"Whoosh!!!"
Like the Grim Reaper's scythe, a searing blue arc swept down from above, slicing the unlucky race car in front of Tony cleanly in half!
Fire seared across his vision. The blast wave hurled scorching metal fragments onto the track behind it like a torrential downpour.
Tony slammed on the brakes. The tires shrieked against the asphalt road, leaving two scorched black streaks.
He raised his head, peering through the thick smoke.
The burly Russian in orange trousers stood in the middle of the track, his upper body bare.
But what made Tony's pupils contract wasn't the pair of wildly lashing high-voltage electric whips. It was the crude ring-shaped device on the man's chest, blazing with blue light.
An Arc Reactor.
Tony's brain froze for a tenth of a second. Just two days ago, he had boasted at the hearing that "no one could replicate this technology within ten years."
Today, a homeless man who looked like he had just escaped a Siberian labor camp wore that very "miracle" on his chest, delivering a resounding slap to Tony's face.
The problem was that his father, Howard Stark, had spearheaded the initial research into the Arc Reactor's underlying theory and first prototype.
The miniature reactor on Tony's chest was a groundbreaking innovation built on his father's technological framework. In theory, no one else could know how to make one unless they had somehow gained access to his father's research from back then.
That tenth of a second of distraction was all it took.
The second electric whip slashed straight at him, shrieking through the air.
"Boom!"
The nose of the blue-and-white Stark Industries race car was cleaved diagonally, its special alloy curling like paper.
The car instantly spun out of control, tumbling wildly three or four times before crashing upside