Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

Chapter 5869 - 4891: Marvelous Shadows and Ingenious Drama (17)

Pepper’s career path wasn’t all that smooth. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a family that could only be described as working class. However, she excelled academically and got into the most prestigious local university, Yale University, and entered the Stark Group as an intern with excellent grades.This already seemed much better than many people’s situations. But even if Pepper was a piece of gold, the Stark Group was still resplendent. In such a large corporation, everyone was a genius from a prestigious school, and Pepper didn’t stand out among them.

Her family couldn’t provide her with much support, nor did they ever teach her any survival rules in the workplace. When she first arrived at the Stark Group, she faced obstacles everywhere, bumping around like a headless fly, and thus missed the best opportunities for promotion and advancement.

As the Stark Group’s operations improved, the talented young people around her gradually rose up, while Pepper lingered at the margins of the office. When Howard was still the leader of the group, she had already joined the company, and even when Tony took over, she was only managing one office, not really counting as high-level within the company.

Pepper lingered in the position of an ordinary employee for too long, and there wasn’t much room for advancement. However, opportunities are always for those who are prepared. The extensive time spent at the grassroots level made her very familiar with the ordinary operations of the Stark Group. During an inspection of the grassroots by Obadiah, Pepper pointed out an accounting error, saving the group from a significant loss. Her familiarity with the business convinced Obadiah that she could handle the tedious tasks Tony didn’t want to deal with, so he promoted her to Tony’s personal assistant.

But Stark didn’t have just one assistant. He had an entire team of assistants, and Pepper was initially the most ordinary new assistant among them, older than any other newcomer, and no one thought she could be competent.

Yet, Pepper relied on her rich experience and strong sense of responsibility to stand out from the assistant team, reaching Stark, successfully gained his trust, and became his most important senior assistant. She then gained complete control over the assistant team, and even all the tasks in Stark’s hands.

Stark expressed as much, saying if he had met Pepper earlier, he wouldn’t have had to linger at the grassroots level for so long. Stark indeed thought this; if Pepper had been promoted sooner, the business level of the Stark Group might have risen even higher.

But unexpectedly, when Pepper heard this, she gently moved Stark’s head aside and said, "I was never the kind of little girl who believed that people in high positions would look favorably upon me because of love. If you had approached me then, I would have accused you of workplace harassment."

Stark hugged her again, pressing his cheek against her hair, "You also think I have a bad reputation, don’t you?"

"It’s not a matter of reputation," Pepper said, gently patting his shoulder. "Your wealth, ability, and beauty didn’t belong to the me of that time. If I had blindly trusted you, they never would have belonged to me."

Stark released her again, looking at her with an intense gaze, almost devout, until he was interrupted by a noise on the side. He turned his head to look over.

"It’s fine, you guys continue." Chris was instructing Eddie on adjusting the camera. Eddie moved his eyes away from the camera, tilted his head, and said, "We just need some evidence to refute gossip tabloids, you don’t need to mind us."

The two deflated. Especially Stark, who swallowed all the words he wanted to say, almost suffocating himself to the point of coughing, covering his mouth and coughing vigorously to the side.

Pepper patted his arm and then asked, "How’s the filming going? Is it going smoothly?"

"It’s going okay," Stark recalled for a moment, automatically erasing some unpleasant details, nodded, "The climax part of the plot is basically finished."

"Who’s the murderer?" Pepper curiously asked.

"Do you really want to know?" Stark asked, "But the biggest taboo in suspense movies is spoilers, I still want to wait until the movie is released to watch it with you."

"Alright, then I won’t ask. By the way, I’m planning to arrange for Helen to take the Mossley Elite Middle School exam..."

They started talking about life matters. Even though it was just some trivial small talk, they chatted for a long time. This finally allowed Stark to break free from the murder atmosphere and improved his mental state a lot.

Then the next morning, there was a blow. As soon as he entered the set, he saw Shiller and Chris examining what was wrong with the second form of the corpse prop.

And because Stark couldn’t tell what was wrong with this prop—it was ridiculously realistic—that he felt as though he’d been punched in the head.

Seeing Strange writing medical records on a laptop nearby, he looked as if he’d seen a lifeline, quickly walked over, and said, "Are those two crazy?"

"Probably," Strange said without looking up, "Anyone who plays with corpses is a madman."

Stark turned his head to look again and then said, "Why don’t you stop them?"

"I’m not interested in corpses," Strange said impatiently, "Are you disappointed that every patient I send out still has a breath?"

It was only then that Stark realized Strange’s lack of interest was academic, not commonsensical, or rather that his common sense was a bit too academic. When he talked about corpses, he referred more to living remains rather than any kind of sign with specific intimidation connotations.

But clearly Stark had a different view and couldn’t accept the idea of handling corpses. However, the two men were dealing with a fake corpse—it was merely a prop—so he had nothing to say.

Chris frowned, seemingly dissatisfied. He had the prop master move it multiple times and made adjustments, tried different lighting to achieve the effect he wanted, but failed every time.

"This won’t do." Chris paced anxiously. "This has to be used at the end of the film to create the biggest twist. If it’s not stunning, it won’t mean anything."

"Forget it," Chris waved his hand. "Dismantle and start over."

The scene that followed was even worse. Stark had finally had enough and rushed out the door to get some air.

The scene was shot at Rodrix Manor, and Stark wandered around aimlessly. Just as he was about to check out the pool area, Chris sent someone to call him back.

"Tony, come over here." Chris called out to him. "Try to act shocked at this corpse..."

"I don’t need to act," Stark looked at the corpse, "I’m already shocked. Can you get this thing away from me?"

But Chris kept frowning and said, "No, your state isn’t right. That’s not shock; you’re just disgusted."

Stark opened his mouth. He thought carefully; indeed, he wasn’t really scared, just found it disgusting.

Back when he was kidnapped, he had seen those people execute traitors—those scenes were quite bloody. To scare him, they even locked him with a corpse. The place was hot, the corpse became horrifying quickly, and the smell was intense. But at the time, Stark was more concerned about his own safety, not so much about the corpses.

Perhaps it was because he was a firm materialist and didn’t think a corpse could stand up and attack him. Living people were a bit scarier. The little bit of fear Stark had in this scene likely came from the two people handling the corpse.

Stark performed multiple takes, but Chris was never satisfied. He was furious, even starting to curse. Stark had a temper too, but he didn’t dare talk back since he didn’t act well.

For the rest of the day, Chris was making Stark circle around the corpse prop. One moment, he wanted him to look from this angle; another, he wanted him to look from that angle. Sometimes close, sometimes far, nearly driving Stark crazy.

Eventually, he couldn’t stand it anymore and ran to a bedroom upstairs to find some peace, but Chris quickly found him again. Unable to achieve the desired effect, Chris began to descend into madness, even thinking of dropping the corpse directly onto Stark.

Stark was adamantly against it. Although it was just a prop, the fake blood used was real—it was dirty and disgusting. He also knew even if it fell on him, the disgust would overwhelm the fear, failing to achieve the desired effect.

To avoid the storm, Stark decided to make a run for it. Running outside openly wasn’t an option, and calling the mecha wasn’t feasible. He remembered that when Hampton was locked down, his neighbors attending a party had gone through the cellar to the dock and left by boat. Stark decided to take that route.

Of course, he knew there were monsters in the sea, but he didn’t plan to row at sea. Once down he’d summon a mecha to sneakily fly away; the monsters wouldn’t be able to catch him.

With this in mind, Stark seized an opportunity and sneaked into the cellar. The lighting was dim, and he could vaguely see freezers and various spices greedily piled there.

Turning past a row of shelves, Stark saw the passage leading to the dock. He walked over there, but suddenly felt something above his head. Thinking it was a dangling bag of odds and ends, he instinctively glanced upward.

In front of him was a hand.

"Ahhhhhhh!!!!"

When Chris arrived, Stark was sitting on the floor, staring blankly upward. With shelves blocking the view, Chris couldn’t see what Stark was staring at, but he knew Stark was finally in the role, delivering the effect he wanted.

He quickly called Eddie to bring the camera over. But the cellar entrance was small, making it difficult to bring the camera down normally. Venom simply suspended from the ceiling with tentacles, as Eddie embraced the camera, they walked across the ceiling.

Venom was the typical heavy-handed type, charging headlong as they came over, accidentally bumping into the shelf in front of Chris, which wobbled and tipped forward.

With a crash, items from the shelf scattered everywhere, and the top left of the shelf hit something, falling with a bang. Along with the shelf fell a circular object enveloping the three of them.

"Ahhhhhhh!!!!"