Marvel Hunter - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: c

[Location: Stark Mansion, Malibu] [Time: Three Days After Veer’s Departure to Russia]

The television screen was a window into hell.

The ultra-high-definition display, usually reserved for stock tickers or vanity searches, was currently broadcasting a shaky, pixelated feed from a conflict journalist in the Kunar Province.

The headline ran in a stark, blood-red banner: GULMIRA DESTROYED. TEN RINGS RETALIATION.

Tony Stark stood in the center of his living room. He held a glass of chlorophyll juice—a habit he was trying to form to purge the remaining toxins, though his new Ten was doing most of the work. The glass was trembling in his hand.

Ho Yinsen sat on the Italian leather sofa. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t crying. He was staring at the screen with the hollow, thousand-yard stare of a man watching his nightmares manifest in the waking world.

On the screen, the reporter’s voice cracked with emotion.

“…reports indicate that the insurgents descended on the village of Gulmira yesterday. This is believed to be a retaliatory strike following the escape of Tony Stark. The Ten Rings are cementing their control over the region, seizing homes, conscripting men, and… executing those who resist.”

The camera panned. It showed burning rubble. It showed a child crying in the dust. It showed families being herded onto trucks—Stark Industries trucks.

Tony saw the weapons. The rifles in the terrorists’ hands. STARK missile launcher parked in the town square.

“It’s my stuff,” Tony whispered. “They’re using my stuff.”

Yinsen slowly leaned forward, burying his face in his hands.

“I told them,” Yinsen’s voice was muffled, thick with a new layer of grief. “I told the villagers that the nightmare was over. I told them the merchant of death had changed.”

He looked up at Tony. His eyes were accusing, not out of malice, but out of desperation.

“We left, Stark. We saved ourselves. And because we left… the vacuum was filled by fire.”

Tony felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. It wasn’t the shrapnel—that was being pushed out by his aura. It was guilt. Heavy, leaden guilt.

Veer had warned him. You can be the shield, but even a shield gets dented.

Tony set the glass down on the coffee table. He walked to the window, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. The waves were calm, indifferent.

“I can’t fix the past, Yinsen,” Tony said, his voice low. “I can’t bring your family back. I can’t bring the dead back.”

He turned around. The blue glow of the Arc Reactor shone through his shirt, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. A faint, white mist—his Ten—leaked from his shoulders before he consciously pulled it back in.

“But I can finish what I started.”

Tony walked past Yinsen, towards the stairs leading down to the workshop.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, sir?” the AI replied smoothly.

“Is the gold-titanium alloy cured?”

“The rendering is complete, sir. The Mark III is ready for assembly.”

Tony paused at the top of the stairs. He looked back at Yinsen.

“Turn off the TV, Doc. I’m going to work.”

[The Workshop]

The assembly process was a symphony of precision engineering.

Robotic arms whirred and clicked, bolting plates of gold and hot-rod red alloy onto the under-suit.

Tony stood on the gantry, letting the machines dress him.

Usually, this process was purely mechanical. But today, it felt different.

As the heavy chest plate was lowered into place, Tony closed his eyes. He focused on his breathing. He visualized the shoko—the aura nodes—Veer had forced open.

Flow.

He pushed his life energy outward. It didn’t just sit on his skin. It pushed against the inner lining of the suit.

“Jarvis,” Tony said. “Interface check.”

“Sir,” Jarvis sounded perplexed. “I am detecting a bio-electric field surrounding your body. It is… interfacing with the suit’s sensors. It appears to be reducing the latency between your neural commands and the servo-motors to near zero.”

“That’s the upgrade,” Tony muttered.

The faceplate lowered.

Clang. Hiss.

The HUD booted up. The world became a stream of data. Altitude, wind speed, targeting vectors.

But underneath the metal skin, Tony felt the warmth of his Ten. It was a second skin. If the suit failed, the aura would hold. If the G-force knocked him out, the aura would keep the blood in his brain.

He wasn’t just a man in a can anymore. He was the battery.

“Sir,” Jarvis warned. “You have not run full flight diagnostics on this configuration. The control surfaces—”

“Sometimes you have to run before you can walk,” Tony said.

He engaged the thrusters.

WHOOSH.

The Repulsors fired. Tony shot up the launch tunnel, blasting out into the California sky.

He banked hard, the G-force slamming into him. He grunted, flexing his core, using aura instinctively to reinforce his neck muscles. The strain vanished.

“Set a course,” Tony commanded.

“For where, sir?”

“Gulmira.”

[Location: Gulmira, Afghanistan]

The village was a scene of calculated cruelty.

The Ten Rings fighters were methodically separating the men from the women. Armin, the leader who had held Tony captive, was absent, but his lieutenants were there, overseeing the purge.

A father was dragged into the center of the square. He was beaten, bloody, clutching his son.

A terrorist raised a Stark Industries rifle to the man’s head.

The air above the village suddenly split.

BOOM.

A sonic boom shattered windows for miles.

The terrorists looked up, shielding their eyes against the sun.

Something red and gold fell from the sky. It didn’t slow down. It slammed into the ground with the force of a meteor.

Dust billowed out.

The terrorist with the rifle hesitated. He squinted into the cloud.

A mechanical whirring sound cut through the silence.

Two glowing white eyes appeared in the dust.

Then, a Repulsor blast.

THWUMP.

The terrorist was launched backward, flying fifty feet into a brick wall.

Iron Man stepped out of the crater.

The suit gleamed in the harsh desert light. It looked alien. Perfect.

“Open fire!” a lieutenant screamed.

Fifty rifles opened up at once. Bullets rained down on Tony.

Ping. Ping. Clang.

They sparked harmlessly off the gold-titanium alloy. But inside the suit, Tony felt the impacts. Usually, the kinetic energy of fifty bullets would rattle his teeth, maybe cause micro-fractures.

Tony focused.

Ten.

He wrapped his aura around his body inside the suit. The vibrations dampened instantly. He felt like he was standing in a gentle rain.

“My turn,” Tony said.

He raised his hands.

He didn’t just use the Repulsors. He moved with the fluidity Veer had shown him. He didn’t waste movement.

He identified the targets using the HUD.

Shoulder. Shoulder. Knee. Shoulder.

He fired. Four terrorists dropped, incapacitated.

A group of insurgents took cover behind a wall, grabbing hostages.

“Jarvis, target lock.”

“Shoulder-mounted micro-missiles engaged.”

Tiny compartments on the suit’s shoulders opened. Six miniature missiles hissed out. They spiraled through the air, curving around the hostages, and struck the terrorists with surgical precision.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The hostages ran.

A tank—Tony’s own design—rolled around the corner. The turret swiveled towards him.

“Oh, look,” Tony deadpanned. “A present.”

The tank fired.

Tony didn’t dodge. He sidestepped at the last second, the shell missing him by inches. The shockwave washed over him, but his footing held, reinforced by the suit’s stabilizers and his own Ten-enhanced mass.

He raised his arm. A small missile rose from his forearm gauntlet.

“Tank missile.”

He fired.

The missile struck the tank. He turned and walked away.

BOOM.

The tank exploded in a massive fireball.

Tony stood in the center of the liberated village. The terrorists were either unconscious, dead, or fleeing into the desert.

He looked at the villagers. They stared at him with fear and awe.

Tony engaged his thrusters. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. The message was delivered.

He shot into the sky, leaving a trail of smoke.

But the mission wasn’t over.

“Jarvis,” Tony said as he climbed through the cloud layer. “Locate the weapons caches. All of them.”

“Detected,” Jarvis replied. “Weapons sites in Sector 4 and 7.”

Tony flew. He destroyed them all. He was a vengeful angel, burning his own legacy to the ground.

[Airspace: Restricted Zone]

“Bogey detected,” the AWACS controller announced. “Moving at supersonic speeds. Vectoring towards the deck.”

Two F-22 Raptors peeled off from their patrol pattern.

“Whiplash One, engaged,” the pilot radioed. “I have visual. It looks like… a man?”

Tony saw the jets on his HUD.

“Uh oh,” Tony muttered. “The welcoming committee.”

He banked hard, diving towards the canyons to shake them.

“Jarvis, get me Rhodey.”

The phone rang in Colonel James Rhodes’ office.

“Tony?” Rhodes picked up, looking at the radar screen where the chaos was unfolding.

“What’s the status of your birds, Rhodey?” Tony asked casually, though the G-force of the turn was crushing him.

“We have an unauthorized aircraft in the no-fly zone,” Rhodes said tight. “We’re about to splash it. Where are you? You sound out of breath.”

“Just… jogging,” Tony lied. “Canyon running.”

“In a canyon?”

“It’s a metaphor.”

Outside, the F-22s were locking on.

“Tone,” the pilot said. “Fox Two.”

A Sidewinder missile detached from the Raptor. It streaked towards Tony.

“Flares!” Tony shouted.

The suit deployed countermeasures. The missile took the bait, exploding behind him. The shockwave clipped Tony’s flight stabilizers. He tumbled.

“Jarvis, deploy flaps! Stabilize!”

He regained control just before hitting the canyon floor.

He pulled up, flying directly under the belly of the lead F-22.

“He’s on my belly!” the pilot shouted. “I can’t shake him!”

Tony stuck to the underside of the jet.

“Rhodey,” Tony said. “Call them off.”

“I can’t call them off, Tony! We don’t know who it is!”

“It’s me!” Tony yelled.

Silence on the line.

“What?” Rhodes whispered.

“It’s me. I’m the bogey. Call them off, Rhodey, or I’m going to have to do something rude.”

Rhodes stared at the radar. He rubbed his face.

“You are crazy,” Rhodes muttered. “Whiplash, disengage. Repeat, disengage. Training exercise. Return to base.”

The F-22s peeled away.

Tony let out a breath. His aura flickered with exhaustion. Sustaining Ten under this kind of physical stress was draining his reserves rapidly.

“Heading home, Jarvis,” Tony said. “And order a pizza. Large.”

[Location: Northern Afghanistan – Ten Rings Encampment]

The desert wind howled through the tent flaps.

Armin, the new leader of the Ten Rings cell, stood with his arms crossed. half his face was scarred.

Across from him stood Obadiah Stane.

Stane looked out of place in his expensive Italian suit, standing on the dirty rug. He was surrounded by his own private security detail.

“You failed,” Stane said, his voice dripping with disappointment. “I paid you to kill him. You kept him alive for so long.”

“He was a treasure box,” Armin spat. “We wanted the weapon.”

“And where is it?” Stane asked, looking around the empty tent.

Armin gestured to his men. They pulled a tarp off a pile of twisted metal in the corner.

It was the wreckage of the Mark I—or rather, the pieces Tony and Yinsen had built but never assembled before Veer rescued them. It was a pile of scrap, blueprints, and the helmet.

Stane walked over to it. He picked up the helmet. It was crude, heavy, ugly.

But Stane saw the genius in it.

“He built this,” Stane whispered, running his thumb over a weld mark. “In a cave. With a box of scraps.”

He looked at Armin.

“And you let him walk away.”

“We have the designs,” Armin said, stepping forward. “We have the initial schematics. We can build it. But we need your engineers. We need your resources. We will rule this region. And in exchange… you get the Stark throne.”

Armin extended his hand.

“Partners?”

Stane smiled. It was a warm, grandfatherly smile.

“Partners,” Stane said.

He reached out.

But he didn’t shake Armin’s hand. He placed a small, ear-piece-like device on Armin’s temple.

HUMMMMM.

A high-pitched, agonizing frequency emitted from the device.

Armin froze. His eyes went wide. His muscles locked up. He fell to his knees, paralyzed, unable to move or scream.

Stane stepped back.

“Technology,” Stane mused, looking at the paralyzed warlord. “It’s always the bottleneck, isn’t it?”

Stane’s security team moved instantly. They raised their suppressed rifles.

Phut. Phut. Phut.

The Ten Rings guards dropped dead.

Stane walked back to the pile of Mark I scrap.

“Pack it up,” Stane ordered his men. “All of it. The blueprints. The metal. The tools.”

He looked down at Armin, whose eyes were screaming in silent terror.

“You see, Armin,” Stane said, leaning in. “I don’t need foolish partners who can’t follow simple orders.”

He walked out of the tent, into the blinding sun.

“Get me the engineering team on the line,” Stane barked at his assistant. “Tell them to prep Section 16. We’re going to reverse engineer this. And tell them I want it bigger.”

He paused, looking at the sky where reports said a red and gold man had just flown.

“If Tony can build a suit,” Stane muttered, his jealousy burning brighter than the desert sun. “I can build a monster.”

[Location: Stark Industries HQ, Los Angeles] [Time: That Evening]

The office of Obadiah Stane was a monument to corporate ego. Glass walls, modern art, and a view of the city that made everyone else look like ants.

It was dark. Stane was at a gala.

Pepper Potts stood by his desk. She was shaking.

In her hand was a small, silver USB drive—a “Ghost Drive” Tony had given her.

“Just plug it in,” Tony had said. “It’ll grab everything. Shipping manifests, under-the-table deals, the lunch orders. If Obie is dealing with the Ten Rings, the proof is on that mainframe.”

Pepper plugged the drive into Stane’s computer.

A holographic interface popped up. A progress bar began to fill.

[Copying Files…]

Pepper watched the door. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She wasn’t a spy. She was an assistant. This was way above her pay grade.

She glanced at the screen. File names flashed by.

Project: Iron Monger. Shipment: Gulmira. Sector 16 Schematics.

And then, a video file.

[Target: Tony Stark – Capture Confirmation]

Pepper clicked it.

A video window opened. It was grainy footage from the ambush in Afghanistan three months ago.

Raza was speaking to the camera.

“Mr. Stane. You told us to kill the target. But you did not tell us the target was Tony Stark. As you know, the price for a Stark is higher.”

Pepper gasped, her hand covering her mouth.

Obadiah hadn’t just ignored the kidnapping. He had ordered it. He had paid for the hit.

“Oh my god,” Pepper whispered. “Tony…”

The progress bar hit 100%.

[Download Complete.]

Pepper yanked the drive out.

She turned to leave.

The door opened.

Obadiah Stane stood there.

He was holding a glass of scotch. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were cold, dead things.

“Pepper,” Stane said smoothly, walking into the room. “What are you doing here so late?”

Pepper froze. She hid the drive behind her back.

“I… I was just leaving,” she stammered. “Tony wanted me to pick up some… papers. For the portfolio.”

Stane walked closer. He towered over her. He smelled of expensive cologne and malice.

“Papers?” Stane asked. “Tony doesn’t read papers.”

He looked at the computer screen. The screensaver was up, but Stane was paranoid. He looked back at Pepper.

“You look nervous, Pepper,” Stane said softly. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Pepper lied, her voice trembling. “Just… it’s been a long day. With the news. And Tony being… Tony.”

Stane took a sip of his scotch. He looked at her hand behind her back.

“You know,” Stane said, taking a step closer, invading her personal space. “I’ve always admired your loyalty. It’s rare. But loyalty to the wrong person… that’s just tragedy.”

Pepper’s breath hitched. She tightened her grip on the drive.

“I really have to go, Obadiah,” she said, trying to step around him.

Stane blocked her path.

For a second, Pepper thought he was going to kill her right there. She saw the calculation in his eyes.

But then, Stane stepped aside.

“Of course,” Stane said, his voice returning to a jovial tone. “Run along. Don’t keep the genius waiting.”

Pepper didn’t look back. She walked out, her heels clicking rapidly on the floor. She made it to the elevator. She pressed the button.

The doors closed just as she saw Stane turn to look at his computer.

As soon as the elevator started moving, Pepper pulled out her phone.

“Agent Coulson?” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes. “I have it. I have everything. You need to come to the mansion. Now.”

[Back in the Office]

Stane sat at his desk. He woke up the computer.

He saw the access logs.

[Recent Download: All Files.]

Stane sighed. He finished his scotch.

“Pity,” Stane murmured.

He pressed the intercom.

“Get Section 16 ready. We’re moving up the timetable.”

“But sir,” the engineer’s voice crackled. ” The power source. We still haven’t miniaturized the Arc Reactor technology. The suit is ready, but we can’t power it.”

Stane stood up. He walked to the window, looking towards Malibu.

“I know where to get a battery,” Stane said.

He picked up a small, metallic device from his desk—the sonic paralyzer.

“I’ll go get it myself.”