Chapter 202: Cap: Is There Any Enhancement Serum Left? Can I Get a Shot?
In the training center, Steve watched Tony spring back up from the floor and felt something settle behind his eyes that he hadn't been expecting.
He had always assumed Tony Stark was fundamentally fragile, a brilliant man who needed the suit the way a turtle needed its shell. Tony had just demonstrated, in concrete terms, that this assumption was wrong.
He wasn't about to say that out loud.
"You've got more to you than I thought." Steve reset his breathing and brought his hands up into a boxing guard.
"But taking hits isn't the same as winning."
He came forward again.
This time, no straight charge.
Steve's footwork shifted. He pivoted on the ball of his front foot, weight cycling rapidly between both legs: left feint, right real, right feint, left drive. Every fake carried a genuine threat inside it, and every genuine threat wore a fake on its surface.
During the war, he had cut through an entire HYDRA assault unit on his own.
The years of close-quarters fighting in trenches and tunnels had written combat into the part of him that worked before thinking.
Tony threw three punches in sequence.
The first went for the face. Too obvious. Steve slipped to the side and drove a knee into his ribs on the way past.
The second swung wide at Steve's temple. Too much wind-up. Steve ducked under it and landed a hard kick to the back of Tony's knee as he came through.
By the time the third came, Tony hadn't fully committed to it before Steve had already circled to his side and slightly behind him.
Tony's turn wasn't fast enough to track it.
The gap between them was pure experience. No amount of physical conditioning covered that.
Steve's right fist came in like a hammer to Tony's liver. His left hook followed to the same side, catching the ribs. Then a third to the same spot.
Tony's body bent slightly under the impacts but he didn't step back.
Instead he chose a different response entirely.
Tony straightened suddenly, dropped his guard, and wrapped both arms around Steve in a bear hug.
No technique. No setup. Just a direct contest of strength.
Steve hadn't expected this from Tony Stark. In his mental picture of how Tony fought, the answer was armor, technology, and intelligence. Not a street-level grapple that came down to who was stronger.
That gap in his expectations was exactly what Tony needed.
His arms locked around Steve's waist like two red-hot rebar rods under load. The Extremis activated fully, the deep red glow across both arms brightening sharply. In that light, the muscle definition beneath the skin looked like black volcanic rock still cooling from the inside.
Steve tried to break free and found the grip genuinely immovable.
This was not a human being's strength.
"Got you, antique." Tony's voice came through his teeth, and under the controlled delivery there was something he couldn't quite keep out of it.
He drove through his legs and lifted Steve clean off the floor. Then he leaned back.
A German suplex.
Steve's head and shoulders hit the mat hard. But his reaction speed was at the absolute limit of what a human body could do — even as his back hit the floor, both legs had already wrapped around Tony's neck, setting up a triangle choke.
The two of them rolled and scrambled across the mat from one end to the other.
Steve locked Tony's left arm in a straight armbar. Tony used that arm to drag Steve off the floor by sheer force.
Steve used the momentum, turned, and drove an elbow into Tony's temple. Tony's head rocked. He slapped his palm into Steve's chest in the same motion.
The red glow at his palm flared.
A concentrated burst of heat detonated outward.
Steve was launched.
He hit the ceiling of the training center hard and came back down harder.
The air in the room rang from the thermal shockwave.
Steve's back hit the crash mat below the ring platform, bounced him half a meter, and deposited him on the floor. The back of his tactical suit was charred black in a wide patch, edges still trailing thin wisps of smoke.
He rolled to one knee, left hand on the floor, and looked up at Tony.
Tony was standing in place. The red glow in his palm hadn't fully faded. His breathing was heavier than when they'd started.
He shook out his right hand. A little skin had been scraped off his knuckles, from the mat during the ground scramble.
He glanced at it. The broken skin was closing at a visible rate, new skin coming in faintly pink.
"So — am I still just taking hits?" Tony was already moving, light on his feet, doing a loose approximation of Ali's shuffle around Steve's position.
Steve looked down at the charred patch on his chest. The expression that crossed his face was not enthusiastic.
"Stark. You're calling this a fight?"
"A fight? My apologies. When did I say I was limited to fighting technique?" Tony spread his hands. "You said no suit. I'm not wearing one. Those were your terms."
"So." The corner of his mouth lifted. "Ready for more, antique?"
Steve drew a slow breath, reset his stance, and looked back at Tony with complete seriousness. "I can do this all day."
He was already moving before the sentence ended.
This time no straight sprint. He pivoted on his front foot and leaned hard to the right, making it look like a lateral step.
Tony's eyes tracked the movement on reflex. His weight shifted with it.
That fraction of a second was all it took.
Steve's right leg swept low and fast, a leg kick aimed at the back of Tony's front knee.
Tony didn't pull the leg back in time. The kick landed clean.
The impact bent Tony's knee joint and dropped him half a level.
On anyone normal, that kick would have snapped the leg. Tony came through it without visible damage, and as his body dropped with the momentum, his right elbow came up wrapped in deep red heat, driving directly at Steve's collarbone.
Tony: eat the elbow.
Steve didn't flinch. The leg he'd kicked out didn't come back — instead he pivoted from the hip.
In a single motion his whole body rotated ninety degrees along the line of Tony's strike, slipping to Tony's side and slightly behind him.
Tony's elbow missed. His body's momentum carried him a half-step forward.
That gap was enough.
Steve's left arm came around from behind, crossing Tony's throat. His right arm threaded through Tony's armpit. Both hands locked together, pulling in.
A rear naked choke, fully secured.
There's not much to be said about a rear naked choke once it's locked in. Once the position is set, breaking it cleanly is very difficult.
Along the wall, Hawkeye's brow went up. "That's it," he said quietly.
Natasha beside him said nothing. Her eyes stayed on Tony.
On the side of Tony's neck where the hold had closed, the deep red glow was accelerating, shifting from dark red to orange. The visible network of vessels on the skin's surface looked like lava finding channels in cooling rock.
Then Tony's hands found Steve's forearm where it crossed his throat.
A sharp hiss.
The sound of skin burning.
Steve's tactical suit sleeve, where Tony's palm made contact, began to smoke. The fabric fibers curled and carbonized. Below them, the skin of Steve's forearm was going red.
A surge of acute pain rode up through Steve's nerves like current.
His jaw set. The arms around Tony's throat didn't move.
The choke kept tightening.
Tony felt the pressure on his carotid arteries. The edges of his vision started filling in with dark static.
He was running out of time.
He gave up trying to pry Steve's arms apart. Instead he loaded everything into his legs, dropped into a sharp crouch, and then launched upward with everything he had — like a spring that had been compressed past its limit releasing all at once.
Both of them left the floor.
Both of them came down hard.
Steve's back hit the mat for the second time, and the shock of the impact broke the choke's lock by a fraction.
Tony seized the opening. His right palm slammed into Steve's forearm, the one that had been around his throat.
The red glow detonated. The thermal shockwave blew Steve's arm clear.
Tony rolled free, put three steps of distance between them, and pulled in air.
On both sides of his neck, deep red pressure marks had formed where the choke had been. They weren't going anywhere quickly. They gave him the appearance of wearing something he hadn't chosen.
Steve was back on his feet as well. His right sleeve was gone from the forearm down, burned away. The skin beneath had a ring of blisters around it. He looked at his arm, tore off what was left of the sleeve, wrapped it twice around the burn, and tied it off with his teeth.
Seven or eight meters between them. Both looking at each other.
Tony's breathing was steadying out — the Extremis recovery rate was working faster than anything normal, rebuilding his energy reserves at a pace that had no business being possible.
Steve's breathing was steady too, but for a different reason. He hadn't been pushed hard enough yet to need to push it.
"Your ability to take a hit is legitimately impressive," Steve said, and he meant it without any edge in it.
Tony rolled his neck. The vertebrae cracked in a short sequence. "So is your stubbornness."
His arms were already heating up again, the air around them beginning to warp and crackle.
"That said, Steve. Warmup's over."
Steve watched the heat building between Tony's hands — temperatures that could ignite charcoal on contact — and lowered his center of gravity slowly.
He answered with movement instead of words.
Tony stopped talking. His right palm drove forward hard, releasing a fan-shaped thermal shockwave that swept outward toward Steve at full width.
The overhead light strips in the wave's path burst in rapid sequence, glass fragments raining down like brief hard rain.
Steve didn't back up.
He ran straight at the shockwave.
In the instant before the heat reached him, he dropped into a slide, body almost flat to the floor, passing below the wave's main body while pulling up a section of flooring that had buckled on the way down.
The back of his tactical suit smoked where the wave grazed it from above, but his speed didn't drop.
The end of the slide brought him to Tony's feet.
Tony looked down and saw Steve's legs already moving, scissoring toward his ankles.
He jumped to avoid it. Steve's scissors changed in midair — right leg hooking Tony's left, left foot planting on Tony's right knee, hip driving through the twist.
Tony was pulled out of the air and hit the floor on his side.
Before he could roll, Steve was already on top of him, knees driving down onto both of Tony's arms, pinning his upper body completely to the floor.
Where Tony's arms touched the mat, the heat burned through the padding and left two black impressions in the concrete.
Tony didn't panic.
He pulled in a full breath. His chest expanded sharply, the deep red glow spreading out along the line of his ribs from inside, as though something had been lit in his chest cavity.
Then:
A focused jet of flame shot from Tony's mouth, angled past Steve's ear, close enough to singe a few hairs at his temple.
Tony had the angle deliberately off. This wasn't a death match, and he had no intention of actually harming Steve. The adjustment was automatic.
Steve's head jerked away on instinct, his weight shifting.
That was what Tony had been waiting for.
He drove from the hips, executing a standard BJJ bridge sweep, rolling Steve off him. In the same motion he came up on top, left hand pressing on Steve's chest, right hand raised.
"Giving up?" Tony's five fingers flattened into a palm strike. Heat moved across its surface in slow waves, the look of a heated blade.
Steve stared at the raised hand. "I can go —"
"Yes, yes, all day, I know." A beat of resignation crossed Tony's face.
Unbending.
Fine.
The heat faded from his palm. His hand closed back into a fist.
"Then you can go to sleep first."
The fist came down.
It was aimed at the point of Steve's jaw.
A clean hit there on a normal person meant at least thirty seconds off the lights. Tony had already composed the scene that would follow — Steve going down, Tony leaning over to offer a hand up, delivering either a gracious you fought well or the classic checkmate depending on the mood.
Tony's fist came down with a sound of air parting.
Steve crossed his arms in a block, but this punch carried significantly more than anything before it.
The Extremis and the Green Goblin Formula, both at full output simultaneously, neither holding anything back.
The block absorbed it. Steve's back hit the floor anyway, the concrete underneath the mat giving a muffled reply to the impact.
The bones in his forearms sent back a sharp protest, the sensation of a red-hot iron rod connecting head-on.
Tony didn't give him the breath to recover.
The second punch came immediately to the same point.
Steve's head moved at the last instant. Tony's fist caught the side of his face and punched into the floor.
Steve used the angle to roll, legs going for Tony's midsection, trying to take back control.
Tony wasn't giving him the ground again.
Before Steve's legs had the leverage, Tony's right hand opened wide and slapped directly onto Steve's chest.
Not a shockwave blast this time. Something shorter, faster, and more concentrated.
The force drove straight through the surface and into the body behind it.
Steve's breathing stuttered half a beat.
His movement stalled for a fraction of a second.
Tony used it. Left hand locked Steve's right wrist to the floor. Right knee pinned Steve's left arm. He dropped his weight across Steve's upper body and locked it down completely.
Steve pulled against it twice. Tony didn't move.
The heat reformed in Tony's open palm. He held it ten centimeters in front of Steve's face.
The air between them warped. The dark red light reflected back from Steve's eyes.
"It's over, Steve."
No mockery in Tony's voice. A rare thing.
Steve looked at the palm ready to come down. Then he looked at his own arms, completely immobilized.
Three seconds.
He let out a breath. The tension went out of his muscles gradually.
"...Fine."
"I'll admit it — even out of the suit, you're a capable fighter."
"And," Tony added, "a capable entrepreneur and a good-looking man."
The red light in his palm went out.
Tony climbed off Steve and sat down on the floor beside him, breathing hard. The pressure marks on both sides of his neck from the choke hadn't faded yet. They had the look of something he hadn't chosen to be wearing.
Steve sat up. He looked at the charred palm print on his chest. Then at the ring of blisters on his right forearm. Then across at Tony, who looked roughly as put-together as he did.
They looked at each other.
Then, almost at the same moment, the corners of both mouths pulled into something that landed somewhere between a rueful grin and genuine respect.
Along the wall, Pietro stared for two seconds with his mouth open, then turned to Peter. "That's it?"
Before Peter could answer, Natasha had already pushed off the wall, dusted her shoulder where it had been leaning, and spoke in a tone that could have been reviewing a weekend amateur bout. "That's it."
"Wrap it up."
"Lucky they both knew where the line was."
She turned and walked out first.
Hawkeye followed, dropping a hand on Pietro's shoulder as he passed. "Come on. Don't just stand there."
Pietro came back to himself, hopped off the vaulting box, and muttered under his breath, clearly a little disappointed. "I genuinely expected at least half a building to come down."
"This is SHIELD," Banner said from behind him, a tired kind of amusement in his voice. "Even if this were just a sparring match, if they actually brought down part of the building — knowing Fury — the invoice would have several extra zeros on it. Stark might actually end up bankrupt."
He was exaggerating, but only slightly.
The group filtered out of the training center.
Before long the only people left were Tony and Steve.
In the center of the floor, Tony braced on his knee and stood. He extended a hand to Steve, still sitting on the floor.
"After you." Tony said it with his full insufferable energy intact.
Steve looked at the hand. Then looked at Tony's face. Waited one beat.
Then took it.
Tony pulled him up, then glanced at the burn on Steve's forearm and made a dismissive sound. "Steve, go get that looked at in the medical bay. And don't tell the doctor in front of me that I hit dirty."
"Cover those marks on your neck first." Steve found his footing and let go, his voice back to its usual steadiness — but the very slight thing at the corner of his mouth hadn't entirely gone away. "They look like you were on the wrong end of a noose."
Tony touched his neck, entirely unbothered. "Doesn't matter. Mine will clear up before yours does."
The banter was still running when Steve's expression shifted slightly, something surfacing.
"Actually, Stark."
"What enhancement did you use? Any chance I could get some?"
"...Are you serious?"
"You're jealous."
"...Yeah."
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces