by Alex Irvine
Tony opened the comm with Rhodey. “Well,” he said. “You ready to make it up to me?”
“I think we got this,” Rhodey said. They stood.
Tony didn’t waste any time. He stepped up and tore the rack from the drone’s torso. He turned it around as the missile fired, annihilating the robot’s upper half and temporarily whiting out Tony’s heads-up display.
He let the missile tube drop and said, “That’s one.”
Rhodey pinned a marine drone down and tore into it with the big machine gun, until Tony finished it off. They were reducing the drone numbers fast, but he wanted the whole thing over with. He powered up a trump card, wrist-mounted cutting lasers that only had a five-second charge.
“Rhodey, get down,” he said.
Rhodey dropped and Tony spun in a circle as he fired the lasers. They split all the remaining drones in half, along with most of the trees and a whole lot of flowers.
In the quiet that followed, Natalie—or Natasha—called into Tony and said, “You’ve got one more drone incoming.”
That couldn’t be right. They’d been counting.
“This one has a much more powerful repulsor signature,” she said.
They looked up and Whiplash came rocketing down out of the sky toward them.
Ivan had been busy designing himself a new armored suit. New whips, too. They deployed from slots at the insides of Vanko’s forearms, and could be used as extensions of his arms. They were thicker, longer, and looked even hotter than the ones Tony had seen in Monaco.
“I got this,” Rhodey said. He opened up a missile port and fired a minimissile that supposedly could level most bunkers.
It bounced harmlessly off Vanko’s armor and fizzled out in the mud. “Hammer tech?” Tony asked. He didn’t really need an answer.
Vanko struck at them with the whips. Tony caught one and unbalanced Vanko for a moment, but he threw Tony off and slashed the barrel assembly off Rhodey’s Gatling cannon with the other whip.
This was serious. They came at him with everything they had, but every time they knocked him down he got up. Every time he knocked them down, Vanko did more and more damage with the whips.
Ivan roared and went after Tony, who met him full on, exchanging punches for slashes of the whips, which were a lot more powerful than what he’d had in Monaco. Whiplash was doing some serious damage to the Mark VI armor.
Whiplash knocked Tony down and then stomped Rhodey into the ground. Tony pulled him away from Rhodey with one of Whiplash’s own whips, but he overbalanced and spun around.
Vanko hit him in the small of the back and hammered him into the pavement. Tony spun, landing a solid elbow to the side of Vanko’s head. Ivan flicked a whip that caught Tony’s forearm, jerking it painfully backward. Tony rolled with the motion, scissoring Ivan’s legs out from under him and stomping on the hand that held the whip. It uncoiled, and sparks shot from the forearm of Vanko’s armor.
He got Rhodey around the neck and held him at a distance. Rhodey had to devote all his energy to holding the whip far enough away from his neck so it didn’t melt through his armor.
Tony fought, but Vanko got his other whip around Tony’s neck. He flipped up his face mask and gloated as he held them both out, waiting for the intense energies of the whips to cut through their armor and finish them.
Tony could feel the heat from the whip through the armor around his neck. The heads-up display was flashing all kinds of red signals. The whips had damaged the suit’s control systems. Tony couldn’t get up. He couldn’t really attack Ivan. And he couldn’t hold the whip away from his neck forever.
It was time for last resorts. Letting go of the whip with one hand, Tony said, “Rhodey, I have an idea. Raise your hand.”
Rhodey, who was having his own troubles with Vanko’s whip around his neck, did. Then he figured out what Tony meant. Could they re-create the explosion that had destroyed most of Tony’s house?
“This is your idea?” he shouted. But what else were they going to do?
They fired simultaneously. The two repulsor beams met each other directly in front of Ivan Vanko’s face. Their energies intersected and intensified… and then came an explosion that whited out both Tony’s and Rhodey’s heads-up displays. Vanko’s body was blasted backward, and since the whips were still around their necks, Tony and Rhodey went with him.
But by the time they hit the ground, the whips were out… and so was Ivan Vanko. Tony and Rhodey got to their feet and nodded at each other. They’d done it.
But even now, Vanko did not look beaten. He was flat on his back, badly injured, and still smiling.
“You lose,” Vanko said, just as he had on the track in Monaco. The RT in his chest turned red and started to blink.
Around them, every other RT in every other drone did the same.
Rhodey figured it out at the same time Tony did. “All these drones are rigged to blow—we gotta get out of here, man.”
Good thing the Expo was mostly evacuated, Tony thought. Then he remembered one person who was staying behind.
“Pepper…”
He blazed up and across the Expo grounds, heading for the Tent of Tomorrow. He zeroed in on Pepper, standing on the pavilion steps, with a decommissioned drone not twenty feet from her. There wasn’t even time to call, and for all he knew she wouldn’t answer, so Tony put himself into overdrive, decelerated hard enough that his vision swam, and snatched her up off the steps just seconds before all thirty-two drones—and Ivan Vanko—exploded in a series of huge fireballs over the devastated Expo.
It was the best fireworks show anyone had ever seen.
When they landed on top of a building a mile or so from the Expo grounds, Pepper took a few steps away from Tony. “Oh my god, I can’t take this anymore,” she said.
Tony couldn’t answer right away because he was trying to get his helmet off. Vanko’s whips had damaged the release toggles. “What do you mean? Look at me.”
“I can’t take the stress. I quit. I’m resigning.”
Tony started to argue, but then he understood. It wasn’t about the company at all. It was more about him. “You deserve better than me. I understand, let’s talk cleanup.”
Pepper started to say something else about the transition, and then they both knew what was coming, so they just went ahead and kissed.
“Weird,” Tony said when it broke.
Rhodey had apparently landed on the same rooftop without them noticing. “You two looked like two seals fighting over a grape,” he cracked. “Listen, I’m going to have to hang on to your suit for a while.”
He dropped his faceplate and rocketed away.
Tony and Pepper watched him go.
A few days later, he and Rhodey were in Washington receiving medals. The presenter was none other than Senator Stern, who’d been strong-armed into doing it by Nick Fury. That was Tony’s condition for agreeing to join Fury’s Avengers thing… whatever that would turn out to be.
As far as Tony could tell, it was some kind of secret organization that kept a handle on people like Ivan Vanko. Maybe others, too.
How many could there be? Tony didn’t know. Fury seemed to think he did. Maybe they’d all find out soon enough.
For today, though, it was enough that Tony was in the gang. He hadn’t met any of the others except Fury, Coulson, and Romanoff. What did the future hold?
He didn’t know. He was just glad he had a future—thanks to his dad—and that it looked like he was going to be sharing it with Pepper.
It wasn’t bad being Iron Man.
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHA
PTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
© 2014 MARVEL
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First ebook edition: November 2014
ISBN 978-0-316-38273-1
E3
