Tony Stark lay rigid on the couch, every vein in his body standing out like dark cords beneath his skin. Just moments ago, Obadiah Stane—the man he had trusted like family, the man he had practically treated as a second father—had ripped the Arc Reactor out of his chest with his own hands.
The pain was beyond sharp. It felt like the shrapnel buried near his heart had come alive and started drilling inward again, each pulse driving it deeper. His vision blurred at the edges, and a suffocating heaviness settled over him as if his body had already decided it was done fighting.
But Tony refused to let go.
He couldn't die here. Not like this. Not while Pepper was still in danger. That single thought cut through the fog in his mind and kept him conscious just long enough for him to remember something else—the older Arc Reactor in the workshop downstairs.
That memory gave him just enough strength to move.
He braced a trembling hand against the couch and tried to force himself upright. As he shifted, his fingers brushed against the phone he had used to call Pepper earlier, and for a split second he froze, staring at it as though it had appeared out of nowhere.
Elsewhere, it was shaping up to be a very pleasant night, and Locke had every intention of enjoying it.
He was halfway through an excellent meal, helping himself to dish after dish with the kind of focus most men reserved for war. Across from him sat David, who had already crossed the line from hungry to shameless, staring at the table like he wanted to climb on top of it and start eating with both hands.
Locke picked up a braised pork rib with his chopsticks and was just about to take a bite when the phone beside him started ringing. He glanced at it once, then ignored it completely and kept eating.
David looked up from his bowl of preserved egg and lean pork porridge, swallowing before he spoke. "Your phone's ringing."
"I noticed."
"It sounds like Tony Stark."
Locke paused and looked at him. "How would you know that?"
David shrugged. "I set a special ringtone for him. The second I heard it, I knew."
Locke slowly lowered his chopsticks, his face filling with weary irritation. "That man has a death wish. I've told him eight hundred times Ethan screwed me over, and he still keeps calling all day long."
He picked up the phone with obvious hostility. "I swear I'm going to curse him out so hard he—"
Before he could finish, a weak, strained voice came through the speaker.
"Dad… help me…"
Locke's expression changed immediately. "Stark?"
By the time Locke arrived, Tony was already unconscious in the basement workshop. The old Arc Reactor had been installed, but he still looked like hell—pale, drenched in sweat, and barely holding on.
Locke shook him awake, and Tony snapped to life with surprising urgency. His hand shot out and grabbed Locke by the arm. "Didn't I tell you to save Pepper? Why are you here?"
Locke rolled his eyes. "Funny story. I called her, and she insisted I rescue you first."
He crossed his arms and looked down at him. "I tried to tell her not to run around with those useless agents and to stay put until we got there, but she'd already gone into some area with signal interference. The line died. Then I thought, great, if I don't come here first, Stark's going to die in his own basement like an idiot."
Tony pushed himself up, breathing hard. "There's a signal jammer at the factory. It has to be Obadiah. We need to save her."
Locke gave a small nod, though inwardly he felt nothing but resignation. He had warned Tony about Obadiah before. Warned him clearly. But some people just wouldn't believe betrayal until it punched through their chest and left a hole there.
There was no helping that kind of lesson.
Tony staggered over to the armor gantry and began suiting up. "If Pepper's in danger when we get there," he said while the machine locked plates into place around him, "I'll hold Obadiah off. You go save her."
"No problem."
Tony sealed the helmet and stepped toward the launch platform. Then he stopped and turned his head. "Wait. How are you getting there?"
He had never actually seen Locke fly.
Locke looked at him like the question itself offended him. "How about I sit on your neck and you carry me there?"
"Absolutely not."
Locke spread his hands. "Then how exactly are you planning to stop Obadiah and save Pepper at the same time?"
Tony clenched his jaw beneath the faceplate. If it weren't for Pepper, he would have rejected the idea on principle alone. Unfortunately, Pepper was involved, and that ruined everything.
A few seconds later, Iron Man shot into the sky with Locke riding along.
Tony flew hard and low, trying not to think too much about the fact that another grown man was currently attached to him mid-flight. Locke thought the original position was too awkward, so he adjusted without asking and locked himself more securely against Tony's waist.
Tony nearly blacked out from secondhand humiliation.
He could only comfort himself with one desperate thought: as long as he flew fast enough, nobody on the ground would see him. So he accelerated even harder, praying the wind would somehow tear Locke off his back.
Locke, meanwhile, enjoyed the ride far more than Tony would ever know. The wind screamed past his ears, and he couldn't help comparing it to his own flight speed. Tony was absurdly fast. Compared to this, Locke's hundred-and-fifty-kilometer-per-hour top speed felt like an old rusted sedan trying to keep up with a fighter jet.
At Stark Industries, Obadiah Stane had already installed the Arc Reactor and climbed into the massive armor built around it.
The moment the systems came alive, a surge of power rushed through him so strong it felt almost religious. The armor responded to every movement of his body with brutal force, making him feel as though he had stepped beyond ordinary humanity and become something greater.
Then Pepper Potts ruined the moment.
She burst into the workshop with several men in dark suits behind her. Obadiah was genuinely surprised. Did these people not understand what they were looking at? They had walked into a steel monster's den with nothing but sidearms and courage.
It barely counted as resistance.
He lunged once and knocked several of them sprawling with the sheer force of the impact. This wasn't a movie. Flesh didn't dodge steel just because it wanted to. The only person who put up even a token defense was an agent with a receding hairline and a mechanical prosthetic on his right hand—Coulson, if Obadiah remembered right.
Coulson managed to score a few shallow marks across the armor, but that was all. One backhand sent him flying.
By the time Obadiah reached the building entrance, Pepper was right in front of him, frozen and trembling. He started to raise his fist.
Then he noticed something in the sky.
A shape was racing toward them at high speed, black against the night, strange and distorted enough that for a second it looked like some kind of four-legged flying beast. Obadiah's nerves tightened immediately.
Only when it got closer did he see what it really was.
Iron Man.
And clinging to him was another person.
Obadiah stared in disbelief. "What the hell, Stark? Are you serious?"
Tony wanted to die on the spot. Being seen like this by Obadiah and Pepper at the same time was worse than almost dying in the cave. He jerked his body in irritation. "Get off! Now!"
Locke nodded, but before dropping away, he leaned in close and muttered into Tony's ear, "Don't fight him in the air. You don't have enough power left."
"It's enough," Tony snapped.
Locke clicked his tongue. Some people really couldn't recognize kindness when it saved their lives.
He dropped from the sky with a clean, dramatic landing directly in front of Pepper. Behind him, Tony kept accelerating and slammed straight into Obadiah's Iron Monger armor. The impact sent both men rolling and crashing toward the highway beside the factory.
Locke turned to Pepper. "You okay? Hurt anywhere?"
She shook her head quickly, still rattled. "No. Thank you for saving Tony, Mr. Locke."
He glanced toward the road where metal was tearing into metal. "This area's too dangerous. I'm getting you out of here."
"Okay."
The second she agreed, Locke scooped her up into his arms.
Pepper panicked at once. "Mr. Locke, what are you doing?"
He answered as if the matter were obvious. "Their battlefield is huge, and the safe zone is too far to reach on foot. Unless you want Stark fighting alone for a long time."
Pepper blinked. "Oh. That's what you meant?"
Locke looked down at her with an innocent expression. "What else would I mean?"
Her face flushed, and before she could recover, Locke launched into the air. Pepper let out a startled cry and wrapped both arms tightly around his neck, burying herself against him as the ground dropped away.
"You can fly?" she asked, stunned.
Locke smiled slightly. "Stark can fly too. He's never taken you up before?"
"No."
The wind around them was strong enough to swallow sound, so Locke leaned closer to her ear to be heard. His breath brushed the delicate edge of it, and Pepper went rigid in his arms.
"Do you have a boyfriend, Miss Potts?"
She shivered. "Why are you asking that?"
"Thought maybe we could grab coffee sometime."
Pepper's entire body tensed.
By the time she fully realized what he had said, Locke was already setting her down in a safe area. He stepped back, looked toward the distant fight, and gave her a small smile. "I'm going to help. If you want that coffee, call me."
Out on the road, Tony was having a much worse time.
His armor was critically low on power, and Obadiah's larger frame was bulldozing through everything in front of him. Tony could barely keep up. Half the fight had turned into him trying to protect civilians from the collateral damage while Obadiah smashed through cars, concrete, and steel barriers like they were paper toys.
Still, he finally managed to spot an opening and threw himself upward, dragging Iron Monger into the air with him.
At that exact moment, Locke arrived near the battlefield. He looked up at the two armored figures climbing into the sky and could only shake his head helplessly. He was too slow. At that speed, there was no chance of catching up.
But the good thing about flying too high was that the fall came fast.
Two explosions slammed into the earth in quick succession. Both armored figures crashed down hard enough to blast huge holes into the street. Tony staggered to his feet inside one of them, barely steady, systems failing all around him.
Then he looked up and saw the massive shape of Iron Monger charging straight at him.
Tony instinctively raised his hand to fire a repulsor blast. The system warned him instantly.
Power too low.
Damn it.
Obadiah's fist smashed into him before he could react, knocking him flat on his back. Iron Monger loomed over him like a steel executioner.
"Stark," Obadiah said with savage delight, "I really have to thank you."
He spread his arms as if showing off a masterpiece. "This armor is incredible. I've never felt power like this in my life."
Then his voice turned ugly.
"And you know what I love most? The feeling of crushing flesh with these hands."
He raised his fist and drove it down toward Tony's head without the slightest mercy.
Then something blurred through the air.
The blow stopped.
Obadiah stared in disbelief. A human figure stood in front of him, one arm raised, casually blocking the full force of the punch without moving back even an inch. It felt like he had slammed the armor into a mountain.
He tried to yank his arm back.
The suit's transmission system responded with a burst of grinding clicks.
It wouldn't move.
Then a much smaller fist rushed toward him, swelling rapidly in his vision.
....
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