Can't get enough? Why not read ahead?
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!
Your support means the world to me. Check it out and enjoy the story even more!
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
"So, you're not even going to look through the rest of the catalog?"
Rosh leaned forward, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips as he watched May Parker slide the tablet away. "This is your absolute final decision?"
"One hundred percent!" May nodded, her response firing out without a single shred of hesitation. "I have never been more sure of anything in my life, Manager."
At this point, there was literally nothing left to double-check. The choice was locked in, stamped, and approved.
Ironically, the fruit's actual healing properties weren't even the main reason she was suddenly vibrating with excitement. Sure, Rosh had dropped a pretty terrifying warning about some dark, catastrophic event lurking in her future. And yeah, having a god-tier healing factor would definitely come in handy if she ever found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But to an ordinary woman from Queens, a distant life-or-death crisis still felt like a plot from a summer blockbuster movie, totally abstract and hard to fully wrap her head around. After all, she didn't wear a cape. She didn't fight aliens.
What truly captured her imagination was something way more relatable: the ultimate fountain of youth.
The thought of staying physically vibrant, high-energy, and completely healthy for decades past a normal human lifespan was mind-blowing. Forty extra years of youth. Fifty. Maybe even sixty.
May was willing to bet all the money in her savings account that if the ultra-wealthy elite of Manhattan found out about this specific fruit, there would be a line of billionaires stretching all the way down the block, throwing blank checks at the front door.
People spent literal fortunes chasing the ghost of their youth. Entire multi-billion-dollar industries existed purely because humanity was absolutely terrified of growing old, getting wrinkles, and slowing down. Yet, here she was, a normal aunt from Queens, about to walk away with a priceless miracle. And the best part? She wasn't even paying a single dollar out of her own pocket.
"In that case," Rosh said, pulling her out of her daydreams, "would you prefer to consume the fruit right here in the safety of the office, or should I arrange for secure transport to your apartment?"
May paused, a sudden, bright spark forming in her mind. "Manager..."
"Yes, May?"
"I remember reading a bunch of theories online about how a Devil Fruit functions," she began, her voice dropping into a hopeful whisper. "They say the magic only works on the very first bite, right?"
Rosh immediately knew exactly where her maternal brain was traveling. "Correct."
"So... hypothetically... if I just took one tiny bite to activate the power..." May cast a subtle, loving glance down at the ten-year-old boy sitting on her lap. "Could I give the rest of the fruit to someone else so they get the powers too?"
Rosh slowly shook his head, gently crushing her loophole. "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way, Ms. Parker. The exact millisecond a user swallows that first bite, the fruit's supernatural traits lock onto their DNA. All the remaining fruit instantly loses its mystical properties."
He didn't sugarcoat the reality. "One bite is all it takes to claim the power. After that, the rest of the object is nothing more than an unusually terrible-tasting, ordinary fruit."
May let out a heavy, disappointed sigh. There went her grand plan.
For a brief, beautiful moment, she had wondered if she could somehow split this miracle right down the middle and share the gift of a long, healthy life with Peter. It wasn't because she wanted less for herself; it was just her baseline instinct as a caretaker. The very first thing she did when she stumbled into something extraordinary was figure out a way to hand it over to her nephew.
Unfortunately, the laws of the universe weren't quite that generous.
"Well, that's a real shame," she muttered with a bittersweet smile.
"A very common reaction among family members who come here," Rosh noted softly.
May laughed, shaking off the disappointment. "Yeah, I figured it was a little too good to be true. Okay, change of plans, I'll just eat the whole thing right here."
Rosh nodded in approval. It was the only sensible choice. Walking through the crowded, unpredictable streets of New York City while carrying an unconsumed, multi-million-dollar Devil Fruit in your purse was a literal invitation for disaster. The entire world now knew exactly how valuable these things were.
Even if a random thug on the subway didn't recognize the specific type of fruit, the sheer risk of carrying it around wasn't worth it. To May, it would feel like wandering through a sketchy alleyway with a giant, glowing neon sign that read, "I am carrying millions of dollars in cash."
It was a million times safer to just swallow the power immediately and leave the physical target behind.
"Very well," Rosh said, his fingers dancing across his digital inventory interface to summon the item. "Let's get this transaction finalized."
Right next to them, Peter's eyes practically flared with pure adrenaline. He gripped the edge of May's coat, his sneakers squeaking against the floor. "Wait, Aunt May is seriously getting a real superpower right now? For real?!"
"She is," Rosh smiled.
"Awesome!" The future hero started bouncing excitedly in his seat, completely unable to sit still. "I wanna see it! Let me see the fruit, let me see!"
May couldn't help but chuckle at his hyperactive reaction, playfully tapping his nose. "My goodness, Peter, you're acting like you're the one getting the superpower here."
"Hey, it kinda feels like it's my fruit too!" Peter argued, puffing out his cheeks.
"No, it absolutely does not."
"Yes, it does!"
Watching the two of them bicker back and forth over the desk, Rosh found himself genuinely smiling. Over the past few months, his office had been a revolving door for some of the most intense, high-profile people on the planet. He had dealt with brooding spies, arrogant multibillionaires, lethal assassins, mythical kings, and world leaders weighed down by global politics.
There was something incredibly refreshing, almost grounding, about watching a normal, bickering family from Queens just being themselves.
Then again, considering the fact that the scrawny kid currently whining about superpowers would eventually become the legendary Spider-Man, the word "ordinary" was probably a massive understatement.
Either way, the heavy, suffocating atmosphere that had taken over the room during May's dark fortune reading had completely cleared out, replaced by a light, cozy vibe.
"Elizabeth."
At Rosh's single word, Elizabeth smoothly stepped forward to finalize the deal. She tapped a sequence into a hidden interface, and with a soft, pressurized hiss, a secure, high-tech compartment slid open in the wall, revealing the Health-Health Fruit resting inside.
"There you go, Ms. Parker," Rosh said gently.
May reached out, her hands trembling just a tiny bit as she carefully accepted the strange, swirling fruit. For a long, breathless moment, she could only stare down at it. It felt entirely surreal. This small, bizarre-looking object was about to completely alter the trajectory of her life, her health, and her family's future.
Taking a massive, deep breath to steady her nerves, she locked eyes with Peter, steeled her resolve, and brought the fruit to her lips.
*Crunch!*
The exact millisecond the fruit's flesh touched her tongue, May's entire face froze solid. Then, every single feature on her face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.
"Mmph!"
Every single drop of color instantly drained from her skin, leaving her a ghostly, shocking shade of white. Her eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
The flavor was completely indescribable. Actually, it was way worse than indescribable. It felt as though every single offensive, disgusting flavor ever created in the history of the universe had formed an evil alliance and launched a coordinated assault directly on her taste buds.
It tasted like a horrific blend of rotten vegetables, burnt rubber, expired liquid medicine, and ancient, stagnant sewage. The fruit somehow hit every single one of those notes all at the exact same time.
May's absolute baseline instinct was to spit the foul chunk right onto Rosh's pristine floor. The only reason she managed to force her jaw to move and actually swallow the bite was through pure, unbending maternal willpower.
'This is a literal nightmare!' she screamed internally. The digital catalog had explicitly warned her that Devil Fruits tasted completely awful, but the word "awful" was a massive understatement. This wasn't food. This felt like a targeted cosmic punishment.
Fortunately, the intense suffering didn't last long.
The very instant the chewed bite slid down her throat and hit her stomach, a massive wave of warm, electric energy violently exploded throughout her entire body. May froze, her breath catching in her throat.
A deeply strange, tingly sensation swept through her limbs. It wasn't painful at all; in fact, it was the exact opposite. It felt as though every single cell, every strand of DNA, and every muscle fiber in her body was suddenly waking up from a lifelong sleep. An incredibly fresh, invigorating current surged wildly through her veins, filling her entire being with a raw, radiant vitality she had never experienced in her entire life.
The heavy, chronic exhaustion she usually carried in her shoulders from working long hours completely vanished. The minor, nagging aches in her joints disappeared into thin air. Even the air entering her lungs felt lighter, crisper, and easier to breathe.
"This..." May whispered, lifting her hands up and staring at her palms. Her eyes sparkled with absolute disbelief. "This feels absolutely incredible!"
The contrast was almost laughable. The baseline taste of the fruit had easily been one of the worst experiences of her entire life, but the instant reward was undeniably one of the best.
Rosh smiled warmly from behind his desk, leaning back. "Congratulations, Ms. Parker. The transaction is officially complete. The Health-Health Fruit belongs to you now."
"Thank you, Manager," May said, her voice rich with genuine, deep gratitude as she looked across the desk. "Seriously, thank you so much."
Over the next several minutes, the heavy atmosphere completely melted away, and the conversation easily shifted into lighter, fun topics.
Meanwhile, Peter completely tuned out the boring adult talk. He occupied himself by climbing into one of Rosh's high-end, incredibly expensive leather office chairs, testing out exactly how fast he could repeatedly spin himself in circles before getting dangerously dizzy.
The scientific results of his little experiment were not encouraging.
Eventually, May had to physically step in and drag her hyperactive nephew away by his collar before he could accidentally launch himself across the room like a human missile.
"Come on, Peter, that's enough," May laughed, smoothing her hair. "Say goodbye to the Manager."
Peter immediately perked up, flashing a giant, gap-toothed grin. "Bye, Uncle Sun God!"
"Goodbye, Peter," Rosh chuckled, waving.
"Next time I come here, I'm definitely getting a cool Devil Fruit too!" the kid declared, throwing a dramatic fist into the air.
May rolled her eyes playfully. "We will revisit that exact discussion in a few years, young man."
Peter let out a loud, highly dramatic groan, earning a synchronized laugh from everyone in the room. A few moments later, May and Peter gathered their things and waved one last time, exiting the office. The heavy office doors clicked shut, and the space gradually returned to its usual, luxurious calm.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Meanwhile, across the state lines, deep inside the reinforced walls of a newly established, off-the-grid S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse...
"So... you're telling me you've been frozen solid for decades, too?"
Steve Rogers sat pulled up across from Bucky Barnes in a dimly lit concrete room, slowly shaking his head with a bitter, exhausted smile.
"Just look at us," Steve let out a short, hollow laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. "Two broken guys from the 1940s desperately trying to figure out how the twenty-first century works. I guess... I guess we really are just a pair of old relics now, Buck."
His expression softened, a deep, protective sorrow swimming in his eyes.
This specific safehouse served as one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s absolute emergency fallback locations, completely hidden from any global grid. But more importantly, right now, it was being used as a temporary shield to keep Bucky completely invisible from a certain high-tech billionaire who was currently not handling the brutal truth about his parents' deaths well at all.
Within these cold, reinforced walls, the two childhood best friends had finally been given a real, uninterrupted chance to talk. To really talk.
For hours on end, Steve just sat there in absolute silence, listening intently as Bucky slowly, painfully recounted the horrific details of everything that had happened to him after his tragic fall from the icy train during the war.
The true story was every bit as dark and heartbreaking as Steve had always feared in his worst nightmares.
After plunging into that frozen, snowy abyss, Bucky hadn't been rescued by some passing heroes. He had been recovered by the cold hands of Hydra.
To the radical scientists of Hydra, Bucky Barnes wasn't a human being with a soul, a family, or a life. He was just a perfect piece of military scrap metal. An experiment. A blank test subject. A golden opportunity.
Completely obsessed with recreating the historic success of Project Rebirth, Hydra had subjected Bucky's broken body to countless agonizing medical procedures, hoping against hope to perfectly copy the exact effects of the Super Soldier Serum running through Steve's veins.
Most of those reckless genetic experiments had failed miserably. Some of them had failed catastrophically, leaving a trail of bodies in the labs.
Yet, against all medical logic, Bucky's stubborn, resilient body had somehow survived every single torture session. And that miraculous survival became the definitive blueprint for a waking nightmare that would trap him for the next seventy years.
Years down the line, after S.H.I.E.L.D. had systematically raided and dismantled one of Hydra's major underground fortresses, agents allegedly stumbled onto something completely unexpected buried deep within the dark, frozen vaults.
It was Bucky Barnes.
He was trapped in a block of ice, totally forgotten by the changing world, but miraculously still breathing. Still alive.
According to the official records floating around in Bucky's fractured mind, S.H.I.E.L.D. had immediately taken full custody of him the second they thawed him out. Unfortunately, actually saving him turned out to be a million times harder than just pulling him out of the ice.
Decades of brutal human experimentation, aggressive brainwashing, and toxic psychological conditioning had left deep, jagged scars across his subconscious. The medical and psychological tech available back then simply wasn't advanced enough to patch up that kind of internal damage.
Because of that, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top brass had been forced to make an incredibly difficult, heartbreaking choice. They had to put him right back into cryogenic sleep.
Not because they wanted to lock him away as a prisoner. But because they wanted to preserve him as a patient. A patient they desperately wanted to cure, but just didn't have the tools to save yet.
According to Bucky's current memories, it was only very recently that the organization had finally developed the groundbreaking neurological methods needed to fix the worst parts of his mental trauma. That massive scientific breakthrough was supposed to mark the official start of his real rehabilitation. It was the only reason they had finally woken him up from his long, icy nap.
But right before his true recovery could even get off the ground... Iron Man happened.
Tony's explosive attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility had completely shattered the timeline, interrupting everything and forcing them onto the run.
As far as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were concerned, that entire history made absolute, flawless sense. And honestly, why wouldn't it?
Every single memory lined up perfectly. Every tiny detail fit into place like a well-made puzzle. Every scrap of digital evidence they looked at backed up the story.
Neither of the two super-soldiers had any earthly way of knowing that the entire narrative was a complete, brilliant fabrication.
Every single memory Bucky had of his S.H.I.E.L.D. rescue? A lie. Every logical justification for putting him back on ice? A lie. Every missing detail in the timeline? Completely manufactured.
The entire history had been meticulously written, woven together, and chemically implanted into Bucky's brain by Simon Boren, the Memo-Memo Fruit user, under the direct, classified orders of one man: Nick Fury.
Fury was a master of mind games, and he had already accounted for the most suspicious question Steve would inevitably ask: 'If you had my best friend this whole time, why the hell didn't you tell me?'
The answer provided by those fake, implanted memories was beautifully simple and incredibly gut-wrenching. Bucky had been unstable. Dangerously, violently unstable. Years of cold Hydra conditioning had left his mind completely fractured and totally unpredictable.
According to the script Fury had written, the director's ultimate goal had always been to reunite the two World War II veterans. He had simply wanted to wait until Bucky's mental recovery was fully complete so Steve wouldn't have to see his best friend acting like a mindless, lethal weapon.
It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. A deeply believable story. Most importantly, it was a narrative specifically engineered to withstand the intense scrutiny of Captain America.
And man, did it work beautifully.
Instead of feeling betrayed or lied to, Steve felt a massive wave of pure gratitude toward S.H.I.E.L.D. From his perspective, Nick Fury had spent years quietly protecting, hiding, and trying to heal his absolute best friend in the world. Rather than destroying Steve's trust in the organization, the revelation made him more loyal to the S.H.I.E.L.D. banner than ever before.
It went exactly according to Fury's master plan.
In almost every single way, Fury's emergency contingency plan had functioned flawlessly. The fake story held together under pressure. Steve accepted it as gospel truth, Bucky believed it completely, and the entire high-stakes situation remained entirely under control.
Well... mostly.
There was still one major problem left on the board. One very loud, incredibly angry problem wrapped up in a multi-billion-dollar suit of red-and-gold armor.
Tony Stark.
Neither Fury nor Steve could comprehend why Tony had suddenly become so utterly, blindly obsessed with hunting Bucky down. No matter how many times they sat in the dark reviewing the details, the chilling conclusion remained identical.
Tony didn't just suspect that the Winter Soldier had murdered his parents. He didn't just have a hunch. He believed it with every single fiber of his being. Completely. Absolutely. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And once a genius like Tony Stark committed himself to a specific idea, trying to convince him otherwise was like arguing with a literal hurricane.
Fury had tried to initiate contact. Steve had tried to call him directly. They had flooded his servers with messages sent through multiple, highly secure channels, begging him to just sit down and look at the facts.
Every single attempt failed miserably. Tony completely ghosted them, ignoring every ping and transmission.
Dialogue was officially off the table. As far as Iron Man was concerned, this script only had one acceptable ending: James Buchanan Barnes had to put a bullet in his own head, or Tony would do it for him.
For the time being, their off-the-grid bunker safehouse remained completely dark and hidden from the world. But absolutely nobody in the room was naive enough to believe that safety would last forever.
Tony Stark possessed a terrifying, vast empire of global resources. He had advanced satellite surveillance tech, world-class artificial intelligence scanning the grid, and practically unlimited funding to burn. Given just a little bit of time, he would trace their footsteps and find them. Everyone in the room knew it. Especially Steve.
Which was exactly why Steve stopped pacing, looked directly into Bucky's tired, haunted eyes, and spoke with absolute, fierce conviction.
"I won't let him touch you, Buck," Steve said, his voice carrying the immense, heavy weight of a sacred promise. "You have my word on that."
Bucky met his gaze, his metal hand clenching slightly. For a brief, emotional moment, neither of the old friends said a single word.
Then—
*BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!*
A shrill, deafening alarm suddenly tore through the concrete bunker, completely shattering the quiet atmosphere in a fraction of a second.
Blaring red warning lights erupted across the entire facility, bathing the sterile white corridors in a rhythmic, flashing crimson glow.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Next Chapter: The Merciless Execution of the Winter Soldier
Next Next Chapter: The End of the Hand, The Beginning of the Hunt
Next Next Next Chapter: Kaecilius Finally Made His Move
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!