Arthur was knocked to the concrete, with Deadlock standing over him.
"You ain't been in this long have you?" She mocked him.
Arthur blasted her face with his repulsers, she fell back while covering her eyes. Arthur delivered a near point blank blast from the arc reactor to Deadlock. She was blasted back through a concrete wall.
"I've been here long enough to know one thing, and that's that I am Iron Man." Arthur said.
He took flight and connected a punch with Deadlock's suit. He landed two more before she caught his punch and delivered a head-butt. He reeled back from the strike.
"You stupid boy. Nothing is gonna stand in the way of that money, especially not you." Deadlock said.
"What money?" Iron Man questioned.
Without answering, Deadlock powered up both repulsers and her arc reactor and fired a massive blast of energy into the gut of Iron Man. He was flung backwards like a rag-doll through two buildings. Arthur got up and saw that the armor over his stomach was starting to crumple.
"Bri, give me an update on the suit."
"Frontal lower amor has been heavily damaged, lower and upper armor on the back have both been critically damaged as well as hindering flight capability." Brianna said.
Iron man stood up and walked out of the rubble and caught a cheap shot right to his chin. Deadlock started hammering away at his face, he put up his arms in defense and she started attacking his midsection.
"Brianna, scan her fighting pattern and look for a weakness! Hurry!" Arthur said.
"Scanning... Alright, ready to activate countermeasures!" Brianna said
Arthur caught a left hook from Deadlock, he looked her in the eye.
"It's showtime now, cowgirl." He said.
Arthur blasted her hand armor, destroying it, this made her turn around, Arthur took this opportunity and grabbed her shoulders and blasted the back of her amor with his arc reactor. She recovered and turned quickly however and landed a swift kick into his midsection. Arthur didn't look down but he heard pieces of the armor break off and hit the ground. She came around for another kick, but this time Arthur caught it and slung her behind him into the very same building she knocked him into earlier.
Iron man flew to the building and was met by a giant chunk of concrete connected to a few pieces of rebar. The concrete hit him in the right shoulder, damaging everything in that area and even breaking off some of the neck armor. He was knocked down to his hands and knees. Deadlock drove the bottom of her boot into his already partially damaged helmet. Again and again. Pieces of metal chipped away with every hit. After enough hits, Iron Man collapsed onto his chest. The right cheek of his faceplate was scratched and battered, showing the bruises beneath.
"Multiple armor components critically damaged, sir!" Brianna alerted him in vain.
Arthur heard those words and they seemed to rattle in his skull. He was sprawled on his chest and he could hear each of his breaths. Then he felt a boot drop into his back. A stabbing pain that sharpened with every gasp of air soon made itself known.
Deadlock rolled him over on his back and he looked up at his triumphant adversary. She clicked the side of her helmet and it fully revealed her head. She had snow whute hair that was just past her shoulders in length. She had a somewhat menacing yet beautiful angular face, topped off with unnaturally red eyes.
"I can tell you're new at this, so I won't kill ya. But just know that I've been doing this sort of thing since I was old enough to pick up a gun." Deadlock said, then her helmet folded back up on her head and she took off into the sky.
Arthur rolled back over and started laughing, he pulled himself up and proped himself up on his back. He kept laughing as he looked and the picture he took of Deadlock. Unbeknownst to her, Arthur could now find out exactly who she was. He got Bri to call Rhodey. He went straight to voicemail.
"Hey, Rhodey. So I'll just be honest with you. I got my ass handed to me. However I did manage to get a picture of her, I'll run her through databases and see who she is." Arthur said.
He barely got the message out to Rhodey and he passed out.
Arthur woke up in an unfamiliar environment. He raised slowly and noticed he was in something that resembled a hospital room, just much more industrial. He looked around and saw the damaged helmet of the Mark XI on a table across the room. Arthur slung the blanket off of him and got up, he yanked the Iv out of his arm and noticed that he still had on his clothes from the fight, just no armor.
He picked up the helmet and examined it. Before he could closely examine it, the door opened and he saw Rhodey standing with a look of quiet pride on his face.
"You are one tough s.o.b. that's for sure." He said.
"What can I say? I suppose it comes naturally." Arthur said.
"So let's see, you junked the Mark XI, you went against my orders, you lost your first fight, and you sustained normally near-fatal injuries." Rhodey said.
"I suppose that's right." Arthur said.
"Son, I'm not as upset with you as I first was. I know you charged headlong into battle not knowing if you were gonna make it back or not. But you did it anyway to protect innocent lives, and sustained massive injuries. Yet the doctor says that you've healed up in roughly twelve hours since the fight." Rhodes said.
"I don't know, Rhodey. I do know that I put my life on the line, though." Arthur said.
"That's what makes a hero, son. You're more than fit to be the next Iron Man." Rhodey said.
Arthur was released from the medical bay of the Helicarrier that evening. He and Rhodey went back to the Stark cabin and recreated the Mark XVII, or the Heartbreaker. They created two, however one was upgraded into the Mark XXVI, his heavily artillery suit. They examined the remains of the Mark XI and found that it had deteriorated and brittled over time.
Arthur sat the helmet down on a table and ran a cord from the back of it into the computer in the workshop.
"You ther Bri?" Arthur asked.
"Yes Arthur, do you want me to run facial diagnostics for the woman from the battle?" She said as the computer screen lit up.
"Read my mind." Arthur said, taking a donut out of a nearby box of them.
He walked over to the almost assembled Heartbreaker suit. He took the faceplate off from the helmet and examined the inner part of it.
"I have a match!" Brianna exclamed.
Arthur let out a surprised curse and his donut fell from his mouth to the floor. He let out an exhale of disappointment and looked back at Brianna in the computer screen.
"Oh you'll live, pastries are bad for you anyway." Brianna said.
"Well that personality add-on is certainly working. You're not wrong, however. Anyway what's the match?" Arthur said.
Without saying anything Brianna brought up a criminal mugshot that was multipurposed into a wanted poster. The ashen-haired woman in question was indeed on the poster. She had a grimace of pure burning hatred. Her hair was frayed and a bit shorter than in Arthur's encounter. Her eyes still blazed red with hate, and she had makeup running down from her eyes. It said, born in 2001. Above her picture in bold letters was her name, Elizabeth Ashe McKinley, also known as "Ashe" and "Deadlock." Below that was her offenses. Wanted For: Murder, Arson, Aggravated Assault, and Prostitution.
Arthur had a look of concerned intrigue on his face.
"What I wouldn't do to have a conversation with her." Arthur thought aloud.
"I don't know anything about her whereabouts, but I'd say judging by her accent she's probably from the southwest." Brianna suggested as she minimized the mugshot.
"Well she's clearly been imprisoned, and she's only a year older than me, but those charges all sound like they came from one situation. Don't you think, Bri?" Arthur conversed with his A.I.
"I wouldn't say it's impossible, and I most certainly wouldn't rule it out as a motive for her actions." Brianna said.
Arthur turned and looked at his suit, so close to being finished. He went deep into thought and then suddenly he got an idea.