Chapter 51: Iron Will (Part 2)

"... Tony refuses to see me now. I know he must be very disappointed, but I hope you can tell him that the Air Force is not satisfied with the technology he gave them; they want more... My superior, General Johnson, once revealed that they want to join forces with the Army to pressure Stark Industries..."

"Or perhaps they have more conspiracies."

Rhodes said on the phone. Shiler asked him, "You've been excluded from the power center of this circle? Why? Because you wavered?"

Rhodes was silent for a while and said, "No, General Johnson has actually never trusted me because I was once a subordinate of General Andro, and the relationship between the two of them is very bad."

"So that's why he forced you to go, right?"

Shiler sighed and said, "If you can't withstand the pressure there, what are you going to do?"

Before Rhodes could speak, Shiler said again, "Tony isn't seeing you now, not because of anything related to the Air Force. Stark Industries has some internal problems. He needs to slow down now and hasn't left the house for several days."

Rhodes's tone had no ups and downs, just like the person himself—always very serious and looking very rigid. He said, "I think we all know that Stark Industries is not monolithic. There must be someone among them who is colluding with the military, and this person must also be a senior executive."

He continued, "The military's grasp of Stark Industries' technical news is too fast and too detailed. This is very abnormal. Although I don't know more information for the time being, I don't want Tony to be betrayed."

"You want me to go tell him this? But perhaps you haven't thought that he might have already known, and the reason it dragged on until now..."

"I know, he is too soft-hearted, otherwise he wouldn't have compromised with the military because of me. But this time the matter is too serious. If he continues to be so indecisive, something big will definitely happen..."

Just as he was saying this, Shiler heard movement. He turned his head and saw two meteors streaking across the window, followed by two dazzling rays of light flashing across the sky. A violent explosion sounded at the end of the sky. The two rays of light were entangled and falling downward. Shiler looked out the window and said to the other end of the phone, "... Something big has already happened."

Shiler hung up the phone. He turned directly into gray mist, passed through the streets of Manhattan, followed the landing point of the two streams of light, and arrived at an abandoned warehouse in the XC district of New York.

This landing point must have been chosen by Stark because this is a rare abandoned urban area. Only by landing here would it not hurt ordinary people.

Shiler slowly condensed his figure. Before he could go in, the phone rang again. Rhodes said urgently on the other end of the phone, "Send me a satellite location, I'll go over immediately, Tony might need my help!"

Shiler, while holding the phone, flashed to the roof of the warehouse and looked down.

There, Iron Man, wearing gold-red armor, was entangled with a huge robot.

That robot was not the Iron Monger.

It was entirely jet black, with gold embellishments on some joints. It was larger than the Iron Monger but more ferocious.

Shiler said to the phone, "Things have changed, you'd better come over quickly."

The battle below was fierce. Iron Man wasn't unable to beat that big robot, but in the fall just now, he had to carry the robot to fall to a place where no one was, so he didn't have time to adjust the angle when landing. One side of the armor's body was already a bit inflexible.

This wasn't like when he usually saved people and fought those street thugs. Even with Jarvis's intelligent calculation system, Iron Man was still very struggling to deal with it. It could be seen that the robot seemed to be prepared specifically to deal with him.

Iron Man flew into mid-air, hugged the robot's waist in a low-altitude dive, and slammed it into the wall. After a violent collision sound, a large piece of the roof collapsed and smashed onto both of them.

Iron Man's situation was even worse. His entire shoulder armor was somewhat damaged, and one arm could hardly be lifted at all.

However, that big guy wasn't much better. After being hit hard and electrocuted, a large piece of the cockpit was knocked off. However, there was no pilot inside; it seemed someone was controlling it remotely.

Discovering this, Iron Man came up with a way to deal with it. He first pretended that the armor was out of control, crawled out of the steel frame that fell from the roof, and then pretended to be defeated and fell to the ground.

That big robot also struggled to crawl out of the steel frame. Finding that Iron Man had already fallen, it directly picked up a steel bar and wanted to stab it into Iron Man's chest.

Just when it leaned its entire upper body forward to exert force, Iron Man on the ground suddenly erupted, kicked its knee, and followed with an elbow strike, hitting the robot's head.

That big robot's upper body was designed too bloated. Although it was very strong, it was inevitably unstable in the lower body. It took Iron Man's elbow strike solidly and swayed to one side.

Just when Iron Man intended to repeat the old trick and use electric shock combined with collision to defeat it, the big robot suddenly started to smoke. Jarvis began to alarm frantically. Iron Man flew backward quickly, but he was still a step slow.

A violent explosion erupted in the warehouse, creating a huge mushroom cloud. The roaring sound could be heard several blocks away. It self-destructed.

Obviously, the designer of this big robot didn't make its upper body so big for no reason.

There was a big bomb inside, and the equivalent was quite sufficient.

When Shiler dragged Stark out of the armor, he was already covered in blood. At least three of his ribs were broken, and it seemed his ankles and arms were also fractured.

Stark himself indeed had no superpowers. Although his brain was very developed, his limbs were obviously much worse.

Stark tried hard to lift his arm and wipe the blood off his eyes. He saw it was Shiler and breathed a sigh of relief. He said to him, "In my pocket... phone... Jarvis will call another armor. Go see if there is anyone around... the explosion was too big..."

Obviously, his head also suffered some impact. Shiler opened his eyelids and looked. The congestion in his eyes was very serious. He took out a small bottle of medicine, poured out a pill, and let Stark take it.

The effect of the high-concentration analgesic was very good. Soon, Stark said, "This guy is coming for me. It has a strong restraint on my armor and can even estimate my movement route. I really can't believe it..."

"Can't believe what? Can't believe that the person who knows you best might have betrayed you? If you have the energy for this, build a few more armors, and you'd win even if you just punched once each."

"I know, I shouldn't have hidden in the lab to escape, but I just wanted to digest this fact. You can't expect me to be emotionless like a zombie."

Stark looked very negative now, his face full of decadence and loss.

Stark coughed heavily a few times, and a trace of blood flowed down the corner of his mouth. Obviously, the impact just now made his respiratory tract uncomfortable. A kind of euphoria brought by the high-concentration painkiller surged in his body. He seemed bewitched and said in a low voice:

"I knew his friends wouldn't be good people, as rotten as him. I originally thought..."

"No, or maybe he was right. Starks are not worth trusting, they will only disappoint people forever..."

Shiler laid Stark's head flat, touched his pulse, and found that his heart rate was a bit low. He wanted to take Stark away directly, but Stark was like a drunk, refusing to leave no matter what.

It could be seen that his desire to survive was not high now.

So Shiler could only sit down beside him cross-legged. Beside him were the wreckage of the Iron Man suit, and the big crater caused by the big robot's self-destruction was smoking not far away. The entire warehouse was blown to pieces, with steel bars and cement fragments all over the ground. Everything looked like the ruins of the end of the world.

Shiler asked Stark, "Obadiah is actually more like your father than Howard, right?"

Stark didn't answer him, as if he were asleep. After a while, he said slowly, "When I made the first robot, Uncle Obadiah was very happy. He said I was a genius just like my father."

"I always heard my father's name in his mouth. He described him as a perfect person—smart, upright, firm... just..."

"In my previous memories, every time he mentioned the name Howard, it was always with praise and nostalgia."

"But later, I started to dislike hearing this name more and more, so he stopped mentioning it..."

Stark's voice was very hoarse. He was speaking almost out of breath. He said:

"I have seen a photo of them together, placed on his desk. In it, they were both very young, high-spirited..."

"Perhaps just like you and Rhodes," Shiler said.

"No, that's different, completely different."

"I'm not like Howard at all, not at all. Rhodes wouldn't be like Obadiah either. Rhodes and I, we are completely opposite, and we will never be their replicas, absolutely not..."

Afterward, Stark had no more voice. The effect of the painkiller made him fall into a deep sleep quickly.

When Rhodes came, seeing Stark's such serious injuries, he hammered the wreckage of the armor hard. Shiler said to him, "Now compared to the injuries on his body, I think his mental state is a bigger problem."

"Aren't you a psychologist? Can't you enlighten him?"

"I am a psychologist, but not God. Obviously, he has walked into a dead end now. He feels that everything he is suffering now is retribution—his retribution, his father's retribution, Stark Industries' retribution."

"He wants to hand all this over to others?"

"That has to be asked of himself. He once said that for the sake of his home, he would never retreat, but now it seems he indeed wants to give all this up himself."

Rhodes looked back at Stark lying on the ground and said, "If he has the only price to pay, perhaps it is for his clever brain, for that sensitive heart."

"He said you two are completely opposite," Shiler said. "He has a suit of iron armor, then what about you?"

"Do you have a heart that is firm enough?"

Rhodes turned back, looking at the scrapped armor in front of him, and said nothing. ===== CHAPTER 52 =====