General Ross and Colonel Stryker watched the Expo from separate offices and for very similar reasons.
The public show meant nothing to either of them. The drones, the lights, the applause, the giant screens, and Hammer's desperate need to look historic were all surface noise. What mattered sat underneath it. Lucius Noctis was on site. The fairground was crowded enough to hide movement, loud enough to cover the initial disruption, and public enough to complicate any immediate federal response, once the right team was already in motion.
Ross had his support people in place with transport solutions ready to go the second Stryker gave the word. Stryker had his mutants waiting because once they had both agreed on kidnapping Noctis, the day of the Expo stopped being a public event and became an opportunity.
On the stage, Justin Hammer was still enjoying himself.
That alone made Tony want to do violence.
He stood under the Expo lights in the suit, looked at the drones, looked at Hammer, then looked at the weaponised Mark II platform beside them and felt the full weight of betrayal land in one miserable line.
Rhodey had stolen his armour, and Hammer had ruined it.
Tony turned first to Rhodey, or more properly to Lieutenant Colonel James Rupert Rhodes, standing inside the modified Mark II like a man who still thought the theft could be filed under necessity and therefore excused.
The disappointment in Tony's face reached him before the words did, and Rhodey actually had the grace to look uncomfortable.
Tony shifted his gaze to Hammer.
"Justin." He said the name like he had found it under a shoe. "I see your habits haven't changed. You're still copying, still stealing, and now you've even found a culprit to hide behind."
Hammer's smile tried to stay alive.
"Tony, that is not fair. We're here celebrating a new era in national security."
Tony ignored him and looked back at Rhodey.
"You really did it."
Rhodey held his ground.
"I did what had to be done."
Tony's mouth moved by a fraction.
"Did you?"
He lifted his left wrist.
"JARVIS, remove Lieutenant Colonel James Rupert Rhodes' access to every private and commercial Stark system and venue, starting with the Mark II platform."
JARVIS answered at once through Tony's comms.
"Access revoked, sir."
The modified Mark II gave a hard mechanical shudder, opened without warning, and ejected Rhodey out of the suit with all the grace of a bad divorce. He stumbled clear, caught himself, and turned in shock just in time to see the armour lock down and stand at idle like a machine that had remembered who owned it.
Tony looked at the suit.
"Return to base."
The Mark II pivoted and began moving to the edge of the stage to take off under remote command.
Rhodey took a step after it.
"Tony, there's no need for this."
Tony cut him off before the sentence could find a leg to stand on.
"Colonel Rhodes."
That landed harder than shouting would have.
Rhodey stopped.
Tony looked at him with a flat, disappointed calm that was worse than anger.
"You're lucky I'm not proceeding for theft and damage to private property. Consider this my last gift to a man I'm already considering dead."
Hammer tried to slide back in before the room fully understood he had lost control of his own spectacle.
"Okay, let's not make this dramatic. We have guests, we have press, we have international visibility, which, by the way, you are ruining with terrible timing."
Tony turned his head towards him.
"You brought a second-rate military theme park to my father's Expo after stealing my technology, after you put your hands on what didn't belong to you. I don't think timing is the category you want to debate with me."
Hammer laughed weakly and spread his hands.
"Come on. This isn't theft. It's collaboration."
"Justin, if you collaborate with my work any harder, I'm going to need a tetanus shot."
Rhodey stepped in again, jaw tight now.
"You're not making this easier."
Tony gave him a hard look.
"No, Colonel. You made it harder the moment you stole my armour and let him put his fingers on it."
Lucius, who had thus far been enjoying the show from a comfortable angle, found the whole exchange deeply satisfying.
Tony's anger was one thing. His disappointment was cleaner, and Lucius instinctively respected the opportunity in it.
Hammer, meanwhile, was starting to understand that the room had stopped belonging to him.
Which made the timing on Vanko's next move almost artistic.
Across the command net, the drones twitched.
That was the first sign.
Then the lights in their eye slits changed, the control latency vanished, and Hammer's entire expensive parade of remote toys stopped being his in the most public way possible. Vanko's voice hit the system a heartbeat later, and every drone turned from demonstration piece to live threat at once.
Hammer stared at them in disbelief just as the first muzzle rose.
"Well," Lucius murmured, "that escalated beautifully."
--
Ross straightened in his chair the moment the drones turned.
On another screen, Stryker did the same.
Neither man cared about Hammer or the audience. Both cared very much that the chaos had just become cover.
Stryker's team was ready.
Lady Deathstrike waited in black tactical gear with metal under the skin and murder in her posture. Yuriko Oyama had the sort of close-quarter lethality that made corridors and confined spaces feel like death sentences for anybody standing opposite her. Her healing factor kept her in the fight, and her adamantium claws made ending it a matter of distance, not difficulty.
Jason Stryker sat beside the transport compartment with his head slightly bowed and his eyes carrying that vacant softness people mistook for weakness until the hallucinations started. His telepathy specialised in illusion, memory pressure, and psychological entrapment. He could bury a target in private torment while the body stood still in the open.
The third member of the team was Leech, small, pale, and unsettling in the particular way children became unsettling when men like Stryker turned them into equipment. His power dampened the X Gene around him and dragged mutant gifts towards silence if he got close enough. Stryker wanted him for exactly that reason. If Noctis proved harder to chain than expected, a dead zone in the middle of the operation might buy the seconds they needed.
Stryker looked between the three of them and then back to the screen, where Stark and Noctis were already taking to the air.
"Stand ready."
Ross, on his own feed, leaned forward with his whisky forgotten on the desk.
"Do not move too early," he said into the secure line.
Stryker did not look at the camera.
"I know when to move."
Ross's mouth tightened.
That was not reassurance. It was territorial behaviour. The man heard it and accepted it anyway because the plan still needed him.
"Then don't miss it."
-
Corvus was aware of far more than the drones.
While the crowd panicked, while Hammer's face started collapsing under the weight of public ruin, and while Tony launched himself into the air with the grim irritation of a man who no longer even had time to process betrayal properly, Lucius let his telepathy sweep wider.
There they were.
Mutants.
One with metal in all the wrong places, one soft and poisonous in the mind, and one with one of the best X-Genes he could think of. Stryker had finally grown bored of waiting on the bench and decided to get handsy.
Lucius nearly laughed.
"Well, that is generous."
He pushed off the platform and began to float upward at an easy pace while Tony shot ahead on repulsors and anger.
The drones were closing fast now. Hammer's toys moved with the dead precision of external control, no longer pretending to be a display. Mark II was out of the picture, Rhodes had been dumped out of it like excess packaging, and that changed the rhythm of the whole fight.
Tony felt it immediately.
He swung wide over the crowd, drew fire off the lower levels, and opened up with repulsors to cut a path before the first ring of drones could lock the exits. The shots took two down. Another three adjusted in perfect sync and came back harder.
Lucius rose through the first burst of wildfire without hurry and glanced sideways at Tony.
"You do realise your friend's theft has made the choreography more interesting."
Tony blew the arm off one incoming drone.
"This is not the moment."
"It's an excellent moment. You're outnumbered, betrayed, and surrounded by inferior design. Reflection improves under pressure."
Tony angled into a second drone and smashed it bodily out of the air.
"Help or shut up."
Lucius smiled.
"I am a design engineer, Tony. Demolition is a leisure activity."
The drones were around them now in a tightening circle of weapon ports, armour plating, and Vanko's stolen malice. The Expo lights flashed off metal and smoke. Below them, people were still running, security was still failing loudly, and Hammer was still learning what public humiliation felt like when it came with muzzle flash.
Lucius opened one hand and let telekinesis spread through the air around them like invisible wire.
Tony rose to his level, caught in the same field that now held half the surrounding air under precise authority.
They ended up back to back in the air, Tony in the Mark suit, Lucius in his expensive clothes and superior mood, with drones surrounding them in a widening cage.
Tony looked over one shoulder.
"You planning something clever?"
Lucius looked at the nearest drone and then at the movement signatures farther out where Stryker's team waited just beyond the obvious zone of conflict.
"At least Stryker brought gifts."
Tony had no time to ask what that meant.
On the secure line, Stryker saw the formation settle and gave the only order that mattered.
"Stand ready. We move on the break."
Lady Deathstrike flexed her hands once. Jason Stryker lifted his head. Leech stayed where Stryker's men had put him, small and silent, while the handlers around him watched the sky.
Above the Expo, Tony and Lucius floated back to back while the drones closed around them, and the kidnapping team waited for the one moment they thought would belong to them.