Tony Stark was burning with pride and panic both—pride for his creations, panic because they were turning into a swarm of death. He barked at the HUD inside his fourth-generation armor. "I'm their father, dammit! Who dares treat my kids like this?!"
"Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S chimed, clinical and urgent, "the energy shield can only take two more hits."
Red dots winked across the targeting displays. One hundred-plus drone mechs closed in behind a curtain of smoke and metal. Tony's confidence flickered. If that armada coordinated a strike, his armor would fail, his thrusters would glitch, and he'd be nothing more than a smoking crater.
This morning he'd been lounging in a Malibu villa, thinking about a private flight to Vegas. Now he was fighting for survival over a school.
"Five hundred meters!" Tony howled. "Hold position—evade—now!"
The mecha combined their beams into one searing column of energy. Tony banked, twisted, and the beam still found him. The armor screamed, systems fritzed. "Thrust system failure! Thrust system—"
"Shut up!" Tony snapped, teeth gritted. The mech fell like a shot bird, streaking toward the ground as obedient drone armors dove in for the kill.
From below, Ryuuto stood and watched. Calm as a pond, infuriatingly unhurried. Tony squinted at him on the ground and, absurdly, his eyes welled. Two hours from Malibu to here; his nerves were shredded. Seeing Ryuuto approach through the chaos felt almost like salvation.
The suit slammed into the earth and dug a crater. The armored shell went silent. Ryuuto crossed his arms, head tilted. "Gonna lie there on your stomach forever, or you want help getting up?"
Tony popped the helmet and coughed. "I'm out of juice. Those drones—this is bad tech. Their mobility, their AI—JARVIS-lite combat nodes. They outmaneuvered me. If we don't stop that combined beam, the whole school—"
Ryuuto had already seen the math. Those drones weren't just trying to frag Tony; they were building a bomb. If that focused beam hit, the blast wave alone would collapse buildings in a three-hundred-meter radius. Kids. Teachers. Everything gone in a heartbeat.
Tony barked through gritted teeth: "Who controls them? Who stole the core?"
Ryuuto's eyes narrowed. "Someone with access—satellite links, military-grade code. Ministry of Defense level theft." He didn't have time to explain. The beam was coalescing, roiling like a sunspot. He clenched his hands.
A white, translucent cube blinked into being between his palms. He'd summoned it clean: a tiny pocket of original-world space—Ryuuto's tool for stopping catastrophic energy. "Dust Shield — Prime Realm Stripping!" he shouted.
The cube rose like an incubator and swallowed the energy column whole. Inside that pocket, normal rules bent; matter and energy were broken down into base components. The beam detonated—inside the cube. The explosion chewed itself apart where it could do no external harm.
For a beat everything was silent. Then the drone armors, deprived of their deathbolt, dove down in a panicked swarm. The crowd's breath came back in a collective wheeze.
Tony's face twisted between fury and relieved adrenaline. "They stole core tech," he spat. "The Ministry stripped my prototypes—Aerial Drone A—downgraded courses, black-boxed the combat AI. If I pull through this, I swear, I'm blowing the Ministry to pieces."
Ryuuto gave a short, wry smile. "Threats always sound better when you're alive to make them."
Tony laughed like a man who'd been to hell and back. Then, softer: "You okay? You could've stayed in the sky, you know."
Ryuuto shrugged. "Where's the fun in that? Besides, someone has to stop these toys from turning into a city-killer. You okay to stand?"
Tony tried to stand. Systems were fried, but the man's stubbornness was intact. Around them, rescue teams were converging, and the drone swarm was already splintering under command overrides and localized EMPs. The immediate threat was passed. But both men knew the bigger danger hadn't gone away: stolen tech, weapons, and whoever had the nerve to turn them loose.
Ryuuto glanced at the horizon where the school sat, trembling under dust and a hundred scared people. He felt that familiar, itchy promise of more fights coming. He felt a grin rise—half tired, half hungry.
"Good. Now," he said, eyes cold and bright, "we find who stole your toys—and take them back."
....
Read up to 100 chapters ahead and access exclusive novels by joining my Patreon!
patreon.com/Zyxxar