The workbench was a jagged landscape of scavenged iron plating and disassembled missile casings as Tony finished cutting a metal plate with a blowtorch. Just then, muffled shouts and the heavy clatter of boots echoed from the other side of the metal door. Tony looked at Yinsen.
The hiss of the blowtorch died as Tony cut the fuel, leaving only the sound of his own racing heart as the heavy metal door opened, and came a whole platoon of terrorists with guns. The terrorists parted, making way for their leader—Raza—to step forward into the flickering light of the forge.
Tony and Yinsen put their hands behind their heads. Looking at Tony, Raza spoke. "Relax." Hearing this, Tony put down his hands as Raza stepped forward, looked at the arc reactor in Tony's chest, and continued. "The bow and arrow once were the pinnacle of weapons technology."
Raza stepped back and went to the workbench, taking in the items on it while continuing to speak. "It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to Ukraine, an empire twice the size of Alexander the Great's. And four times the size of the Roman Empire," Raza said, walking past Tony and picking up the armor blueprint on different translucent sheets.
"But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands." Hearing this, Tony looked at Yinsen out of the corner of his eye, receiving a placating gesture in return.
"And soon it'll be my turn," Raza said, looking at Tony.
Raza started talking in a different language while walking towards Yinsen. He said a few words to Yinsen and signaled for someone to push him to his knees. Raza turned towards the furnace and picked up hot charcoal with a pair of tongs.
A pair of rough hands shoved Yinsen's head onto the cold iron of the anvil. Raza brought the charcoal closer to his mouth. Just as he was about to feed it to Yinsen, Tony spoke up. "Oh, you want a delivery date? I can…" Before he could finish his sentence, every terrorist trained their guns on him. Raza looked at him.
"I need him. He's a good assistant," Tony said while looking at Yinsen.
Raza looked at Tony and spoke. "You have till tomorrow to build my missile." With that, he and all other terrorists walked out of the cave, closing the doors behind them.
Tony hammered at the metal, shaping it into a mask. After relentless hammering, he put the mask in the bucket of water to cool off. He brought the mask and placed it onto the workbench in front of Yinsen, who was working on the armor's wiring.
Wrapping his hands with surgical cloth tape, Tony put on a brown shirt with Yinsen's help. He put on the thick leather gloves, wrapped a thick leather collar around his neck, and put on the heavy metal armor.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"Can you move?" Yinsen asked, and Tony tested it by moving his fingers inside the armor.
"Okay, say it again," Yinsen said while helping Tony.
"Forty-one steps straight ahead. Then sixteen steps, that's from the door. Fork right. Thirty-three steps, turn right.
Up in the command post, Raza noticed Tony had disappeared from the camera feed. He asked, "Where's Stark?"
"He was here a moment ago," the man replied.
"Go look for him," Raza said to two men who nodded and left.
"Yinsen! Yinsen! Stark!" A voice shouted from the other side of the iron door.
"Say something back to him," Tony said.
"He's speaking, he's speaking Hungarian. I don't…"
"Then speak Hungarian."
Yinsen replied to the guard in Hungarian.
Not satisfied with the reply, the two men prepared to open the door, not knowing it was rigged with a bomb. Just as the door opened, it disintegrated in a massive blast that hurled both men back several meters into the stone corridor.
Raza watched in the camera feed as the blast shook the cave. He frantically alerted everyone about it as the group of terrorists moved towards the cave.
Back in the cave, Tony asked Yinsen, "How'd that work?"
"Oh, my goodness. It worked all right," was the reply.
"Yeah? That's what I do."
"Let me finish this."
"Initia… Initialize the power sequence," Tony said.
"Okay," Yinsen replied, hurrying toward the small computer on the workbench. "Tell me! Tell me."
Tony guided Yinsen on what to do as the shouts and hurried footsteps sounded from the entrance tunnel.
"It's done, now come over here and button me up," Tony said.
Tony calmly guided him in tightening the hex bolts while Yinsen continued to panic and repeat, "They're coming."
The footsteps and shouts got closer as the progress bar on the computer filled.
"Make sure the checkpoints are clear before following me out, okay?" Tony asked calmly.
"We need more time," Yinsen said while looking at the slow progress bar on the computer screen. He turned around, looked at Tony, and said softly, "Hey, I'm gonna go buy you some time."
"Stick to the plan!" Tony watched as Yinsen picked up the gun from the dead terrorist and fired randomly in the air. "Stick to the plan! Yinsen!"
The tension in the cave climbed high as Tony looked at the half-filled progress bar.
Outside the cave, Yinsen roared and fired haphazardly in the air while running after the terrorists. He stopped before the main entrance of the cave as he found himself surrounded by the terrorists with guns pointed at him.
Back in the cave, the bar finally hit 100%. A deep mechanical hum vibrated through the armor as the servos whined to life.
The group of terrorists finally reached the dark inner cave, silently moving forward, and found two dead bodies. They stepped inside and looked around cautiously. Just then, Tony hit one of them with metal gauntlets as the man flew some meters away.
The remaining terrorists started firing shots everywhere in the cave. As the firing stopped, one of them turned back and said, "I think he's de—" before he could finish his sentence, he was swatted to the side of the wall with immense force.
The second terrorist got the same treatment, and the man in the middle fired on the armor, but was punched so hard that he went down in one move.
Heavy iron footsteps echoed as Tony moved forward, ignoring the bullets sparking against his chest. One of the terrorists came running at him while roaring. Tony did not even look at him and backhanded him into the sidewall. He punched the other one so hard that he flew for five meters and landed with a heavy thud.
Tony once again backhanded a terrorist who was coming from his left. Tony continued moving as the terrorists were fleeing from seeing him. Just ahead, as most of the men crossed the door, they closed it, leaving one of them behind. He hammered on the door for a few desperate seconds before the silence turned absolute.
Tony punched the heavy metal door so hard that dents appeared, and then kicked it open with so much force that one of the men was buried beneath it.
Tony marched forward as the men scattered. As one of the men fled, Tony swung a backfist at him, but the man dodged, and Tony's arm smashed into the stone, getting stuck. One brave, or perhaps foolish, man stepped close and fired a bullet at Tony's head, but the bullet bounced back from his metal helmet and killed him. Tony turned his face to look at him for a moment before his stuck arm was removed from the wall.
Raza stepped forward with a grenade launcher. Just as Tony walked to the main entrance of the cave, he spotted Yinsen in a badly wounded state, lying on some bags. "Yinsen!" Tony shouted while looking at him.
"Watch out!" Yinsen warned just in time as Raza fired the grenade launcher, but Tony dodged it and brought his left arm up, opened a compartment housing a small missile, and launched it at Raza. Perhaps because of the recoil, it did not hit Raza but hit the wall behind him, which took Raza down with it.
Tony stepped towards Yinsen. He lifted his mask and looked at Yinsen.
"Stark," Yinsen said in a small voice.
"Come on. We gotta go. Move for me."
"Please, Stark."
"Come on, we've got a plan. We're gonna stick to it."
"This was always the plan, Stark," Yinsen replied while taking shallow breaths.
"Come on, you can go and see your family. Get up."
"My family is dead. I'm going to see them now, Stark. It's okay. It's… I want this."
"Thank you for saving me."
"Don't waste it. Don't waste your life, sir." Yinsen gulped, and with that, he was no more.
With rage in his heart, Tony moved toward the entrance of the cave.
The terrorist waited outside with their guns trained on the entrance as the heavy footsteps sounded from inside. And once the armor came into view, all of them fired at it at once.
Tony stood there as the bullets pinged off his armor, and then the rain of bullets stopped. He said only one thing. "My turn." He started the two flamethrowers on the arms of his armor. He watched as the terrorists screamed and ran everywhere.
The chaos continued as Tony blasted the flames at the Stark Industries weapons in the possession of the terrorists.
The terrorists started firing once again from outside the range of the flamethrowers. As the firing got more intense, Tony started to get overwhelmed by the bullets. One lucky bullet hit his left knee servo motor, and he dropped onto one knee. Tony blasted that terrorist with the flames, but he was still getting overwhelmed, seeing that it was getting out of hand. He stood up and pressed a red button on his left arm, which fired the thrusters that were attached to the boots of his armor as he flew away from the chaos.
After some time in the air, he came crashing down in the hot desert, sending pieces of the armor flying everywhere.
He removed the helmet and lay there for a little while as he murmured. "Not bad."
Tony walked in the hot desert with his shirt tied at his head to ward off the sun, and he spotted a military chopper. He waved excitedly to it in the hopes that he would be spotted.
The chopper landed, and Rhodey stepped out with four more soldiers and immediately pulled Tony into a hug.
"Next time you ride with me, okay?"
***
Author Note: This is the last chapter that focuses on Tony, from the next chapter Adam will be the main focus again.