Tony hovered in the air, palm thrusters glowing bright blue. He pointed at the fifteen-foot monster stomping toward them across the sand. "I will take the big guy. You support. That robot has more weak points than a budget toaster. Follow the HUD and hit them. I've unlocked the master control for now."
Peter nodded. "Got it. Hit the joints. Avoid the giant blender arms. Do not die. Classic strategy."
The robot charged. The ground shook so violently that sand jumped like popcorn. Silvio's voice thundered through the speakers.
"YOU ARE DEAD, STARK!"
Tony sighed loudly. "Yes, yes, very original. Try poetry next time."
The robot fired a volley of vibranium-tipped missiles. They streaked through the air in blue trails.
Tony pointed his finger toward the oncoming missiles. The nanites shifted, forming a mini gun. He shot a blue energy bolt. Space warped outward in a ripple. A vortex opened in front of him and swallowed the missiles whole. A second vortex snapped open behind the robot and spat them back out like angry hornets. The missiles slammed straight into its armored spine.
Peter whistled.
"Okay. That was cool. Like unfair cool. Like cheat code cool."
"Focus, kid."
The robot staggered for a moment, then charged again with boosted thrusters under its feet. It hit the sand so hard the dunes shifted like waves.
Peter leaped into the air and fired webs at the robot's knee joint.
"Hey, Robo Giant! Bet you skipped leg day!"
The webs stuck, but the robot's knee servos spun violently and shredded them like thread. Peter used the back boosters to fly out of the way as a massive metal hand slammed down where he had been standing. But he managed to get in three more shots.
'Wow! I just thought of using it, and it worked... just like that,' Peter thought.
"Hermes, push 2% Space energy." Tony dove in from above and fired a beam of condensed space energy from his gauntlet. It sliced a burning line across the robot's chest plate, but the vibranium armor held.
Silvio growled through the speakers. "Your toy cannot cut through this armor. Nothing can."
'Stupid fool. I've isolated your entire shield system.' Tony grinned. "Nothing is a strong word. Let us test that hypothesis."
The robot lunged. Tony teleported a few meters to the left in a blink. The robot punched the spot where he had been hovering, creating a giant crater in the sand.
Peter flew behind the robot, flipped in midair, and switched his web mode through the HUD. "Let us try spicy webs." He launched a set of plasma-charged webs at the exposed elbow joints. The webs wrapped around the metal plates and heated rapidly until the servos beneath them sparked.
The robot jerked its arm.
'Looks like not everything is Vibranium made, is it? You made the same mistake I once did, mixing Vibranium with other metals to create a suit. Haha! The other metals won't be able to keep up with the Vibranium parts, which will cause a massive imbalance and your kinetic absorbers and heat dispersal parts will be fucked up,' Tony thought after scanning Sivlio's armor.
Peter pumped a fist. "Yes. Science wins again."
Silvio snapped back. "Annoying insect."
A hidden shoulder cannon popped open and blasted a vibranium pulse straight at Peter.
Peter screamed. "Too close!" He curled into a ball and the suit auto-boosted sideways. He bounced across the sand, rolled, and landed in a crouch. He pointed both hands at the cannon.
"Okay mister Murder Toaster. Try web grenade."
He fired a glowing orb of sticky nanoweb. It hit the cannon, hardened instantly, and clogged the rotating barrel. The nanites began to eat through the metal. When it tried to fire again, the entire compartment blew out with a loud metallic shriek.
"Darn you pests," Silvio cursed.
Tony used the opening. He created two swirling vortexes in his hands and slammed them together. The space between them bent like soft glass. He hurled the compressed distortion at the robot's head. The hit made the entire machine stagger and sink knee deep into the sand. The top half of its head vanished.
Silvio roared. "What kind of power is this? You are using magic now, Stark?"
Tony replied, "And? What are you gonna do about it?"
The robot lunged forward again. Tony blasted upward and returned fire with a barrage of blue repulsor shots that forced the machine to shield its sensors with its massive arms. But the blasts were strong enough to shatter the armor plating. Peter sprinted and launched himself upward.
"Joints, joints, joints," he said to himself. "You are basically a giant action figure, and I am about to void your warranty."
Peter fired rapid web shots at the knee, swapping between adhesive mode and shock mode while flying around the robot. The shocks made the robot jerk violently. The adhesive started to gum up the rotating plates.
The robot tried to stomp him, but Peter flipped backward and landed on the leg.
"Wow. You need to clean your joints. This is dustier than my aunt's attic."
Tony swooped down beside him. "You are doing great. Keep going. I will take the torso."
The robot whirled and opened a chest panel. A rapid fire cannon emerged. It launched a hail of glowing plasma bolts. The bolts scorched the sand and exploded in sprays of molten glass.
Tony raised a hand. A shimmering blue hexagonal shield snapped into place in front of him. The bolts splashed against it like fireworks. Peter used his senses to easily dodge the attack and even managed to get closer to the robot.
Peter aimed at the robot's hip joint. "Let us try web type twelve."
Peter fired.
The shot exploded into cold vapor.
The robot's right hip joint froze solid. Frost crawled over the plates.
Tony's eyes widened. "You have cryo webs? When did I install that?"
"You gave me the suit."
"I definitely do not remember installing cryo webs. Ah! Probably, Sue."
The robot tried to move its right leg and snapped the joint. The entire limb locked, frozen stiff. The machine toppled. It slammed sideways into the sand hard enough to shake the dunes.
Tony hovered over it. "Finish it, kid. Aim for the neck and clog the coolant vents."
Peter zipped upward. "On it."
"What the hell is going on? How is Vibranium this weak? Did they scam me?" Silvio roared inside. "NO! NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!"
Peter landed on the robot's back and fired a concentrated line of reinforced webbing straight into the vent. The sticky mass instantly clogged the vents.
Tony shouted, "Brace!"
Peter launched himself off as Tony fired a single missile at the neck area.
A massive explosion threw the robot back a few hundred feets. Then the overloaded system detonated internally. The robot jerked once, lights flickering, then collapsed face-first into the sand with a heavy final thud.
"C'mon, c'mon..." Silvio cursed as he kept attempting to restart the system. However, due to overheating and the kinetic dampeners overloading, the excess heat and absorbed damage had caused the robot to malfunction.
Peter landed beside Tony and looked at the smoking wreck. "So... is that it? Did we win? And please say yes, because I really do not want round two."
Tony clapped him on the shoulder. "We won. And you did great. The robot is down for good. Now, it's the Cyborg's turn." He looked at the time on his HUD. "And I think this is enough fun for today. We are gonna be late for the real demo. So..."
A massive explosion rocked the desert as the robot exploded. Metal fragments and sand were sprayed all over like bullets. Tony released his nanites to eat up the Vibranium and store the metal for future use. Though he got an almost endless supply of new adamantium from the Celestial island, still, why waste precious material?
Silvio dragged himself out of the wreck like a horror prop that refused to stay dead. The flames behind him lit the sand in trembling orange waves. His synthetic skin hung in strips. What was left of it peeled away and hissed as the heat cooked the false flesh into ash. Underneath the ruined disguise sat the real body: a full chrome frame, half skeletal, half armored, with exposed wires twitching like irritated nerves. His optics flickered and reset, washing from red to dead blue.
Peter whispered, "Oh no. No no no. Why do villains always look worse without the mask?"
Silvio raised a hand and opened his mouth to begin the most predictable monologue in the Western Hemisphere.
Tony cut him off.
"Absolutely not."
He flicked his fingers like he was dismissing a waiter who brought the wrong drink. A spark of technopathy surged from his palm. Silvio's entire body shuddered as the pates popped, bolts loosened, servos unraveled. His limbs separated along the joints. His spine unfolded like a mechanical zipper. He came apart in perfect silence except for the tiny chirps of metal decompressing. In less than a second, he was hovering in the air as a floating cloud of labeled components.
Peter blinked. "That was terrifying. But in a strangely tidy way. How did you do that?"
"Technopathy," Tony replied, scanning the pieces. His HUD highlighted a small triangular core pulsing faintly. A secondary signal pinged from it: backup instructions, reboot instructions, and remote failover. Silvio had another body somewhere else. Of course, he did.
Tony quickly sent an emergency message to Yelena and sent her the location of Silvio's base, where he had hidden another body. She would handle the remaining cyborg and the base. She loved blowing up labs. It was basically her version of yoga.
Satisfied, Tony retracted the armor. The nanites streamed back into the watch on his wrist in a smooth silver wave. He pointed his bare hand at the hovering pieces of Silvio's legacy.
"These are your final patch notes," he said.
Cosmic energy charged in his palm. The air shimmered, and the sand quaked underfoot. The temperature rose so rapidly that Peter instinctively took a step back. Tony shot out a blast of cosmic energy. Every bit of metal in front of him vaporized within 3 seconds.
When the light faded, the air smelled faintly of hot ozone. A shallow glassy crater remained where Silvio's remains had floated.
Peter let out a long breath. "Okay. That felt pretty final."
Tony tapped his watch. "Yeah, don't worry. He wasn't even alive anymore, just a machine."
Peter nodded. "Should we hurry? It was the coolest thing I've ever done. But my friends will be worried, and I really don't want to miss the demo."
Tony lifted an eyebrow. "Kid, please. I own the demo."
"Oh, so you were serious when you said I could keep the suit?" Peter asked.
"Yeah. Oh, did I mention that you can use the suit as your regular clothes? You can even customize it according to your choice. Just say, regular clothes options and the AI will open the page. Anyway, we'll talk more later. Time to go," Tony said as he opened a portal before them. "Hop in."
"Yeah, just a quick question. You could have dismantled him from the start, but you didn't. You wanted to see how I do in a real fight, right?" Peter asked with a large smile under his mask.
"Yeah, sure. Now, get in," Tony said, pointing at the portal.
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