Xu Wenwu waved his hand dismissively, the gesture carrying the casual indifference of someone who'd witnessed a thousand years of human suffering.
"Raza is dead. The specific details of right and wrong no longer concern me." His tone remained conversational, almost pleasant. "If you wish to hold me accountable for my organization's actions, then I accept responsibility. It changes nothing."
The casual dismissal—the absolute lack of weight given to Tony's trauma—made the billionaire's jaw clench hard enough that his teeth ached.
Before he'd met Ying Li, Xu Wenwu had overthrown governments for sport. Kidnapping a weapons manufacturer, regardless of how wealthy or important, barely registered on the scale of atrocities he'd committed across ten centuries.
Tony's voice dropped to something cold and precise. "Since you're accepting responsibility, I'm going to put a hole in your chest. Let you feel what I felt, bleeding out in a cave while terrorists tried to force me to build weapons."
He raised both palms, repulsors glowing with building energy. "Don't worry though. Smith will save your life before you die. Tournament rules."
Xu Wenwu smiled—genuine amusement rather than mockery. "Little devil, show me what that suffering taught you."
The ten rings began to spin faster, building momentum.
In the audience, Pepper pressed her hand to her mouth, memory surfacing unbidden. The video she'd found on Tony's computer. The cave. The crude arc reactor keeping shrapnel from his heart. The man who'd emerged from Afghanistan had been fundamentally changed.
And the organization responsible stood on the arena floor, treating it all like ancient history.
"Come on, Tony!" Pepper shouted, surprising herself. "Beat him!"
Throughout the spectator sections, recognition rippled through those familiar with Iron Man's origin story. The kidnapping that created the superhero. The rescue by Smith Doyle. The closure of Stark Industries' weapons division.
And now Tony faced the ultimate architect of his trauma.
Tony didn't waste words on further conversation.
His right palm cannon fired, a concentrated beam of repulsor energy that could punch through tank armor.
Xu Wenwu didn't dodge.
One of the ten rings detached from his forearm, spinning outward in a blur of blue light. It intercepted the repulsor blast effortlessly, the energy dispersing against the ring's surface like water against stone.
Tony's expression hardened behind the faceplate. Shang-Chi and Xialing had possessed skill, but nothing like this level of casual power.
Good, Tony thought grimly. I wanted this to hurt.
Xu Wenwu didn't pause after deflecting the attack. He surged forward, the ten rings glowing brilliant blue as they channeled energy older than human civilization.
Tony stood his ground, both palms raised. "JARVIS, rapid fire."
The repulsors fired in alternating pulses, creating a wall of energy between them.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
The rings danced through the air like living things, intercepting each blast with precision that bordered on precognition. Xu Wenwu continued advancing, not even slowing.
The distance closed to thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.
Tony smiled behind his faceplate.
"Surprise," he said quietly.
The shoulder-mounted micro-missile pods deployed with mechanical precision. Dozens of miniaturized projectiles erupted from Tony's armor in a single devastating salvo.
The missiles closed the distance in a fraction of a second.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM!
The explosions merged into a single roaring conflagration that engulfed Xu Wenwu completely. Fire bloomed across the arena floor, heat washing over the spectators even from their distant positions.
"Father!" Xialing screamed, half-rising from her seat.
Shang-Chi grabbed her arm, but his own face had gone pale with worry.
The Death Dealer and the other Ten Rings commanders remained calm, almost bored. They'd seen Xu Wenwu survive worse than conventional explosives. Much worse.
Through the smoke and flame, something moved.
A blue ring shot forward like a bullet, trailing fire.
CLANG!
The ring struck Tony's chest dead center, the impact transmitting through the armor with brutal force. Diagnostics screamed warnings as the chest plate's integrity dropped thirty percent from a single hit.
Tony flew backward, repulsors engaging automatically to arrest his momentum. He stopped five feet from the arena's edge, the gold-titanium alloy of his boots scraping across the metal floor.
"Shit," Tony breathed, reading the damage reports. The ring had hit with enough force to dent secondary adamantium. His gold-titanium alloy had nearly crumpled.
Should have worn the adamantium suit, he thought with dark humor. Pride comes before getting your ass kicked by a thousand-year-old warlord.
The smoke cleared.
Xu Wenwu stood in the center of a blast crater, completely unharmed. Not even his clothes showed scorch marks. The ten rings orbited him slowly, a defensive constellation that had apparently shielded him from an explosion that would have vaporized a normal human.
The ring that had struck Tony flew back to join its siblings.
The audience erupted in shocked exclamations.
"How is he not even singed?" someone shouted.
"Those rings," Shuri murmured, making rapid notes. "They're generating some kind of energy field. Kinetic absorption? Force redirection?"
"Magic," Karl Mordo said quietly from his section, mystic senses analyzing the rings' nature. "Or something so close to magic that the distinction becomes meaningless."
Tony didn't give Xu Wenwu time to counter-attack.
His boot jets flared to maximum output, launching him skyward. The arena fell away below as he climbed, gaining altitude and distance.
Compartments opened across his armor's surface—back, legs, arms. Bombs deployed on mechanical arms, each one a miniaturized marvel of destructive engineering.
Tony had held these in reserve during the previous tournament, waiting for an opponent who required overwhelming force.
He'd found one.
"JARVIS, weapons free. Full saturation bombardment."
"Executing, sir."
Tony became a one-man bomber squadron.
The first wave dropped as he flew over Xu Wenwu's position. Explosions erupted across the arena floor, cratering the gold-titanium alloy surface that was supposed to withstand superhuman combat.
Tony banked, circled, and made another pass.
More bombs. More explosions. The detonations merged into a continuous roar that made speech impossible and forced spectators to cover their ears.
Fire engulfed the entire fighting platform. Smoke billowed upward in a black column visible for miles. The heat became intense enough that the holographic projectors closest to the arena began to malfunction.
Eddie Brock had retreated to the edge of the spectator section, one hand shielding his face from the thermal wash. "My god," he muttered. "And people wonder why I sold my Dragon Ball."
Venom's voice echoed in his mind: We would not survive this. The fire would kill us instantly.
I know, Eddie thought. That's why we're staying very far away from angry billionaires in flying tanks.
Among the Eternals, Phastos watched with professional interest. "Single-operator powered armor with that level of ordinance capacity. Impressive miniaturization." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "The energy source is unusual though. Not standard power cells."
"Can you build better?" Sersi asked, half-teasing.
Phastos snorted. "With my hands and raw materials? Absolutely. But I'll admit—for human technology, that's remarkably sophisticated."
The bombardment continued until Tony's ordinance was completely depleted. He hovered above the inferno he'd created, repulsors keeping him stable as he surveyed the destruction.
The arena floor had been transformed into a moonscape of overlapping craters. Metal had melted and re-solidified in twisted formations. Small fires still burned in scattered patches where fuel residue ignited.
And Smith Doyle hadn't moved from his position outside the ring.
Which meant Xu Wenwu was still alive.
"JARVIS, target scan."
"Negative, sir. Thermal bloom is preventing infrared detection. Scouter module is offline. I cannot acquire the target."
Tony's hands clenched into fists, servos in the gauntlets whining softly.
"Then we wait for the smoke to clear."
Below, in the center of the devastation, something moved through the flames.
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