Xu Wenwu waved his hand dismissively, the gesture carrying the casual indifference of soone who'd witnessed a thousand years of human suffering.
"Raza is dead. The specific details of right and wrong no longer concern ." His tone remained conversational, almost pleasant. "If you wish to hold accountable for my organization's actions, then I accept responsibility. It changes nothing."
The casual dismissal—the absolute lack of weight given to Tony's trauma—made the billionaire's jaw clench hard enough that his teeth ached.
Before he'd t Ying Li, Xu Wenwu had overthrown governnts for sport. Kidnapping a weapons manufacturer, regardless of how wealthy or important, barely registered on the scale of atrocities he'd committed across ten centuries.
Tony's voice dropped to sothing cold and precise. "Since you're accepting responsibility, I'm going to put a hole in your chest. Let you feel what I felt, bleeding out in a cave while terrorists tried to force to build weapons."
He raised both palms, repulsors glowing with building energy. "Don't worry though. Smith will save your life before you die. Tournant rules."
Xu Wenwu smiled—genuine amusent rather than mockery. "Little devil, show what that suffering taught you."
The ten rings began to spin faster, building montum.
In the audience, Pepper pressed her hand to her mouth, mory surfacing unbidden. The video she'd found on Tony's computer. The cave. The crude arc reactor keeping shrapnel from his heart. The man who'd erged from Afghanistan had been fundantally changed.
And the organization responsible stood on the arena floor, treating it all like ancient history.
"Co on, Tony!" Pepper shouted, surprising herself. "Beat him!"
Throughout the spectator sections, recognition rippled through those familiar with Iron Man's origin story. The kidnapping that created the superhero. The rescue by Smith Doyle. The closure of Stark Industries' weapons division.
And now Tony faced the ultimate architect of his trauma.
Tony didn't waste words on further conversation.
His right palm cannon fired, a concentrated beam of repulsor energy that could punch through tank armor.
Xu Wenwu didn't dodge.
One of the ten rings detached from his forearm, spinning outward in a blur of blue light. It intercepted the repulsor blast effortlessly, the energy dispersing against the ring's surface like water against stone.
Tony's expression hardened behind the faceplate. Shang-Chi and Xialing had possessed skill, but nothing like this level of casual power.
Good, Tony thought grimly. I wanted this to hurt.
Xu Wenwu didn't pause after deflecting the attack. He surged forward, the ten rings glowing brilliant blue as they channeled energy older than human civilization.
Tony stood his ground, both palms raised. "JARVIS, rapid fire."
The repulsors fired in alternating pulses, creating a wall of energy between them.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
The rings danced through the air like living things, intercepting each blast with precision that bordered on precognition. Xu Wenwu continued advancing, not even slowing.
The distance closed to thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.
Tony smiled behind his faceplate.
"Surprise," he said quietly.
The shoulder-mounted micro-missile pods deployed with chanical precision. Dozens of miniaturized projectiles erupted from Tony's armor in a single devastating salvo.
The missiles closed the distance in a fraction of a second.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM!
The explosions rged into a single roaring conflagration that engulfed Xu Wenwu completely. Fire blood across the arena floor, heat washing over the spectators even from their distant positions.
"Father!" Xialing scread, half-rising from her seat.
Shang-Chi grabbed her arm, but his own face had gone pale with worry.
The Death Dealer and the other Ten Rings commanders remained calm, almost bored. They'd seen Xu Wenwu survive worse than conventional explosives. Much worse.
Through the smoke and fla, sothing moved.
A blue ring shot forward like a bullet, trailing fire.
CLANG!
The ring struck Tony's chest dead center, the impact transmitting through the armor with brutal force. Diagnostics scread warnings as the chest plate's integrity dropped thirty percent from a single hit.
Tony flew backward, repulsors engaging automatically to arrest his montum. He stopped five feet from the arena's edge, the gold-titanium alloy of his boots scraping across the tal floor.
"Shit," Tony breathed, reading the damage reports. The ring had hit with enough force to dent secondary adamantium. His gold-titanium alloy had nearly crumpled.
Should have worn the adamantium suit, he thought with dark humor. Pride cos before getting your ass kicked by a thousand-year-old warlord.
The smoke cleared.
Xu Wenwu stood in the center of a blast crater, completely unhard. Not even his clothes showed scorch marks. The ten rings orbited him slowly, a defensive constellation that had apparently shielded him from an explosion that would have vaporized a normal human.
The ring that had struck Tony flew back to join its siblings.
The audience erupted in shocked exclamations.
"How is he not even singed?" soone shouted.
"Those rings," Shuri murmured, making rapid notes. "They're generating so kind of energy field. Kinetic absorption? Force redirection?"
"Magic," Karl Mordo said quietly from his section, mystic senses analyzing the rings' nature. "Or sothing so close to magic that the distinction becos aningless."
Tony didn't give Xu Wenwu ti to counter-attack.
His boot jets flared to maximum output, launching him skyward. The arena fell away below as he climbed, gaining altitude and distance.
Compartnts opened across his armor's surface—back, legs, arms. Bombs deployed on chanical arms, each one a miniaturized marvel of destructive engineering.
Tony had held these in reserve during the previous tournant, waiting for an opponent who required overwhelming force.
He'd found one.
"JARVIS, weapons free. Full saturation bombardnt."
"Executing, sir."
Tony beca a one-man bomber squadron.
The first wave dropped as he flew over Xu Wenwu's position. Explosions erupted across the arena floor, cratering the gold-titanium alloy surface that was supposed to withstand superhuman combat.
Tony banked, circled, and made another pass.
More bombs. More explosions. The detonations rged into a continuous roar that made speech impossible and forced spectators to cover their ears.
Fire engulfed the entire fighting platform. Smoke billowed upward in a black column visible for miles. The heat beca intense enough that the holographic projectors closest to the arena began to malfunction.
Eddie Brock had retreated to the edge of the spectator section, one hand shielding his face from the thermal wash. "My god," he muttered. "And people wonder why I sold my Dragon Ball."
Venom's voice echoed in his mind: We would not survive this. The fire would kill us instantly.
I know, Eddie thought. That's why we're staying very far away from angry billionaires in flying tanks.
Among the Eternals, Phastos watched with professional interest. "Single-operator powered armor with that level of ordinance capacity. Impressive miniaturization." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "The energy source is unusual though. Not standard power cells."
"Can you build better?" Sersi asked, half-teasing.
Phastos snorted. "With my hands and raw materials? Absolutely. But I'll admit—for human technology, that's remarkably sophisticated."
The bombardnt continued until Tony's ordinance was completely depleted. He hovered above the inferno he'd created, repulsors keeping him stable as he surveyed the destruction.
The arena floor had been transford into a moonscape of overlapping craters. tal had lted and re-solidified in twisted formations. Small fires still burned in scattered patches where fuel residue ignited.
And Smith Doyle hadn't moved from his position outside the ring.
Which ant Xu Wenwu was still alive.
"JARVIS, target scan."
"Negative, sir. Thermal bloom is preventing infrared detection. Scouter module is offline. I cannot acquire the target."
Tony's hands clenched into fists, servos in the gauntlets whining softly.
"Then we wait for the smoke to clear."
Below, in the center of the devastation, sothing moved through the flas.
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