"Leo? That child?" Happy stared, baffled, at Pepper, who was frantically looking past him at the battle raging inside the house.
"Yes, Leo! He might be the only one who can actually stop those two drunken, armored lunatics right now!" Pepper's face was streaked with soot and tears of frustration. She thought of Leo's figure—calm, confident, always in control, the kid who could casually float down from the sky.
"Go find him quickly! He's in a guest room on the second floor, the one overlooking the ocean. I'll try to get these idiotic spectators to leave!"
Happy, despite his doubts about the small boy's ability to stop two tons of enraged, fighting metal, didn't hesitate. He turned and rushed toward the guest rooms.
Meanwhile, the remaining partygoers seemed utterly delighted by the destruction. They were perched on the balcony railings and along the edges of the shattered hall, watching the commotion inside like a gruesome but thrilling sport. Pepper tried everything to persuade them to leave, but they wouldn't budge. Seeing the two metal titans still locked in a destructive embrace, she could only pray that Leo's arrival would somehow bring this madness to an end.
Leo, who had entered a deep, meditative state in his room shortly after noon, seemed to have completely forgotten the passage of time. The four tons of gold-titanium alloy he'd been drawing energy from were now completely dull and lifeless, their metallic essence spent.
Even the two palladium-depleted Arc Reactors in his hands had dimmed considerably, appearing as if they were about to sputter out at any moment.
All the remaining absorbed golden light surged deep into his skeletal structure, seeping into the bright red marrow. The marrow itself, the core of his bones, was gradually being rendered in pure, solidified gold. The brilliant golden light slowly dissipated, leaving behind only a faint, constant golden glow emanating from the core of his bones.
At the same time, the enhancement level of his Iron Bone trait finally cracked the next threshold, increasing to a formidable 50%.
The door was suddenly flung open with a bang, and a stumbling, chubby figure staggered in, breathing heavily.
"Leo! Leo!"
Leo's eyes snapped open, blazing with a momentary golden intensity. Simultaneously, the light switch in the room automatically flipped on—a soft, white light illuminating the scene.
"Happy, what's wrong? Has the birthday party started already? You look like you ran a marathon."
"Tony and Rhodes… they're fighting! In the suits! Pepper told me to come and find you, they're demolishing the whole damn house!" Happy gasped, looking at the surprisingly composed, shirtless boy in front of him.
Upon hearing this, Leo looked out the window, only to find the night sky pitch black.
He couldn't help but frown internally. What's going on? My perception of time is getting worse and worse when I'm in a deep absorption state; I thought maybe only two hours had passed since I started.
He focused his Golden Eyes. The two massive, armored figures trading blows in the hall were instantly visible.
"Seriously, such a perfectly engineered battle suit being used as a drunken boxing glove," he muttered.
He got up and quickly pulled on a shirt.
"Happy, go and chase away that rubbernecking crowd out there. Tell them the show's definitely over. I'll take care of the two main actors."
Leo calmly followed the frantic bodyguard out of the room.
The rapid succession of wild, haymaker punches to the face enraged the already deeply drunk Tony. With a powerful roar, he slammed the Mark II's helmet down with both hands, smashing the marble bar counter beneath it into a thousand jagged pieces.
Rhodey was momentarily stunned by the blow and couldn't immediately get up from the wreckage.
Tony looked back at the crowd of onlookers outside, their faces filled with either cruel mockery or simple, amused detachment, and a raw, nameless rage boiled up within him.
With a single, devastating step, he shattered the expensive floor tiles beneath his metallic feet, and a terrifying roar of pure frustration echoed through the Mark IV's amplification system.
The sheer, imposing presence of the Mark IV, coupled with Tony's primal scream, finally scared the last remaining guests into running away, losing all interest in watching the violent spectacle.
The Mark II, recovering from the blow, stood up and grabbed a huge, jagged slab of marble counter, swinging it violently at the Mark IV.
The slab smashed Tony backward into the massive stone fireplace, burying his entire upper body in the remnants of a decorative fire.
Although the flames caused Tony no actual harm inside the armor, seeing the dazzling, hungry orange light before him snapped the last thread of his sanity. He looked up, smashed right through the wall above the fireplace, then turned back to Rhodey, raising his right repulsor hand.
Seeing this clear threat, Rhodey also raised his right hand. "Put your hand down, Tony! Now!"
"Do you honestly think you're cut out to be Iron Man, Rhodey? The guy who saves the world?" Tony slurred through the comms.
"We don't need to fight! We don't need this, Tony!" Rhodey yelled back, desperately trying to de-escalate.
"You wanted to be a war machine? Fine! Open fire, Colonel!"
"Put it down right now, Tony! This is going to destroy the whole house!"
"Do you want to fire?!" Tony's Mark IV palm pulse cannon was already crackling, charging to full capacity.
"Put it down, Tony!"
"No! Fire!"
Both of their palm pulse cannons reached their maximum charge simultaneously and fired. Two blinding blue beams shot across the shattered room, their center points converging in the exact space between the two armored suits.
At that catastrophic moment, a small figure rushed over, moving with impossible speed, approaching the lethal nexus point between the two charging suits.
"Both of you need to give your hands..."
Before Leo could finish the sentence, the two fully charged repulsor beams met, and the combined energy convergence point rapidly expanded, forming a massive, blinding ball of blue energy in less than a second.
"You two really need to calm down."
Leo stretched out his hands, the golden light of his power enveloping them. He slammed his Matter Manipulation field into both suits, instantly freezing the Mark IV and the Mark II in place. A layer of shimmering, condensed psychic energy appeared around him, a temporary shield.
The energy ball reached its critical limit and exploded. The powerful, focused impact was deafening, sending everything within a twenty-meter radius flying outward in a massive, pulverizing shockwave of sound, heat, and kinetic force.
From a distance outside the property, a huge, billowing cloud of smoke and dust appeared to be violently shooting out from the entire mansion, marking the final, fatal injury to the structure.
As the smoke slowly dissipated, Leo, who had been at the absolute center of the explosion, stood completely unscathed. He looked at the two suits facing him.
The massive shockwave had even caused the primary power systems of both suits to crash, only recovering a few seconds later. Moreover, the two men inside, despite the armor, were battered and sore, their bodies dizzy from the immense G-forces of the blast before they slowly recovered.
Leo looked at the two figures in front of him, his face one of deep disapproval. He reached out with an invisible force, grabbing the Mark II, and lifted Rhodey high into the air.
He flung the suit away from the property with a terrifying, controlled velocity, yelling, "Get out of here! Now!"
The Mark II, flying thousands of meters through the night sky, finally managed to spew flames from its repulsors to stabilize itself. Rhodey glanced back one last time at the smoking ruins of the mansion—and at the silent figure of Tony—with a look of profound disappointment and anger, then turned and flew away, taking the Mark II with him.
Tony, his mask still off, lay sprawled on the ground amidst the terrible wreckage, his face pale and tired.
He slowly put the mask back on.
"Leo, I'm going to sleep. Don't disturb me."
The Mark IV lay motionless amidst the ruins of the villa. Tony Stark had finally gone completely cold.
Leo stepped outside. Pepper and Happy, who were the last two people left and were watching the destruction from a safe distance, saw the Mark IV lying still in the center of the demolished hall.
Unaware of the true, mortal danger Tony was facing, Pepper was only angry at his self-destructive behavior. She turned away, her disappointment palpable. "Happy, let's go to the company. Just let him lie there by himself. He can deal with this mess when he wakes up."
The two of them quickly drove away from the ruined property, leaving Leo alone with the withdrawn, 'sleeping' Tony.
Leo looked at Tony lying motionless on the ground and sighed heavily.
"You left the company to Pepper, and the Mark II armor to Rhodes. You always like to carry everything on your own, don't you? The big hero, the martyr."
"Even if it's a slow-acting nuclear bomb destroying your body, you want to carry it alone. That's really stupid, Mr. Stark. You've got a family, even if you refuse to see it."
Looking at the chaotic scene around him—the splintered wood, the shattered marble, the endless debris—Leo floated up into the air. Several metal steel bars and bent pieces of railing flew to his side.
They quickly transformed into more than a dozen long, thin metal wires, which flew into every corner of the massive, ruined room, wrapping around all the debris and pulling it out with precision.
In just over ten minutes, a small mountain of junk piled up neatly outside the house, but the interior rooms were completely clear of the shattered fragments.
'Are they treating me like a babysitter now?'
Leo floated down and stood in front of the motionless Mark IV. With a mental command, he began to disassemble the Mark IV completely and methodically. Tony fell unceremoniously to the cold, hard floor and woke up with a startled gasp.
"Is it dawn yet? Where's my suit?" Tony rubbed his eyes, dizzy and confused.
Leo was focused elsewhere. He had noticed something subtle during his latest psychic sweep of Tony's body. It seemed the small injection of gold-titanium energy, though small, had somehow made the traces of palladium slightly more visible to him.
Looking directly at the faint, newly activated golden light emanating from his own bones, he felt an unprecedented level of control over the internal structure of his body.
He extended a finger and gently tapped it between Tony's ribs, near the glowing Arc Reactor.
Tiny, microscopic specks of golden light—the remnants of the metallic energy he'd absorbed—flowed up from all the bones in his body.
A clear, visible golden line could be seen momentarily tracing along Leo's bare forearm, flowing along his extended finger, and finally transferring itself into Tony's body, targeting the area near the reactor. This wasn't healing, but an energetic signature—a pointer.