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Luke was having the time of his life.
The Zaku's hydraulic systems sang as he swung the massive hammer, each blow generating a terrifying whoosh of displaced air. The weapon must have weighed over a hundred pounds, but inside the powered exoskeleton, it felt like swinging a baseball bat.
Obadiah Stane never stood a chance.
Iron Monger was bigger, more heavily armored—but it was also slow, clumsy, and critically lacking in tactical software. Tony's suits had JARVIS to handle threat assessment and combat optimization. Stane was piloting manually, relying on raw power to compensate for his limitations.
Against Luke's relentless assault, that wasn't enough.
The first hammer blow had cracked Iron Monger's chest plate. The second caved in the shoulder assembly. The third, fourth, and fifth turned the battle into a one-sided beatdown.
Luke called it the "Windmill Hammer Technique"—swing wildly, hit everything, let the suit's strength do the work.
Iron Monger's shock absorption system was based on the Mark I's cave-built design. It wasn't meant for sustained heavy impacts. After a dozen hits, the internal mounting points began to fail. After twenty, the cockpit integrity was compromised.
Obadiah Stane died inside his own armor, shaken apart by forces the suit couldn't dissipate.
Tony Stark and Coulson watched with matching expressions of horror.
That's... brutal, Tony thought. The newcomer hadn't used energy weapons or precision strikes. He'd just bludgeoned Iron Monger into submission with medieval brutality.
Part of Tony wondered if he should design a similar weapon. Sometimes simple solutions were the most effective.
SHIELD reinforcements arrived alongside the National Guard, surrounding the battlefield with enough firepower to level a city block. Two giant robots fighting in public had attracted considerable attention.
"Sir." Coulson approached Luke's Zaku cautiously. "I'm Agent Coulson with—"
"I know who you are, Agent Coulson." Luke's voice came through the suit's external speakers. "Forget me so quickly?"
Coulson's eyes widened. He recognized that voice.
"Mr. Foster?"
The mysterious stranger from months ago. The one Fury had ordered him to stop tracking. The leader of some unknown organization that had vanished from SHIELD's surveillance.
Now apparently piloting his own powered armor.
What the hell is going on?
Coulson had questions—many questions—but Luke wasn't interested in answering them. The Zaku turned and walked away, each step cracking the pavement.
He had better things to do than explain himself to SHIELD. Tifa was waiting at home. That was infinitely more appealing than debriefing with government agents.
Back at Umbrella headquarters, Luke checked his drops from the battle.
Killing Obadiah Stane while piloting the Zaku had counted as a valid combat action. The system had rewarded him accordingly.
What appeared in his inventory made his jaw drop.
"Holy shit."
A Crysis Nanosuit.
He immediately retrieved it and mounted the suit on a display mannequin for examination.
The armor was breathtaking.
Dark gray material covered the entire body without any visible seams or gaps. The faceplate featured a red-tinted visor shaped like tactical goggles, with a triangular breathing apparatus below. No external metal plating was visible—the entire suit appeared to be made of interlocking synthetic muscle fibers.
It looked like someone had skinned a human and replaced the flesh with mechanical tissue. The aesthetic was simultaneously organic and technological, disturbing and beautiful.
This wasn't just armor. It was a revolution in personal combat technology.
The Nanosuit's capabilities were staggering.
Armor Mode: The suit's surface contained electroactive polymers—a liquid armor matrix combining fast-twitch fiber co-polymers, colloidally-doped ceramics, and copper nanocrystal lattices. When activated, this layer could absorb kinetic energy, thermal damage, and radiation, effectively making the wearer temporarily invulnerable to conventional weapons.
The exoskeletal structure used tantalum-titanium alloy reinforced with carbon nanofiber composites. The outer skin incorporated elastic ceramic compounds that actually became harder when struck—a counterintuitive property that made the armor more effective the more damage it took.
Strength Mode: In this configuration, the suit injected biochemical enhancers directly through the wearer's skin, compounds that were rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. Nanobots reinforced this effect, dramatically amplifying physical output. The result was superhuman strength—enough to flip vehicles, punch through walls, and perform feats impossible for baseline humans.
Speed Mode: This mode flooded the wearer's body with oxygen-enhanced blood, using nanobots to accelerate circulation throughout the entire system. The brain received more oxygen, muscles worked more efficiently, and neural reflexes accelerated to inhuman levels. Users could move faster than the eye could track.
Cloak Mode: The most impressive capability. When activated, the suit's outer layer generated specialized crystals that absorbed and bent incoming light waves—visible spectrum, radio, infrared, microwave, all of it. The wearer became invisible to both human eyes and electronic surveillance.
There was a catch: movement caused minor visual distortion. Staying still meant perfect invisibility. Moving too quickly or too dramatically could reveal the user's position.
The Nanosuit's semi-organic nature created unique challenges.
Because portions of the suit directly bonded with the wearer's body, putting it on and taking it off required specialized laboratory equipment. This wasn't something you could throw on before a mission and remove afterward.
The upside was that basic biological needs were handled automatically. While wearing the suit, users didn't need to eat, drink, or eliminate waste—the armor's systems managed everything internally.
Testing had shown that continuous wear of up to two weeks caused no adverse effects. Simulations suggested the suit could be worn for an entire year without problems, assuming it remained undamaged.
There was one significant concern that Luke could safely ignore.
In the Crysis games, the nanosuit was vulnerable to alien signal radiation—a frequency that could gradually corrupt the suit and transform its wearer into something inhuman. The Ceph civilization used this as a weapon, turning humanity's greatest soldiers into puppets.
That particular threat didn't exist in the Marvel universe. No Ceph. No alien signal. Just the suit's incredible capabilities without its most dangerous drawback.
Luke stared at the armor with undisguised hunger.
The Zaku was impressive—a mass-producible combat platform that could turn ordinary soldiers into walking tanks. But it was still a vehicle. You climbed inside it. You operated it.
The Nanosuit was different. It became you. Your strength. Your speed. Your armor.
Combined with the Sparda bloodline that was slowly awakening in his cells...
Luke smiled.
The future was looking very interesting.