[Third Person's PoV]
Recovery Girl sat alone in a dimly lit observation room, her wrinkled hands folded tightly on the desk before her as she monitored the various testing sites where students were undergoing their Practical Exams. The room was silent, save for the gentle hum of the monitors and the occasional flicker of light on the screens. Her sharp eyes moved from one feed to the next, most showing typical displays of courage, teamwork, or struggle. That was, until one monitor grabbed her full attention—so much so that she leaned forward in her seat, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape.
Her focus was locked on the site where Tony Stark and Katsuki Bakugo were being evaluated. What she had just witnessed could only be described as cataclysmic. The earth had trembled beneath her feet monts ago, a tremor powerful enough to rattle the entire facility. Everyone in the vicinity had felt it—students, instructors, and even the pro heroes testing other students.
The monitor now displayed nothing but chaos: a roiling wall of dust and debris clouded the scene, as if a sandstorm had been unleashed inside the artificial cityscape. The explosion that caused it had produced a towering mushroom cloud of dust and fla—sothing more reminiscent of a battlefield than a student examination. It was eerily similar to the aftermath of a nuclear detonation.
Peering into the screen, Recovery Girl squinted through the gray haze. Her breath caught when she noticed sothing glowing amidst the destruction. It started as a reddish hue emanating from the ground—an intense, blistering heat signature that distorted the air around it with visible heatwaves. The temperature had to be unbearable. The ground shimred like molten lava, the sheer energy lingering in the aftermath enough to warp tal and lt stone.
Then she saw it: a glint of silver breaking through the veil of smoke and ash. It shimred for just a mont, but the shape grew clearer as the dust began to settle. Recovery Girl leaned closer, narrowing her eyes lined with age.
It was Tony.
He stood defiantly at the heart of the scorched zone. His silver armor glead despite the dirt and soot, reflecting the hellish glow of the molten ground beneath him. His stance was confident—no, arrogant. Arms spread slightly to his sides, feet placed together in a poised yet relaxed position, his head tilted back just enough to give off a dramatic silhouette. The plating on the front of his helt had slid back, revealing his face.
His expression was almost infuriating—smug and self-assured, his lips curled into a cocky grin. The red glow of his artificial eyes pierced through the settling dust, and even his teeth seed to sparkle in the strange light.
Recovery Girl blinked, her face twitching in disbelief. "He certainly has the showmanship of a hero down to a T," she muttered under her breath, shaking her head with a mix of concern and exasperation.
…
"I love this suit," Tony said aloud, his voice brimming with pride. His grin grew wider. "This is my best suit yet~."
'Boss, if I may ask… why are you acting like this?' Friday's voice echoed through his internal comms. 'You're behaving… very uncharacteristic.'
Tony chuckled. 'Two reasons, really. First, I never had a chance to properly test this suit's full capabilities. And with the Number Two hero—Endeavor himself—standing in front of ? Well, I couldn't resist the opportunity. It's the perfect battlefield, the perfect opponent.'
He glanced down at his armor with a sense of reverence. 'This suit is an amalgamation of everything I've learned and everything I have obtained and created —my experience from both my world and that other universe.'
The Mark 48—what Tony proudly called the Iron Marvel Suit—was unlike anything he had ever created. It was designed from the ground up using the wealth of knowledge he had amassed his stay in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Every breakthrough, every innovation, every resource he could gather had been poured into its creation.
At its core, the suit was powered by two revolutionary foundations: Extremis and Tony's research into the Mind Stone.
Thanks to Extremis, which Tony had enhanced with own knowledge on his own version of the SSS, Tony had achieved a permanent biological fusion with the suit. It was no longer just armor—it was part of his body. His enhanced physiology, already modified through his own version of the Super Soldier Serum, had been elevated to staggering levels. Extremis allowed his body to regenerate, adapt, and even absorb damage in ways that bordered on immortality.
Unlike his previous models, such as the symbiote-based Mark 43, the Mark 48 had no need to feed on energy to maintain itself. There was no need to speak commands or even think them consciously—the armor moved with him as naturally as his own limbs.
But Tony hadn't stopped there. He had also integrated elents derived from the Mind Stone into the suit. Using that research, he created a pure psychic link with the Mark 48—one that not only enhanced his control over it, but allowed him to manipulate the very energies it generated.
Through this connection, Tony could shape the suit's energy output into nearly any form: gravitational fields, laser beams, solar blasts, kinetic shockwaves, thermal eruptions, radiation pulses, electromagnetism, photon Manipulation, pure unfiltered energy and more.
And that led to the second reason behind the suit's na: Iron Marvel.
Tony nad it in tribute to one of the most powerful and well known energy manipulators in the MCU—Captain Marvel.
As for the matter of Uru—the enchanted tal used in forging Thor's legendary hamr—Tony had decided to leave it entirely in the hands of lissa. After all, she had developed a growing fascination, so might even call it an obsession, with the idea of wielding the power of Thor. Ever since the mont she briefly held Mjölnir and experienced its divine energy.
Back on the battlefield, Tony was still imrsed in conversation with Friday, his AI companion.
"As for my second reason," Tony began casually, his voice laced with both sarcasm and mild irritation, "I don't really like Endeavor all that much. Never did, actually. So I figured I'd see just how far I could push his buttons before he completely snapped."
A few dozen ters away, Endeavor stood, his imposing figure slightly hunched as he took deep, labored breaths. The recent clash had drained him more than he expected. Sweat dripped from his forehead, soaking into the collar of his fla-resistant hero costu. His chest rose and fell like a furnace working overti. He looked down at the cracked, scorched earth ahead of him with a contemplative expression—frustrated, humbled, and uncertain.
But his mont of reflection was cut short.
A growing shadow crept over him, growing larger with each passing second. Sensing the threat, Endeavor snapped his head upward just in ti to see a bloodied, airborne Bakugo plumting toward him like a missile. The boy's body was battered and bruised, his face sared with blood, but his will remained unbroken. His hand clutched the pin on his grenade-shaped gauntlet with fierce determination.
"Don't think I'm gonna let you forget I exist!" Bakugo bellowed mid-air, his voice raw with fury and pain.
With a defiant pull of the pin, his gauntlets roared to life, releasing a blinding storm of violent explosions. Blasts erupted in rapid succession, lighting up the sky like a hellish firework display. The force of the explosions hurled Endeavor backward, his body smashing into the ground with a thunderous crash that echoed across the testing field.
But Endeavor was far from finished.
Amid the blasts and smoke, his flaming hand shot upward. With incredible precision, he seized Bakugo's gauntlet mid-flight, crushing the reinforced equipnt in his grasp. His fingers wrapped around Bakugo's exposed wrist like a vice, and with a brutal twist of his body, he slamd the explosive-wielding student down into the concrete with bone-jarring force.
Bakugo's body rebounded violently, blood spraying from his mouth as his eyes rolled back. He gasped for air, his chest convulsing, while Endeavor stood above him, smoke curling from his scorched skin. The Pro Hero bore the marks of battle—first and second-degree burns laced his arms and torso—but he remained upright, rage still burning in his eyes.
Endeavor turned his gaze toward Tony.
Clink.
A tallic sound interrupted him. His eyes shifted downward instinctively—and widened in disbelief.
Bakugo, bloodied and bruised beyond recognition, had sohow clung to his ankle. A tal cuff, which was handed to them at the start of the exam, was wrapped tightly around Endeavor's ankles. His free hand trembled as he slowly raised his middle finger and aid it toward Endeavor.
"That's what you get," Bakugo growled through clenched teeth, "for getting cocky and ignoring … you shitty number two…"
Tony, watching from afar, blinked slowly in pure disbelief. Even with all his knowledge and battle experience, he hadn't seen that coming.
"Friday…" Tony muttered, his expression caught between awe and confusion. "I'm blaming you for this. You distracted with your questions."
There was a pause.
"I'll submit my letter of resignation imdiately. Deepest apologies, boss," Friday replied dryly.
********************************************
31 advance Chapters on: patreon/Shadow_D_Monarch3
User Comments
0 comments from readers