The people in the room had a lot to say about one very particular absentee boss.
Mostly because they couldn't beat him in an argunt.
"Relax, Deputy Director Fury. I've been waiting for this day," Tony Stark said with the smug confidence of a man who'd already won the room before anyone else had spoken.
Then he pulled out his phone, swiped across the screen, and projected a hologram in front of everyone.
An Iron Legion.
No. Not one Iron Legion.
Thousands of them.
Different models, different loadouts, all unmanned and all under JARVIS control. Their operational efficiency dwarfed anything a human pilot could manage. Each unit worked as part of a larger battle network, a distributed combat system designed for deploynt in a crisis.
Tony's orbital contingency system, Veronica, was part of the package too.
It was a separate ergency platform developed by Tony Stark and Dr. Bruce Banner. During developnt, the Hulk himself had even participated in live testing.
The system was designed to be stored in orbit and called down rapidly when needed.
And yes, the na Veronica ca from a comic-book joke.
In Archie, Veronica was the rich, glamorous girl involved with Archie, while Betty was her rival.
Banner's old love interest had been nad Betty.
So naturally, the armor designed to beat Banner beca Veronica.
Tony's version of Veronica included multiple modules. The Anti-Hulk armor was only one component. The rest handled support, logistics, and battlefield recovery, including independent satellite communication, autonomous deploynt, damage control, spare-part replacent, and prison-style containnt units.
But Tony had gone a step further in this universe.
He had fed Veronica data on a huge number of heroes and villains, and the system could generate tailored counterasures from that information.
In other words, Veronica had beco a weaponized response platform.
Now its target was vampires.
Which ant the whole thing was basically a slaughter waiting to happen.
Tony Stark's Iron Legion could already go toe-to-toe with major cosmic threats if it had to.
Gamora, in the original tiline, was already considered one of the galaxy's top assassins.
That alone told you how badly the Marvel universe lacked top-tier combat power.
Drex Valen knew enough about the setting to understand that most so-called "top tiers" were either limited, missing, or too far apart to matter most of the ti.
Still, for vampires?
This was overkill.
And the cleanup rate showed it.
The pace of vampire extermination jumped by more than tenfold almost imdiately.
anwhile, Drex had not been idle either.
He had tracked the vampires straight to their nest.
He already knew about the mixed-blood troublemakers, since they weren't exactly subtle about using technology. Black Queen had overheard their conversations with almost insulting ease.
And with Drex's super-hearing, electromagnetic perception, and gravity-based information sensing, vampires had basically no privacy if he decided to listen in.
"Results from S.W.O.R.D. are excellent, sir," Black Queen reported.
"Expected," Drex said. "But this batch of mixed-blood vampires is probably going to feel it in the bones. With vampires from all fifty states gathering in one place, not one of them should get to go ho."
His expression stayed calm.
"The politicians and capitalists can be the cleanup crew."
That was the ugly truth of it.
The remaining vampires were parasites with money and influence, but they depended on a much larger population of lesser vampires for security and reach. Once the lower ranks were stripped away, the purebloods beca exposed corpses waiting for scavengers.
The real predators in human society, the greedy politicians and capitalists, would tear them apart better than S.W.O.R.D. ever could.
Let them.
They'd be far more patient about stripping the vampires for parts, favors, research access, and property.
Drex didn't particularly understand how the vampires had chosen such a disastrous strategy, but it no longer mattered.
He had already located the pureblood nest.
And the purebloods had already found out what the mixed-bloods were doing in New York.
They were killing people.
Slaughtering civilians in broad daylight.
"The idiots," one elder said, his face perfectly controlled even as his voice turned cold. "What is Lawrence doing?"
Another elder frowned.
"Is he trying to start a war?"
One of the council mbers who had either accepted Lawrence's gifts or agreed with his logic raised his voice.
"Lawrence wants Arica to see what happens when the mixed-bloods lose their food supply. That's all this is."
The council wasn't united.
That much was obvious.
Human politics weren't the only place where factions split over principle, greed, and survival.
"He doesn't understand what the humans actually fear," the eldest vampire said sharply. "It's not just the blood. It's our numbers. It's how well we hide. Once the mixed-blood horde is gone, humans will move against us imdiately."
He turned to his people.
"Notify every mixed-blood and pureblood family in the other regions. Bring them here. Now."
His expression hardened.
"If this goes the way I think it will, humanity is going to make a major move."
And why wouldn't they?
Not long ago, Dracula had been killed by Blade.
Then Deacon Frost's attempt to summon the Blood God had also been cut down by Blade.
Every one of those failures had made the vampires more nervous.
The elder knew how the summoning worked. He didn't need the vampire Bible to understand it. What they had lacked was a proper Daywalker's blood. When Deacon Frost finally found one, the council had allowed him to temporarily control vampire leadership and brought him twelve pureblood nobles to work with.
They'd wanted to know whether he could truly summon the Blood God.
Then Frost got cut apart by Blade.
If the summoning had worked, the Blood God would have swept across the world like a storm and turned every living human into a vampire.
No more human threat.
No more need to fear extinction.
Then a loud explosion shook the building.
One elder shot to his feet.
"Damn it. Is humanity already moving?"
If that was the case, humans had prepared this far in advance.
Then the house exploded too.
Floating in the air outside was a strange creature with green skin, two antennae, a bald head, and a bizarre outfit.
The pureblood guards rushed out and froze the mont they saw it.
"It's a monster!"
"Oh hell, it's a monster!"
And they knew exactly what that ant.
Wolf-Level monsters already required firearms to deal with effectively.
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