"What?"
Captain America froze.
He even wondered if he had heard wrong. After fighting for so many years, this was the first time anyone had ever told him to go hide.
"I'm not that old yet, kid."
He was not offended. After flashing an easy smile, he whipped the shield in his hand with force. Under Peter's astonished gaze, it carved a perfect arc through the air and struck the machine's energy core with pinpoint accuracy.
Bzzzt!
The two-meter-tall robot immediately collapsed in a shower of sparks.
"See that?"
Steve lifted an arm, and the shield flew back into his hand as if it had eyes of its own.
"I can do this all day!"
"Whoa!"
Peter cried out in surprise. He leaped down to land beside Captain America, then reached out and tapped the round shield, but it did not make a sound at all.
"Man, where'd you get this thing? Don't tell me you stole it from a museum?"
"The one in the museum isn't the real one." Steve shook his head. Then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a missile flying straight at Peter.
He immediately raised his shield to cover him.
At the same time, Peter's spider-sense had naturally already picked up the danger. He shot out a web at the robot attacking them, then gave it a violent yank.
A robot weighing several tons was dragged straight off the ground just like that. Peter swung it around like a meteor hammer, smashing through an entire row of machines.
Captain America was left staring in shock.
Honestly, with how heavy those robots were, Steve might have been able to lift one too. But to swing them around as casually as Peter was, like they were toys, was simply impossible.
So after watching Peter pull that off, all the thoughts in Steve's head merged into a single sentence.
What the hell, this kid!
Was his strength not a little too ridiculously outrageous?
Had the world really changed that much over the years? Had not only Steve himself become outdated, but even the super-soldier serum too?
For a moment, Captain America actually missed the old days, when he had been the only one with superpowers.
"So this really is the real one?"
Peter pointed at the shield, sounding even more amazed.
"Not just it. I'm the real one too." Steve smiled. "You're pretty good. Where're you from?"
"Queens."
"I'm from Brooklyn."
The two made only the briefest introduction before throwing themselves back into the fight against the machine monsters.
At first, Peter had actually wanted to call Bant for help, because there were simply too many robots.
But the longer he fought, the more he realized these robots seemed way too weak.
Not just him. Even Captain America felt the same way.
After turning around and choking one machine to death, Steve said in confusion, "I honestly have no idea what Hammer Industries was thinking when they designed these things... tanks with two legs? Actual tanks would be better..."
He glanced up at the sky. The flying machines were a little better than tanks, sure, but if you were going to use something like this, then why not just fly a plane?
"Hard to say. Think of it like Gundam," Peter said with a shrug. "We all know fighter jets are better shapes for combat, but in comics, humanoid mechs just have that feel. Even in interstellar civilizations, people still end up fighting by throwing punches."
"That makes sense." Captain America nodded, then asked in confusion, "So what's Gundam?"
"You don't know what Gundam is?"
Peter raised a hand to cover his face.
"Okay, now I really believe you're Captain America."
To be honest, Peter was already the type who loved old movies and old animation.
But even he had not expected there to be someone more old-fashioned than him.
Then again, once he remembered that this person was Captain America, it suddenly did not seem strange at all.
Meanwhile, since Captain America had already joined the fight, there was no way S.H.I.E.L.D.'s two hardworking lackeys, Coulson and Natasha, were just going to stand around.
The two of them had both equipped special gear and were preparing to fight those robots head-on.
But they quickly discovered the same thing.
These robots seemed a little too fragile.
Their outer armor was nowhere near as durable as Iron Man's suit, and their shock resistance was terrible too.
In fact...
Natasha stopped what she was doing and pulled out a device.
"You know, Bant Parker gave me this earlier."
"What is it?"
Coulson rubbed the top of his nearly bald head and thought to himself that Plamos really came up with too many inventions. At this rate, it was starting to feel like Doraemon. If things kept going like this, maybe one day they really would invent a time machine.
"It's nothing that special. Just a signal jammer."
As she spoke, Natasha pressed the button.
An invisible electromagnetic field spread out and interfered with the signal of every single machine suit.
In an instant, all the armors froze and crashed.
"All done."
Natasha lightly slapped both thighs with her hands, looking utterly relaxed.
"This is the easiest mission I've ever done."
"That's it?"
Every robot within Coulson's line of sight really had frozen in place like a system crash, but he still found it a little hard to believe.
The reason was simple.
His phone still worked just fine, and the signal was perfect.
"That's because you're using a Plamos phone, obviously." Natasha said. "Do Hammer's garbage products deserve to be compared to Plamos?"
"You've got a point. Though I guess this means students cheating on exams are going to have a good time."
"Then they can just invent a dedicated anti-jammer device too." Natasha said it as if that were only natural.
Coulson nodded at that.
He could already imagine it.
Plamos invents a phone, then invents a jammer, then invents a phone unaffected by the jammer, then keeps repeating the cycle forever.
Now that was how you made money!
"Still, it looks like Hammer Industries' robots really aren't very good, whether in software or hardware. The military spent all that money and got this?"
He shook his head, the corners of his mouth stretching nearly to his ears as he felt sorry for the military.
For a long time now, there had always been a kind of invisible rivalry between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the military.
On the surface, both served the country.
But behind the scenes, the two sides were always fighting to secure a bigger slice of the budget.
This time, Hammer's products had clearly turned the military into a joke. It was easy to imagine that their budget was probably going to shrink a little after this.
And there was only so much total funding to go around. Since the military was such a giant institution, even a small amount shaved off their side would still be an astronomical sum once it moved through all the layers.
That money was something S.H.I.E.L.D. could fight for!
Coulson did not know exactly how happy Nick Fury would be when he heard the news, but he did know one thing.
The money to upgrade his beloved car was definitely secured now.
At the same time, Justin Hammer hunched over like a rat and slipped into the Plamos pavilion with the crowd.
By now, he had already cursed Ivan Vanko hundreds of times in his heart. If words could kill, then Ivan would probably have been riddled with holes by now.
He truly had not expected Vanko to give him such a massive surprise.
Sure, he had indeed told Vanko before that he wanted Tony Stark, that arrogant bastard who looked down on everyone, dead.
But honestly, from a businessman's point of view, what he had meant was not Tony Stark's literal death, but the death of Stark Industries.
And now look at this.
After that Russian lunatic pulled a stunt like this, the one who was going to die would not be Stark.
It would be Hammer Industries.
Even if Ivan managed to kill Tony Stark, what would be the point?
Justin himself would lose everything because of this attack.
The current Hammer Industries had military contracts. That was national power backing it!
He was finished!
His face was deathly pale, and his whole body seemed dimmed. Though he was dressed in a sharp suit and looked like a proper man on the surface, in reality he was as miserable as a street rat everyone wanted to beat to death.
It was obvious that Justin Hammer had already realized exactly what kind of ending awaited him.
For a crime like this, even if they did not execute him, he would still be looking at a sentence of several hundred years. Even if his time got reduced again and again and again, he still would never see daylight again.
As for someone bailing him out, that was even more impossible.
Once Hammer Industries collapsed, it would be like a towering tree falling. Countless plants beneath it would rush to absorb its nutrients, spreading out and branching upward until they covered the sky.
And Justin Hammer himself was not some genius scientist, much less a supervillain. Without Hammer Industries, he was nothing.
No one would waste the effort to save a loser.
But no matter what, he still could not suppress the rage he felt toward Ivan Vanko.
That damned bastard!
That Russian piece of trash!
If not for him, Ivan would have died in prison long ago. Justin had saved him out of goodwill, and this was how he repaid him?!
If he could do it all over again, Justin Hammer would rather the one who had blown up in prison had not been a stand-in.
But now, nothing he said mattered anymore.
No one could save him.
He stayed bent low, dodging constantly, terrified that someone might recognize him.
Even though he understood full well that he could never escape prison, at least prison meant he might stay alive. If these people recognized him right now, they would probably rush over and beat him to death on the spot.
Bant had noticed him long ago, but he did not bother with that clown. Instead, he was already backstage, discussing what came next with Norman Osborn.
"Once we take control of Hammer Technology, we can expand the ecological park. Then all the accumulated orders can be completed much sooner, and Plamos will leap in one move into becoming a company as powerful as the Osborn Group."
Even after saying it out loud, Norman still felt like he was dreaming.
It was too fast.
Only a few months had passed since Plamos was founded. And in just a few more months, it would become one of the top companies in the country. The speed of that rise was so incredible that Norman, who had built his own empire from scratch, was left speechless.
Sure, part of it was luck. Oscorp's decline and Hammer Industries' collapse had created an opening for Bant.
But the more important part was that Bant himself had the ability to seize it.
Still, Norman could tell that Bant was in a hurry.
So he asked why.
What Norman Osborn did not know was that before long, this Earth would become a place where monsters and demons filled the skies, where all sorts of people with bizarre powers would begin stepping onto the stage one after another.
Bant needed to build his foundation quickly.
As for the other reason...
Bant smiled slightly, looked at Norman, and asked a shocking question.
"Uncle Norman, have you ever thought about becoming mayor?"
/-\
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