Iron Monger

Tony Stark had a best friend. Or so he thought.

Obadiah Stane had been at Stark Industries for as long as Tony could remember. He was big and broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and a booming voice, and he smoked cigars that filled every room with a thick, sweet smoke. He played chess — beautifully, patiently, always thinking six moves ahead. He had worked alongside Tony's father, Howard, and had helped build Stark Industries into the giant it was.

Tony trusted him completely.

That was the mistake.

Because while Tony had been in Afghanistan, while Tony had been in that dark cave building the Arc Reactor and the Mark I, Obadiah Stane had been doing something very quiet and very terrible. He had sent people to the desert to find the wreckage of the Mark I suit. He had brought it back in secret. And he had a team of engineers working day and night in a hidden workshop to reverse-engineer every single part of it.

They were building something bigger.

Much bigger.

The Iron Monger was the color of old steel — gray and massive, taller than Tony's suit by a full head, broader by half again. It had no elegance, no grace. It was pure power and nothing else. And Obadiah Stane had one more thing Tony didn't expect: he came to Tony's home in Malibu, and while Tony sat helpless on the couch, Stane reached out his enormous hand and — with a device that was never supposed to exist — pulled the Arc Reactor directly out of Tony's chest.

The glowing blue light went with it.

The room went dark.

Tony lay there alone, the old, weaker Arc Reactor somewhere across the room — the original one, the one he had set aside and kept like a relic — and the cold silence of a house where the power was gone and the heartbeat had been taken.

He crawled. Across the floor, inch by inch, arms shaking, because the shrapnel near his heart was not sleeping anymore. He reached the old Arc Reactor with trembling fingers. He pressed it into his chest. The faint blue glow returned. It was not enough to power the Mark III properly — it was barely enough — but it was something.

It was enough.

Pepper Potts — Tony's brilliant, unflappable assistant and the person who kept everything running — was already at the Stark Industries building, having discovered the truth about Stane. She was brave in a way that had nothing to do with armor. She had called the right people and done the right things, because that was what Pepper Potts always did.

Tony put on the Mark III.

The suit powered up weakly, systems groaning, thrusters flickering. He flew toward Stark Industries. It wasn't pretty. But he got there.

And then, on the rooftop, beneath the California stars, the two armors met.

BOOM. The Iron Monger swung one of its massive fists and Tony dodged — barely — and the concrete where he had stood cracked like an eggshell. CLANG. Tony fired his repulsor ray — the pale white beam from his palm — and it bounced off Stane's armor and scattered sparks across the roof.

"We're iron mongers, Tony!" Stane's voice came from inside the great gray suit, distorted and booming. "That's all we've ever been! We make tools of war!"

"I don't make those anymore," Tony said.

WHOOOOSH — he shot upward into the night sky, pulling Stane after him, higher and higher. The air grew thin and cold, the lights of the city shrinking below. He knew the Iron Monger's suit wasn't built for extreme altitude — the engineers hadn't had time. He had. He'd designed for it.

Ice formed on Stane's armor. His systems began to fail. The great gray giant began to slow, then to fall, and Tony caught him — because even now, even here — and brought him back down to the rooftop.

Below, in the massive industrial building, Pepper Potts reached the control panel of the Arc Reactor that powered the whole Stark Industries campus. Her hand hovered over the controls. Tony's voice crackled in her earpiece.

"Do it, Pepper. Overload the reactor."

"You'll be right on top of it!"

"Trust the suit."

Pepper pressed the button.

The whole roof lit up with blue energy — a brilliant, blinding surge that rose like a sunrise in fast-forward. BOOM. The Iron Monger was gone in the light. Tony was thrown backward, the Mark III sparking, and he landed hard on the edge of the roof and lay still for a long moment, looking up at the California sky.

He breathed. The Arc Reactor in his chest glowed softly. Still there. Still him.

The next morning, at a press conference with cameras flashing and reporters shouting questions, a man in rumpled clothes with dark circles under his eyes stood at a microphone and read from a piece of paper someone had prepared for him. He was supposed to say it was all a misunderstanding. He was supposed to say Iron Man was a different person.

He put down the paper.

"I am Iron Man," Tony Stark said.

The cameras flashed. The reporters went wild.

And somewhere deep in his chest, the Arc Reactor pulsed its quiet blue light, steady as a heartbeat, warm as a promise.