"It was not a compliment, you defiler of fruits."
Tony pushed himself fully upright on the sofa and glared at Lucius with the last of a dying man's dignity now that dying had been postponed.
Lucius leaned against the arm of the opposite chair and spread his hands.
"Now, now. My process with fruits is entirely OSHA approved." He gave Tony a measured look. "Unlike some people who keep getting into physical altercations with bald men."
Tony took one step towards him.
"For the last time, Stane did not bugger me."
Lucius's expression turned almost tender.
"Tony, you are a good man. I am not judging."
Tony stood there for a second, decided murder would be rude after being saved, and instead turned towards the workshop.
"I'm shutting Stark Industries first thing tomorrow."
Lucius's smugness died so fast it might as well have been shot.
He bolted after him.
"No, that is too much, and you know it." He caught up in three strides. "Some people spent their hard-earned money buying shares in your company."
Tony kept walking.
"I'm still shutting it down."
Lucius moved ahead just enough to slow him down and look at him.
"You cannot keep trying to kill my investment every time an old bald man inserts something in you, Tony. It is not fair. Plus, I will help you deal with Stane, and you will still owe me afterwards. Also, no more casually threatening to destroy my investment just because you had a bad evening."
Tony stopped, looked at him, and then resumed moving towards the workshop with Lucius beside him.
"You are still embarrassingly wet behind the ears when it comes to business," Tony quipped. "And yes, before you ask, thanks for the timely assist. Twice now, if we're counting properly."
Lucius turned to him. Are you calling my saving your life an assist?
"Thank you. Deeply moving. I feel cherished."
They entered the workshop together.
The circular platform rose from the floor as Tony stepped onto it. Robotic arms slid down from the rails above with the precise movements of machines. Panels opened. Servos rotated. The first pieces of the Mark III locked around Tony's legs and torso with hard, clean clicks.
Lucius watched from a few feet away.
"You went with red and gold."
Tony held his arms out as the plating came in around them.
"I had a feeling you'd approve."
"Your need for validation is touching."
Tony smirked as the chest piece seated itself.
"It's not validation if I'm right."
The helmet closed over his head, the faceplate sealed, and the eye slits lit up.
JARVIS's voice filled the room.
"Mark III boot sequence is completed, sir."
Tony flexed his hands inside the gauntlets and turned his head once towards Lucius.
"Try not to fall in love with it."
Lucius looked him over deliberately.
"The colours did most of the heavy lifting."
Tony snorted, then the suit drove power through the thrusters, and he shot out of the workshop without another word.
Lucius watched the exit flare of light and sighed.
"Ungrateful."
Then he teleported.
--
At the warehouse, Obadiah Stane had already installed the arc reactor into the Iron Monger chassis.
The power problem had been solved. The armour stood active. The size felt good. The weight felt right. The world, for a few short minutes, had the decency to look conquerable again.
Then he heard the explosion outside.
His head snapped towards the main access feed.
Someone had found him.
He rolled his shoulders and got inside the armour and brought the systems up.
If they had come this far, they were going to earn the privilege of dying here.
-
Pepper hit the warehouse floor at a run the moment the entry team breached.
The men with her still wore the look of federal agents, but by then she had stopped believing half of what anybody with a badge said unless she had seen the paperwork herself and cross-checked the signatures with the blood type.
She only cared about getting to the armour before Stane moved it.
That ambition lasted less than a minute.
The first man died when the suit hit him hard enough to turn his body into a paste. The second vanished under a metal fist and a shower of debris. The third got thrown through a stack of crates and did not get back up. The fourth managed half a shout before Iron Monger's weapon fire cut the space apart and turned him into Swiss cheese.
Pepper dropped behind a loading barrier with the surviving agent beside her, breath sharp in her throat. The moment the giant armour turned away from her direction, she ran towards the exit.
Iron Monger stepped out through the dust and wreckage like bad taste given industrial funding.
The armour was enormous. Overbuilt in every possible way, as if Stane had taken one good idea and drowned it in steel until subtlety died on the shop floor.
The last surviving agent touched his earpiece, said something fast, and then disappeared from her awareness when Iron Monger was standing in front of her.
Pepper froze.
She heard Stane's voice through the armour's speakers, warped by metal and ego.
"Where do you think you are going?"
-
Tony crossed the sky above the city in Mark III and burned through what little comfort the old reactor could provide.
He had not even thought to ask Lucius for a faster method.
Every warning light JARVIS gave him about drain, efficiency, and power margin was technically useful and emotionally irrelevant.
"Sir, at the current rate, you are spending more energy than this power source was ever intended to provide."
"I know."
"Your confidence remains difficult to admire."
"Get in line."
The warehouse came into view.
Above and behind him, Lucius had no such issue.
He simply appeared in the air at a height he liked and watched.
Stane lumbered out in the Iron Monger armour with all the grace of a drunk chipmunk. The suit was even uglier in motion than on paper. Tony came in a second later, shouting something that mostly sounded like fury forced through a helmet speaker while burning reactor life at a rate that should have counted as self-harm.
Lucius gave them some space. That was only fair.
Tony hit Stane. Stane hit back. The warehouse roof became a brief argument between mobility and mass.
Then he dropped.
Telekinesis caught Iron Monger mid-motion and locked it hard.
The whole suit jerked to a stop with one leg half-planted and one arm still trying to track Tony. A second invisible grip took Tony out of the air as well and floated him sideways towards Lucius so he could stop wasting energy pretending momentum solved engineering.
Tony looked at him through the mask.
"I had this."
"No, you had not."
Lucius turned his attention to Stane.
The armour strained against the telekinetic hold.
Lucius drifted closer and started dismantling it piece by piece.
"Stane," he said, as the shoulder pistons tore free, "this design should be punishable."
Tony, still suspended beside him, turned his helmet slightly.
"That's actually a fair opening."
Lucius ripped the other shoulder assembly apart.
"What in the name of engineering have you built? This is the ugliest piece of shit I've seen in my life, and I read enough Chinese cultivation drivel to know true crimes when I see them."
He pointed at the exposed arm linkage.
"You put delicate parts out where they can be hit. Why? Were you designing this for a parade?"
Tony joined in now that someone else was doing the heavy lifting.
"He also went with a broad profile instead of efficiency. More bulk, less control, terrible weight discipline, and all the elegance of a filing cabinet with anger issues."
"Yes, exactly. Look at these leg assemblies."
Tony pointed with one gauntlet.
"Visible pistons, external stress lines and no clean protection around the movement points. It's like he built the whole thing by asking what if the answer to every design question was more metal."
Stane shouted from inside the armour.
"You arrogant little bastards."
Lucius ignored him and tore the chest plates open.
The front of Iron Monger split apart under telekinetic force, peeling back like bad metal around a wound. He ripped the helmet off next and let it spin away into the dark.
Stane's face appeared inside the wreckage, flushed, furious, and suddenly much less impressive without steel pretending for him.
"Never put delicate parts where they can be harmed," Lucius said. "What kind of design is this? One out of ten."
Tony nodded beside him.
"I'm being generous and giving him a one only because I can physically confirm it exists."
He looked straight at Stane now.
"You sold me out, tried to have me killed, sold my weapons to terrorists, stole my reactor, and then built this?" He shook his head inside the helmet. "Obi, betrayal I can understand. Bad engineering feels personal."
Lucius began crushing the remaining outer frame while Stane was still inside it.
Metal folded inwards with a violent grinding shriek. The whole armour compacted by inches at a time.
Stane lost every trace of his earlier confidence immediately.
"Wait."
The word broke out of him with actual fear in it.
Lucius did not stop.
The pressure increased. Metal pressed into itself. Internal joints buckled. Something in Stane's leg snapped with a sound neither Tony nor Lucius had any trouble identifying.
"Any last words?" Lucius asked, not really addressing anyone in particular.
Stane tried to speak.
Lucius shushed him with a gesture.
"I was asking Tony, baldy."
He glanced sideways.
"Any last words for the rat?"
Tony looked at Stane for one long second.
There were years in that look. Betrayal, grief, disgust, disappointment, rage, and the final ugly calm that came when a man realised the truth had already chosen its own ending.
Then Tony shrugged.
"Nope. Burn in hell, Obi."
Lucius pushed.
The sound that followed was brief, vicious, and final. Iron Monger compacted in on itself under an enormous telekinetic crush until it became a dense iron ball with blood, bone, and Stane's last bad decisions packed into the middle like a filling.
Lucius let the metal sphere drop to the concrete.
It hit with a heavy, ugly thud.
Tony stared at it for a moment.
Then Lucius began to rise.
Tony rose with him by accident.
He looked down, realised he was still hanging in Lucius's telekinetic grip several yards off the ground, and then watched Lucius continue flying away at an annoyingly relaxed pace.
"Lucius."
No response.
"Lucius, you forgot me."
Still no response.
He tried louder.
"Lucius!"
The bastard kept drifting onward.
Tony looked down at the ground again, then back at the retreating suit.
"You know I was joking about shutting the company, right? You didn't take that seriously, did you?"
Lucius stopped in the air, turned slowly, and looked back at him.
"I want Stane's shares. Can you arrange it?"
Tony's jaw tightened.
"For God's sake, what is wrong with you and this obsession with shares? Put me back on the ground."
Lucius cupped one hand to his ear.
"Can't hear you."
Tony glared. "Put me down, you thug."
Lucius started lifting him higher.
"Oh, you want to feel the breeze? You should have said so."
"Lucius."
Up he went.
"Lucius, I swear to God."
Higher.
Tony started listing insults on instinct.
"Bandit, thug, this is extortion. You absolute jackass."
Lucius watched him with visible calm.
At last, the sentence he was waiting for arrived.
"Yes, you can take the damn shares. Now put me down. Gently."
Lucius descended at once and lowered him the final few feet with almost insulting care.
Tony touched the ground and started to check his suit with whatever dignity could be recovered after being used as airborne collateral.
"There, see?" Lucius smiled. "That wasn't difficult."
Tony pointed at him.
"You are the least charitable person I have ever met."
"I am not extorting you. I am helping you discover the value of gratitude at altitude."
Tony charged his repulsors to show his gratitude in a different way.
Lucius raised both hands and spoke in haste.
"I saved your life, corrected your corporate structure, and improved your succession outlook in one evening." Lucius lowered his hands and brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve. "Really, a little gratitude is not much to ask for."
Tony looked at the metal ball that used to be Obadiah Stane, then back at Lucius, then up at the sky as if asking whether any part of this day still counted as normal.
Finally, he let out a breath.
"You know what? You are right."
Lucius's smile widened.
"I always am."