After Drex Valen discovered that the hell-born creatures had no cells and no genes, he lost interest almost imdiately.
He could not understand them, and anything he could not aningfully analyze was just noise.
That left the Ancient One in a far more comfortable position. With Drex standing guard, not even a bug from underground could sneak close enough to bother her.
Now that he had stepped into the Father Tier through the power of the dragon, Drex honestly did not value that dragon power as highly as he had at first.
To him, it was a tool. A very useful one, but still only a tool for dealing with mystical threats.
His own strength ca first.
Then, suddenly, the hell dinsion shuddered.
Drex looked up and saw the Ancient One rise smoothly off the ground. One intricate magic circle after another unfolded around her, layered in perfect sequence like rotating gears of light.
"It is enough," she said.
The two of them passed back through the portal and returned to Kamar-Taj.
There, Drex saw the Ancient One holding a crystal sphere in her right hand. Inside it was a tiny miniature model of the sealed fragnt.
With a turn of her wrist, the crystal sphere and the model vanished.
"I will head back now, Ancient One," Drex said.
"Drex." The Ancient One hesitated for a mont. "I do not have much ti left, so…"
She stopped there, but she knew he would understand what she ant.
Drex did not turn around. He simply paused for a beat, then disappeared.
The mont he returned, the Black Queen contacted him.
Tony Stark had not given up after Stark Industries went bankrupt. In fact, he had moved quickly and founded a new company called New Stark Industries.
This ti, though, the new Stark Industries did not include the weapons division. Tony had shifted his focus to clean energy and a few other fields.
But over the past five days, the Black Queen had detected an unidentified flying object moving above Tony Stark's villa at speeds above Mach 2.
It had been called unidentified, but Blade Tech Industries had three satellites that were ahead of the world by a wide margin, and the 10K footage left no room for doubt.
It was a suit of armor.
Tony Stark had not quit. He had still built the Iron Suit, only this ti he had no intention of selling it.
"Keep watching him closely," Drex said at once. "He will probably head to Afghanistan to play hero."
Tony Stark spent the next stretch catching up on everything that had happened during his disappearance.
Drex Valen's inventions alone were enough to blow his mind.
The magnetic flux nuclear fusion reactor, for example, was stronger than the palladium cold fusion reactor Tony had once built. It ran longer, delivered more output, and did not require constant elent replacents.
The AIDS cure was another obvious shock.
But what really hit Tony hard was the rise of superheroes.
The Fantastic Three, the Spider-Silk of Queens, and Drex Valen's Dark Knight all gave Tony the sa feeling: he was not the only one out there anymore.
Then he saw the reports coming out of Afghanistan, detailing the atrocities of the terrorist group called the Ten Rings.
A few nights ago, after finishing a flight test, Tony Stark made up his mind.
He was going to Afghanistan.
He was going to deal with the Ten Rings, and he was going to rescue the people who had kidnapped him.
Mark 3 gave him more than enough confidence to do it.
After all, the Mark 3 was built from titanium-gold alloy and secondary Kryptonite supplied by Blade Tech Industries.
Stark Industries may have gone bankrupt, but Tony Stark himself was still wealthy. He still had plenty of weapons patents bringing in money.
Even though secondary Kryptonite had risen to ten thousand dollars per gram, Tony still bought a lot of it.
He suited up in his villa, sealed the armor, and launched into the sky.
He was heading to Afghanistan to deliver justice.
"Sir, we have been locked on," J.A.R.V.I.S. said suddenly.
"How is that possible? J.A.R.V.I.S., nobody can lock onto …"
He had barely finished speaking when two blazing tails appeared behind him.
"This is United States airspace. Unidentified flying object ahead, land imdiately!"
"Repeat, land imdiately. Failure to comply will result in opening fire!"
Tony's face darkened.
"Damn it, it's the Air Force's War Machines!"
"Sir, we have been locked on. Their War Machine system is more advanced than mine. I cannot breach it."
J.A.R.V.I.S. sounded urgent now. No room for stubborn heroics.
The two War Machines behind him raised their cannons and aid directly at Tony Stark.
"Sir!"
"Fine, fine, I surrender!"
Tony raised both hands.
A mont later, he was escorted to an Air Force base by the two War Machines, one on each side like ard chaperones.
"What is that? A War Machine made by the Chinese?" the colonel at the base muttered, studying the red-and-gold armor with a frown.
It did not look like Drex Valen's style. The color sche looked more like sothing from China. Had they finally reverse-engineered their own War Machine?
"I request to see Colonel Rhodes," Tony said after opening his faceplate.
The colonel blinked. "So it really is you, Tony Stark."
He looked surprised, though maybe not entirely.
After all, before Tony vanished, he had already built his own War Machine and announced he was going to challenge Drex Valen with it. Then nothing had happened.
A year and more passed, and everyone had eventually forgotten about him, rembering only Drex Valen's War Machine instead.
Nobody had expected Tony Stark to actually finish an Iron Suit.
That changed the aning of things entirely.
Tony did get to et Rhodes, but Rhodes brought him bad news.
The military had their eyes on the suit.
"Why?" Tony asked sourly. "They already have Drex Valen's War Machines."
"You know how it is," Rhodes said. "The President does not want Drex Valen becoming a monopoly. He wants to break his one-man dominance."
Tony was escorted into the base, and Rhodes had been completely blindsided when he first heard the news. Tony Stark had been taken to an Air Force base?
What had he done? Flirt with a commander's daughter or sothing?
Rhodes had practically panicked and flown over in a helicopter, only to learn the truth. Tony Stark had built a suit of armor, not reported it, and then tried to fly out of the country.
That was never going to fly.
Now that War Machines were basically deployed everywhere, Tony had been spotted instantly, and the rest followed naturally.
"Tony Stark built an Iron Suit and got detained by the Air Force?"
Back on the other side, S.H.I.E.L.D. had received the sa report.
Nick Fury stared at the news and thought, as always, that Tony Stark was exactly what he had always been: the only genius in this era who might possibly catch up to Drex Valen.
At the sa ti, he understood exactly what the United States wanted.
They wanted Stark's suit.
And Hydra was excited too.
The strategic value and future potential of the War Machine had already been proven over the last year and a half. Super soldiers, Winter Soldiers, all that old hardware suddenly looked a lot less impressive compared to a War Machine.
This was the future.
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