~~
"All right, down to business."
After teasing Tony, Hao Shuai turned serious. "Tell me, what's been happening lately?"
"Well, it's like this..."
Tony sobered up as well and gave Hao Shuai a thorough account of what had happened since he left.
Things had unfolded much as they had in the original story.
At the press conference, Tony had decisively announced that Stark Industries would stop producing weapons. The announcement had caused an uproar and angered many of the board members.
There was one small difference from the original story: Tony hadn't been ousted as chairman. With Hao Shuai's shares combined with the Stark family's, they had complete control of Stark Industries.
After that, Tony began work on the Mark II armor. Meanwhile, the terrorists who had kidnapped him found the remains of the Mark I, collected them, and sold them to Obadiah Stane.
At a party, a reporter confronted Tony, demanding to know why he had sold weapons to the terrorist group known as the Freedom Fighters. The town they had attacked was the hometown of the man who had saved Tony's life. Combined with his own kidnapping, it made Tony begin to suspect Obadiah Stane.
When Tony went alone to the town to wipe out the terrorists, he asked Pepper Potts to gather evidence that Obadiah Stane had been trafficking weapons behind his back and was involved in Tony's kidnapping.
Obadiah Stane had sensed that something was up, of course, and wasn't about to sit idly by. While Tony was away, he forced his way into Tony's home, stole the small Arc Reactor Tony had replaced, and installed it in the Iron Monger he had built.
Mark II versus Iron Monger!
Unlike in the original story, where Tony had been thoroughly beaten, the Mark II had plenty of