Inside Afghanistan.
To ensure their safety, Leon and his group didn’t linger.
Instead, the three of them sat on the frame of the Jet Glider as it hovered close to the ground, casually gliding back toward civilization.
Several hours passed.
The distant thrumming of helicopter blades suddenly resounded across the sky.
“Hey, over here, Rhodes!” Tony shouted, waving excitedly.
The armed helicopter descended, and several special forces soldiers followed a fully armed Rhodes over to the dust-covered trio.
Rhodes didn’t ask Leon why he was there, nor did he ask Tony how he had escaped.
He simply offered the two brothers a half-joking remark: “Next time, try riding in the same car as me, okay?”
Tony gave a bitter smile, while Leon merely gave an indifferent shrug.
Ho Yinsen watched the scene unfold with a warm smile.
With Rhodes’s help, Tony—who didn’t want to squeeze onto the glider with Leon—boarded a massive transport plane alongside Ho Yinsen.
Leon was more than happy to take it easy and join them on the plane.
As for the Jet Glider, under JARVIS’s remote control, it had already flown ahead to wait for them at the airfield.
The moment they stepped off the plane back home, paramedics tried to rush forward with emergency stretchers, only for Tony to wave them off impatiently.
Happy had been waiting in the car for a long time.
Pepper’s eyes were red as she looked at the two brothers, safe and sound, her expression a mix of tears and smiles.
Leon moved with lightning speed, pouncing into Pepper’s arms like an overgrown child to give her a tight hug.
“Pepper, I missed you so much!”
“I missed you too, Leon.”
“Shoo, shoo!
Kids, out of the way!” Seeing this, Tony’s eyelids twitched fiercely.
He shoved Leon away for so shamelessly taking advantage of Pepper, then strode right up to her.
“Aw, are you crying?” Tony asked with a calm, playful smile.
“Are you crying for your lost boss?”
“I’m crying tears of joy because it saves me the trouble of job hunting,” Pepper replied, her heart soft despite her sharp tongue.
“Is that so?”
Before Pepper could react, Tony leaned in and kissed her firmly.
Leon, Rhodes, and Ho Yinsen watched with fond, knowing smiles.
As for the surrounding soldiers, they had long grown accustomed to such sights.
After all, Tony Stark hadn’t earned his playboy reputation for nothing, though Leon Stark turned out to be a bit more behaved than expected.
Little did they know that Leon truly viewed Pepper as an older sister and a future sister-in-law.
He still had some baseline principles and would never let things turn into an incestuous anime trope.
If he did, Tony would probably build an Anti-Leon Armor just to hang him up and spank him.
*Wait!
Anti-Leon Armor?*
Leon suddenly froze at the thought, staring solemnly at Tony’s back.
*Could that guy already have a draft of that in his head…?* New chapters come out on g.com first.
After a long moment, their lips parted.
Tony assumed a serious expression.
“Back to work, kids.”
He glanced back at Leon, who gave him a nod.
Afterward, Tony and Ho Yinsen got into the car with Happy and Pepper.
Instead of heading to the hospital as Pepper had originally planned, they rerouted to the press conference venue that Tony insisted on attending.
Before they departed, Leon picked up two Burger King bags from the seat of the Jet Glider and tossed them cleanly through the car window to Tony and Ho Yinsen.
“Hey, skinny old guys, don’t forget your burgers.”
He had asked JARVIS to prepare them in advance.
“Not bad, kid, you’re pretty sharp!” Tony took a huge bite of his burger, a look of utter satisfaction on his face.
Having narrowly escaped death, Tony had reflected deeply on his life and decided to shut down Stark Industries’ weapons division.
Leon had no objections, but there was no need for him to go to the press conference.
All he wanted right now was to head home and take a hot shower.
“JARVIS, remember to wash my uniform later and patch up the torn spots.”
“Of course, Master Leon.”
When Leon returned to the seaside villa, an unexpected yet entirely logical figure was standing right outside his door.
“Mr.
Stark, may I have a word with you?”
It was an elegant, refined man with the same aura as Ho Yinsen, dressed in a sharp black suit as he approached Leon.
“And you are?” Leon parked the Jet Glider with JARVIS’s assistance and raised an eyebrow.
“Hello, Mr.
Stark.” The man shook Leon’s hand warmly before introducing himself: “I’m Agent Phil Coulson, with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”
“Oh, damn, that is a mouthful of a department name,” Leon grumbled, taking the liberty of abbreviating the name of Hydra-SHIELD before Nick Fury even could.
“Why don’t you just use an acronym?
S-H-I-E-L-D…
Shield.
How about just calling it SHIELD?”
Coulson’s eyes brightened.
He had long felt that his agency’s name was far too clunky to say out loud.
*SHIELD, huh?
Sounds pretty meaningful,* Coulson thought.
“So why isn’t it the DOD, the FBI, or the CIA, but rather some agency I’ve never even heard of before?” Leon asked, acting genuinely curious.
“Compared to the DOD, FBI, and CIA, we are a more independent agency with a much more focused mandate,” Coulson answered, before asking, “Mr.
Stark, I hope you can give me a detailed account of your and Mr.
Tony Stark’s escape.”
As he spoke, Coulson handed Leon a photograph.
Leon looked at it and saw a highly blurred beam of searing red light taken from a top-down perspective.
However, due to the massive radiation released when the cannon fired, this satellite photo looked blurrier than a censored video.
“At the time, the radiation index in that area spiked abnormally, resembling a nuclear reactor explosion.
It caught the attention of a SHIELD satellite, which captured this photo in time,” Coulson explained.
“Upon investigation, that location turned out to be the very Ten Rings base where Mr.
Tony Stark was held captive.”
“Mr.
Stark, can you tell me what kind of weapon fired this beam of light?” Coulson asked with a polite, friendly smile.
“Uh…” Leon was somewhat speechless.
The efficiency of SHIELD was absurdly high.
Or was this just a villain buff?
After all, aside from Agent Coulson right here, the only ones in SHIELD who were actually clean were Hill, Sharon Carter, Nick Fury, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.
Everyone else was practically a Hydra agent in waiting.
He really had no idea how Nick Fury had managed to rise to the position of SHIELD Director.
In terms of deep cover, Leon was ready to name Fury the absolute goat!
“Agent Coulson, as you know, I’m just the younger brother.
If you want details, you should wait for my big bro to make an announcement.
It shouldn’t take long.”
With that said, Leon didn’t bother chatting any further.
Right in front of Coulson, he vaulted over his own compound wall, giving him no opportunity to come inside for a visit.
“…”
Looking up at the three-meter-high white wall, Coulson’s polite smile twitched on his face, his internal thoughts unreadable.
Before long, his Bluetooth earpiece rang.
Coulson, having returned to his car to head back, answered the call.
“How did it go?”
“Sir, the target has no intention of cooperating.”
“Motherfucker…
his lips are pretty tight…”
After a brief pause, the voice on the other end gave instructions: “Since this kid isn’t talking, go make contact with Tony Stark’s secretary, Pepper Potts, first.”
“As for Leon Stark…
oh, shit, Natasha is currently on a classified mission in the Far East and won’t be back for a couple of days.
Send Sharon instead.”
“Isn’t that kid famous for living it up?”
“Then let him have his fill!”
“Understood.”
Leon, who was currently scrubbing himself in the shower, had no idea what kind of grand feast SHIELD was preparing for him.
If he knew, he would definitely say: *There’s a good deal like that?*