The arc reactor's glow was the only light in the ruins of Tony's Malibu living room. Glass crunched under Obadiah Stane's shoes. The Iron Monger suit hummed around him, massive and grey, hydraulic fists clenching and unclenching with soft mechanical whines.
Tony lay on the floor. The couch was overturned. The coffee table was splinters. He tried to push himself up. His arm gave. The armor wasn't responding. Power was at eight percent.
Obadiah looked down at him. The faceplate was up. His expression was almost sad.
"Why?" Tony's voice cracked. "You were my uncle. My dad's best friend. Why?"
Obadiah crouched. The servos in the suit groaned. "Your dad. Howard Stark. All my life I lived in his shadow. Built his company. Shook hands. Smiled at his funeral. And then you came along. Same face. Same arrogance. Same everything."
"I'm not my father."
"You're worse." Obadiah straightened. "You had everything. The genius. The name. The money. And what did you do? You shut down the weapons division. After thirty years of keeping me afloat. I had contracts. People who counted on me. People who would have killed me if those deals fell through."
"So you had me killed."
"I had you removed. There's a difference." Obadiah's voice hardened. "But you survived. You always survive. So now I'm doing it myself."
The Iron Monger's hand closed around Tony's chestplate. Crushed it slightly. Arc reactor flickered. Tony gasped.
"I'm taking the reactor," Obadiah said. "And I'm taking the company. Your little Iron Man experiment ends tonight."
Tony's eyes met his. "You're not taking anything."
The boot thrusters ignited.
Tony shot upward. Through the hole in the ceiling. Through the second floor. Through the roof. The night sky opened above him, cold and black and full of stars. The air grew thin. Malibu fell away beneath him, lights shrinking to pinpricks.
Obadiah followed.
The Iron Monger suit was heavier but the engines were stronger. Tony climbed faster. The wind screamed against his faceplate. His ears popped. The suit's temperature gauge dropped.
"Jarvis, divert all power to thrusters."
"Sir, the arc reactor—"
"Just do it."
The thrusters flared. Tony punched through a layer of cloud. The world below vanished into white. Then black. Then silence.
The suit stopped working.
Ice crystals formed on the faceplate. The HUD flickered. The cold was absolute. Tony tried to move his arm. Nothing. Tried to speak. His lips were numb.
He began to fall.
---
Obadiah's suit cut out at the same altitude. The arc reactor in Tony's chest was the only thing that could power sustained flight. The Iron Monger's backup battery wasn't designed for this height. For this cold.
Both suits went dark. Both bodies went limp.
They fell through the clouds together. Two armoured figures tumbling against the curve of the earth. The wind howled. The stars wheeled.
Obadiah's suit rebooted first. A secondary system kicked in, emergency power flaring to life. He stabilized, grabbed Tony by the leg, and began dragging him back toward the mansion.
"I'm not letting you die up here," Obadiah growled. "I want you to see it happen. I want you to know I won."
Tony couldn't hear him. Tony was unconscious. Oxygen depletion. The faceplate had sealed but the scrubbers were offline.
They dropped through the last layer of cloud. The Malibu coastline spread below. Obadiah's descent was controlled now, engines roaring as they approached the ruined villa.
He never saw the black shape coming.
---
Bruce hit the Iron Monger suit at ninety miles an hour.
The black armor absorbed the impact. Carbon composite plating. Shock-dampening weave. The HUD painted Obadiah in red thermal glow against the dark sky. Bruce's arm snapped forward and a web line shot out, catching Tony's unconscious form around the chest.
He pulled. Tony separated from Obadiah's grip.
"What the—"
Obadiah spun. The massive grey suit turned, targeting systems rebooting, missile pods opening. Bruce was already moving. Web lines crisscrossed the Iron Monger's joints. Servos jammed. Hydraulics seized. The right arm locked in place. The left leg froze mid-stride.
Bruce landed on the chestplate. Clung there. Spider-sense hummed, mapping the suit's weak points. The neck joint. The shoulder coupling. The power conduit running down the spine.
He drove the alloy blade into the first joint. Metal screamed. Wiring sparked. The right arm went dead.
Obadiah roared. Swung with the left. Bruce ducked, flipped over the shoulder, web line anchoring to the backplate. He swung around and the blade found the knee joint. Hydraulic fluid sprayed like black blood.
The Iron Monger collapsed. One knee on the floor. One arm useless. Emergency power fading.
Bruce grabbed Obadiah's helmet with both gauntleted hands. Twisted. The seal broke. Cold air rushed in. Obadiah's face was pale, eyes wide with shock and fury.
A single punch to the temple. Obadiah slumped forward. Unconscious.
The Iron Monger crashed onto its side. Dead weight. Dead machine.
---
Tony still wasn't moving.
Bruce landed beside him. The lawn of the ruined villa was torn up, craters where the two suits had launched. Sirens in the distance. Helicopters. SHIELD response closing in.
He knelt. The Iron Man faceplate was sealed. Ice frosted the eye slits. Bruce found the manual release and the helmet came away with a hiss of equalizing pressure.
Tony's face was grey. Lips blue. Eyes closed.
Oxygen depletion. Short coma if lucky. Brain damage if not.
Bruce pressed his wrist terminal to the suit's exposed neck port.
"Mystic. Copy the data."
The Eye's voice responded through his earpiece. "Connecting to target system."
A new voice. British. Synthetic. Defensive.
"Intruder detected. This is JARVIS. Identify yourself."
"Mystic," the Eye replied. "Stand aside."
"Access denied. Encrypting—encryption overridden. Firewall breached. Core systems—"
Mystic cut through Jarvis's defenses like a blade through silk. The Iron Man suit's schematics unspooled across Bruce's wrist terminal. Armor composition. Flight systems. Weapons array. Arc reactor design. Neural interface architecture. All of it. Terabytes compressed into seconds.
"Data acquisition complete," Mystic reported.
"Good."
Bruce withdrew the terminal. Tony was still unconscious. Still breathing. But shallow.
Headlights swept across the lawn. Black SUVs screeched to a halt. SHIELD agents poured out, guns raised. And in front of them, James Rhodes. Colonel. Friend. His face was torn between horror and fury.
"You." His voice shook. "The intruder. Unhand Tony. Now."
Guns clicked. Twenty agents. Twenty rifles. All trained on Bruce.
Bruce straightened. Raised one hand.
The rifles left their wielders' grips. Twenty guns rose into the air, spinning slowly, barrels facing upward toward the empty sky. The agents stumbled backward. Some shouted. Some reached for sidearms. Those guns rose too.
Rhodes stared at his own floating weapon. "What the hell—"
Bruce looked at him. The HUD eyes glowed cold blue in the dark.
"Tony needs a doctor. Oxygen depletion. He'll wake up soon if you treat him now."
"You—who are you?"
Bruce didn't answer. The air folded around him. A crackle of displaced space. The smell of ozone.
He vanished.
The guns clattered to the ground. The agents stood frozen. Rhodes ran to Tony's side. Knelt. Pressed two fingers to his friend's throat.
Pulse. Weak. But there.
"Get a medic!" His voice cracked. "Now!"
The villa burned softly in the background. The Iron Monger lay broken on the grass. And Tony Stark breathed, slow and shallow, under the fading stars.