Normally, when Bella issued an order, old comrade 006 would go carry it out. Today, however, there was a trace of listlessness in the old comrade's voice.
"No need to send anyone to investigate. I know this matter very well. Whatever you want to ask, just ask me directly!"
The way 006 spoke as though no one knew Tony Stark better than he did left Bella completely baffled. Was there information here that she did not know?
What was with the old comrade's absolute certainty? Did he know everything that had happened behind the scenes? Could the Secrecy Portfolio she had obtained be fake, while the real Secrecy Portfolio was with 006? That made no sense!
Bella, a genuine Transmigrator and a Goddess of Secrets currently waiting for a proper posting, was thoroughly confused by his words. She stammered, "Why do you say that? Is there something about this that I don't know?"
"Three months! Do you know what I've been through these past three months?!" 006's question left her even more baffled.
"Where are you? I'll come over right..." Bella wanted to discuss it face to face, but when she glanced back and saw the two children sitting on the sofa, she stopped herself. There probably was not anything urgent on 006's side anyway. "...Let's just talk over the phone."
Poor 006 was having a miserable time of it. At that very moment, he was in the hospital being treated for his injuries.
When Tony Stark held his press conference, 006 had only just returned to the United States as well.
After three grueling months of planning and work, they had finally completed the Mark I that Tony Stark had sworn would work and that the other two had placed such high hopes in!
With an ace agent like 006 helping, almost nothing had gone wrong while they were building the Mark I.
But when it came time to break out, an unexpected problem appeared!
The enemy's firepower was too heavy! Tony Stark at least had a metal shell around him, with an absurdly high armor rating. Under normal circumstances, it would not have been difficult for him to charge out alone. But with 006 and Ho Yinsen following behind him, the difficulty shot up.
The Ten Rings were not idiots either. Tony had that enormous metal shell wrapped around him in plain sight, and he did not have any forced-taunt skill. How stupid would someone have to be to shoot bullets at steel?
The result was that ninety percent of the bullets went straight at 006!
The guy with metal wrapped around flesh looked hard to hurt. The one with flesh wrapped around metal looked, huh... rather easy to bully?
Tony Stark was obviously an unqualified tank! He barely blocked any of the enemy's bullets.
With no other choice, old comrade 006 pushed his Gun Kata to the limit. He fought until he was covered in blood, was shot more than ten times, and got riddled like a sieve! Even Ho Yinsen was shot once. Fortunately, the wound was not fatal, and the three of them barely managed to escape.
Thanks to the biochemical virus in his system, 006 possessed fairly strong self-healing, but taking more than ten bullets was still nearly fatal. Ho Yinsen also needed treatment, and because he had a mild temperament and did not want to appear in public, the two separated from Tony Stark and used Weyland-Yutani's network to return to the United States first for medical care.
When Bella called, a young nurse was still changing 006's bandages.
After hearing his story, Bella felt the whole thing was strangely absurd. She could not tell whether 006 was unlucky or lucky. Every time he reached a crisis, someone always showed up to save him...
"Focus on recovering. I'll go avenge you."
After searching and confirming the location, she reached the valley 006 had described. Unfortunately, the spacecraft was already gone. She could still see traces where it had taken off. The old man wearing ten rings that 006 had mentioned had already boarded the craft and departed for the distant reaches of space.
Where had he gone? What was he going to do? No one knew. Bella's Divination showed only that she would not see the old man again in the near future.
***
With Tony Stark's declaration that Stark Industries would "stop producing weapons," the company instantly became the center of a storm. A weapons manufacturer that no longer manufactured weapons?
The decision caught countless people off guard and, even worse, put the U.S. government and the Pentagon—both steadily sending more troops into Afghanistan—under intense pressure.
Without weapons, what the hell were they supposed to fight with?!
Benjamin Asher was furious, but he had no authority to interfere in the day-to-day operations of major corporations. They simply refused to sell weapons. What could he do about it? Nothing, unless he changed the law.
The other manufacturers in the military-industrial complex were delighted. The market share left behind by Stark Industries was enough to make their fortunes soar. A company called Hammer Industries stepped into the spotlight with support from the Pentagon and promptly took over many orders that had originally belonged to Stark Industries. Unfortunately, the company's capabilities left much to be desired. The military was not satisfied with its products and was merely making do with them for now.
That weekend, at the Texas underground base, Bella, the elders of the Assassin Brotherhood, and the Vanko father-and-son pair listened as 006 explained how Tony Stark had built his powered armor, the Mark I.
006 had indeed picked up quite a lot by watching. Of course, under those circumstances, Tony Stark could not have hidden much even if he wanted to. With 006's intelligence, he could reconstruct the design logic, but when it came to actual implementation, he knew what had been done without understanding why it worked.
The Vanko father-and-son pair helped make adjustments from time to time, but progress remained slow.
Simply possessing an Arc Reactor did not mean you could build powered armor. Far too many technologies and engineering steps were involved.
Even a simple boot-mounted jet thruster involved a whole collection of technologies such as impact beams, super-combustion boosting, and afterburning systems. Only when combined could they reach the speed of sound. If the armor needed to stop during high-speed flight, it would also require a localized gravitational field, along with a flight computer capable of handling an enormous computational load and a built-in gyroscope.
And this was only the most basic Mark I, not the future armors that casually reached Mach 8 or Mach 10.
At present, Stark's Mark I only had thrusters installed in the feet. Later versions would add pulse devices to the arms and a shock-wave device to the chest. The helmet would be even more outrageous, crammed with modules for spectral acquisition, audio processing, visual light guides, voice transformation, environmental scanning, a flat-grid neural-network processor, a mode-control integrated processor, a subprocess processor, and more...
Studying cost little; martial pursuits demanded money. Technology was the greatest money pit of all—and the greatest drain on the brain.
Anton Vanko had been somewhat dismissive at first. He had worked with Tony Stark's father, Howard Stark. How could he possibly fail to understand such a simple suit of powered armor? The fact was, he really did fail to understand it. Money and resources did not help.
Weyland-Yutani had money, but money was useless if they could not master the technology. The Vanko father-and-son pair could at most build a pair of electric whips. Using comrade 006's memories to recreate the Mark I was barely possible. At the very least, they could definitely reach the level of Iron Monger, but they had no way to handle later upgraded versions.
Under the pretext of visiting a former fellow captive, 006 dragged Ho Yinsen along to Stark's place to cozy up to him. Instead, they found the basement door tightly shut. After sitting in the house for a while, they could only leave helplessly.