The Mark 42 was dead weight, but Tony dragged it anyway.
JARVIS had gone quiet somewhere between the road and the tree line—a final, faint "I believe I need to rest, sir" before the power cut entirely. Tony had called out to him twice, gotten nothing, and accepted the silence with the grim practicality of a man who had more immediate problems than an unconscious AI.
The snow wasn't heavy, but it was consistent. Tennessee in December had a particular quality of cold that didn't negotiate. Tony, in a short-sleeved shirt, hauling two hundred pounds of unpowered armor down the shoulder of a two-lane road, was losing that negotiation by degrees.
The Texaco sign appeared through the flurries like a small miracle.
A display mannequin stood outside the entrance wearing a promotional poncho. Tony stopped, looked at it, looked at himself, and made the practical decision. He pulled the poncho off the mannequin, threw it over his shoulders, and moved to the payphone mounted on the building's exterior wall.
He dropped in the coins and dialed.
"Stark Security Services—forwarding to all known receivers." He paused. "Pepper. It's me." Another pause, longer. "I know I owe you more apologies than I have time for right now, so here's the short version: I'm sorry for putting you in danger. That was my fault—completely. The publicity, the address, all of it. I promise that was the last time." He looked at the mannequin, now bare and faintly accusatory in the cold. "Merry Christmas. That rabbit is genuinely enormous, by the way." He exhaled. "I won't be home on time. I'm going to find this guy. I just need you to be somewhere safe. I'm fine." He glanced down at himself—wet, freezing, wrapped in a stolen poncho. "I also may have just stolen a cloak from a wooden man. I'll explain later."
He hung up, turned back to the armor, and started looking for somewhere warm enough to work.
Malibu — Cliff Site
The crane crews were still working when Xu Xialing's convoy arrived. News vans had claimed the best angles along the cliff road. Police tape defined a perimeter that the press was ignoring as creatively as possible. Rescue divers in the water below moved between sections of debris that had once been one of the most recognizable addresses in the country.
The reporters spotted Shang-Chi before the car had fully stopped.
They were through the door and surrounded in seconds—cameras, microphones, the specific chaos of forty journalists who had been standing in the cold for two hours waiting for something to happen.
Shang-Chi handled it the way he'd learned to: steady eye contact, clear sentences, no hesitation. "The Paragons listed the Mandarin as a priority target this morning. Eliminating terrorist threats is the core of what we do. That hasn't changed." He kept moving as he spoke, and the reporters moved with him like a tide around a ship. "We have no sympathy for this."
The questions pivoted immediately to Xu Xialing.
"Ms. Xu—you condemned the Mandarin publicly this morning, and hours later he bombed Tony Stark's home. Your response?"
Xu Xialing didn't slow her pace. Her expression was composed, but the set of her jaw was not. "He's insane and he has no respect for anything. We will find him, and every person he has hurt will receive justice. He cannot hide from us." She reached past the nearest microphone with one hand and moved it firmly aside. "That's all."
They pushed through to Pepper, who was standing at the edge of the tape line with Maya Hansen a step behind her—both of them watching the water.
Pepper turned when she heard them approaching. The relief on her face was genuine. "I didn't expect you both to come. Tony—"
"Tony Stark is the kind of man who survives things," Xu Xialing said. It wasn't comfort for its own sake—it was a statement of calculated probability. "I coordinated with him yesterday. Happy was attacked that night. Today, his home." Her voice tightened slightly. "This Mandarin is going to pay for every single one of those decisions."
Pepper nodded. Her hands were steady, but she'd been standing here for a long time. "The suit came back to him before the building fell. I saw that. But he went into the water with the building, and the rescue teams haven't found him. There's too much debris on the seabed."
Xu Xialing glanced at Shang-Chi.
He was already looking at the cliff edge, calculating the drop. His Dragon Heart had opened new capabilities in him since Ta Lo—movement through water among them. Enough to search a debris field.
"I'll go down," he said.
He walked to the edge and dropped off the cliff before anyone could respond.
The nearest reporter spun toward his cameraman. "He just—did he just jump? Move the camera, get the water—"
The footage went live within thirty seconds: Shang-Chi cutting the surface cleanly, disappearing into the grey Pacific below the cliff wreckage, no equipment, no oxygen tank. The reporter's voice climbed steadily as the seconds accumulated. One minute. Two. Three. The water above the debris field began to move—sections of foundation shifting, cloud of silt rising to the surface—and then even the skeptical journalists understood they were watching something the Paragons had not yet publicized.
The Dragon Heart worked underwater.
Pepper watched the disturbances on the surface and said quietly, "Is he going to be alright down there?"
"He's fine," Xu Xialing said. "Better in the water than most people are on land right now."
Maya Hansen stood slightly apart from the group, watching Pepper's face, then watching the sea. She said, almost to herself, "The Paragons. The Ten Rings. All of them coming for one person." She looked at Pepper. "They're really going to go after him, aren't they."
Pepper's jaw was set. "Every single one of them. And so would I, if I had any way to help."
Maya said nothing else. The water continued to move below the cliff, Shang-Chi working through the debris unseen, and Maya Hansen stood in the cold thinking about Killian, and AIM, and how badly everything had already gone, and what, if anything, she was going to do about it.