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Obadiah Stane hadn't expected to hear from the Ten Rings today.
He was still furious with them. They'd had one job—kill Tony Stark—and instead they'd let him escape. Now the golden boy was back, making waves, threatening everything Obadiah had built.
And these terrorists had the audacity to contact him again?
But what they brought changed everything.
"We found this in the desert," the Ten Rings commander said, gesturing to the hulking mass of scorched metal behind him. "Your friend Stark built it in our caves. Used it to escape."
The Mark I armor.
Obadiah stared at the crude but functional suit, his mind racing through possibilities. Tony had built this in captivity, with limited resources, under constant threat of death. The engineering was rough, improvised, but the core concept was sound.
If Tony could build this under those conditions, what could Obadiah build with Stark Industries' full resources?
"We want a hundred of these," the commander continued. "In exchange, we'll finish what we started. Tony Stark dies."
"Deal," Obadiah said smoothly.
Then he activated the sonic paralyzer.
The weapon was one of Tony's inventions—military had rejected it for mass production, but Obadiah always carried one for personal protection. The high-frequency pulse hit the terrorists like a physical blow, dropping them where they stood.
"Kill them all," Obadiah ordered his security team. "And bring everything back to the lab."
He had new plans now. Better plans.
Iron Monger was going to be magnificent.
Meanwhile, Luke was hunting Reapers.
His investigation—supplemented by Blade's legwork—had revealed something unexpected. The Reaper outbreak wasn't connected to Prince Nomak after all.
Nomak was probably dead.
Gitano Dragonetti's faction had moved fast after Luke's warning about Damaskinos. The pureblood elders remembered how close Deacon Frost had come to destroying them all. They weren't about to let another ambitious vampire threaten their power.
Damaskinos had been crushed. Forced to submit. And now he was cooperating with Gitano's people, sharing his genetic research in exchange for survival.
The vampire nation wanted to evolve. Faster. Stronger. Immune to silver and sunlight.
Nomak had been captured as a test subject. Whatever remained of him was probably in pieces on a laboratory table.
Which meant the Reapers running loose in New York weren't escaped experiments. They were released experiments. Someone was field-testing the new breeds.
EMIYA found the source: a facility called the Cross-Species Genetic Blood Research Center.
The name alone screamed "evil laboratory."
Luke suited up for the assault.
His new outfit was a black longcoat in the style of Devil May Cry's demon hunters—Dante, Vergil, Nero. Cut-resistant fabric, reinforced stitching, and enough hidden pockets for a small arsenal.
Yamato hung at his hip.
He still couldn't access the sword's dimensional cutting abilities—that required an awakened Devil Trigger he didn't have. But the blade itself was impossibly sharp. Perfect for testing a theory: would a Reaper survive being bisected by a legendary demon weapon?
If not, great. If so, he'd brought UV lamps as backup.
The research center looked like a bank crossed with a bunker. Two-story structure, heavy security, and entrance doors made of reinforced bulletproof glass.
Luke noted the quality. Most movie laboratories had glass that shattered if you looked at it wrong. This was professional-grade.
Yamato didn't care about professional-grade.
One smooth draw, one perfect cut. The reinforced glass parted like water, and Luke stepped through the gap.
Alarms screamed. Armed guards converged from multiple directions, weapons raised.
"Is that Captain America?" someone shouted, staring at the security footage of Luke casually slicing through bulletproof material.
Luke wasn't Captain America. He wasn't bulletproof. He wasn't fast enough to deflect gunfire like Vergil or regenerate like Deadpool.
He stepped aside and let Skadi and Riven handle it.
The guards lasted about thirty seconds.
Then something unexpected happened.
A woman appeared in the middle of the carnage, materializing from nowhere like all of Luke's drops did. Long black hair, brown eyes, athletic build barely contained by a white tank top and black skirt.
Luke's brain stuttered.
"Tifa?"
Tifa Lockhart. From Final Fantasy VII. One of the most iconic characters in gaming history.
She looked exactly like her Remake incarnation—gorgeous, dangerous, and somehow standing in the middle of a vampire research facility like she belonged there.
"Luke?" she responded, tilting her head curiously.
Wait. Why is she calling me Luke?
In the games, Tifa's whole story revolved around Cloud Strife. Her childhood friend, her complicated love interest, the man she'd followed across continents and through the end of the world.
Luke had expected to be called "Cloud." That's how the drops usually worked—the characters recognized him as someone important, fit him into their understanding of reality.
Instead, she knew his actual name.
Does that mean... Luke's mind spiraled into uncomfortable territory before he forcibly redirected his thoughts. Not the time. Focus.
Riven was watching the new arrival with barely concealed irritation. Another woman. Another potential competitor for the Doctor's attention.
She was starting to wish the system would drop monsters instead.
"Are you alright, Luke?" Tifa stepped closer, concern evident in her voice.
"I'm fine." Luke shook his head, centering himself. "Tifa, are you willing to help me?"
"Of course."
Just like Skadi and Riven before her, Tifa showed no hesitation. The drop system had apparently primed her for cooperation.
Luke gave her a quick briefing—vampires, Reapers, UV weakness, the mission objective. She absorbed the information with the calm competence of someone who'd faced world-ending threats before.
He handed her a UV flashlight.
"Got it," Tifa said, cracking her knuckles. "Let's do this."
The research center's defenses escalated as they pushed deeper.
Regular guards gave way to something worse: modified vampires. Controlled Reapers. Creatures that looked less like the feral monsters Luke had fought before and more like... bioweapons.
Engineered. Stable. Directed.
The aesthetic reminded Luke uncomfortably of Blacklight infected. If he didn't know for certain that he'd destroyed every trace of the virus, he'd have suspected someone had gotten their hands on it.
"These aren't like the others," Skadi observed, bisecting a creature that kept trying to reform around her blade. "They're... smarter."
"Controlled subjects," Luke agreed grimly. "Someone's been refining the process."
Tifa drove her fist through a Reaper's skull, following up with a UV burst that reduced the creature to ash. She moved like she'd been fighting monsters her whole life—which, technically, she had.
"Where's the source?" she asked, shaking gore from her gloves.
"Deeper in." Luke checked his mental map of the facility. "We find the labs, we find whoever's running this operation."
And then Luke was going to have a very pointed conversation with Gitano Dragonetti about what his new "allies" were doing in New York.