"Obadiah, where did you get that suit of armor?"
"I'm going to make Tony Stark have a good taste of what it feels like to lose everything too!"
"..."
The conversation, distorted by a faint layer of static, came through the phone. Pepper's forced calm, trembling with fear underneath, cut into Tony like a dull blade.
Crack!
After a burst of explosive noise, Fenris's phone was crushed to pieces in Tony's hand. The joy from discovering the new element was gone from his eyes, replaced entirely by cold indifference.
"Sir, you have an incoming call."
At that moment, JARVIS suddenly spoke. "It is Nick Fury."
"Tony, I just got word on my end that Obadiah from your Stark Industries may be planning something against you soon."
The next instant, Nick Fury's voice echoed from all around the room. "As far as we know, your earlier kidnapping was also orchestrated by this man."
"If you trust me, you'd better be on your guard. This is exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. intel, and I took time out of my extremely busy schedule personally to call and tell you..."
Beep. Beep.
"Thanks, but it's not necessary anymore."
Tony casually cut off Fury's communication, the chill in his eyes nearly spilling over. "JARVIS, prep the suit."
"Track Pepper's phone signal. Redirect the Stark satellite. Sync the suit to the satellite feed."
"Yes, sir."
Tony moved quickly to the armor platform. Amid a crisp series of mechanical assembly sounds, the freshly repaired Mark III was fitted onto him at high speed.
"Obadiah is heading this way, and Ms. Potts's phone signal has remained aligned with his movement trajectory."
JARVIS's calm voice continued. "They are now less than fifty kilometers away from us, but for some reason they have stopped."
"Sir, she should be safe for the moment."
The Stark satellite shifted position with impressive speed, and Iron Monger had never attempted to conceal its route. Very soon, one clear satellite image after another was displayed in front of Tony.
"That's probably the only good news."
The suit was fully equipped in moments. Tony let out a breath of relief, and the thrusters fired instantly.
Thanks to the physical condition that now far surpassed ordinary human limits, the suit's acceleration restrictions had been removed.
At full thrust, the armor launched straight up from where it stood, smashed effortlessly through the mansion ceiling, and shot into the sky trailing a long blazing wake.
In only a few seconds, with thunderous noise roaring all around him, Tony had already broken the sound barrier.
This kind of flight intensity was something he would never have dared attempt before, but now his mind was full of Pepper comforting him, and he had no attention left for anything else.
"Where's Fenris?"
"Is he still in the mansion?"
Tony asked while watching the images being fed from the Stark satellite.
"Mr. Fenris left the moment you ended your call with Nick Fury," JARVIS answered honestly.
In the sky not far away, a brilliant rainbow-colored trail stretched into the distance along Tony's path.
JARVIS thoughtfully highlighted the route Fenris had intentionally left behind inside Tony's helmet display.
"He's annoyingly considerate..."
Only after seeing that did the tight knot in Tony's chest finally begin to ease.
...
Dozens of kilometers away, on a battlefield near the bay.
Obadiah was gritting his teeth as he continuously controlled Iron Monger through sharp aerial evasions, dodging the green monster that had appeared out of nowhere.
Pepper's physical condition had never been particularly good. How could she possibly endure this kind of high-intensity maneuvering?
After only a few evasive bursts, the sudden acceleration had already pushed her to the limit.
As the world in front of her blurred more and more and dizziness overwhelmed her mind, Pepper's eyes rolled back, and she collapsed limply against Iron Monger's arm, passing out on the spot.
On the ground, Hulk stared at the steel monster. It was only a little bigger than he was, and its body looked clumsy and heavy, yet every single time it barely managed to avoid his pounces. Worse, it always seemed able to fire micro-missiles at exactly the moment he was dropping back down.
Those attacks were nothing more than tickles to Hulk. They could not truly hurt him, but they were maddening all the same. Then he noticed Pepper had actually passed out, and his eyes suddenly turned red.
"Hulk!"
With one furious roar, his body visibly swelled even larger, until it was now bigger than Iron Monger itself.
Boom!
Rock shattered apart as Hulk leaped high into the air once again and lunged for Iron Monger several hundred meters above the ground.
"Again?"
Iron Monger's built-in intelligent support program really was powerful enough, because Hulk's mind right now was simple, and his fighting style had absolutely no tactics to it.
With the suit assisting him, even Obadiah, who was not especially skilled in combat, quickly adapted to Hulk's attack rhythm.
With the advantage of flight, plus the large arsenal loaded into Iron Monger, he could kite Hulk with ease.
Watching the green brute come charging at him again, Obadiah calmly controlled the suit to evade. At the same time, the shoulder plating opened, and Stark-designed micro-missiles were primed and ready to fire.
But this time, Hulk moved far beyond the limits he had shown before.
Before Obadiah could fully dodge clear, he suddenly felt his right leg drop with alarming weight. Then, as a massive hammering impact rang out, the alarm for right leg thruster failure blared immediately.
"What?"
The sudden turn of events threw him into panic.
Somehow, Hulk had latched directly onto Iron Monger's right leg.
His powerful skin let him ignore the searing heat of the thruster exhaust. He slammed down with one brutal punch, and the expensive thruster was instantly destroyed.
Without enough thrust to keep it aloft, Iron Monger could no longer maintain its hover and began plummeting rapidly toward the ground.
Hulk clung to the right leg and kept hammering away with his fists. Thick smoke poured out as the rate of descent increased even further.
"Activate fire suppression!"
"Deploy stabilizers!"
Although a series of corrective measures had already been triggered automatically by the intelligent support system, and the smoke had been extinguished, nothing could stop the increasingly rapid fall.
A violent sense of weightlessness hit. Under the rush of adrenaline, Pepper Potts actually woke up from unconsciousness.
"Ah!"
"Tony!"
As the ground rushed closer and closer beneath her, her pupils expanded sharply, and she almost instinctively squeezed her eyes shut.
Even now, Hulk still had Iron Monger's leg in a death grip, refusing to let go, looking as if he meant to drag it down with him to the bitter end.
Five hundred meters.
Three hundred meters.
Fifty meters...
The speed kept climbing. Just as all three of them were about to smash into the ground, a light fluttering sound drifted in from the distance.
A brilliant trail flashed across the sky, cutting an elegant arc through the air.
Amid Pepper's uncontrollable, piercing scream, a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist at the very last possible instant.
"Don't be afraid."
(End of Chapter)
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