"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"
"Yeah, that's right, James." Tony Stark said. "Keep calling me stupid. That'll teach me a lesson."
"You said you were done with weapons!" General Ironwood scolded. "And here, I find you building your own!"
"I'm done having Stark Industries build weapons." Tony said. He gestured his hand around the underground lab. "This is a personal project of mine."
"And what's this personal project supposed to achieve?" Ironwood asked.
"Peace in our time." Tony replied. "General, the White Fang has secret armories full of Stark Tech weapons. I've been working to bring them down."
"Why didn't you bring them over to me?" Ironwood asked.
"If I did, you'd confiscate the weapons." Tony said. "I need them destroyed."
Ironwood growled placing his hand on his forehead. "So you're solution was to build yourself a suit of armor and go play vigilante? Stark, do you have any idea what we would do with this kind of tech?"
"I know what the White Fang would do if they got their hands on it." Stark said. "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but I can't just give this tech away, not even for all the lien in the world."
Ironwood was about to argue more, but his scroll made a sound. He sighed before answering. "What?"
"General, it's Agent Romanoff. Professor Ozpin is waiting at your office and he has a guest."
Ironwood exasperated pinching the space between his eyes. "Right. Banner. I'll be there soon." He hung up. "Stark, I'll have to…" He turned around, but stopped talking when he noticed that Tony Stark was fully wearing his Iron Man armor and hovered in midair.
"Sorry, can't hear you! Gotta jet!"
And just like that, Iron Man blasted his way through the tunnels as booming speed. Ironwood sighed before turning to Pepper Potts.
"When he returns, tell him that our discussion isn't over."
"I'll try, but he gets pretty stubborn." Pepper said.
"Tony, General Ironwood didn't exactly leave in a good mood." Pepper called her boss who was flying through the sky.
"I'll get him a cookie the next time I see him. He loves that." Iron Man said.
"This is serious." Pepper said. "Ironwood has plenty of ground to arrest you."
"He can try." Iron Man said. "This suit's more advanced than anything Atlas has got. It's powered by an arc reactor too."
"Arc reactor? Like the ones at the Stark Towers around Remnant? I thought those were big as houses."
"Desperate times, Potts. I had to make a miniature one because of the damage the White Fang did to me. It's literally the only thing keeping me alive right now."
"What?" Pepper asked. "Tony, why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't wanna… OOF!"
Tony was interrupted when his body rammed into something. They both stumbled in midair until they regained their ground. Iron Man hovered himself back into balance while looking at what he ran into. He was surprised to see Thor hovering there spinning his hammer around to keep himself balanced.
"Well, that's something you don't see every day." Tony said.
"You dare strike me, metal man?" Thor asked angrily.
"Uh, no. Look, blondie, we can…"
Thor didn't listen. Instead, he threw his hammer right at Iron Man. It struck him very hard sending him flying backwards. The hammer flew back into Thor's hand while Iron Man regained himself gasping upon impact.
"You didn't want to do that, point break. But you did." Iron Man said. He reached out both his palms and shot from them. Both beams hit Thor and sent him backwards.
What came next was an exchange of attacks. Iron Man followed his first strike with a barrage of flare bombs that temporarily blinded Thor. That gave Iron Man the chance to fly right at him and tackle him. It connected, but Thor reversed the situation by holding onto Iron Man and holding up his hammer into the sky with the other. He yelled and summoned a lightning bolt that struck them both. Iron Man's armor lit up before Thor tossed him aside crashing him into the ice. Thankfully, Iron Man wasn't injured. In fact, he was quite the opposite.
"Suit's power reached 1200 percent." JARVIS said.
"How about that?" Iron Man asked. With all his extra juice, he fired a crazy strong beam that blasted Thor a mile away. Iron Man flew himself over to where the demigod landed. "You done now, sparky?"
Of course, Thor wasn't done. Instead, he jumped out of where he laid and grabbed Iron Man by his torso plate. He launched himself upward taking Tony along with him. He then held him close to his face. "Don't call me sparky."
"I call it as I see it." Iron Man said. "By the way, you shouldn't get so close to my face like that. People are gonna talk and…" He stopped talking and tilted his head. "Oh, boy."
"What?" Thor asked. He turned around and gazed out into the distance outside of the city with worry and fear. "Odin's beard!"
After leaving the Stark home, General Ironwood rode back to Atlas Academy. Inside, he took the elevator up to his office where Professor Ozpin, Bruce, and Natasha waited for him.
"Hello, James." Ozpin said. He noticed a stressed-out look in around the general's eyes. "Is everything all right?"
"It's fine, Oz." Ironwood said. "Just got out of a heated discussion with an old friend of mine. Enough about that, however. You must be Dr. Banner."
"Hi." Bruce said. "I assume Professor Ozpin told you a lot about me."
"A lot actually." Ironwood said. "Don't worry, though. A lot of people have uncontrollable Semblances."
"Well, I heard you have something that can help with that."
"Of course." Ironwood said. He reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out a small bottle of pills. "Fresh from our science team. In a basic sense, this should suppress your rage, but there is a limit."
"Don't overdo it. Got it." Bruce said accepting the bottle. "Thanks, by the way. The other guy is more trouble than you think."
"I already know." Ironwood said. "The last thing Atlas needs is a monster attack."
As if on cue, the alarms rang in the distance. Ironwood turned his head in concern before heading to his desk. The screen lit up revealing the outer area of the city a few miles from the limit. Creatures of Grimm from different species were running towards Mantle closing in at great speed.
"That's a big Grimm attack." Ironwood said with worry on his face. "I'm ordering for the shields to activate."
"What about Mantle?" Ozpin asked.
"The city below has an array of defense systems." Ironwood said. "And the city's got its own Huntsmen and Huntresses to help defend the people."
"That's still a lot of Grimm." Agent Romanoff pointed out. "There's gonna be heavy casualties."
"I don't have the resources!" Ironwood said before burying his hands. Then, he removed his hands and widened his eyes. "But I do have the perfect soldier for this."
"Agent Schnee." The general called his top fighter's earpiece.
Winter answered. "General."
"There's a Grimm horde about to attack the city of Mantle." Ironwood said. "I need Captain Remnant down there leading the defense and…"
"Sir, we already got the alert," Winter replied, "And Captain Rogers is already ahead of you on that." She looked back at where Steve once was before he ran off.
The alarms ringing made all the citizens run indoors. Inside he house of his ex-wife, Scott stayed close to his daughter.
"Daddy, what's going on?" Cassie asked with fear in her voice.
"I don't know," Scott answered, "But don't worry, peanut. I won't let anything bad happen."
"Scott!" cried out Hope's voice. She popped from her small size in her Wasp outfit. It spooked Cassie at first, but she looked at her with wonder in her eyes.
"Hope, what happened?" Scott asked.
"I flew up and checked over the wall." Hope said. "It's not looking good. The Grimm are scaling up. The defenses are holding them off, but it won't be long before they fail. We're gonna have to hold up until help arrives."
Scott looked down at his worried daughter. He looked worried, but then became determined. "Hope, we can't wait. Do you have my suit?"
"Are you sure, Scott?" Hope asked. "That's a lot of Grimm."
"It's my daughter. Of course, I'm sure." Scott said.
"Daddy?" Cassie asked.
Scott turned to his daughter and kissed her on the forehead. "Don't worry, sweetie. I'll be back. I promise."
In the middle of Mantle, Loki stood alone with no one around in the street. He held up his scepter and tapped the ground beneath him twice with it. That's when a square formed between his feet and the road beneath him. It hovered up carrying Loki on top. The trickster brought Loki higher and higher up until it stopped at the side of Atlas. He looked to admire the blue force-field surrounding the floating city before gazing at the metal pole in front of him. The lasers around were about to blast him, but he shot them first with a blue beam from his scepter. He went back to the pole in front of him.
"Such a simple trick." Loki said. "So many nodes just to maintain one force-field. As long as they all work, the city of Atlas is safe from Grimm. Such poor craftmanship if you ask me."
Loki held up his scepter and thrusted it into the node. Electricity sparked out of the hole he made. That's when the blue field began to flicker.
Loki removed his scepter and saw the field die out. "Let the show begin."
