Whiplash

Far away from Malibu, in a cold and very small apartment, a man named Ivan Vanko looked at a photograph on his wall and felt the fire of an old, old grudge beginning to burn.

The photograph was of his father, Anton Vanko. And Anton Vanko, Ivan believed with his whole heart, had been cheated.

You see, many years ago, Ivan's father and Tony's father — Anton Vanko and Howard Stark — had worked together on the very first Arc Reactor design. They had built it together, two brilliant minds solving the same great puzzle. But Howard Stark had taken the credit, and Anton Vanko had been sent away, and he had spent the rest of his life poor and forgotten.

And now, every time Ivan Vanko looked at a television screen and saw Tony Stark smiling in his red-and-gold suit, the fire in him grew hotter.

Ivan Vanko was also a genius. Just like his father. Just like Tony.

He built his own Arc Reactor with what he had — parts scrounged and borrowed and made by hand in that cold apartment. It glowed in his chest, not blue and elegant like Tony's, but fierce and bright. He built two long coils of electrified plasma — whips that crackled and SIZZLED and could slice through reinforced steel the way scissors cut paper.

He called himself Whiplash.

And he chose the most dramatic moment he could find: the Grand Prix of Monaco.

Can you picture it? The famous racing circuit winding through the streets along the brilliant blue Mediterranean Sea, the roar of engines, the smell of fuel and sunlight and sea spray, the crowd pressed against the barriers — and then, walking calmly onto the racing track, this man in his homemade armor with two glowing whips crackling at his sides.

CRACK. CRACK. A racing car hit one of the whips and split cleanly in two.

Tony Stark was in the crowd. He had no suit. He was just Tony Stark, in a shirt, with a watch. He had never felt so much like he was wearing the wrong thing in his entire life.

But Pepper Potts was already moving. Happy Hogan — Tony's loyal driver and friend — was already sprinting. They brought the one thing Tony needed: the Mark V. A suitcase. An ordinary-looking suitcase that, when Tony grabbed it and pressed two hidden panels, CLANK-CLANK-WHOOOOSH — unfolded in seconds and snapped and wrapped and assembled itself around his body like a silver shell folding from nowhere.

It was not his best suit. It was traveling armor — lighter, thinner, designed to fit in a bag. But it was enough.

The fight was loud and close and dangerous. Whiplash's plasma coils left deep gouges in the Mark V's surface — long glowing furrows that sizzled with heat. But Tony was faster. He was always faster. WHOOSH — dodge. CLANK — block. ZAPP — repulsor blast at the coil controls.

Ivan Vanko was captured that day. But the trouble was not over.

A man named Justin Hammer — a rival who built weapons and desperately wanted to be Tony Stark but never, ever quite managed it — thought he had found his solution. He got Ivan out of custody and gave him a whole laboratory and unlimited supplies. The plan: build an army of drones. Remote-controlled robots in armor, like Iron Man, but under Hammer's control.

Justin Hammer did not understand one important thing about Ivan Vanko.

Ivan Vanko did not want to help Justin Hammer. Ivan Vanko had his own plan.

At the Stark Expo — a massive fair celebrating technology, held outside the glittering towers of New York — the drone army appeared in the sky. WHIRRRR, WHIRRRR, WHIRRRR. Dozens of them, hovering in perfect formation. The crowd cheered. Justin Hammer smiled.

Then Ivan Vanko's signal reached the drones, and they turned.

The Stark Expo suddenly became very exciting in the wrong kind of way.

Iron Man was in the sky instantly. And beside him — in gunmetal gray armor that gleamed under the Expo lights — was James Rhodes. Tony's best friend. War Machine.

They fought through the drone army together, shoulder to shoulder. BOOM — a drone fell. CRASH — another. ZZZZAP — repulsor beams and cannon fire and dodging and weaving through clouds of metal.

And then Tony had an idea.

"Rhodey," he said. "Point your repulsor at mine."

"What?"

"Trust me."

They aimed at each other — two Iron Men, palms forward — and fired. The energy beams hit and spiraled together, building and building — BZZZZZZZT — and released in one enormous combined blast that swept through the remaining drones like a thunderclap.

The sky went quiet.

Tony landed on the roof of the Expo pavilion and breathed.

The lesson, he thought, was not that the enemy was clever. Ivan Vanko had been very clever. The lesson was that no technology, no matter how brilliant, was safe if it was also powerful. Everything he built, everything he put into the world — he was responsible for it. All of it. Every circuit. Every bolt. Every reactor.

He looked at his palm, where the repulsor still glowed faintly with residual light.

A lot of power. A very, very great responsibility.

He had heard something like that before.