Marvel: Terror Stream

Later half of Chapter is basically a recap coz some patron beings were asking for it😕

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After another wildly successful stream, Luke vanished from the street and reappeared inside his unfinished highway mall hideout.

The unconscious Winter Soldier was slumped onto the dusty concrete floor a few feet away from him.

"Alright, Sleeping Beauty, time to get you tucked in," Luke muttered, his voice still slightly altered due to the mask.

With a flick of his wrist, a tendril of black ash shot out, effortlessly lifting the heavy, battered super-soldier into the air. Luke guided him over to a concrete pillar.

Luke turned his head to look at a massive pile of heavy-duty iron chains he had stolen from a shipyard a few days prior.

Then, using his ash to maneuver the incredibly heavy links, he began wrapping the Winter Soldier to the concrete pillar. He wrapped him tightly from the neck all the way down to his steel-toed combat boots.

Then came the finishing touch.

Using the ’Saber’ move with just his fingers, Luke welded the chains together.

Luke stepped back to admire his work. Bucky looked like a metallic popsicle.

"Hm..." Luke rubbed his masked chin thoughtfully, tilting his head as he inspected his captive. ’Is there still a way the Winter Soldier could magically escape these bounds?’

He mentally calculated the odds.

Yeah, there were chances...

After all, Luke was painfully aware that the Winter Soldier wasn’t just some random thug. He was a highly trained, seventy-year-old Hydra super-weapon. If Luke left him alone just like this for a day or two, Bucky would inevitably do some crazy, super-soldier nonsense and find a way to escape.

So, when the time eventually came for Luke to actually leave this room, he decided he would simply add a few more highly creative layers of restraints around Bucky and around the room.

But for now, he was perfectly content to just sit here and keep an eye on his prize.

Luke let out a long sigh and dragged over a metallic chair, placing it directly in front of the unconscious Bucky. He took a seat.

The furniture situation in Luke’s hideout was currently, to put it mildly, deeply tragic.

Having a folding chair was honestly considered a luxury item in this dreary, unfinished mall. Everything he currently owned, from his sleeping mattress to his camping stove, was stolen from various places around the city.

Whenever he needed supplies, Luke would simply don a generic hoodie, sunglasses, and a surgical mask, activate his smartphone’s anti-surveillance hacking mode, and waltz into whatever mall met his criteria.

The canned food, the basic cooking utensils, the cheap bathing essentials basically everything in this hideout was shoplifted... teleported.

The setup was bare-minimum. Looked like a homeless person had set up camp. That was exactly the image Luke wanted.

Still wearing his tailored Veritas suit and cracked white mask, Luke pulled his smartphone out of his pocket. It was time to check the harvest.

Sadly, today there wouldn’t be any massive Quest Rewards waiting for him in the System interface. The quest was technically a total failure today, seeing as he hadn’t taken any actual civilian hostages, and his stream duration was way, way below the mandatory minimum time limit.

But Luke still decided to check the detailed breakdown anyway.

[Quest: Live Terror Stream]

Objective: Conduct a live-streamed event within any public, commercial, private, or restricted facility.

Conditions:

— 35+ minutes duration

— 25+ hostages

Reward: Terror Shop Gacha (Rare Guarantee) + 150 Terror Points

Bonus Condition:

— Engage in battle with a superpowered individual.

Bonus Reward: +100 Terror Points (Extra points awarded depending on enemy strength.)

[Status: Quest Failed!!!]

[Attempts left before 1-Year Terror Shop Lock Penalty: 3]

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

’Damn,’ Luke thought, wincing slightly. ’I knew I only had four attempts to fail a quest before the System slapped me with a massive penalty, but seeing that red text still looks super scary.’

He clicked over to check his updated profile statistics.

[---------------------------------]

Username: Luke Dunphy

Terrorist Rank: 4,659,858 → 4,6530,551

Power Level: D+

Achievements: New Recruit

Total Terror Points: 129

[---------------------------------]

Latest Stream Stats - Patron Section:

Max Viewers: 53

Total Duration: 7 min

Total Hostages: 0

Comments: 41 | Likes: 33 | TP Donations: 111

[---------------------------------]

"Hmm..." Luke muttered, staring at the donation numbers and his total TP count.

At first glance, the numbers looked a bit disappointing. His last major stream had netted him well over 500 TP from donations alone.

But then again...

The numbers looked a little disappointing at first glance, but when Luke considered the incredibly short duration and the absolutely negligible amount of preparation he had to do for this stream, that much TP was totally worth it.

All of his previous streams had required at least a week of exhausting prep work - data gathering, personality analysis, route planning, and location scouting.

Compared to that headache, getting 111 TP for essentially showing up uninvited and making a quick exit was a spectacular return on investment.

Luke gave the Patron comments a quick skim, mostly ignoring the weirdos, before locking his phone. He tossed it onto his lap and stared idly into the empty space of the unfinished mall.

’Still...’ Luke thought, a small, genuine smile creeping onto his face beneath the mask. ’I’ve really come a long way in such a short amount of time.’

From a powerless, random civilian to a menace that half the country now knew and feared.

Luke exhaled a long breath, resting his head back against the metal chair and closing his eyes.

He clearly remembered the day he first arrived in this universe.

He had been so incredibly panicked and confused on that very first day.

One night, he had set his alarm for his boring IT job in his original world. The very next morning, he woke up in a completely new body, several years younger, living in a house in New York he didn’t recognize.

He had spent more than half of that first day frantically studying the life of the person he had transmigrated into - scrolling through the photos and videos on his phone, trying to familiarize himself with his new identity as ’Luke Dunphy.’

He spent the rest of the time trying to figure out why his smartphone could magically teleport, and what the hell the mysterious ’Terror Stream’ app was.

And, of course, he spent some time cautiously interacting with his new family.

In his past life, Luke had a deeply dysfunctional family.

His father was a genuinely good man who had divorced his drug-addicted, deadbeat mother, but he had to spend every waking hour working himself to the bone just to pay off the massive alimony and maintenance fees she aggressively demanded.

Luke had grown up mostly alone.

That was exactly why the warmth of the Dunphy family had made him attach to them so incredibly quickly. They were messy but deeply loving.

Initially, Luke had firmly decided to ignore the Terror Stream app entirely. Becoming a wanted criminal, a literal terrorist, was the fastest way to ruin a perfectly comfortable new life.

He was a normal guy... he liked his comfort zones.

But then came that evening.

The Vulture. The helicopter spiraling out of control due to his attack, barreling toward his house, toward his family. The sheer, paralyzing terror of watching death approach and being utterly powerless to stop it.

If Spider-Gwen hadn’t swooped in at the very last second to save them, he would have lost them all.

That was the wake-up call. The terrifying realization of his own utter powerlessness. He couldn’t just sit around and rely on the sheer luck of a passing superhero in this chaotic, insanely dangerous universe.

He needed power. For survival and for protection.

So, he embraced the madness. He accepted the system’s very first quest: Stream for 15 minutes. Take 5 hostages.

He’d chosen a small convenience store - low security, low crowd, predictable foot traffic, easy escape routes.

He’d stalked the staff and regulars for days. Learned their addresses and their schedules. He’d used every scrap of information to keep them terrified and compliant for the full duration.

There had been major ups and downs during that debut stream. A random variable had caused the local police to arrive way too early, but he had escaped into the sky by hopping on his teleporting phone. Like an air-hopping bunny...

Luke chuckled softly to himself in the quiet hideout.

And then, there was the Daily Bugle Incident. That was when he had taken several executives and building management staff hostage - including the memorable moment where he publicly revealed to a man named Matthew that his wife was cheating on him.

Yes, this time Luke was streaming publicly because he actively wanted to summon Spider-Woman for a little "conversation."

The stream’s multiversal viewers, his Patrons, had highly suggested that every good T-Stremer needed an archnemesis.

Plus, the quests offered a massive bonus payout of TP if he successfully engaged in a fight with a super-powered individual.

So, Luke had practically invited Gwen for a quick brawl.

And while making his escape after completing his objectives, Luke had even hinted to Gwen that he already knew her secret identity, leaving the poor girl completely paranoid.

And that, ultimately, was the day the terrified public had finally given him his official moniker.

Veritas: The Devil Jester of Terror and Truth.

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