The shift in Obadiah's fortune was swift, but for a man who had spent decades weaving a web of corruption, a prison cell was merely a temporary office.
Inside the high-security holding cell of the federal lockup, Obadiah Stane sat upright. Across from him sat General Thaddeus Ross and a high-ranking official from the Department of Defense, both shielded from the cameras by a "legal consultation" blackout.
"You're facing treason, Obadiah," the General growled, sliding a folder across the table. "The evidence Stark leaked is airtight. You're done."
Stane leaned forward, "The evidence is a distraction. You're worried about shipping manifests while a god is flying over Afghanistan."
He pulled a contraband mobile device from his pocket—one his military contacts had smuggled in—and played the grainy footage from the Ten Rings base. The screen showed the Mark III tearing through reinforced steel as if it were paper.
"This is what Stark is hiding," Stane hissed. "An unidentified armored platform that bypasses your radar, ignores your ballistics, and answers to no one. You can lock me up and watch your air superiority vanish, or you can give me my freedom and the resources to build the counter-measure."
The officials looked at the screen, the fear of a technological gap outweighing their duty to the law. "What do you need?" the General asked.
"Exoneration. A 'Black Site' facility. And a team of your best ballistic engineers. I have the blueprints... I just need the forge."
Twenty-four hours later, the FBI was told that Obadiah Stane had been "transferred to an undisclosed federal facility for further questioning." In reality, he was standing in a massive underground bunker beneath a decommissioned Stark subsidiary.
——
Stane's strategy was rooted in Brute Force Engineering. The Iron Monger was being forged as a sledgehammer of terrifying mass.
This was Howard Stark's forgotten legacy—the 1970s Exoskeleton Prototype. It was a prehistoric beast of iron and hydraulics, looking more like a deep-sea diving suit than a combat chassis. Howard had abandoned it because the hydraulic fluids of the era couldn't handle the pressure, and the power requirements were impossible. By utilizing the 1970s Stark "Power Suit" chassis, Stane's team bypassed the most difficult stage of robotics. Howard Stark had already solved the complex joint-stress ratios and load-bearing calculus decades ago. They simply took that indestructible "bone" structure and reinforced it with modern high-tensile steel.
"Howard was a dreamer, but he was limited by the physics of his time," Stane told the group of gathered scientists and military engineers as he paced around the iron giant.
He plugged a high-capacity drive into the main console—the drive containing decades of stolen Stark Industry "Bleeding Edge" sensor data and flight-stabilization algorithms. This allowed his engineers to skip years of R&D, leapfrogging directly to weapon integration.
Under the table, his military co-conspirators delivered the "forbidden" goods. They stripped the Depleted Uranium plating from a decommissioned M1 Abrams tank to give the Monger its skin, and installed an experimental 20mm Gatling system usually reserved for fighter jets. It was a walking, sentient tank.
Stane pointed to the massive back plating. "For flight, integrate the thrust-vectoring nozzles from the F-22 Raptor. It will fly like a rocket."
The lead scientist stepped forward, sweat beading on his forehead as he looked at the empty chest cavity of the Iron Monger. "Sir, the integration is 90% complete. We've slaved the targeting systems to the satellite network and reinforced the joints with titanium-steel alloy. But the power requirement is astronomical. It's a dead god. Even a high-output nuclear battery wouldn't sustain a combat cycle for more than ten seconds before the motors seized."
Stane leaned into the flickering light of the monitors, his eyes fixed on a stolen sensor reading of the "Ghost" armor from Afghanistan. He looked at the energy spikes—it was a miniature version of the massive Arc Reactor at Stark HQ.
"The engine exists," Stane murmured, "Tony has found a way to put the power of the sun into a bottle. He's keeping it in his workshop in Malibu, treating it like a science project while the world changes around him. He's forgotten that I was the one who helped him build the fireplace; I know exactly where the logs are kept."
———-
Tony has seen the glimpse of the future during his second Tarot Club meeting, he knew Obadiah wouldn't hesitate to target Pepper to get to him. Because of this, he had permanently deployed Miller's elite "Shadow Team" to her side—Tier 1 operators who were invisible to the public but lethal enough to level a city block to keep her safe.
When Tony received word that Stane had been moved to a "secured" federal facility, he knew the military was lying. He tapped into the satellite network he had compromised months ago, tracking the transport's thermal signature to a decommissioned Stark subsidiary bunker.
Using his private security force once more, Tony sent Micro-Drone "Insects." These tiny, magnetically-propelled recorders slipped through the bunker's ventilation shafts, providing Tony with a multi-spectral live feed of everything happening inside.
Tony sat in his workshop, his face illuminated by the blue glow of the holograms as he watched Stane and the rogue Generals standing over the Iron Monger. Seeing his father's 1970s prototype being weaponized by the very people who claimed to protect the country made his blood boil.
"JARVIS," Tony said, his voice cold. "He's going to come for the reactor. He has no choice. The suit he's building is a power-hungry parasite."
"And what is the plan, Sir? Shall we reinforce the perimeter?"
"No. We're going to give him what he wants. But we're going to wrap it in a gift."
Tony walked to his workbench and began assembling a specific miniaturized Arc Reactor. To the naked eye, it looked identical to the Mark III's core, but inside, Tony used his Magnetism to weave a microscopic thermite-pulse bomb into the casing.
The reactor was designed with a "Dead Man's Switch." It would power a suit for exactly thirty minutes—just enough to make the wearer feel invincible—before the magnetic containment would fail, causing a localized explosion.
If Stane tried to dismantle it or integrate it into the Monger, the explosion would leave behind undeniable forensic evidence.
"I want the legal trail to be perfect," Tony muttered, his eyes glowing with a predatory light. "The moment Stane uses the Sonic Paralyzer on me—which he will—and takes this reactor, it becomes a federal crime. I'll be the victim of a military-sponsored assassination attempt. I'll sue the Department of Defense into the dirt for possessing my stolen research and for letting a high-profile prisoner walk into my living room."
Tony sat back in his chair, intentionally leaving the workshop's side door unlocked. He was ready for the theater to begin. He knew his High-Speed Regeneration would protect him from the sonic blast, but he needed the world to see the military's "hero" act like a common thief.
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