J.A.R.V.I.S. — Tony Stark's pride and the smartest teammate a genius could build — was panicking on-screen. Locking onto Ryuuto wasn't supposed to be this hard. The HUD blinked red, warnings piling up like an angry chorus.
Tony fumbled, voice tight with the rare edge of worry. "Sir! Can't lock! Can't—can't lock!"
Ryuuto stood calm as a cliff in a storm, eleven shadows of himself flickering around the grass like afterimages. To everyone else, bullets were instantaneous death. To Ryuuto, who'd been running faster than conventional reaction times, they were slow-motion, almost polite. When the tracker rounds screamed toward him, he plucked them out of the air like they were stray seeds.
The duplicates bobbed and weaved, avoiding and baiting. The "real" Ryuuto ran in the same vector as the incoming rounds, letting them skim past his ears as he stared at them with far-too-relaxed contempt. He pinched a shell between two fingers, feeling its vibration. The metal still sang. He didn't snatch it wildly; he timed his grab so the round's speed dropped below painful friction. Then he turned, shook it like a loose tooth, and pocketed Tony's most advanced sample.
Tony took the bite. "These are prototype tracking rounds! They aren't even for sale yet," he barked, half-raw pride, half-mortified. Watching his bullets be caught — by hand — didn't sit well.
Ryuuto shrugged, casual as a guy stealing snacks. "Nice hardware. Keep it," he said, sliding the shell into his pocket. "You float up there and it makes things harder for me."
Tony's grin was back before it should've been. "Got a plan. I'll stay airborne. You can't reach me. I'll wear you down." He cocked the shoulder gatling and sent a mesh of guided fire at the duplicates — twenty shells per clone now, meant to hem Ryuuto in and force him to gas out.
Tony's confidence came with J.A.R.V.I.S. backing it up. The armor's analytics spat calories-and-endurance estimates that assumed Ryuuto had mortal limits. The math said: he'll slow. He'll tire. Keep firing, and he's ours.
Only problem: guesswork. J.A.R.V.I.S. assumed human physiology; Ryuuto wasn't playing by "human" rules. Even after ten minutes of frantic sprinting, the speed readout stayed stubbornly flat. The boy didn't look winded. If anything, his grin widened.
"Ready?" Eleven Ryuutos chorused, perfectly in sync.
Tony laughed. "New move? Bring it on! Want me to call Director Hill to—" He didn't finish. The armor's HUD screamed as dozens of impact beams and repulsor flares chased shadows that blinked, folded, and rematerialized across the meadow like a living glitch.
Then duplication closed.
A single clone launched Rasengan — not Ryuuto's real body this time, but one of the decoys. The spinning chakra orb slammed into Tony's forearm. The repulsor's trajectory stuttered; the armor's targeting went haywire. Rasengan after Rasengan hit with machine-precision timing. The impact beams, the bullets, the trackers — all were forced into ugly evasions.
J.A.R.V.I.S. shouted, voice threaded with confusion and admiration. "Sir — I cannot maintain lock! Target position variance exceeding—"
Tony's normal smirk thinned. "J.A.R.V.I.S., keep trying." He fired everything: micro-missiles, microbursts, a focused plasma sweep. But each attack chased ghosts. Each beam met empty air until one clone slowed long enough for a real Ryuuto to step in and catch the strike.
Someone untrained would've panicked; instead Ryuuto moved with the calm of a man who'd already practiced failing a dozen times and learning from it. He dodged when needed, blocked and pocketed when he could — the casual thief of momentum. When a tracking net finally thudded near him, he simply pinched a round off, letting it slide between two fingers before replacing it like it was nothing.
Tony hovered higher, cheeks flushed with the thrill of a fight finally showing teeth. "You're tough, kid. I like that. But I'll keep you on the ropes until you can't keep moving."
Ryuuto's internal monologue — half annoyed, half delighted — would've been a text to Athena if this were a calmer moment. Instead his grin spoke for him. "You built this to be smart, Stark. Tell J.A.R.V.I.S. thanks — he makes a great playing partner."
J.A.R.V.I.S., for all its precision, had met a variable it couldn't model: a mutant with ninja-data packets and a body trained by borrowed legends. Tony had a suit, a lab, and enough arrogance to fund three small countries. Ryuuto had speed, uncanny timing, and that infuriating underdog smirk that said he'd been written off before — and yet here he was, rewriting the rules with his feet.
The wind carried the scent of ozone and scorched grass. Tony's HUD kept flashing warnings. On the ridge, Natasha and Steve watched like teachers watching a student pull a stunt that somehow worked. They'd seen miracles; they'd seen threats. This was both.
Ryuuto caught another bullet, turned, and bowled Tony's armor with a series of rapid kicks — testing, prodding, learning — then melted away into a dozen afterimages and came at the armor with synchronized Rasengan strikes that left the suit blinking and re-calibrating.
When one of the impact beams finally grazed a clone and sent it scattering into the dirt, Tony felt that satisfying jolt of getting a hit. He'd earned that. But the victory was small, a single stamp in a book that Ryuuto was still filling with defiant, furious handwriting.
"Okay," Tony muttered into the helmet comms, part warning, part exhilaration. "This one's going to be fun to study."
Ryuuto flicked a salute mid-run, his chest humming with the leftover burn of speed and the electric high of battle. "That's the idea. Teach me, Stark — but don't expect mercy."
He wasn't there to be tamed. He was there to test limits — his and everyone else's. That day, Red Mirage proved he could catch a bullet. The world was taking notes.