The whole world seemed to have the mute button pressed.
Tony stared blankly at the impossible sight before him, his jaw hanging open beneath the armor.
His brain, which he thought had already weathered enough storms to be unshakable, once again… crashed.
"…Okay."
It took him a long time before he finally squeezed out a few words through gritted teeth, words laced with both shock and jealousy.
"I take back what I just said. You're still a total cheat."
Henry ignored him.
He only slowly raised his head, his gaze fixed on the giant now completely cowed by him.
"Not bad strength," he said calmly. "Looks like HYDRA really went all out on piling in materials."
"…But—"
He paused, then smiled faintly, his eyes flickering with a dangerous red light.
"Not enough."
Before his words even fell, the right hand propping up that steel fist suddenly clenched tight.
Excitement surged through his body, every ounce of strength stirring to life, adrenaline spiking sky-high.
"Sir, your physical values are increasing at an exponential rate!" Jarvis's timely reminder rang out.
The next second—
Crack!!!
A crisp snapping sound.
The giant steel fist, forged from ultra-high-strength alloy, was crushed in Henry's single hand.
"ROAR!!!"
A furious bellow erupted from the massive robotic head.
But that was far from the end.
Henry released his grip, letting the blazing shards of metal fall into the lava below.
In the next instant, his whole body turned into a streak of black lightning, racing up along the massive steel arm.
His speed was so fast that Tony's suit couldn't even leave a trace of him in its dynamic capture system.
"Jarvis! How fast is Henry moving?!" Tony demanded quickly as he stared at the numbers.
"Sir, Henry's speed has instantly surpassed Mach 100… and thanks to his bio-forcefield controlling the destructive output, this is the only reason there hasn't been catastrophic collateral damage," Jarvis reported calmly.
"F***!" Tony cursed.
In the blink of an eye, Henry was already at the robot's massive head.
"Too big," he muttered, his face twisted in disdain.
"Big… just means slow. And ugly, too."
Without the slightest hesitation, he swung his right fist.
Boom!!!
No earth-shattering explosion. Just a deep, muffled impact.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Tony clearly saw the robot's head cave in at the exact point Henry's fist struck. The dent spread outward like ripples in water.
Cracks raced across the entire massive skull.
And then—
BOOM!!!
An explosion.
An explosion that began from the inside.
The giant steel head, under Henry's deceptively ordinary punch, turned into a skyrocketing firework.
Burning metal fragments scattered like a doomsday meteor shower, turning the already-ruined underground space into a complete inferno.
...
Deepest part of the base, the central control room.
"No! NO!!!"
General Lukov howled in despair as he watched the monitor showing the robot's head obliterated in a single punch.
"This is impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
He shook his head wildly, his paranoid eyes filled with fear and collapse.
"God… he really is a god…"
One of the white-coated researchers collapsed onto the ground, muttering in shock.
"Shut up!!"
Lukov spun around, pulled his pistol, and without hesitation blew the man's brains out.
"There is no god!!" he roared. "There is only the greatness of HYDRA!!"
"Relay my orders!!" he screamed at the trembling survivors in the control room.
"Activate the base self-destruct program!!"
"If I can't have it, no one can!!"
...
Amidst the firestorm, Henry slowly descended to Tony's side.
His armor, gleaming beneath the roaring flames, radiated even more pressure.
"…Alright," Tony spread his hands helplessly, staring at his brother's spotless armor.
"I admit it. You win. Your way of making an entrance… is more efficient. And more violent."
"But—" His tone flipped, arrogance returning to his face.
"I should remind you, brute force idiot. You only blew its head up. Its body is still—"
Before he could finish—
"Warning! Warning!" Jarvis's urgent voice blared again.
"Base self-destruct sequence has been initiated! Estimated detonation in 30 seconds!"
Tony cursed under his breath, speechless. F**, I knew these sore-loser bastards would pull this crap.*
"Thirty seconds?" Henry raised an eyebrow.
He glanced at the unconscious Winter Soldier still stuck in the wall, the raging inferno around them, and the falling slabs of stone from above.
"Looks like time's a bit tight," he drawled lazily, with not a hint of tension in his tone.
"A bit tight?!" Tony rolled his eyes.
"You call this a bit tight?! We're underground! And the only exit's blocked! You number-illiterate moron, we—"
"Shut up, Tony." Henry cut him off, turning to face him.
"Who said we needed an exit?"
Before Tony could react, Henry became a streak of black lightning again.
But this time, his target wasn't down. It was up!
Tony froze, dumbfounded, as Henry charged straight toward the rocky dome overhead without hesitation.
This lunatic!!
BOOM!!!
Like an unstoppable drill, Henry smashed through dozens of meters of ice and rock head-on.
In Tony's stunned eyes, he just kept going—up, up, further up!
Ten seconds later.
Just as the base was about to be swallowed whole by a rising firestorm—
BOOM!!!
A thunderous explosion ripped through the Siberian ice plains.
For hundreds of kilometers, the ice sheet was blasted sky-high by a monstrous force erupting from underground!
A black figure, carrying a gold-and-red figure and an unconscious man, shot out of the ice like a dragon rising from the sea!
Behind them, pillars of ice and snow surged to the sky, and on the horizon, a mushroom cloud loomed like a second sun.
The first light of dawn shone on Henry's armor. The black suit shimmered faintly with golden radiance, sacred and mysterious.
Suspended in the air, he looked like a god, surveying the apocalypse he had left in ruins.
Henry slowly turned to Tony, smiled faintly, his voice brimming with confidence—
"See? I told you, the party's only just begun."
***
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