The Jericho missile demo in Afghanistan had gone off without a hitch—explosions, applause from warlords, the whole shebang. Tony Stark, ever the showman, reveled in it, toasting with the military brass before hopping into a Humvee convoy for the ride back. But fate—or the Ten Rings—had other plans. Ambush. Rockets. Chaos.
Tony woke up in a dingy cave, shrapnel threatening his heart, saved only by an electromagnet rigged by a fellow captive, Ho Yinsen. "Welcome to hell, Stark," Yinsen said dryly.
Back in the States, Alex Dumbfort was "holding down the fort" at Stark Tower. Or trying to. With Tony gone, Pepper had given him busywork: "Organize the prototype storage. And don't touch anything explosive."
Alex nodded sagely, then promptly got lost in the basement levels, wandering into a restricted shipping area. Crates everywhere, labeled for international delivery. "Whoa, adventure boxes!" He pried one open (because curiosity over common sense), finding a Stark Industries care package meant for Tony's demo team—snacks, gadgets, and a prototype portable arc reactor tester that looked suspiciously like a fancy flashlight.
In his fumbling, Alex activated the tester. It beeped, then sparked, interfacing weirdly with a nearby shipping manifest computer. The screen glitched, rerouting the crate's destination from "Afghanistan Base Camp" to... well, nowhere specific. "Oops," Alex muttered, slapping the side of the machine like an old TV. The glitch escalated: the system auto-shipped the crate via drone drop to "last known Stark location"—which, thanks to a satellite ping, was now the Ten Rings' cave network in the Afghan mountains.
Cut to the cave: Tony, post-surgery and full of defiance, had just jury-rigged his miniaturized arc reactor. Glowing blue in his chest, it hummed with power. "Not bad for a cave with a box of scraps," he quipped to Yinsen, who nodded impressed.
They were sketching plans for the Mark I armor—hammering metal, welding circuits—when a distant rumble echoed through the tunnels.
The Ten Rings guards grumbled, investigating. A Stark drone—malfunctioning from Alex's earlier tampering—crashed through a ventilation shaft, bursting into the main chamber in a shower of rocks and dust. The crate tumbled out, spilling its contents: energy bars, a toolkit, spare parts, and Alex himself, who had somehow climbed inside during his "organizing" panic back at the tower (don't ask; it involved hiding from security after the glitch alarm went off, and the crate auto-sealed for shipping).
Alex rolled out, covered in packing peanuts, blinking at the dim light. "Uh... delivery? Anyone order pizza? Wait, this isn't the bathroom..."
Tony stared, arc reactor flickering in surprise. "Dumbfort? What the hell are you doing here?"
Yinsen raised an eyebrow. "Friend of yours?"
Alex sat up, shaking off foam. "Mr. Stark! Cool cave office. Kinda dusty. Want a chip? They're a bit crushed from the flight." He held out a mangled bag.
The guards rushed in, rifles raised. Chaos erupted. One guard slipped on scattered peanuts—face-planting into a workbench, knocking over a torch that ignited a pile of rags. Fire spread toward ammo crates. Another guard fired wildly; Alex ducked (tripping over his backpack), causing the bullet to ricochet off Tony's makeshift tools and hit a support beam, collapsing a section of tunnel on two more terrorists.
In the pandemonium, Tony grabbed a loose pipe, swinging it like a baseball bat. Yinsen hurled a wrench. Alex, panicking, flung his backpack—full of gadgets—at the lead guard. The prototype tester inside activated on impact, emitting a high-frequency pulse that jammed the guards' radios and stunned them with a sonic boom. They dropped like sacks of potatoes.
Tony blinked at the wreckage. "Kid, you just took out half the Ten Rings with... snacks and a shipping error?"
Alex shrugged, oblivious. "I was just delivering. The drone went wonky. Hey, nice glowy thing in your chest! Is that a new phone charger?"
Yinsen chuckled despite himself. "This one has the luck of the gods."
With the guards down (and the fire accidentally extinguished by Alex knocking over a water barrel while trying to "help"), Tony seized the moment. The spilled crate provided extra parts: wires, circuits, even a mini-welder Alex had mistaken for a fancy stapler. "Perfect," Tony muttered, incorporating them into the armor build. "Yinsen, let's speed this up. Dumbfort, try not to blow us up."
Alex "helped" by handing tools—wrong ones, mostly—but in his bumbling, he accidentally fused a capacitor in a way that boosted the suit's power output by 20%. "Whoops, sticky fingers," he said, wiping grease on his shirt.
As the Ten Rings regrouped outside, Tony suited up in the clunky Mark I. Flames roared from the flamethrowers (upgraded thanks to Alex's mishap). The escape was a blaze of glory: Tony blasting through terrorists, Yinsen sacrificing himself heroically, and Alex trailing behind, scooter somehow materialized from the crate (long story; Stark prototypes are weird).
They burst out into the desert sun, suit exploding behind them. Tony collapsed in the sand, arc reactor steady. Alex, singed but unscathed, pulled out his last energy bar. "Want half? Adventures make me hungry."
Rescue choppers arrived soon after—SHIELD-tipped, no doubt. Back home, Tony began his transformation into Iron Man, forever changed. But Alex? He just thought it was a wild business trip.
"Dumbfort," Tony said later, clapping him on the back, "you're officially my good luck charm. Don't ever change."
In a universe of calculated geniuses and cosmic threats, Alex Dumbfort kept succeeding—by stumbling right into the heart of it all, no clue required.