[Third Person POV]
The boardroom on the top floor of the Coca-Cola headquarters was suffocatingly silent.
A massive, glowing line graph dominated the screen, and the trajectory was downright devastating. It looked less like a financial quarter report and more like a heart monitor flatlining.
The CEO rubbed his temples, staring at the sheer financial ruin displayed before him. Ever since the Viltrumite invasion and the miraculous reconstruction of New Chicago, the geopolitical and economic landscape of the world had shifted. But for this boardroom, the apocalypse wasn't aliens.
It was a man in a silver-and-blue metallic suit, with the damn logo of their competitor on his chest.
"It's that damn Pepsi Man!" the CEO spat, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "Ever since the Battle Beast incident, he's been everywhere, handing out Pepsi to everyone he saves, and people are treating it like a religious experience."
"And he publicly stated his hatred of Coca-Cola during the Rampage fight," Gerald added, pulling up the footage that had gone viral within hours. "The clip has 400 million views across all platforms, and every comment section is full of people swearing off our products."
A VP interjected the rant, coming to the crux of the problem, "Now our market share has plummeted to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Coca-Cola stock had dropped 67% in the past week alone."
Seeing no one dared to match his eyes, he continued.
"Inventory is rotting in warehouses since nobody wants our product. They want what the 'hero' drinks. Stores are reporting customers actively avoiding our products, and social media sentiment has hit an all-time low"
The executives around the mahogany table shifted nervously.
"We didn't just sit on our hands, sir," the Chief of Research and Development said, wiping sweat from his brow. "After you authorized Project Super-Cola, we spent every available dollar we had. We hired the best scientists money could buy, consulted with shamans, mystics, alchemists, anyone who might give us an edge, and even secured a consultancy from Euclid, the genius half-brother of the hero Brit and retired hero Britney. We somehow synthesized a single dose of serum capable of rivalling the top-tier heroes of the Guardians themselves. Well… there was an accident and…"
"And what?" the CEO demanded, slamming his hand on the table. "Where is our corporate saviour?"
The R&D Chief swallowed hard. "Sir... during the chaos of the invasion, the logistics grid went down, and our transport trucks were rerouted by the national guard. The single prototype batch of Super-Cola was misplaced."
"Misplaced?"
"It was shipped with the standard stock in the Midwest, sir." The executive tapped a remote, switching the projector slide. "And we believe... a civilian drank it."
The screen flickered, displaying a high-resolution photograph pulled from a social media feed.
The image showed a woman hovering in mid-air. She was clad in a sleek, liquid-metal silver and cola red bodysuit. Her hair was a massive, gravity-defying mane of glowing white energy, trailing behind her like a comet, and her eyes radiated a fierce, golden light.
"You're telling me," Victor said slowly, his face going pale, "that we have super-human serum in soda bottles sitting on grocery store shelves right now, and we have no idea who bought them?"
"Find her," the CEO ordered, half choking on his drink. "I don't care what it costs. We need to know who she is, and we need to convince her to work with us before this entire company goes under."
High above the atmosphere, the super in question was currently panicking.
A stray meteor was hurtling directly toward the newly built city of 'New' Chicago.
Mary Winchester, currently glowing with the unbridled power of a heavily caffeinated deity, shot into the sky. The wind whipped past her face as she pushed her new abilities to their limits.
[Imager Here]
She didn't have any training, nor experience with this hero thing.
But she was a mother of two, and she wasn't about to let a space rock crush her city.
She reared back her silver-plated fist as the super-cola pumped through her veins and punched the meteor with everything she had.
KRA-KOOM!
The impact was spectacular. The force of her blow shattered the meteor instantly, turning the apocalyptic threat into a massive, booming firework display.
'Deana and Sam would've loved it; if only it were night down there.'
Mary smiled in triumph, hovering in the sky.
But then she looked down and her smile vanished.
She had destroyed the meteor, but it wasn't magically vaporised. Now, instead of one giant rock, a terrifying shotgun blast of flaming, car-sized debris was raining directly down on the screaming civilians below.
"Oh no, no, no!" Mary gasped, diving desperately to catch them. But there were too many. She was too slow and too inexperienced to manage the spread.
She braced for the inevitable tragedy in the form of screams and screams of bodies being crushed.
But it never came.
A brilliant blur of silver and blue ripped through the city streets as the sound of carbonated pops echoed through the new city.
Pepsiman had arrived.
He moved like liquid metal given purpose, his chrome surface blurring as he weaved between falling debris with impossible precision, and everywhere he went civilians were suddenly somewhere else, plucked out of harm's way so quickly they barely had time to register what was happening before a Pepsi bottle was pressed into their hands and he was gone again.
Before Kaisen's miraculous Gacha rolls, the public used to run from Pepsiman, terrified of his corporate connections and featureless face. But now, bathed in the effects of his Mythical Nice Guy ability, the crowd's perception had completely shifted.
They didn't see a strange experiment but a knight in shining aluminium.
The civilians cheered wildly, swooning as the hero gently set them down on the safe sidewalks.
Mary tried to land gently next to him, but the concrete still cracked beneath her red boots. The glowing white mane of hair settled around her shoulders as she rushed forward, her hands waving frantically.
"I am so, so sorry!" Mary stammered, her golden eyes wide with guilt. "I didn't think about the debris! I just wanted to stop it, and I made it worse, and—"
Pepsiman stepped toward her, raising a gleaming silver hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. He tilted his head, giving it a reassuring shake, as if to say,
'It's not your fault. You did good.'
He offered her a crisp thumbs-up, smoothly whispering.
"Pepsi."
Mary froze.
At the sound of that word, the roaring cheers of the crowd faded away, and the burning craters on the street vanished from her mind as she snapped into a daze.
Flashback — One Week Ago
The world was burning, yet the Viltrumite invasion had pulled every major hero away to the front lines, leaving the suburban streets exposed to the opportunists.
Mary Winchester's heels scraped desperately against the cracked asphalt as she shoved her pre-teen boys, Dean and Sam, backwards. Their spines hit the brick wall with a dull thud. "Mom," Dean whispered, his voice cracking with fear.
"Stay behind me," she'd said, trying to sound brave even as her hands shook. "No matter what happens, you stay behind me."
You didn't live in a world of capes and supervillains without developing a healthy amount of paranoia, and right now, every alarm bell in her head was screaming.
Five figures had boxed them in.
They didn't move like normal street thugs. They stalked forward with a predatory slink, clad in a matching reptilian theme. If they hadn't been heavily armed, their costume might have actually been laughable.
But there was nothing funny about the massive brute dressed in a Komodo Dragon costume. He had massive, scaled shoulders that completely blocked the alley's exit. He cracked his thick knuckles, the sound echoing like snapping tree branches as he let out a low, rumbling growl.
Flanking him was Iguana. She clung halfway up the brick wall, her razor-sharp claws digging effortlessly into the mortar as she tilted her cowl, fixing Mary with a sadistic, unblinking stare.
And slithering into the narrow space beside her was Salamander. He casually twirled a rusted combat knife around his fingers, letting out a wet, guttural hiss that sounded entirely too animalistic for a human throat.
To the heavy hitters in the GDA, the Lizard League might have been a running joke. But to a single mother in an empty alley? They were an absolute death sentence.
The smell of damp sewer water and cold-blooded sweat choked the narrow space.
Mary reached back, twisting her fingers into the fabric of her sons' jackets to keep them pinned behind her, and squeezed her eyes shut as the shadow of a raised blade fell across her face.
Her children could only watch with wide, fearful eyes as they witnessed what they believed would be their mother's final moments..
But her end was interrupted by the sharp hiss of a pop-tab.
Pepsiman had dropped from the sky, holding a six-pack of chilled Pepsi cans. With the vigour of a man on a mission, he vigorously shook the cans and hurled them like high-velocity missiles. The carbonated pressure detonated on impact, sending the Lizard League goons flying into the dumpsters, completely incapacitated.
One shot kills across the board.
The silver hero walked up to the terrified family, kneeling down and gently checking Dean and Sam for injuries, before standing up and looking directly into Mary's eyes.
He had reached into empty air, pulled out a perfectly chilled, glass bottle of Pepsi, and offered it to her.
"Pepsi." he said, his tone somehow managing to convey concern, reassurance, and an offer of refreshment all in that single word.
Sam took the bottle with trembling hands. "Thank you."
Dean stared at the chrome hero with wide eyes. "That was so cool."
Mary's breath hitched as her trembling fingers brushed against the freezing glass, her gaze dragged upward, finally taking in the man who had just saved her life.
She saw the impossible breadth of his shoulders cutting a stark, heroic silhouette against the smoke.
She saw the quiet, unshakeable confidence radiating from his stance—the unfiltered embodiment of selfless heroism. The world was literally falling apart, but all she could hear was the hammering rhythm of her own heart skipping a beat.
It was sudden and completely absurd. But as she stared up at him, she knew with certainty that it was undeniably love at first sight.
Pepsiman had blurred away a second later to save another city, but Mary couldn't get him out of her head, even through the invasion and the rise of the new Chicago.
The very next day, driven by a constant demand from her boys to buy more Pepsi, she went to the grocery store.
But the shelves were completely stripped of Pepsi, apparently the entire country was buying it in droves to support the hero.
She'd settled for Coca-Cola instead because she'd always enjoyed it, and because she'd needed the caffeine after three days of the twins having nightmares about the invasion.
She'd been cooking dinner, had taken a long sip of the Coke to wash down the stress of single motherhood.
And as fate would have it, the Super-Cola disguised as a normal Cola, hit her bloodstream like a lightning bolt.
The transformation was sudden and explosive. She gained the unbridled power of a superhuman capable of matching Guardians themselves from just a sip!
But that was it, she got the raw power but no control, so for the past few days, she had kept it a strict secret from her kids, flying out during her lunch breaks to stop muggers and catch falling scaffolding.
She had been desperately searching the skies, hoping to find her silver hero so he could mentor her. And now, he was standing right in front of her.
Present Day
Mary snapped out of her romantic daze, her heart fluttering wildly in her chest.
"Wait, I didn't even—!"
She reached out, but her hand grasped empty air. Pepsiman was gone, already blurring across the city skyline to give a sip of fresh cola to a quenched citizen.
Mary stood there, crestfallen, until a small tug on her silver-plated leg brought her attention back down to earth.
A little girl, clutching a slightly worn Pepsiman plushie, looked up at her with massive, awe-struck eyes.
"What's your name, super lady?" the girl asked.
Mary's glowing eyes softened as a warm, maternal smile spread across her face.
She reached into her white mane, miraculously producing a perfectly chilled can of Coke-Zero, and gently handed it to the child.
"Call me... Super-Mom," Mary declared, completely unbothered by the fact that her kids usually physical cringed every time she used that line at a bake sale.
The little girl's face lit up. "That's what I call my mom!"
Her smile faltered as her enhanced hearing picked up the chime of a distant clock tower.
3:15 PM.
"Oh no, I'm late!"
Mary raced through the busy streets, a red and silver streak cutting through the city. She pushed her superspeed to the limit, flawlessly skidding to a stop in a secluded, empty alleyway just a block from the local middle school.
She closed her eyes and willed the power to recede.
The liquid metal suit vanished, as her wild, glowing white mane shrank and darkened into a practical blonde ponytail, and finally the golden light in her eyes faded into a warm emerald green.
She smoothed down her blouse, stepping out of the alley just as the school bell rang.
"Boys!" Mary waved enthusiastically from the sidewalk.
Dean and Sam spotted her immediately, pushing through the crowd of students and sprinting up to tackle her in a massive hug.
"Mom! There was a meteor!" Sam yelled, his eyes wide with adrenaline as he hugged her tightly. "I was so scared!"
"Mom, mom!" Dean chimed in, practically jumping up and down to get her attention. "There was a hero lady who stopped it! She punched it and it exploded! Did you see it?"
Mary looked down at her twins. The exhaustion of the day melted away, replaced by a deep, mischievous smile.
"Oh, you two," Mary chuckled softly, wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders and steering them down the sidewalk. "Why don't you tell me all about it on the way home?"
As the twins excitedly babbled about explosions and silver heroes, Mary looked up at the clear blue sky.
Her heart did a bubbly flutter.
'Maybe I'll get to see you again soon, my hero,' she thought.
[A/N]: Alright, to clear confusion, the chapter with the title What-If is the only non-canon chapter and the rest are canon. Hope this helps.
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