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Ben retracted his arm, which had struck like a spear.
Iron Man visibly convulsed. A short burst of static came from the suit, and the light in his helmet flickered before dimming completely.
THUD!
The heavy armor crashed to the ground. A small, pickaxe-like gash now marred the glowing blue surface of the Arc Reactor.
"Sir, the Arc Reactor is compromised. Energy leak detected."
Even through the armor, Ben could hear J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice.
Tony didn't need J.A.R.V.I.S. to tell him how bad it was. He knew better than anyone!
This reactor wasn't just the suit's power source. It was his lifeline!
Embedded in his chest, it provided the energy to power the electromagnet that kept the tiny shrapnel fragments in his body from migrating into his heart.
Ben's violent strike had cracked the reactor's casing, hitting Iron Man where it hurt most.
While it was just a surface crack, not enough to drain all power or stop the reactor entirely, it was more than enough to cause a severe leak of the palladium core.
Within seconds, Tony's palladium poisoning symptoms intensified dramatically.
Seeing this, J.A.R.V.I.S. immediately throttled the reactor's output, reducing it to the minimum needed to sustain Tony's life, hoping to slow the poisoning.
"Contacting Miss Potts now."
"Don't!"
Fighting through the nausea and dizziness of the poisoning, Tony immediately canceled J.A.R.V.I.S.'s call.
He still had no idea what Ben was or what his true motives were. He couldn't risk dragging Pepper into this!
"Let's see how much time you have left, Tony Stark," Ben said, giving him a taste of his own medicine. Having made his point, he saw no need to press the attack further.
Killing Iron Man offered him no benefit. However... his eyes scanned the Mark 3, examining the armored suit for a few seconds... this had research value.
Maybe Grey Matter can figure something out from this.
With that thought, Ben got to work without hesitation. He planned to take the suit apart, piece by piece, and take it all with him!
Most people who ended up in the Marvel universe, upon getting powers, went after street thugs and their meager wallets. But in Ben's case, the unlucky one was Iron Man himself.
Not that Tony didn't deserve it.
The guy had wanted to capture and dissect him, after all!
Stealing one suit of armor was getting off easy.
He started immediately, his hands becoming a blur. In an instant, he had wrenched one of the suit's arms clean off.
"What are you doing?!" Tony yelled, panic rising.
With the suit powered down, his field of view was extremely limited, like a man in a mascot costume peering through a narrow slit. But he could clearly feel one of his arms now exposed to the open air, stripped of its armored protection.
It made him incredibly nervous and afraid. He felt like a canned good waiting to be opened...
"Time is money, Tony. You wasted several minutes of mine. I need to recoup my losses," Ben said, continuing his violent disassembly. He soon pried off the faceplate of the helmet.
Immediately, a wave of nauseating, sour stench hit him.
"Whoa!" Ben recoiled, his whole upper body jerking back as if the very air had turned a different color. "You threw up in the suit? That's disgusting!"
It was a canned good alright, just the fermented herring kind.
He looked at the dismantled faceplate in his hand with the same regret one feels after opening a jar of chili sauce and getting oil all over their fingers. He wanted to toss it, but it felt like a waste.
It was, after all, a giant, fully functional action figure!
So he gave it a vigorous shake, flinging the disgusting vomit residue right back onto Tony's face.
Tony took a deep breath, his face pale with fury. Even his hair was damp and sticky.
"And whose fault do you think that is?"
"Yours, obviously. Remember? I warned you not to stick your nose where it didn't belong!" Ben retorted, speeding up his work. "I'm gonna have to wash this thing a hundred times with a whole bottle of detergent!"
"I've got a better idea. Don't touch it."
"Shut up!"
Ben paused his work just long enough to punch him.
In less than half a minute, he had completely stripped the armor. Now, he hoisted a pile of components nearly as tall as himself and cheerfully bid Tony farewell.
"I'd recommend calling your girlfriend. Otherwise, you're walking back to Stark Tower," Ben kindly reminded him. "And tomorrow, your current... state... will be on the front page of every news outlet."
With that, Ben left, taking the disassembled suit with him.
Strangely, Fasttrack seemed to possess some kind of force field-like ability. Despite the large number of parts and his incredible speed, not a single screw was lost to wind resistance or inertia.
"Wait, Fasttrack does have a minor tactile telekinetic field. It's how the people he saves don't get cut in half by the G-forces. But it shouldn't be this strong!"
Ben quickly realized the truth.
"Unless... Fasttrack is borrowing a little from Spider-Man, using bio-static electricity to hold all the small parts together!"
The thought excited him.
Could his alien transformations actually stack with Spider-Man's abilities?
That was incredibly cool!
For now, however, it was just a theory. His Spider-Sense certainly hadn't triggered during the fight with Tony.
Ben quickly scanned the armor components for any tracking devices.
With a speed that allowed him to test millions of password combinations in seconds, a full sweep of the armor took him less than one second.
Sure enough, he found a small locator.
He destroyed it immediately and hid the armor pieces.
Researching the Iron Man suit could wait. He'd need to be Grey Matter for that anyway.
Right now, his top priority was getting back to school.
He spent another ten seconds leisurely arriving at the school, avoiding every possible security camera. He waited out the final, long seconds of his transformation in a bathroom stall, finally reverting to his normal form in a flash of red light.
At that exact moment, the school bell rang. Ben sprinted into the classroom, skidding in just under the wire.
"Perfect timing!"
"Not perfect at all, Ben Parker!" His teacher stood at the podium, face like thunder, glaring sideways at him. The man expressionlessly raised his arm and pointed at the clock. "You're late!"
So, why is it that speedsters are always late?
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