Tony slammed through the pile of debris at the main hall exit, the iron plate of the Mark I colliding with wood and sheet metal.
Sunlight flooded in, illuminating dust motes hovering over the floor.
Tony charged outside, and Ho Yinsen stumbled after him.
Lined up along both sides of the cave mouth were weapons manufactured by Stark Industries—crates upon crates of ammunition, missile components, and steel shipping containers bearing the word “STARK,” all arranged in neat rows under the morning sun.
The insurgent leader chased them to the cave mouth, but the moment he saw Tony standing in front of that mountain of munitions, his face went completely pale.
Tony raised his armored arm, and the flamethrower in his palm flared into a white-hot pillar of fire.
*Boom.*
The first row of ammo crates detonated.
Then the second, and the third.
The shockwave blew back every guard near the cave mouth, sending black smoke and fire towering into the sky as the entire entrance was consumed in flames.
The blast pushed Tony back two meters, the joints of the Mark I emitting a harsh metallic screech.
“Go!” He grabbed Yinsen, and the thrusters ignited.
The Mark I wobbled into the air.
Its trajectory was far from stable, swaying left and right as the welded seams groaned under the strain.
Clamped to the side of the suit, Yinsen clutched an exposed steel bar with one hand, his eyes shut tight as he yelled, “Can’t you fly any smoother?!”
“First time flying!” Tony’s voice rang muffled from inside the suit.
“Just hold on tight!”
The suit traced a crooked arc across the sky, heading southeast.
Behind them, secondary explosions at the cave mouth raged on, a continuous rumble like rolling thunder.
By the time Leo Vance crawled out of the abandoned tunnel, he was just in time to see the towering column of smoke.
He didn’t look back.
Running about a hundred meters along a fissure in the rock, the terrain ahead suddenly opened up into a wide view on the back of the slope.
He stopped, then sprinted toward a low hollow to the northeast.
A kilometer away in a shallow valley, the first thing he saw was a scatter of torn iron plating.
A deformed shoulder guard, a broken knee plate, and a charred iron boot lay crookedly in a pile of gravel.
Then he saw the men.
Tony was leaning against a large rock, staring at the bat emblem on Lucas’s chest.
After a moment of silence, he tilted his head.
“That suit of yours…
is it based on the Batman movie?”
“Doesn’t it look like it?”
“It does,” Tony said.
“A bit too much.
The throwables, the cape, the black armor, even the landing posture are identical.” He paused, his eyes locking onto the surface texture of the suit for a few seconds.
“Wait, no.
There’s something wrong with the material.”
Lucas didn’t answer.
Tony sat up straight and carefully examined the fine weave on the surface of the black fiber. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
He gestured with a finger in the air.
“This doesn’t look like polyester or Kevlar.
Friction against metal doesn’t leave a scratch on it, and ricocheting shrapnel from a submachine gun didn’t even tear it.
What’s it made of?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?
You’re wearing it and you don’t know what it’s made of?”
“I just know it works.”
Tony stared at him for a long moment, then leaned back against the rock and clicked his tongue.
“…Fine.
Next time I’ll ask a different way.
Setting the fabric aside, what about the cape?”
“What about it?”
“When you jumped off the ledge, the cape deployed.” Tony gestured again.
“Once it opened, your rate of descent slowed down significantly, and you even changed direction slightly.
That thing can’t be ordinary cloth.
Tell me, is it a fabric or some kind of mechanical structure?”
“Fabric.”
“What kind of fabric?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Tony opened his mouth to say something else, but Yinsen cut him off.
Yinsen was squatting in a gap between the rocks, twirling a short piece of copper wire that had fallen off the Mark I.
Without looking up, he said, “Tony, you’ve been asking one question after another all the way from the main hall.
If he wanted to tell you, he would’ve said it already.”
Tony shut his mouth.
Three seconds later, he spoke up again.
“Yinsen’s right.
But I’m not very good at keeping quiet.”
Lucas glanced at him.
“I noticed.”
Yinsen let out a quiet laugh.
Leaning against the rock, Tony went silent for a moment, his gaze still resting on Lucas’s suit.
This time he didn’t press about the materials or the mechanics, changing his angle instead.
“That outfit…
did you make it yourself, or did someone give it to you?”
“Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“Someone who isn’t here anymore.”
Lucas’s expression was calm, showing neither dodge nor hesitation—a quiet posture that clearly communicated, *I’ve answered, and the conversation ends here.*
Tony opened his mouth, then closed it.
This time he truly refrained from asking further.
He leaned back against the rock, looking up at the sky, and spoke after a few seconds.
“…Fine.
Tell me when you feel like talking.”
Beside them, Yinsen finished twisting the copper wire, bent it into a loop, and tossed it onto the ground.
He stood up and slapped the dust off his hands.
“We should move, shouldn’t we?
The sun’s starting to get hot.”
Lucas stood up from the shadow of the low hill.
His cape fell behind him, its hem brushing across the sand and raising a faint trail of dust.
Tony struggled to his feet as well.
The ruined chest plate and armor on his body groaned, and the blue light of the Arc Reactor flickered once.
He looked down at his own battered wreck of a suit, then at Lucas’s Batsuit—which remained completely intact even after the melee in the main hall—and went silent for a second.
Then he spoke.
“When we get back to New York, can you lend me that suit so I can take it apart?
Just for one night.
I promise I can put it back together.”
Yinsen coughed off to the side.
Lucas looked at Tony.
“No.”
“We can negotiate the price.”
“Not for rent.”
“Then I’ll buy it.
Name your price.”
“Not for sale.”
Tony took a deep breath, looked out across the desert, and took a step forward.
His voice drifted back: “Fine.
Then when you figure out how it works, tell me the principles.
That acceptable?”
Lucas followed behind him and Yinsen, maintaining a distance of about ten paces.
“Depends on my mood.”
A faint laugh came from Tony up ahead.
The desert wind swept across the sand dunes, swirling fine grains into the air.
The sunlight shone from the side, stretching their shadows long and thin across the pale sand.
No one spoke again.
The three of them walked toward the southeast, their footsteps swallowed by the sand, punctuated only by the occasional rustle of wind against fabric.