Iron Heart (Part 2)

"…Tony won't see me right now. I know he must be very disappointed, but I hope you can tell him that the Air Force isn't satisfied with the technology he gave them. They want more… My superior, General Johnson, once revealed that they want to join forces with the Army to pressure Stark Industries…"

"Or perhaps they have more sinister plans."

Rhodey said on the phone. Schiller asked him, "Have you been excluded from the center of power in this circle? Why? Because you wavered?"

Rhodey was silent for a moment and said, "No, General Johnson never really trusted me because I used to be under General Old Andro. The two of them had a very bad relationship."

"So that's why he's forcing you, right?"

Schiller sighed and said, "What if you can't withstand the pressure there?"

Before Rhodey could speak, Schiller added, "Tony isn't seeing you now not because of anything related to the Air Force. There are some internal problems within Stark Industries. He needs some time to himself and hasn't left his house for days."

Rhodey's tone remained flat, much like his personality, always serious and seemingly rigid. He said, "I think we all know that Stark Industries isn't a monolith. There must be someone within it colluding with the military, and that person must be high-ranking."

He continued, "The military is getting information about Stark Industries' technology too quickly and in too much detail. This is abnormal. Although I don't have more information for now, I don't want Tony to be betrayed."

"You want me to tell him about this? But perhaps you haven't considered that he already knows. The reason he's dragging this out…"

"I know, he's too soft-hearted. Otherwise, he wouldn't have compromised with the military because of me. But this matter is too serious. If he continues to be so indecisive, something big will happen…"

As he was speaking, Schiller heard a noise. He turned his head and saw two shooting stars streak across the sky, followed by two dazzling beams that flashed across the sky. A violent explosion sounded at the edge of the sky. The two beams, intertwined, fell downwards. Schiller looked out the window as he spoke to the person on the phone, "...Something big has already happened."

Schiller hung up the phone and transformed into Gray Mist, passing through the streets of Manhattan to chase the landing spot of the two streaks of light, arriving at a derelict warehouse in the western district of New York.

This landing spot must have been chosen by Stark, because it's a rare abandoned area within the city. Only by crashing here would he avoid harming ordinary people.

Schiller slowly condensed his form. Before he could enter, his phone rang again. Rhodey spoke urgently on the other end of the line, "Send me a satellite location. I'm coming over right now. Tony might need my help!"

Holding the phone, Schiller flashed to the roof of the warehouse and looked down.

There, Iron Man, clad in his gold and red armor, was locked in combat with a giant robot.

That robot wasn't Iron Monger.

It was entirely black, with gold accents on some joints. It was slightly larger than Iron Monger but more menacing.

Schiller said into the phone, "Things have changed. You'd better come quickly."

The battle below was fierce. Iron Man wasn't losing to the giant robot, but during the fall, he had to carry the robot to an uninhabited area. Therefore, he didn't have time to adjust his angle upon landing, and one side of his armor was already a bit stiff.

This wasn't like his usual fights against street thugs when saving people. Even with Jarvis's intelligent calculation system, Iron Man was struggling to cope. It was clear that this robot seemed to have been designed specifically to counter him.

Iron Man flew into the air, performed a low-altitude dive, grabbed the robot's waist, and slammed it into the wall. After a violent impact, a large section of the roof collapsed, crushing them both.

Iron Man was in worse shape. The armor on his entire shoulder was damaged, and one arm was almost completely immobile.

However, the behemoth wasn't faring much better. After being slammed hard and then electrocuted, a large chunk of its cockpit was ripped off. But there was no pilot inside; it seemed to be remotely controlled.

Discovering this, Iron Man devised a plan to deal with it. He pretended his armor was malfunctioning, crawled out from under the steel frames that had fallen from the roof, and then feigned defeat, collapsing on the ground.

The large robot also struggled to climb out from the steel frames. Seeing that Iron Man had fallen, it directly picked up a steel bar and intended to drive it into Iron Man's chest.

Just as it leaned its upper body forward to exert force, Iron Man on the ground suddenly surged up, kicked its knee, and then delivered an elbow strike to the robot's head.

The upper body of the large robot was designed to be too bulky. Although very strong, its balance was inevitably compromised. It took Iron Man's elbow strike squarely, wobbled, and fell to one side.

Just as Iron Man was about to repeat his tactic of using electricity combined with impact to defeat it, the large robot suddenly began to smoke. Jarvis started issuing frantic alarms. Iron Man rapidly retreated, but he was still a step too slow.

A violent explosion erupted in the warehouse, creating a massive mushroom cloud. The roar could be heard for several blocks. It had self-destructed.

Clearly, the designer of this large robot didn't make its upper body so large for no reason.

It contained a large bomb, and the yield was significant.

When Schiller pulled Stark out of the armor, his face was covered in blood. He had at least three broken ribs, and his ankle and arm also appeared to be fractured.

Stark himself truly possessed no superpowers. While his brain was highly developed, his limbs were clearly far inferior.

Stark struggled to raise his arm and wipe the blood from his eyes. Seeing that it was Schiller, he let out a sigh of relief and said, "In my pocket… the phone… Jarvis will call for another suit to check if anyone is around… The explosion was too big…"

Clearly, his head had also suffered some impact. Schiller flipped open his eyelids to check and found severe conjunctival congestion. He took out a small bottle, poured out a pill, and had Stark take it.

The high-concentration painkiller worked very well. Soon, Stark said, "This guy was targeting me. It had strong countermeasures against my armor, and it could even predict my movement routes. I can't believe it…"

"Can't believe what? Can't believe the person who knows you best might have betrayed you? If you have that much time, build a few more suits, and you could have won with one punch each."

"I know, I shouldn't have hidden in the lab and avoided it, but I just wanted to process this fact. You can't expect me to be emotionless like a zombie."

Stark looked extremely despondent now, his face etched with weariness and disappointment.

Stark coughed heavily a few times, a trace of blood flowing from the corner of his mouth. Clearly, the impact had also affected his respiratory tract. A sense of euphoria from the high-concentration painkiller surged through him. He seemed entranced and murmured:

"I knew his friends wouldn't be good people, just as rotten as him. I thought…"

"No, perhaps he's the one who's right. Stark isn't worth entrusting with anything; he will always disappoint…"

Schiller laid Stark's head down and felt his pulse, finding his heart rate a bit low. He wanted to take Stark away directly, but Stark, as if drunk, refused to leave no matter what.

It was evident that his will to survive was not high at the moment.

So, Schiller could only sit down cross-legged beside him. Beside them were the wreckage of the Iron Man suit. The large pit caused by the robot's self-destruction was smoking nearby. The entire warehouse had been blown apart, littered with rebar and concrete debris. Everything looked like a post-apocalyptic ruin.

Schiller asked Stark, "Obadiah was more like your father than Howard, wasn't he?"

Stark didn't answer him, appearing to have fallen asleep. After a while, he slowly said, "When I built the first robot, Uncle Obadiah was very happy. He said I was a genius, just like my father."

"I always heard my father's name from him. He described him as a perfect person – intelligent, upright, resolute… righteous…"

"In my past memories, whenever he mentioned Howard's name, it was always with praise and nostalgia."

"But later, I started to dislike hearing that name more and more, and he stopped mentioning it..."

Stark's voice was hoarse, he was speaking breathlessly, he said:

"I saw a group photo of them, placed on his desk. In it, they were both young and full of spirit..."

"Perhaps like you and Rhodey," Schiller said.

"No, that's different, completely different."

"I'm nothing like Howard, not at all. And Rhodey isn't like Obadiah. Rhodey and I are complete opposites. We would never be their carbon copies, absolutely not..."

After that, Stark fell silent. The painkillers quickly lulled him to sleep.

When Rhodey arrived and saw Stark's severe injuries, he punched the wreckage of the mech hard. Schiller said to him, "Right now, more than his physical injuries, I think his mental state is a bigger problem."

"Aren't you a psychologist? Can't you counsel him?"

"I am a psychologist, but I'm not God. Clearly, he's hit a dead end. He believes everything he's suffering now is retribution—his retribution, his father's retribution, Stark Industries' retribution."

"He wants to hand it all over?"

"That's something you'll have to ask him. He once said he would never back down for his family, but now it seems he really does want to give it all up himself."

Rhodey glanced back at Stark lying on the ground and said, "If there's one price he has to pay, perhaps it's for his incredibly intelligent mind, for that sensitive heart."

"He said you two are complete opposites," Schiller said. "He has an iron suit, what about you?"

"Do you have a heart strong enough?"

Rhodey turned back, looking at the scrapped mech in front of him, and said nothing.