"...Tony refuses to see me right now. I know he must be terribly 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 even more schemes in mind."
Rhodey spoke over the phone. Schiller asked him, "Have you been excluded from the center of power in that circle? Why? Because you wavered?"
Rhodey fell silent for a moment before saying, "No. General Johnson has never trusted me, because I used to serve under General Andro. The two of them have a very poor relationship."
"So that was why he forced you to go, right?"
Schiller sighed. "What will you do if you can't withstand the pressure over there?"
Before Rhodey could answer, Schiller continued, "Tony isn't refusing to see you because of the Air Force. There are some problems within Stark Industries. He needs time to recover, and he hasn't left the house in days."
Rhodey's tone remained as flat as ever. Like the man himself, he was always serious and seemed rigid. "I think we all know that Stark Industries isn't united. Someone among them must be colluding with the military, and that person has to be part of the upper management."
He continued, "The military has obtained information about Stark Industries' technology far too quickly and in far too much detail. That isn't normal. Although I don't know any more at the moment, I still don't want Tony to be betrayed."
"You want me to tell him this? But perhaps you haven't considered that he already knows. That's why he's dragged things out until now..."
"I know. He's too soft-hearted. Otherwise, he wouldn't have compromised with the military because of me. But this is too serious. If he keeps hesitating like this, something terrible is bound to happen..."
Just then, Schiller heard something. He turned and saw two meteors streak past the window, followed by two dazzling beams flashing through the air. A violent explosion sounded at the far end of the sky, and the two lights tangled together as they plummeted downward. Schiller looked out the window and said into the phone, "...Something terrible has already happened."
Schiller hung up. He transformed directly into Gray Mist and passed through the streets of Manhattan, following the landing point of the two streaks of light until he reached an abandoned warehouse in western New York.
Stark must have chosen this landing site, because it was one of the rare abandoned sections of the city. Only by crashing here could he avoid harming ordinary people.
Schiller slowly reassembled his form. Before he could go inside, the phone rang again. Rhodey spoke urgently from the other end, "Send me a satellite location. I'm coming right away. Tony might need my help!"
With the phone still in hand, Schiller flashed onto the warehouse roof and looked down.
Below, Iron Man, clad in red-and-gold armor, was grappling with a massive robot.
That robot was not Iron Monger.
Its entire body was pitch-black, with gold accents around some of its joints. It was slightly larger than Iron Monger, but far more menacing.
Schiller said into the phone, "Things have changed. You'd better get here quickly."
The battle below was fierce. Iron Man was not incapable of defeating the giant robot, but during the crash, he had needed to steer it toward an uninhabited area. He had not had time to adjust his angle upon landing, and one side of his armor had become somewhat unresponsive.
This was not like beating up street thugs while saving people. Even with Jarvis's intelligent calculation system, Iron Man was struggling. It was clear that the robot seemed to have been built specifically to deal with him.
Iron Man flew into the air, swooped low, wrapped his arms around the robot's waist, and slammed it into the wall. After a violent impact, a large section of the roof collapsed and buried them both.
Iron Man was worse off. The armor around his entire shoulder had been damaged, and he could barely raise one arm.
But the big brute had not fared much better. After being rammed hard and then shocked with electricity, a large chunk of its cockpit had been smashed away. Yet there was no pilot inside. Someone appeared to be controlling it remotely.
Having discovered this, Iron Man came up with a way to deal with it. He first pretended that his armor had malfunctioned, crawled out from beneath the fallen steel beams, and then acted as if he had been defeated and collapsed onto the ground.
The giant robot also struggled out from the steel beams. Seeing Iron Man already down, it grabbed a steel bar and tried to drive it into Iron Man's chest.
Just as it leaned its entire upper body forward to put force behind the strike, Iron Man suddenly sprang up from the ground and kicked its knee. Then he followed with an elbow strike to the robot's head.
The giant robot's upper body had been designed too bulky. Though powerful, it was inevitably unstable below the waist. After taking Iron Man's elbow squarely, it swayed and toppled to one side.
Just as Iron Man intended to repeat the same trick, using an electric shock and a collision to defeat it, smoke suddenly began to rise from the giant robot. Jarvis started blaring warnings frantically. Iron Man retreated at top speed, but he was still one step too slow.
A violent explosion rose within the warehouse, forming a huge Mushroom cloud. The roar could be heard several blocks away. It had self-destructed.
Clearly, there was a reason its designer had made the giant robot's upper body so large.
There had been a massive bomb inside it, with plenty of yield.
When Schiller dragged Stark out of the armor, his face was covered in blood. At least three of his ribs were broken, and it seemed his ankle and arm were fractured as well.
Stark himself truly had no superpowers. His brain might have been extraordinarily developed, but his limbs were clearly much less impressive.
Stark struggled to raise his arm and wipe the blood from his eyes. Seeing Schiller, he sighed in relief and said, "In my pocket... phone... Jarvis will call another suit... Check whether there's anyone nearby... The explosion was too big..."
Clearly, his head had taken some impact as well. Schiller lifted his eyelids to examine him and found severe bloodshot in his eyes. He took out a small bottle, poured out a pill, and had Stark swallow it.
The high-concentration painkiller worked well. Soon, Stark said, "That thing came for me. It was highly effective against my armor. It could even predict my movements. I really can't believe it..."
"Can't believe what? Can't believe that the person who knows you best might have betrayed you? Instead of dwelling on it, build a few more suits. One punch each, and you'll win."
"I know. I shouldn't hide in the lab and run away from it. But I just wanted to process this fact. You can't expect me to be an emotionless zombie."
Stark looked extremely despondent now. His face was filled with dejection and loss.
Stark coughed heavily several times, and a thread of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. The impact had clearly done no favors to his airways either. A sense of euphoria from the high-concentration painkiller surged through him. As if entranced, he murmured:
"I knew his friends couldn't be good people. They're as rotten as he is. I thought..."
"No, or maybe he was right. Stark isn't worth trusting. He only ever lets people down..."
Schiller laid Stark's head flat and checked his pulse, finding that his heart rate was somewhat low. He wanted to take Stark away directly, but Stark was like a drunk man and refused to leave no matter what.
It was obvious that he had little will to survive right now.
So Schiller could only sit cross-legged beside him. The wreckage of the Iron Man suit lay nearby, while the enormous crater left by the giant robot's self-destruction still smoked in the distance. The entire warehouse had been blasted apart, littered with steel bars and chunks of concrete. Everything looked like ruins after the end of the world.
Schiller asked Stark, "Obadiah is more like your father than Howard is, isn't he?"
Stark did not answer. He seemed to have fallen asleep, but after a while, he slowly said, "When I made my first robot, Uncle Obadiah was very happy. He said I was a genius like my father."
"I always heard my father's name from him. He described him as someone flawless—smart, upright, steadfast... righteous..."
"In my old memories, whenever he mentioned the name Howard, he always did so with nothing but praise and nostalgia."
"But later, I started disliking that name more and more, so he stopped mentioning it..."
Stark's voice was hoarse. He was nearly out of breath as he spoke.
"I saw a photograph of them together. It was on his desk. In it, they were both young and full of ambition..."
"Perhaps like you and Rhodey," Schiller said.
"No, it's different. Completely different."
"I'm nothing like Howard. Not at all. And Rhodey won't become Obadiah either. Rhodey and I are complete opposites. We will never become replicas of them. Never..."
After that, Stark made no more sound. The painkiller quickly sent him into unconsciousness.
When Rhodey arrived and saw how severely Stark was injured, he slammed his fist hard into the wreckage of the armor. Schiller told him, "Compared to his physical injuries, I think his mental state is the greater problem now."
"Aren't you a psychiatrist? Can't you talk him through it?"
"I'm a psychiatrist, not God. Clearly, he has reached a dead end. He thinks everything happening to him now is retribution—his retribution, his father's retribution, Stark Industries' retribution."
"He wants to hand everything over?"
"You'll have to ask him that yourself. He once said that for the sake of his family, he would never retreat. But now, it seems that he truly wants to give it all up himself."
Rhodey turned and glanced at Stark lying on the ground. "If there is one price he has to pay, perhaps it is for that brilliant mind of his, and for that sensitive heart."
"He said the two of you are complete opposites." Schiller said, "He has a suit of iron armor. What about you?"
"Do you have a heart strong enough to stand firm?"
Rhodey turned back, looked at the ruined armor before him, and said nothing.
Before you continue