Tony was playing a high-stakes game of chess, and he wasn't about to let himself be the captured king. He knew the risks of his new abilities; if he revealed his Magnetism or High-Speed Regeneration during a home invasion, he wouldn't just be a billionaire anymore—he'd be a specimen for every government lab on the planet.
To prevent this, Tony transformed Stark HQ into his fortress. He spent his nights in the penthouse of the tower, surrounded by corporate security and the prying eyes of the public, which acted as his shield. He had already scrubbed his Malibu home of anything truly vital. Every byte of data, every blueprint of the Mark III, and every piece of Tarot Club intelligence was moved to a localized, "air-gapped" server with no physical connection to the outside world.
Tony didn't leave himself defenseless, however. Using the precision of his magnetic control, he had engineered the Mark V "Suitcase" Armor. It was portable, lightweight, and sat discreetly in his office. He was never more than a few feet away from becoming Iron Man, but to the world, he just looked like a busy CEO trying to save his company.
In his Malibu workshop, Tony left a carefully prepared "ghost" of his life. He left the lights on, a few old cars, and—most importantly—the Trojan Horse Arc Reactor. He placed it in a reinforced glass casing on his primary workbench, right where Obadiah's old security codes would lead him.
"JARVIS, keep the Malibu feeds encrypted but live," Tony instructed while sitting in his Stark HQ office, sipping a coffee. "I want to see the moment our guest arrives."
Three days later, while Tony was in a meeting with the board of directors, a silent alert pulsed on his phone. His private "Shadow Team" bodyguards signaled that the Malibu perimeter had been breached.
Tony waited. He let the "theft" happen. He waited for the reports to come in that a specialized military-grade strike team had bypassed his residential security, used a localized sonic pulse to clear the rooms, and made off with the reactor.
An hour later, Tony arrived at his Malibu estate, flanked by his head of security, Happy Hogan, and his elite missionaries. The house was a mess—glass was shattered, and the workshop door had been burned through with a thermal lance.
Happy was checking the rooms. "Tony, they took it. The prototype energy source... it's gone. We need to call the police, the FBI, everyone!"
Tony walked slowly into the workshop. He looked at the empty pedestal where the "booby-trapped" reactor had been sitting. His Eye Boy vision picked up the lingering heat signatures of the tactical boots and the residue of the military-grade explosives used on the door. It was a perfect forensic trail leading straight back to the Pentagon's black-site bunkers.
"Don't worry about the police, Happy," Tony said, his voice calm. "Obie thinks he just won the war. He has no idea he just signed his own death warrant—and a massive settlement check for Stark Industries."
———-
The frustration boiling inside Obadiah Stane had reached a fever pitch. For days, he had watched the surveillance feeds of Stark HQ, hoping Tony would step out into the open so he could eliminate him. But Tony remained like a "turtle in a shell," buried under layers of corporate security and public scrutiny.
Finally, Stane's patience snapped. "Forget the man for now," he barked at the rogue General. "Get me the heart. Without the power source, the man is just a billionaire in a suit. With it, I am a god."
The raid on the Malibu house was swift and violent, and as Stane stood in the secret underground military base hours later, he held the miniaturized Arc Reactor in his hand like a captured soul. He didn't notice the microscopic "insect" cameras—no larger than a grain of dust—clinging to his collar and the walls of the bunker, broadcasting everything back to Tony's private servers.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Stane whispered, looking at the scientists and Pentagon officials gathered in the massive hangar.
In the center of the room stood the Iron Monger. It was a twelve-foot-tall mountain of depleted uranium and jagged steel. Stane climbed into the cockpit, the metal groaning under his weight. He wanted to rule.
"Initiate the power sequence," Stane commanded. "I want every system to be green. We're going to show the Pentagon what real peace looks like."
The lead scientist carefully slotted Tony's "Trojan Horse" reactor into the chest cavity of the Monger. Immediately, the hangar was filled with a high-pitched hum. The massive suit's eyes flickered to life with unstable blue light.
Stane laughed as the haptic feedback systems surged into his arms. "The parameters are perfect! Targeting slaved hydraulics at 100%. I can feel the power!"
The military brass clapped each other on the back, grinning at the display of stolen might. For ten minutes, Stane moved the massive machine around the hangar, crushing concrete blocks and testing the Gatling systems. He felt invincible. He felt like the new king of the world.
But Tony's thirty-minute timer was silent and relentless.
Inside the reactor, the microscopic thermite-pulse bomb reached its "zero" state. The magnetic containment field—the very thing holding the Arc energy in place—suddenly inverted.
"Sir! We have a thermal spike in the core!" the scientist screamed, his eyes glued to the monitors. "The energy is cascading! It's not a malfunction, it's a—"
He never finished the sentence.
The "Trojan" reactor didn't just fail; it detonated with the focused intensity of a localized sun. Because Tony had engineered it to react with the surrounding metal, the blast was amplified by the Iron Monger's own massive frame.
BOOM
A blinding white flash consumed the hangar. The shockwave was so powerful it turned the reinforced concrete walls into dust. The Pentagon officials, the rogue scientists, and the Iron Monger itself were caught in the epicenter of an azure-colored explosion that looked like a tactical nuke had been detonated underground.
The entire secret base buckled. The ceiling collapsed, burying the corruption, the stolen tech, and Obadiah Stane's ego under a million tons of earth and fire.
In the quiet of Stark HQ, Tony watched the live feed turn to static as the cameras were vaporized. He slowly closed his laptop and looked at the sunrise over the New York skyline.
"The evidence is uploaded, JARVIS?"
"Yes, Sir. The full footage of the military raid, the illegal base, and the final explosion has been sent to every major news outlet and the International Court of Justice."
Tony leaned back, his eyes glowing with a satisfied light. "The military wanted a weapon. They got one. Now, it's time to send them the bill."
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