guy in the world."
"Fourth smartest," Ethan said dryly, remembering someone with an even greater ego, "But yeah. Big news. Bigger fallout."
Peter stared at the wall for a second too long, processing.
Ethan didn't mention how none of the pictures matched the actors from the movies he grew up on. Tony Stark wasn't RDJ.
His face was leaner, younger, like he'd stepped out of The Ultimates run with a jawline that could cut glass and a beard that was somehow worse.
And Steve Rogers, blond, blue-eyed, heroic, potentially racist, looked nothing like Chris Evans. Hell, a few of the grainy old WWII photos showed a guy that looked like a hulking prep kid on every steroid known to man, not a Hollywood Chris.
This was a mosaic world, glued together from canon fragments and creative liberties, and every time Ethan thought he had it pegged, it shifted again.
But there was one thing that didn't change across realities.
Markets react.
People panic.
And Ethan Cain? He had the bastard soul of a degenerate day trader.
Later that night, the basement lab, well, garage, but calling it a lab helped morale, was lit only by two monitors, a lava lamp, and the eerie white light of Peter's debugging glasses.
The "lab" belonged to an old coworker of Ethan's dad who was out of the country. It had peeling drywall, suspiciously stained linoleum, and possibly a rat that answered to "Gary." But it had Wi-Fi, power, and most importantly, privacy.
"We can't call it port it on Starkphone anymore" Peter said, holding a Red Bull like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth "They've delayed it and aren't sure if they'll use Android or their own operating system."
"Again?" Ethan grunted from where he sat cross-legged on an overturned milk crate, flipping through their prototype build on a FrostMobile dev kit.
"Again," Peter wrinkled his nose.
"Guess they'll just have to live without Subway Surfer," Ethan grinned, "Might be better for their attention spans to be honest."
"Subway Surfer…"Peter paused, they never discussed the name, "...Actually, that sounds kinda catchy."
"And marketable." Ethan grinned.
Very stolen too, but you don't need to know that, Pete.
The prototype ran smooth enough. A touch-scrolling infinite runner set on subway tracks, easy to understand, dopamine-inducing, just polished enough to pass for a "real" game.
The idea was disgustingly simple, and that was the point.
In a few months, Ethan guessed, this universe's version of mobile gaming would hit its first boom.
Smartphone adoption was accelerating like a rollercoaster. FrostMobile had just launched its slick, glass-heavy model with a gimmicky holographic projector.
OsPhone, the other competitor, all style, overpriced accessories, and smug billboards, had just released their SDK to public devs.
Most people saw new phones to lead the youth astray, Ethan saw solid gold.
Kids would start carrying games around in their pockets like it was crack cocaine. And if he timed it right, he could be the dealer.
'Okay, it sounded much better in my mind.' He amended.
The plan wasn't revolutionary. Ethan didn't have the resources to build the next Instagram, but that didn't matter.
Start small, stupid.
Freemium games. Cosmetic-only shops. Ad networks paying pennies per click that scaled beautifully when you had half of Manhattan middle schoolers hooked on your app.
A few rotating skins that could be bought with either fake coins or five real ones.
Leaderboards that refreshed every week to keep the competitive types addicted.
"Is it evil," Peter asked one night, eyes bloodshot and voice faint from sleep deprivation, "if the game is fun?"
"Only if we charge for lives." Ethan didn't look up from his screen.
"…So we won't?"
Ethan paused, running the numbers in his head.
"Maybe?"
Peter groaned and went back to tuning the jump sensitivity.
The work was split clean down the middle, Peter coded the engine, built the UI from scratch, and solved bugs Ethan didn't even understand. Ethan handled the aesthetics, marketing planning, backend framework, and was slowly teaching himself how to scrape analytics like a Silicon Valley intern.
It wasn't fast. There were bugs. Sound glitches. Lag spikes on lower-end phones. One terrifying moment when Peter's build bricked Ethan's test OsPhone and he had to lie his way into a new one by claiming it "caught fire in a public restroom."
But progress was being made.
In school, Peter smiled more now. It wasn't because of Ethan, not really, though the paycheck didn't hurt. It was because he had something he was building. Something that didn't involve blood or powers or suits or dying uncles.
The suit was probably coming soon though.
Ethan kept the mood light. He joked.
He let Peter test the coin magnets. He made fake ads for the game starring himself in sunglasses. He fed Peter protein bars and told him he was the "Giga-Chad of Swift."
Behind it all, though, Ethan was watching the stock market.
Stark Industries hit a dip.
Then a dive.
Then a spiraling collapse as talking heads screamed about "leadership gaps" and "defense instability" and "tech dependency."
Everyone from China-stans to pseudo-communists and neoliberal technocrats were being brought on talk shows and magazines, giving their opinions to the thirsty masses.
Ethan emptied every legal dollar he had.
He moved gang money through dummy wallets into gift cards, then flipped them for crypto, then flipped that into shell accounts before making modest, totally-not-suspicious trades through a platform with "green" in the name.
He bought Stark stock like it was toilet paper in a pandemic.
The media painted Tony as a cautionary tale, playboy messing around in a warzone turned tragedy. The DOD started sniffing around Stark patents. Rumors of shareholders selling off their voting rights floated around like bloated fish in a poisoned lake.
All while Obadiah Stane was doing everything possible to secure the company and rescue it from the ongoing storm.
Ethan couldn't care less if Tony came back in a cave-built tin can or a full Gundam.
All that mattered was that when the world realized Iron Man was real, and oh, they would, those shares would turn into gold bars overnight.
Though he'd probably have to sell and buy again when he announces a desire to leave the arms industry altogether, just to maximize his profits.
Two weeks before summer break, Subway Surfers soft-launched.
Just a test build, only on FrostMobile's beta store, only in a few districts with phones new enough to handle the frame rate.
The next morning, Peter woke up to an email saying the app had hit 4,000 installs.
By afternoon it was at 12,000.
By nightfall it was trending on the FrostMobile forums under "Hidden Gems."
Ethan read every comment.
"Addictive as hell. Where are the cops coming from?" "That train jump feels so good." "My mom beat my high score and I haven't spoken to her since."
He sat back in his chair, let the notifications ping endlessly around him, and whispered, "We're gonna be f***ing loaded."
For sophomores, that is.
Peter looked up from his debug screen, blinking owlishly.
Ethan tossed him a can of Dr. Pepper like it was a champagne bottle.
"We're soft-launch dragons, Parker. Let's get this bug-free and global."
Peter smiled, tired, surprised, and maybe a little proud.
"You think we're ready?"
"No," Ethan said. "But the timeline doesn't wait."
Out there in the world, Tony Stark was bleeding in a cave and preparing to become Iron Man.
But in a dingy basement in Queens?
Two kids were about to drop one of the most addictive mobile games of the decade.
And hey? Maybe make the first million before senior year?
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.