One month later, Hammer Industries held a new product launch event.
The venue was the central exhibition hall of the industrial park, with a 30-meter-high dome and an all-glass structure. Nearly two thousand people sat in the audience—military personnel, government officials, Wall Street representatives, and representatives from over two hundred media outlets worldwide. Justin Hammer's PR team had touted the press conference as a "turning point in the history of warfare" two weeks in advance.
Tony Stark was sitting in the third row by the aisle, wearing sunglasses and chewing gum with his legs crossed. Next to him sat Pepper, and further to his right sat Rhodey, who was dressed in civilian clothes this time, with a strangely shaped military badge pinned to his chest.
" Tony, are you sure something's going to happen today?" Rhodey asked in a low voice.
"Not sure." Tony blew a bubble. " Lin Xiao told me this guy is a clown, he'll definitely do something at crucial moments. That's not important. What's important is that Justin Hammer laughs really loudly every time he thinks he's about to win. I came here just to see him laugh."
The lights dimmed abruptly, and a spotlight shone on the rising platform in the center of the booth. Justin Hammer slowly rose up, dressed in a custom-made dark gray suit, his shoes polished to a shine, and his hair slicked back with at least half a pound of hair wax. His arms were outstretched, as if embracing the whole world.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new era."
At the same time, the black cloth behind Justin Hammer fell down. Twelve Iron Soldier, nearly two meters tall, with matte black paint, replicas of Arc Reactor embedded in their chests, multi-barreled machine guns on their shoulders, and missile launchers integrated into their arms, turned towards the audience in unison, their red optical sensors shining brightly in the darkness.
Applause and camera shutters exploded simultaneously.
Justin Hammer raised his hand to quell the applause at its peak, stepped off the stage, and strolled slowly down the aisle, shaking hands with generals and senators along the way, his demeanor as composed as if he were at his own coronation ceremony.
He stopped in the third row.
" Tony Stark," Justin Hammer, his voice brimming with barely suppressed smugness, "I thought you wouldn't come."
Tony took off his sunglasses, folded them, and hung them in his suit pocket. He looked up at him, a lazy smile playing on his lips, "I've sent out invitations five times already. It would be disrespectful not to come."
"Face?" Justin Hammer bent down, placing his hands on the back of the chair in front of Tony, deliberately lowering his voice, but the miniature microphone on his chest amplified every word into the sound system. "You think I don't know? You sent me that blueprint through Ivan's email; I knew what you were up to a long time ago."
Tony's smile remained unchanged, but his chewing of gum slowed down a beat.
"The part you gave me had its cooling module downgraded by 30%, and the thruster overload threshold lowered by two levels." Justin Hammer straightened up, turned, and walked towards the booth, counting on his fingers as he spoke, his voice echoing throughout the dome. "The reactor output power curve has two parameters changed, and the weapon cooling circuit has a whole loop of copper pipe missing. You think that just because you sent me the blueprints, I'd happily take them and mass-produce them, then blow them up into a pile of fireworks in front of the whole world, right?"
The exhibition hall fell silent. Several military representatives exchanged glances and reached for their waists.
"I saw every single move you made." Justin Hammer stood on the platform, turned around, and looked down at Tony. His face was no longer displaying an exaggerated smile, but rather a smug satisfaction that had been suppressed for a long time. "You thought you could bribe my henchman to fabricate evidence that this thing came from Ivan and I'd believe you? Actually, I've seen every single text message he sent you. I've planted viruses in their phones. I've archived every single message and every transaction. You thought you were fishing, Tony? You didn't expect this, did you? You're the fish."
Pepper gripped Tony's arm tightly. Rhodey ' hand pressed against the badge on his chest, the nano-storage unit glowing slightly beneath his shirt.
Tony finally spoke, his voice low but each word clear. "So you changed the blueprints?"
"I didn't change it." Justin Hammer shook his head, his smile genuine. "Your drawings were useless from start to finish. But I have more than one Ivan Vanko working with. I sent your designs to a dozen independent labs and had them reverse engineer them. I didn't need to fix them; I deduced the real core architecture from scrap paper. Then, based on that, I built something entirely new."
He snapped his the Snap.
The chest plates of the twelve mechs slid open simultaneously, revealing the reactor core. The stable blue light was replaced by a more dazzling platinum-gold glow, like twelve miniature suns. The joints emitted a deep hydraulic hum, and they all took a step forward at the same time, pointing their gun barrels at the three people.
Just then, all the lights in the exhibition hall went out. All the entrances and exits simultaneously lowered their alloy gates, and the glass dome overhead slid through its dark coating, completely blocking out the sunlight. In the darkness, only the white-gold light on the chests of the twelve mechs flickered, illuminating Justin Hammer's face, which was slightly distorted with ecstasy.
"You gave me a fishing rod, trying to hook me. But I never took the bait. I swam underwater for a month, waiting for you to reel in the rod, then jumped up and capsized the whole boat."
Rhodey jumped to his feet. " Justin Hammer, there are at least a thousand people sitting here! Most of them are military representatives, politicians, journalists, and businessmen from various countries. By doing this, you are making an enemy of the whole world."
"No, no, no, you've misunderstood me, sir." Justin Hammer looked at him with almost pity. "I'm just making history. As long as you cooperate, I won't hurt anyone except Tony. When the door opens, the whole world will only see one thing: Tony Stark kneeling at the feet of my mech. I am the strongest."
He raised his right hand, ready to give the order to attack.
Tony sat in the chair, not moving an inch. He didn't even try to stand up; he just leaned back, legs crossed. His expression was obscured in the darkness, but his voice was unusually calm.
"Are you done talking?"
Justin Hammer's smile froze for a second.
"You said you read every text message from the In-Betweener and knew my every move." Tony tilted his head. "Have you ever thought about why I would hire someone you know to go undercover?"
Justin Hammer did not answer.
"After Ivan Vanko was arrested in Monaco, I had my medical team take over all his treatment." Tony stood up, slowly rolled up his sleeves, and walked to Justin Hammer, speaking in a voice only the two of them could hear, "It's not that I'm kind-hearted; I need him alive, I need his encrypted channel to still be in your system, I need you to believe that the connection is still under your control."
He pulled a palm-sized device from his suit pocket and pressed it. The nanosuit began to spread from his chest, covering his entire body within seconds, the gold and red armor reflecting a dazzling light in the platinum glow.
"The undercover agent you discovered was someone I asked you to discover. The text messages you intercepted were someone I asked you to intercept. You thought you'd been swimming in the water for a month, but actually you've been splashing around in the pool I dug. I have plenty of ways to deal with you, but your arrogant and conceited personality made me give up everything else. Guess which one I chose?"
Justin Hammer's pupils contracted sharply.
"The dumbest kind." Tony raised his right hand, the white light of his palm cannon piercing the darkness, "To make you reveal all your cards, to your most triumphant moment, and then, in front of everyone, to dismantle them one by one."
Fear finally appeared on Justin Hammer's face. He slashed downwards with his right hand.
The twelve mechs started up simultaneously, advancing step by step with heavy strides.
But the first to act were not them, but underground.
The floor suddenly exploded open.
Countless grains of sand surged up from the cracks in the marble, coalescing in mid-air into thumb-thick tentacles that burrowed into the joint gaps, gun barrels, and reactor cooling vents of the front-line mechs. All the mechs jammed at the same moment, large amounts of sand were squeezed out of their joints, and the machine gun ammunition belts were blocked, emitting a piercing metallic scraping sound.
Justin Hammer whirled around. A thin figure emerged from the hole in the floor, covered in a black nanotech suit, his hood pulled low so his face was obscured.
" Super Fool, reporting for duty." Peter's voice came through the mask.
Before Justin Hammer could react, another crisp sound of Silk shooting came from above. A white figure swung down from the shadow of the dome's steel frame, kicking a mech in the face with both feet together, and then somersaulted and kicked over a second one. Ghost-Spider landed and half-crouched on the overturned mech wreckage, tilting its head to look at Justin Hammer.
"Whose boat did you just say you wanted to capsize?"
Rhodey moved as well. Silver-gray armor surged from his badge— Tony had also upgraded his nano-storage unit. He raised his right arm, the multi-barreled cannon spinning, its muzzle aimed at the nearest mech. With a deafening roar, the mech was blasted to pieces.
Justin Hammer staggered backward, bumping into the control panel of the elevator. His lips trembled, but his eyes still shone, a desperate last stand of a cornered beast. He frantically pressed the buttons, muttering incomprehensible numbers and letters.
"It's not over yet—it's not over yet—you thought I only prepared these twelve? You thought—this is the end? No, you will all be left here, none of you can leave."
The four walls cracked open simultaneously, sliding from the middle to both sides to reveal deep launch silos hidden behind them. Each silo housed a mech—smaller and faster, with bat-wing-like gliders folded on its back and a high-frequency beeping reactor in its chest.
" The Locust Model." Justin Hammer tilted his head, his smile almost sickly bright, veins bulging on his forehead. "Two hundred of the latest models. They don't need to fly for long, they don't need to fight for long, but they're more than enough to fight you. Even if you can't win, once they get out there and appear over New York to launch missiles, can you stop them? Then the whole world will know that because of your stupidity, the citizens of New York have suffered needless harm. What will they do then?"
The mechs in the launch silos ignited simultaneously. Glide wings deployed, and the roar of engines coalesced into a sickeningly loud sound.
Tony's visor snapped open, his face pale. Rhodey' cannon swung back and forth between the two launch silos, unsure which to aim at first. Peter had begun maneuvering the sandfall, but the silos were too deep, and the sand's penetration speed couldn't keep up with the firing rate. Gwen Stacy fired Silk to try and seal the nearest silo, but the glider's airflow blew the Silk off course.
Justin Hammer spread his arms and looked up at the dome, which was covered by a dark coating. Platinum light poured out from the launch silo behind him, casting a frenzied red glow on his face.
"The new era belongs to me, Tony, you've lost."
Just then, a fist-shaped imprint appeared on the alloy plating of the dome, then a second, then a third. The metal was torn apart like cardboard, and sunlight streamed in through the cracks, making everyone instinctively squint. Justin Hammer's last syllable stuck in his throat as he looked up at the hole that had been smashed open, and his smile began to crack.
A red figure fell down from the crack.
His cloak unfurled behind him, embroidered with a five-clawed golden dragon. His landing created spiderweb-like cracks a meter in diameter in the marble beneath his feet. He straightened up, looked around, and glanced down at his watch.
"No, the new era belongs to superheroes, Justin Hammer, you lost. But can you hurry up?" Lin Xiao turned his watch over to show everyone, looking impatient. " Betty flew back from Culver today, and left for Tony's birthday party. I haven't even had a taste... cough cough, I promised May I'd pick her up from the airport before 3 pm. Do you know that if I'm late, Betty and May will make me sleep on the sofa? You don't know! You only care about yourselves!"
The exhibition hall was silent for a full three seconds.
Rhodey lowered his head, his shoulders twitching suspiciously. Tony hovered in mid-air, the light from his palm cannon dimming slightly. Peter nudged Gwen Stacy with his elbow and whispered, " Uncle Lin's at it again." Gwen Stacy rolled her eyes through her mask.
Justin Hammer didn't laugh. His expression shifted rapidly from ecstasy to confusion, from confusion to fear, and from fear to hysterical rage. He abruptly turned to the launch silo and frantically pounded on the control panel.
"Launch! Launch now! Launch all of them!"
The two hundred Locust remained completely still.
The engine hum vanished in an instant. Not destroyed, not shot down—it shut down. The glider drooped before it was fully deployed, the launch silo thrusters coughed weakly a few times, and then fell silent. The only sound in the entire exhibition hall was the wind rushing in through the cracks in the dome.
Lin Xiao pulled his right hand out of his pocket. An extremely slender blue vine was wrapped around his index finger, swaying slightly in the sunlight. Its roots burrowed into the cracks in the marble beneath his feet, extending into the ground, into the interior of the walls, and into the power pipes of each launch silo.
"Your Locust Model," Lin Xiao walked up to Justin Hammer, bent down, and waved the vine on his index finger in front of him, speaking casually, "The power lines run through the wall's inner layer without even basic electromagnetic shielding. I short-circuited it all with a single blade of grass. You call this the New Era?"
He patted Justin Hammer on the shoulder, not hard, but Justin Hammer slumped down, his knee hitting the base of the lift platform with a dull thud. He slumped there, his suit crumpled, a few strands of his meticulously styled hair falling loose and onto his forehead, his lips moving as if he were still muttering something, but no one could hear him anymore.
Lin Xiao straightened up and gestured towards the dome with his chin. "Who has time to help me dig another hole? The one I just smashed wasn't very regular; it doesn't meet our Homelander ' aesthetic standards."