"Damn it, Ross moved again this fast?"
Banner gritted his teeth and turned to run without a second thought.
"That thing isn't some drone loaded with a special weapon, is it?"
"Ross really has gone insane."
The instant he saw it, Banner almost instinctively assumed Ross had developed some brand-new piece of equipment specifically designed to deal with him.
Even as he ran, Banner kept glancing back from time to time, trying to figure out what the thing actually was.
The flying object was incredibly fast. In barely a few breaths, it had already crossed nearly a third of the sky.
"No. I can't just sit here and wait to die."
After only a brief look at its direction, Banner immediately broke into a full sprint toward an area with a much lower population density.
The city he was in was not far from the sea. Ahead of him was a spot near the bay. If he could get into the water, Ross would have a much harder time catching him.
"How does Ross even know where I am?"
He changed direction several times, but despite being high up in the air, the pursuer was able to alter course without the slightest hesitation every single time.
Ross's cunning and sharpness far exceeded Banner's expectations. No matter where he hid, Ross could always track him down with the precision of a hound.
Hearing the distant roar grow closer and closer, Banner clenched his jaw, and his steps became faster and faster.
Without realizing it, under the strain of the increasingly violent exertion, Banner's heart rate also began to skyrocket. Very soon, it broke past two hundred.
"Banner, just hold on a little longer. Just a little..."
Banner ground his teeth so hard the veins on his forehead bulged out. His skin was growing greener and greener.
When he turned to look up into the sky and saw the flying object drawing nearer, a feral roar almost beyond human came tearing out of his throat.
He moved faster and faster until everything around him blurred into streaks in his eyes.
The landscape around him grew more and more desolate. Dozens of kilometers away, he could already faintly hear the sound of the ocean. But overhead, the flying object had begun to slow down as well.
"Just a little more. I was only a little more away!"
"Ross, why do you always have to push me?"
"You've gone too far!"
A violent fury surged through his chest. In that instant, Banner finally stopped suppressing the rage in his heart.
Amid his howl, his body grew larger and larger, and his skin quickly turned completely green.
"HULK!"
A furious roar exploded into the air. Freed from Banner's restraint, Hulk's eyes burned red as they locked without hesitation onto the steel monster speeding in from the distance.
The next second, every muscle in Hulk's body swelled wildly, all that monstrous power driving straight into the earth.
Boom!
The hard ground split open. Hulk bent his knees low, then launched upward and slammed toward the incoming figure.
"Ahhh!"
"Slow down! Slow down!"
At the same time, Pepper Potts was being held tightly in Iron Monger's grasp as the two of them flew toward Tony Stark's home at a pace that was neither especially fast nor especially slow.
This was already the result of Obadiah deliberately slowing down in order to humiliate Tony. Otherwise, with Pepper's physical condition, the rushing air from high-speed flight would have knocked her unconscious in no time.
"Hulk!"
As the wind screamed past Pepper's ears, she thought she faintly heard a roar.
"What was that?"
Inside the armor, the onboard radar system issued a warning almost immediately.
As a capitalist who had long since abandoned every trace of conscience, Obadiah was not especially familiar with the suit's systems. He could manage only the simplest functions.
It was not until the alarm sounded that he reacted.
Iron Monger's visual assistance system activated automatically. Very quickly, it highlighted a huge green figure directly in front of Obadiah's eyes.
"Where the hell did that thing come from?"
Watching the monster leap from the ground and, in the blink of an eye, vault all the way into the sky before lunging straight at him, Obadiah suddenly felt a stab of panic for no clear reason. He immediately swung Iron Monger sharply aside to evade.
"So he's not one of Ross's people?"
Only after reaching the air did Hulk finally get a clear look at what had been chasing him all this time.
It seemed to be a man in metal armor, holding a woman hostage in his arms.
After seeing him, the woman did not seem surprised. Instead, she closed her eyes.
Hulk was not very intelligent, but he instantly caught the flash of despair in her eyes.
That expression almost immediately made him think of Betty.
Hulk froze for a moment. The moment Betty's face rose in his mind, he twisted in midair without hesitation, threw his arms wide, and lunged at Iron Monger again.
"Let. Her. Go!"
...
Ding ding.
A gentle ringtone sounded through Tony's spacious laboratory.
"Who is it?"
Fenris yawned and finally woke up.
He slowly reached up, took the arc reactor off his forehead, and answered the phone.
"Fenris, I need help!"
"Save me!"
A woman's slightly trembling voice came through the phone, as though she were suppressing overwhelming terror. It snapped Fenris fully awake in an instant.
"Voicemail from Pepper Potts?"
Fenris sat up, staring at the message in surprise.
"Fenris, you're awake?"
An energetic male voice came from not far away. Fenris turned toward it and saw that the lab, which had at least been somewhat tidy before, had now become something else entirely.
Chunks of broken concrete were scattered everywhere, along with exposed electrical wiring. The surrounding walls had all been knocked through, and countless thick pipes looped around the laboratory in a massive ring.
Tony Stark stood in the distance with a giant wrench in his hand, head tilted as he tinkered nonstop with the piping.
A delicate prism sat quietly in place, while on a stand not far away rested a triangular object emitting a faint white glow.
"Fenris, come take a look at the particle accelerator I built from scratch in one afternoon."
Now that Fenris was awake, Tony seemed to have instantly found someone to talk to. His face was full of pride as he introduced his masterpiece.
"My father really did leave me a treasure. It's a mysterious isotope, something no one in human history has ever discovered before."
"And today, I'm going to create that element out of thin air with this particle accelerator."
Like someone who had finally opened the floodgates, Tony launched into a nonstop stream of words the moment he started.
He hoisted the huge wrench onto his shoulder and waved Fenris over, motioning for him to come help.
"With this new element, the arc reactor's performance should multiply several times over. It'll be more efficient for you to use too. So? What do you think?"
"Not much."
Fenris walked over and shoved the phone into Tony's arms. "Your girlfriend's in danger."
(End of Chapter)
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