Sup guys! Can I get more reviews pls? I would appreciate it! Also spoiler but The Boys universe is going to integrate in the story
Chapter 112: The Mark VI, Stripped to Parts
WTF.
That was Tony's first thought.
The fist was enormous and it was already at his face. Every hair on his body stood up at once.
JARVIS, monitoring for the Stanavistin trigger condition, registered the high-speed incoming object and activated the system in the same instant.
One instant.
That was all it took for the world to slow to a crawl.
Tony's body moved on instinct, jerking his head back away from the incoming strike.
The Astartes's fist came through.
It cleared Tony's faceplate by centimeters.
Even so, he felt the force behind it through the air displacement alone.
"What is this thing?!" Tony threw himself backward, putting distance between them.
In that moment, he finally understood exactly what Matthew had meant when he said not to treat this as an oversized Iron Monger.
This was nowhere near Iron Monger territory. Not even close.
Speed, strength: both entirely beyond anything Obadiah Stane had built. If JARVIS hadn't activated Stanavistin in time, that first punch would have sent him across the range before he finished processing what had happened.
The contempt he'd walked in with was gone. Something heavier had replaced it.
His back thrusters flared to maximum, driving him low and fast across the ground, trying to open up distance. The Astartes gave him none of it.
The armored helmet tilted upward, tracking Tony's retreat.
Then one arm came up.
It was going to grab Tony's ankle in midair and drag him back.
Tony raised his palm and aimed the repulsor directly at the Astartes.
The arc in his hand lit up.
A blast that could flip a car hit the Astartes square on.
For one second, the Astartes stopped. Its movement stalled under the impact.
Then it walked through it and kept coming.
The repulsor hadn't done any meaningful damage, but that one second of interruption was enough. Tony's flight system surged and he cleared the reach, barely.
He climbed into the air and let out a long breath.
Tony turned his head toward Matthew, who was watching from the side.
"Matthew. You're sure that equipment is Osborn Industrial's work? I've looked at what Osborn produces. This doesn't feel like something he should be capable of."
"And yet here it is," Matthew said with a small smile. "He may not match you technically or intellectually, but this kind of power armor doesn't require precision engineering. It needs to be solid and brutal, and that's exactly what it is."
He looked up at Tony. "I forgot to mention something, by the way."
"That altitude isn't a safe distance. With the propulsion system factored in, the maximum jump height is approximately seventy-five meters."
"What? Seventy-five meters?!"
Tony's stomach dropped. He'd assumed instinctively that something this large and heavy couldn't get meaningfully airborne. Now he understood that the entire design included a solution for low-altitude combat. Not sustained flight. Just a jump high enough to get to the target and come down on it.
He turned his head back toward the range floor.
In the next instant, the massive silhouette burst off the ground and was in front of him.
The faceplate was the color and warmth of a casket lid. Cold light burned in the eye lenses. Looking at the reflection in the polished surface above him, Tony could even see his own movements, slightly more frantic than he would have preferred.
"Fuck," Tony muttered.
He needed to break this habit of underestimating things. Immediately.
He tried to repeat the repulsor delay from before. The Astartes's hand closed around his helmet instead, and threw him the way someone discards a sandbag.
Tony hit the ground and kept moving. He skipped across the surface in a series of hard impacts, bouncing and sliding like a stone thrown flat across water.
Matthew, observing from the side, had already taken out his phone. He opened the camera and captured the footage carefully.
On the other side of the range, Tony had no attention to spare for what Matthew was or wasn't doing.
He heard the footsteps getting closer. He got himself up off the ground.
JARVIS's voice sounded in his ear.
[Armor damage: 12%...]
No deliberation. The shoulder mounts fired a spread of micro-missiles in the same breath.
Four impacts rang out across the range in quick succession.
The power armor had walked through sustained tank fire during testing. Four micro-missiles registered as slightly less than nothing.
Through the cycling smoke and intermittent fire, the Astartes continued forward without adjusting its pace.
"The defensive rating on this thing is insane."
Tony's jaw tightened. "JARVIS, analyze the material composition of that armor."
"Running analysis. Please stand by."
"Analysis complete. The target's power armor uses sub-Adamantium alloy, gold-titanium alloy, and homogeneous steel, with an internal Kevlar fiber layer. The construction resists external impact while simultaneously reducing transmission of internal shock to the wearer."
"Based on current weapons loadout, it appears only the laser system has realistic potential to breach the armor's defense," JARVIS concluded.
"The laser."
Tony looked at the Astartes coming at him like a dump truck with purpose, and decided.
The laser it was.
Reactor energy flooded into the arm systems. JARVIS's prompt arrived almost immediately.
"Sir, laser weapons are ready."
"Activate."
Tony stopped his retreat. He raised both arms and swept the beam across toward the Astartes's midsection.
The red laser cut through the air like a blade of extraordinary sharpness. The sweep caught the test range wall on its path and opened a clean line through the concrete. Some wooden crates that hadn't been cleared from the range were sliced through and immediately started burning.
Tony expected this to land.
The Astartes, which had shown no interest in avoiding any attack up to this point, chose this moment to move. One clean spring to the side, covering the distance with surprising fluidity, and the beam passed through empty air.
Then it came down on him like a meteor.
The impact into Tony's chest hit with everything behind it.
[Armor damage: 35%...]
The chainsword howled.
Tony's chest cannon was already building charge, energy flooding into it at maximum draw.
The Astartes watched the power building in Tony's chest and extended one hand. The palm came down flat over the emitter housing.
And then it tore the chest cannon assembly off the armor with its bare hands.
After that, the chainsword went to work.
Methodical. Systematic. Efficient.
When it was done, the Mark VI had been completely stripped from Tony's body.
The only thing left was the helmet, still sitting on his head.
***
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