Blood was dripping from his mouth leaving a sickening metallic taste as it went. His helmet had been destroyed and so were other parts of his armour luckily he had set up a failsafe that meant that even if his helmet was destroyed he could still fight with full power. He was doing all could to protect every one but right now that wasn't going very well. To make matters worse it was raining and there were news helicopters flying around in the sky he had told them to leave but finding out who Iron man is was to important to them.

"Don't you know when to quit Stark!" the Mandarin Yelled angrily even with ten rings Tony was putting up a good fight.

"Not while there are people trying to, fucking kill the people I care about, Gene!" Tony roared back.

"But they all abandoned you they all said the world would be better without you and you know it's true!"

"Yes it is true and yes they did abandon me but I am not one to lay down and let my loved ones die even if they hate me I will go to the end of the earth to protect them!"

Rhodey, Pepper, Roberta and Virgil sat there and watched awe-struck about what Tony had said and more, Virgil and Roberta about him being Iron man.

"Rhodey is there any particular reason that Tony said that his friends abandoned him?" Roberta asked anger lacing her words.

"Well we sort of got angry with him and told him we didn't want anything to do with him any more." Rhodey answered sheepishly but before Roberta and Virgil could reprimand their children a massive explosion took place on the screen they all watched fearful that Tony might not emerge from the black cloud of smoke.

Gene powered up the Makluan rings and fired Tony fired his repulser at the same time and the beams hit each other and created a black cloud of smoke that he couldn't see through it. He thought for a second and straight away he knew that he needed to get him and Gene out of this so that he would be able to kick his arse where everyone could see.

Spitting out fresh blood he flew straight to where he last saw Gene. Ether he was very lucky or Gene was stupid but Tony smashed into him and took him flying up into the air as he reached a peak he threw Gene down thinking that it was finally over. How wrong he was. Just as Tony turned around a beam shot out and encased him in a blue bubble of energy. Gene started pulling Tony to the ground once he was there Gene walked over and started to rip the iron man armour off of Tony

"Well Stark looks like this is the end. Oh, did that mess up that little idea in your head that good always triumphs over evil? Well guess what you were wrong."

Tony simply smiled that ring that froze him was the ring of will so if he showed enough will he could get out of this.

"Gene you should never count me out because you've really started to piss ME OFF!" Tony roared. "YOU CAN SAY WHAT YOU AND DO WHAT YOU WANT TO ME BUT IF YOU BRING MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS INTO THIS THEN YOU CROSS THE LINE!"

"But I didn't say anything about them."

"IT'S NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU DID OR DID NOT SAY IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU DID." Tony took a deep breath and started to will himself to move to save his friends indirectly of course, as they weren't there. "FIRST YOU CRASH MY PLANE AND CAPTURE MY DAD, SECOND YOU TRY TO KILL RHODEY, THIRD YOU BLEW UP MY LAB AND FOURTH MOST IMPORTANT TO ME YOU BROKE PEPPERS' HEART!"

Pepper burst into tears when she heard that.

Suddenly the blue bubble of energy around Tony vanished and Tony fell to the floor only to pick himself up straight away.

"Enough of this I'm ending this now!" Gene charged up his rings to their maximum power, Tony meanwhile started charging up his unibeam. He had decided to change his arc into a weapon as well as his heart when he realised that one day he might not have his armour to protect him.

Both beams collided at the centre of where they were standing. Tony was using all of his will to send the power of all the beams back at Gene.

Gene however was so sure that he was going to over power Tony that he didn't realise what was happening until it was to late, the energy hit him at full power tearing through his armour and ripping his flesh from his bones until nothing was left.

Tony fell onto one knee and panted he needed to recharge his heart and see his friends so he put what was left of the armour on and headed back to Rhodeys'. He stopped out side for a second before the door burst open and Rhodey and Pepper were on him straight away, hugging him and telling him how sorry they were that they were bad friends he could have listened to them all day but he cared about them to much to let them think that and he really badly needed to charge his heart. When he told them this they jumped off him and helped him up stairs, where they started asking him about the fight. when they finally had heard enough about the fight Pepper asked him if he really meant that she having her heart broken was the most important thing to him. He paused for a moment then answered by kissing her she was shocked at first but soon started to return the kiss with as much passion as him. When they broke apart for air Tony asked

"Does that answer your question?"