Hancock Air Force Base
"Tony and the others are still in New York! There are still countless civilians down there! How can they launch a nuke? Who authorized this? Has our deployment request been approved yet?"
Arcee's livestream filled the main screen in the command center.
Tony had been captured alive by Ebony Maw · Leon, and now Manhattan faced nuclear annihilation. If events continued unchecked, Tony Stark would not survive.
Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes—who had no idea that Tony's Mark VI armor could theoretically survive the blast—finally snapped. He leapt to his feet, desperate to deploy, only to be restrained by fellow officers.
"Rhodey, it doesn't matter anymore."
"The nuke will vaporize everything. We'd just be flying to our deaths."
"Damn it!"
Powerless, Rhodey slammed his fist into a nearby monitor. The shattered glass sliced his palm and tore open a vein along the back of his hand. Dark venous blood flowed heavily.
His aide quickly escorted him to the infirmary for treatment.
But moments later—
Inside the medical bay, both the aide and the medic lay unconscious, neatly bound and gagged.
Rhodey, hand now wrapped, stepped out alone.
He did not head toward the runway. Security there was on full alert—suicide to approach.
Instead, he went to the underground parking garage.
He climbed into his pickup truck and pressed an invisible biometric switch hidden on the parking brake.
At once, silver metallic components unfolded and reconfigured from the driver's seat itself, assembling piece by piece around his body.
In seconds, a complete suit of armor locked into place.
War Machine.
"Sir," an AI voice announced in a steady baritone, "War Machine, shiny and glorious, at your service."
Rhodey's grief-twisted expression faltered. His mouth twitched.
"Just call yourself 'Silver.' That's enough."
"Yes, sir. Silver at your service."
Whoosh—
The truck's sunroof retracted automatically.
War Machine blasted upward, rocketing out of the garage in a vertical ascent.
"Warning! Warning!"
"Unidentified aerial object launching from within the base!"
"What?!"
Inside the command center, officers stared at the screen displaying the unmistakable silhouette of a silver armored figure.
Then Rhodey's voice cut across the base-wide frequency:
"This is Colonel James Rhodes. I am deploying to New York in a personal capacity to support Tony Stark. Call sign: War Machine."
Without another word, he accelerated—surpassing Mach 5 in seconds—and vanished from Hancock Air Force Base's airspace.
Somewhere in the stunned silence, someone muttered bitterly,
"I wish I had a best friend like Tony Stark."
"Would you go die for him like Rhodey just did?"
"…."
The room fell silent.
Only Arcee's livestream flickered on the main display.
…
Stark Tower
High above the rooftop of Stark Tower, Ebony Maw · Leon levitated the bound Avengers, forcing them to witness the devastation below.
New York lay in ruins beneath the Chitauri assault.
Screams filled the air—
Soon swallowed by unending explosions.
With a snap of his fingers, Leon dispelled the steel gags sealing their mouths.
"The Great Titan's mercy has descended," he said calmly. "Will you now acknowledge Lord Thanos as the one true supreme father?"
"I may persuade him to forgive your earlier offenses."
"In your dreams!"
Thor strained against his restraints, veins bulging along his neck.
Tony, unusually, said nothing.
Because he was building something.
Instead of begging for mercy, he chose to squeeze every last drop of potential from himself.
For a long time—
Influenced and provoked by Leon—Tony had focused excessively on strengthening his physical body and defenses.
But in doing so, he had overlooked a fundamental truth:
Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe.
It is, in theory, a key to omnipotence.
If a unified field theory could be achieved, electromagnetic manipulation could extend into control over gravity, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.
Ebony Maw's telekinesis, for instance, could be approximated through gravitational manipulation.
Control gravity—
You control spacetime curvature.
Manipulate atomic vibration—
You control temperature.
Control the strong force—
You bind atomic nuclei so tightly that matter becomes nearly indestructible at a physical level.
Create nuclear reactions by hand.
Fabricate matter from energy.
Tony's so-called "steel body" was inspired by this very concept—enhancing electromagnetic bonds between the atoms in his cells.
But it was far from invincible.
Because the strength of his power remained limited by his mental endurance.
True atomic-level precision in real-time combat was beyond his current capability. The time required merely to reinforce his own molecular structure proved as much.
However—
The electromagnetic field defense derived from this principle was already sufficient to block the overwhelming majority of physical and energy-based attacks.
With one glaring exception:
Abilities like Leon's telekinesis, which directly targeted the body itself.
As for the weak nuclear force—
Among the four fundamental forces, it was arguably the least combat-oriented. It primarily governed particle decay—quarks, neutrinos, fermions—radioactivity itself.
A cancer killer.
But in battle?
Its application was brutally simple: radiation emission.
From this perspective, Tony couldn't help drawing a comparison.
On some level, DC's Superman embodied analogous expressions of the four fundamental forces:
Gravity → Flight
Strong Force → Invulnerability
Weak Force → Heat Vision
Electromagnetism → Bio-Electric Aura
Ultimately, Superman's godlike might seemed to originate from that bio-field.
And the four fundamental forces—except gravity, still not fully unified—were already understood as manifestations of a single underlying interaction.
If Superman's bio-field grew powerful enough, he could traverse time itself.
Einstein's general relativity suggested the same:
Sufficient gravitational curvature could warp spacetime.
Warp it enough—
And time travel becomes possible.
Tony believed gravity could eventually be unified with the other three forces.
Of course—
This entire line of reasoning hinged on Superman actually existing.
Leon's existence had already validated much of Tony's hypothesis.
But Leon's bio-field was not yet strong enough to pierce spacetime.
So for now—
Tony could only theorize.
And think.
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