[Flushing, New York - The Stark Expo]
The Stark Expo launched exactly on schedule.
Even Tony Stark, who had spent the last several months obsessively buried in neurobiology and mechanical engineering, was dragged out of the house by Pepper Potts. As the core figure and face of Stark Industries, it didn't matter whether he was officially the CEO anymore or not. The board needed him. The shareholders needed him.
This time, he had no chance to refuse.
The Iron Man armor flew freely across the New York skyline. Upon reaching the massive, illuminated Expo venue in Flushing Meadows, it dove rapidly, decelerating with a roar of repulsors to land center-stage with a heavy, metallic thud.
The crowd went absolutely wild.
Mechanical arms extended seamlessly from the stage floor, disassembling the gold and hot-rod red armor piece by piece as Tony stepped forward in a crisp tuxedo.
Tony Stark, who had been hiding from the public eye for months, returned to the spotlight.
"Did you miss me?!" Tony shouted, throwing his arms wide.
The stadium erupted.
"I missed you too!"
Even though he hadn't stood before the media in months, Tony Stark's ability to command a crowd hadn't declined in the slightest. Amidst a continuous wave of cheers, Tony delivered a charismatic, fast-paced opening monologue filled with his usual brand of brilliant, meaningless narcissism.
But as soon as the opening applause faded and the transition music played, Tony's smile vanished.
He walked briskly down the stairs behind the main stage, his eyes scanning the chaotic backstage area. He couldn't find the one figure he needed to see.
"Happy!" Tony snapped, grabbing his Head of Security by the shoulder. "Where is Pepper? She texted me that she was heading backstage ten minutes ago, and now her phone is going straight to voicemail."
"Boss, I saw her near the VIP pavilion earlier," Happy Hogan replied, looking around the crowded concourse. "But there are fifty thousand people here right now. The cell networks are probably jammed. Don't worry, she's probably just tied up with the event coordinators."
Happy's words eased Tony's immediate spike of panic, but only slightly.
Security at the Expo was incredibly tight. Since Pepper was just here, logic dictated there shouldn't be any major problems. However, Pepper had been violently kidnapped just a few months ago. The trauma of that night was still burned into Tony's mind. They had established a strict protocol: no dark zones, no radio silence.
Now that he suddenly couldn't reach her, a cold knot of unease tightened in Tony's chest.
"Go to the Security Hub and check the surveillance feeds," Tony ordered, his voice tight. "I'll go look on the floor. We have to find her, Happy. I'm... I'm not feeling good about this."
Ignoring Happy's reassurances, Tony pushed his way into the dense crowd, his eyes darting frantically.
[The New York State Psychiatric Research Institute]
While Tony searched the Expo, three heavily modified, armored Jeeps equipped with reinforced steel bull-bars roared up the private driveway of the maximum-security psychiatric facility.
They didn't slow down. The lead Jeep smashed directly through the reinforced security barriers, crushing the guard booth and screeching to a halt at the main entrance.
A dozen men piled out of the vehicles. They were heavily armed with military-grade assault rifles.
And every single one of them was wearing a grotesque, smiling clown mask.
There were no demands. There were no negotiations. The moment their boots hit the pavement, they raised their weapons and opened fire.
They breached the lobby, indiscriminately gunning down doctors, orderlies, and security personnel. They moved with terrifying, tactical precision, clearing floor by floor, leaving a trail of blood and brass casings in their wake.
Upon reaching the high-security wing where the luxury isolation wards were located, they blew the electronic locks and searched room by room.
Until they found the figure they were looking for.
He was bound to a heavy, tilted hospital bed with thick leather restraint straps, staring blankly at the ceiling.
A masked thug stepped forward, pulling out a tactical combat knife to slice through the thick leather belts.
Colonel James Rhodes was free.
"What big plan does the Boss have for tonight?" Rhodes asked, his voice raspy from disuse. He sat up, rubbing his chafed wrists. "Is it finally my turn to step onto the stage?"
Rhodes had been trapped in the sterile hell of the mental hospital for months. He had endured endless arrays of psychological treatments, electroshock therapy, and heavy sedation.
None of it had worked. His condition hadn't improved by a single fraction of a percent. His mind was still entirely governed by the twisted, nihilistic philosophy the Joker had carved into his brain.
Looking at the Joker Gang members who had slaughtered their way into his room, the Glasgow smile he had been forced to suppress for months bloomed wildly across his scarred face.
"Hee hee hee... ah ha ha!" Rhodes giggled, sliding off the bed.
"Yes, right now," a voice replied. "Your stage has already been set up."
Amidst Rhodes's wild, echoing laughter, the squad leader stepped forward and pulled off his clown mask.
Beneath the cheap plastic was the smeared greasepaint, the green hair, and the terrifying, Glasgow-scarred face of the real Joker.
"Let's go put on a show," the Joker smiled.
Rhodes fell in line behind the clown, leaving the ward with absolute, joyful cooperation.
Minutes later, heavily armored NYPD SWAT teams finally swarmed the hospital. However, besides a facility completely strewn with corpses, there was no trace of the perpetrators anywhere.
[NYPD Headquarters - One Police Plaza]
Captain George Stacy sat heavily at his desk, rubbing his temples. Having survived the relentless grind of New York's underworld to sit in this chair, Stacy only felt mentally and physically exhausted.
New York had just enjoyed a few months of fragile stability following the Manhattan Incident.
And now, that damn lunatic in the makeup had resurfaced.
When the SWAT teams had breached the asylum, the killers were already ghosts. However, the Joker had intentionally left the hospital's internal security servers completely intact. Clearly, this squad of butchers had absolutely no intention of hiding their identities. It was a brazen, arrogant statement.
After the surveillance drives were rushed back to the precinct, Stacy immediately reviewed the footage. Watching the Joker Gang execute unarmed nurses in the hallways made Stacy clench his fists so hard his knuckles turned white. Every gunshot on the tape felt like a physical slap across the face of the NYPD.
It wasn't until Stacy watched the footage of the high-security wing that the true motive of the massacre became terrifyingly clear.
They had slaughtered an entire hospital just to break one man out.
It was a perfectly, horrifyingly Joker-esque operation.
Filled with cold indignation, Stacy pulled up the patient files for the luxury isolation ward without a second's pause. When the digitized file loaded on his monitor, his blood ran cold.
He knew exactly who paid the bills for that specific room.
[Flushing, New York - The Stark Expo Security Hub]
"What?!" Tony yelled into his cell phone, his voice echoing in the crowded concourse. "Rhodey was broken out by the Joker Gang?! Are you sure?!"
Tony Stark, already strung out and vibrating with anxiety due to Pepper's disappearance, listened to Captain Stacy's grim report. The fire of absolute panic and rage ignited in his chest. The customized Starkphone in his palm creaked ominously under his crushing grip.
The knot of unease in his stomach twisted into pure terror.
Was Pepper's sudden radio silence part of the clown's scheme? Was the Joker hitting all his weak points simultaneously?
Forcefully suppressing his panic, Tony hung up on the police captain and sprinted directly toward the Expo's central Security Hub.
He kicked the heavy door open.
"Did you find her?!" Tony roared.
His voice, laced with raw, unadulterated anger, made the dozen security technicians in the room freeze. The hub went as quiet as a graveyard.
Only Happy Hogan, who had weathered Tony's worst emotional storms for years, dared to speak.
"Boss, we haven't found Pepper," Happy said quickly, stepping into Tony's path. "But we found a clue. Look at this."
Happy pointed at the main wall of surveillance monitors.
"This guy..." Happy traced a finger along the screen. "He seems to have been shadowing Pepper since she left the VIP pavilion."
Tony shoved past Happy, his eyes locking onto the grainy footage. As the video played, Tony watched a hulking, heavily tattooed man in a dirty jumpsuit casually weaving through the crowd, staying exactly ten paces behind Pepper.
The more Tony watched, the grimmer and colder his gaze became.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony commanded, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Take over every single camera at the Expo. Facial recognition. Gait analysis. Find out exactly where this bastard is right now."
Outside the Security Hub, hundreds of automated security cameras mounted on poles and pavilions began to flash with red targeting lasers, panning and scanning the massive crowds.
In less than ninety seconds, J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice chimed in his earpiece, locking onto the target's live coordinates.
Hearing the location, Tony didn't run out to hunt the man on foot.
He turned on his heel, sprinting directly to the backstage armory.
The mechanical arms clamped the Iron Man armor onto his body in record time. The moment the faceplate locked, the thrusters ignited, and Iron Man blasted through the backstage ceiling, soaring high into the night sky over the Expo.
Suspended high in mid-air, the armor hovered motionless. The glowing blue eye-slits scanned the massive sea of people below, syncing with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s targeting telemetry.
The HUD locked onto a heat signature standing near the Unisphere fountain.
"Found you," Tony growled.
The armor instantly broke its hover, diving straight down toward the crowded plaza like a missile.
The thousands of people in the audience looked up. Seeing Iron Man diving toward them, they felt no fear at all. They erupted into deafening cheers and howls, assuming this was just another spectacular, choreographed performance by Tony Stark.
Except for one person.
Standing perfectly still amidst the screaming crowd, the long-waiting Ivan Vanko looked up at the diving armor.
He didn't run. He just smiled.
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