Obadiah Stane stood in the basement of his villa, watching the workers unload that hunk of iron from the truck.
The Mark I.
The thing Tony had hammered together in a cave, an iron shell pieced together from missile scrap and discarded parts, bulky, ugly, and covered in welding scars. It should have been buried beneath Afghanistan's yellow sands along with Tony, but that damned big guy had rescued him and even recovered the armor.
Tony had left it in the exhibition hall, saying it was a memento. A memento of what? Those three months when he had nearly died?
Obadiah clenched his cigar between his teeth and narrowed his eyes.
"Watch it!" he roared at the workers. "That thing is worth more than all your lives put together!"
The workers ducked their heads and picked up the pace.
Obadiah stared at the armor, his gaze as dark as the sea before a storm. Today, Tony had announced to the press that he was Iron Man and that he would permanently shut down the weapons manufacturing division. The stock price had already dropped twelve percent, and the board members were practically blowing up his phone. He could not even pat Tony on the shoulder and brush it off with "the kid needs time to recover" the way he used to.
Because that big idiot had stripped away his dignity, layer by layer, in front of everyone.
Obadiah took the cigar out of his mouth and crushed it to pieces in his fist.
He needed a plan. No, he already had a plan. That armor was its centerpiece. Tony had built the thing out of scrap metal in a cave. With the entire Stark Industries R&D team and more money than he could spend, what he built would only be stronger than the original.
"Tony," Obadiah murmured into the empty basement, "you think shutting down the weapons division is the end of it? You think I can't touch you with that big guy protecting you? This is only the beginning."
S.H.I.E.L.D. training room
When Lin Xiao answered the phone, he was playing around, spinning in his desk chair.
"Tony? What's up?"
"Someone stole the Mark I." Tony's voice came through the phone considerably faster than usual. "You might not believe this, but the entire display case was pried open, and the security footage was tampered with. I asked security. Not one person saw who did it."
Lin Xiao shifted positions, wedged the phone against his shoulder, and reached for the coffee cup on the desk to take a sip.
"Relax. That iron shell of yours isn't exactly precision equipment. It's big and clunky. Who'd steal it, and what for? What if it just got bored and wanted to go out for a stroll?"
The other end fell silent for about three seconds.
"...Lin Xiao."
"Yeah?"
"That armor doesn't have artificial intelligence. It can't go for a stroll on its own."
"How do you know? Maybe you accidentally hammered a soul into it while you were working on it in that cave." Lin Xiao said this with a perfectly straight face. "Like Pinocchio. Yours is Iron Pinocchio."
Tony fell silent for a few seconds. "Lin Xiao, stop joking. This isn't funny."
"Okay, okay, no more jokes." Lin Xiao set down his coffee and sat a little straighter. "You want me to help investigate?"
"No kidding. Why else would I call you? I've already got JARVIS looking into it. On your end, aren't you with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Doesn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have a bunch of surveillance satellites?"
"Sure, leave it to me." Lin Xiao cut off Tony's rambling. "I've got a way. Stay home and wait for news. Don't go running around on your own."
"You're telling me not to run around? When did you start nagging like a mother hen?"
"The day I hauled you out of that cave, I became your guardian." Lin Xiao hung up without giving Tony any chance to argue.
He tossed his phone onto the desk, then called out in his mind.
Doupao.
Ding-in.
Activate reconnaissance. One-hundred-kilometer radius. Find the Mark I's location and what Obadiah Stane is doing right now.
Ding-reconnaissance activated. Scanning...
Lin Xiao leaned back in his chair and took another sip of coffee. A blue screen visible only to him unfolded before his eyes. The image was blurry at first but gradually sharpened. A fat, bald man stood in the basement of a luxurious villa, arms crossed, staring at the iron-gray armor before him with a shifting expression.
"Oh, it really is you." Lin Xiao grinned and propped his feet a little higher. "Stealing someone else's iron shell. Isn't it heavy?"
Ding-current activity assessment for target Obadiah Stane: preparation phase for reverse engineering and weaponization modifications.
"Speak human."
Ding-he plans to copy the Mark I and build a larger, more destructive suit of armor.
"That's more like it." Lin Xiao nodded in satisfaction, watching the system feed like television as he drank coffee and admired Obadiah's livid face. On-screen, Obadiah began making calls. Judging by his lip movements, he was contacting someone, probably the head of the R&D team or some technical expert willing to do his dirty work.
"What do you think he can build?" Lin Xiao asked.
Ding-according to the plot database, Obadiah Stane will manufacture the Iron Monger Armor. In the original plot, it was reverse-engineered from the wreckage of the Mark I. Since the Mark I remains intact in this world, the Iron Monger Armor's performance is projected to improve by twenty to thirty percent over the original plot.
"Iron Monger. Sounds pretty intimidating." Lin Xiao smacked his lips. "How many stars would you give it?"
Ding-current assessment: four stars. The target is a conventional armored combat unit, operating alone, without supernatural enhancements.
"Four stars, huh." Lin Xiao closed the system feed, instantly losing most of his interest. "Then it's not worth me getting involved. Let Tony get some practice himself. People need to grow. This is the perfect chance for him to gain some experience."
Ding-host, Tony Stark has not yet completed development of the Mark II or subsequent armor. If Iron Monger acts ahead of schedule-
"Isn't that even better? Pressure creates motivation." Lin Xiao picked up his phone, opened the browser, and started searching for "Maldives vacation guide." He pulled a tissue from the desk and wiped away his sweat. "I'll take a month off next month and say I'm sick. Go soak up the sun in the Maldives, check out some beauties in bikinis. Ah, just thinking about it feels great."
Ding-host, you took two months off while rescuing Tony.
"That was psychological readjustment. It doesn't count as vacation," Lin Xiao said with complete conviction. "This time it's sick leave. I'm sick. I have a very serious illness that makes me sleepy whenever I see a four-star mission."
Doupao: "..."
A few seconds later, the screen flashed.
Ding-mission updated. Reassessing Iron Monger's threat... Target Stane's weaponization modifications are complete. The Iron Monger Armor is equipped with a multibarrel rotary cannon, short-range missile launchers, and a hydraulically boosted close-combat system. Overall destructive power assessment: threat level to urban environments and civilians significantly increased. Revised assessment: four and a half stars. Rewards: strength +5, freely allocatable points ×3, random item ×1.
Lin Xiao, who had been typing "Maldives five-star hotel recommendations," abruptly stopped. He set his phone on the desk and stared at the mission panel that had popped up again, the corners of his mouth slowly curling upward.
"Doupao, are you raising the price?"
"You're afraid I won't go, so you tacked on half a star at the last minute and threw in three extra free points? Do you think I'm a beggar?"
Ding-assessment criteria follow the system's built-in rules. No manual intervention has occurred. The threat level has indeed genuinely increased.
"You reassessed the threat five seconds after finishing your assessment, and it went up?"
The system fell silent again. This silence lasted longer, so long that Lin Xiao almost thought it had crashed.
Ding-system data updated. Shutting down...
Lin Xiao stared at that line, froze for a second, then burst out laughing. His shoulders shook, and he nearly choked on the coffee he had just swallowed.
"Shutting down? You can shut down? You can even shut yourself down?" Lin Xiao wiped the coffee from the corner of his mouth, his lips curling into a smile.
"Doupao, how did I never notice what a tsundere you are?"
"Fine, fine. Ignore me, then."
Lin Xiao stood and stretched. He picked up his now-cold coffee, drained it, and called toward the other end of the training room, "Instructor!"
Natasha, who was practicing her shooting, lowered her gun and spoke coldly. "What is it? What do you want to do now?"
"I'm hungry. How about fish tonight? I know a Chinese restaurant that makes really good steamed sea bass."
Natasha closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Lin Xiao."
"Here."
"You were five minutes late this morning and said it hadn't been ten minutes yet, so it didn't meet the threshold for a fine. During physical training, you crushed three horizontal bars and four gravity rings. During shooting practice, you turned the target into a sieve. Just now, you were training while drinking coffee and eating garlic, spouting something about coffee with garlic giving you boundless magic power and making the whole training room smell like a garlic bread factory. And now you have the nerve to tell me you want fish?"
"Not just fish." Lin Xiao counted on his fingers. "We should order a few stir-fries too. Training burns a lot of energy. I need to replenish my protein. Oh, and dinner's on me today. We'll use what's left from my last lateness fine. I did the math. There's still some left."
"What's left? I collected your lateness fine. That money was mine to begin with."
"Oh." Lin Xiao scratched his head, looking perfectly unruffled. "Then you can treat me."
Natasha stared hard at Lin Xiao, then turned and headed for the door, moving as fast as a gust of wind, her red hair swinging in a crisp arc across her shoulders.
"Keep up."
Lin Xiao grinned and jogged after her.
The nightlife had only just begun.