The track was filled with the smell of burning rubber.
All around lay the flaming wreckage of race cars, while terrified screams echoed from the distant crowd.
Ivan Vanko staggered to his feet.
He spat out a mouthful of blood, his bloodshot eyes locking firmly onto the man standing leisurely not far away. He glanced down at the arc reactor in his chest, now completely extinguished, and at the two heavy electric whips in his hands.
Those whips had been his hope for revenge. But now... they'd been destroyed by Tony Stark.
Despair and unwillingness surged in his chest.
He had failed.
The hatred he had carried half his life, inherited from his father, had crumbled so easily before this man.
Tony couldn't help but feel a little speechless. Two clowns had shown up in a single day — it was hard to say. Maybe Batman really had been slacking off.
"Stark…" Ivan Vanko rasped, his voice hoarse.
He began unfastening the mechanical exoskeleton that supported the whips on his body.
With a clang, both whips and the ruined reactor fell heavily to the ground.
Stripped to the waist, his upper body was exposed — every muscle forged in Siberian prison training.
He glared at Tony, and despite his twisted hatred, a mocking sneer spread across his face.
"Tony Stark. Take off that tin can, and what are you then?" he spat through gritted teeth.
"You're nothing but a pitiful ordinary man hiding behind money and weapons.
Your father, Howard Stark, was a thief! He stole everything from my father! And you, Tony Stark — you're the same as your damned father! Thieves! You stole the glory and fortune that should have belonged to the Vanko family!"
His roar was that of a cornered beast.
Tony listened quietly, his expression calm — so calm it was terrifying.
"Are you done?" His voice wasn't loud, but it cut cleanly through the rising wail of sirens.
"First of all, let me correct some of your... misconceptions. One: my father was no thief. He was a genius. As for your father? From what I can guess, he was probably just a failure my father fired."
He paused, his gaze carrying the weight of someone looking at an idiot.
"Second — I've never been just an ordinary man."
Ivan trembled with rage. He let out a furious roar, bent down, and snatched up one of the whips from the ground.
Even without power, the iron whip itself weighed dozens of kilos. It was still a weapon.
"Die, Stark!!!"
He bellowed and swung the whip with a roar that tore through the air, aiming straight for Tony's skull!
The strike was powerful enough to split a bull in half!
In the stands, Pepper and Happy froze in horror, their hearts leaping into their throats.
They wanted to scream, to warn him, to tell him to dodge — but it was too late!
At the very instant the whip was about to smash Tony's head...
Tony moved.
He didn't dodge. He didn't flinch.
He simply lifted his right hand — slowly.
And under the horrified gazes of everyone watching, he casually caught the whip with his bare hand.
BOOM!
The collision of metal and flesh echoed like thunder!
A shockwave of air blasted out from the point of impact, sweeping the racetrack!
But the bloody mess everyone expected never came.
Tony remained standing. Calm, unmoving.
The hand he had strengthened with serum — broad and muscular — clamped down on the whip like an iron vise. Cracks spiderwebbed beneath his feet on the track!
Yet he didn't take even a single step back.
The entire venue seemed frozen in time.
Ivan Vanko stared, dumbstruck. His eyes widened in terror.
Because what he felt in that moment wasn't the grip of a man...
It was the immovable weight of a mountain.
"Not bad strength." Tony chuckled, his tone mocking.
He eyed Ivan's tattooed body and instantly understood.
"Looks like prison food wasn't half bad. At least it gave you a passable set of muscles."
He paused, then slowly lifted his head, his gaze turning cold.
"Good. Now, without your flashy toys...
Congratulations, Mister Second-Rate Electrician.
You've unlocked my second stage."
The moment his words fell, Tony's grip tightened with explosive force!
Ivan felt an irresistible strength drag him forward against his will!
And before the eyes of everyone present, Tony released the whip, clenched his other hand into a fist, and delivered a brutal uppercut straight into Ivan's jaw!
BAM!
The crunch of breaking bones echoed across the arena.
Ivan's body lifted clean off the ground, launched upward like he'd been hit by a giant hammer.
But it wasn't over. Not even close.
Tony's movements were smooth, almost rhythmic.
Just as Ivan's body began to fall, Tony spun on his heel, whipping a devastating roundhouse kick into his waist.
THUD!
Another sickening impact.
Ivan's body flew sideways like a baseball rocketed from a bat, before crashing heavily into the wreckage of a car he himself had sliced in two earlier.
BOOM!
The racetrack fell silent, stunned into disbelief.
"I've got to say," Tony drawled, lowering his leg, "your durability's even worse than I expected."
He glanced at the smoking wreckage with disappointment.
"I thought this might last a little longer. Guess it didn't even count as a warm-up."
He flexed his wrists and ankles as if he'd swatted nothing more than a noisy fly.
At that moment, Happy and a team of armed security finally arrived, panting.
"Boss! Are you okay?!" Happy's face was pale, horrified at the carnage around them.
But seeing Tony, completely unscathed — not even his hair out of place — his brain seemed to crash once again.
Pepper, heels clicking frantically, lifted her dress and rushed from the stands, fear and worry etched on her face.
"Tony!"
She ran up, words on the tip of her tongue, but in the end, all her emotions erupted into a furious roar.
"You arrogant, incorrigible bastard!!!"
"Hey, Pep. Relax." Tony smiled helplessly yet softly at her tear-brimming eyes. "See? I'm fine. Just had a little... after-sales discussion with our guest here about Stark Industries' products."
He crouched by the discarded exoskeleton, picked up the now-useless crude reactor, and said, "J.A.R.V.I.S., scan this toy."
"Yes, sir."
"Scan complete," J.A.R.V.I.S. reported quickly.
"Device structure crude. Energy conversion efficiency extremely low. Severe safety hazards. Overall rating: fail."
"Knew it." Tony shook his head, then glanced at Ivan and clicked his tongue.
"Look at this piece of junk. Even the first version I hammered together in an Afghan cave out of scrap metal was better. Honestly, if your father could see what you did with the only legacy he left you, he'd probably crawl out of his grave just to strangle you himself."
He straightened, glanced at the smoking wreckage, and smirked.
"Well. Looks like he was satisfied with our customer service."
Pepper: "…"
She felt like one day this man would literally kill her from sheer exasperation.
Ignoring her glare, Tony turned to the frenzied crowd of reporters and fans now shoving phones and cameras at him.
He smiled faintly, then spread his arms wide.
Basking in the adoration and frenzy of their eyes.
From this moment on, Tony Stark knew...
The name Iron Man was no longer just a codename.
It was a legend.
***
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