Tony had arranged the garage with intent.
At the center of the space stood a tall equipment bracket, and suspended from it — draped in a wide black cloth that fell to the floor and suggested the shape underneath without revealing it — was something approximately two meters tall.
The cloth lifted at the edges in the slight air movement of the space, giving the covered shape just enough humanity in its silhouette to be unmistakably deliberate.
This was staging.
Tony had staged this.
“You should feel honored,” Tony said, spreading his arms with the ease and had rehearsed this moment.
“You are about to witness the world premiere of the most significant engineering achievement of this decade.” He paused.
“And you’re the only person who’s now seen two of them.
So: twice honored.”
Leon didn’t argue the point.
“Noted.
Please begin.”
Tony straightened slightly.
“JARVIS — go.”
The mechanical arms extended from the rear bracket simultaneously, moved to the cloth, and removed it with a single coordinated lift.
The armor underneath was steel-colored and absolute.
Every surface was engineered to within a tolerance that caught the ambient light from the garage entrance and distributed it across the room — a secondary brightness that the space hadn’t had before the cloth came off.
Not a glow.
Cleaner than that.
The light was simply going somewhere it hadn’t been going before.
The arms moved again: methodically, precisely, beginning the assembly sequence.
Panels lifted from their staging positions and approached Tony.
Section by section, the armor found its place — chest plate, back assembly, shoulder units, the joints that connected them — each piece overlapping the last like scales achieving their final arrangement, fitted together with tolerances that left no room for error because Tony had not permitted error.
When the last component locked, the arms withdrew.
The suit’s eye slits lit.
A soft pressurization hiss moved through the gaps in the plating — not an exhaust, more like the armor taking its first breath after being assembled around the person who wore it.
Tony spread his arms.
Flames erupted from his palms and the soles of his boots simultaneously.
He lifted off the garage floor, rose to ceiling height in a controlled arc, and held position.
“Behold,” Tony said, from altitude, “The Mark II.”
He inverted briefly, righted himself, pulled a smooth banking turn in the space available to him, and came to a hover facing Leon.
“Flight stabilizers.
Repulsor arrays in both palms.
Full JARVIS integration.
Two years ahead of anything else on the planet.” He reached up and flipped the faceplate.
His expression underneath it was the expression of a man at complete peace with his situation.
“Your turn.
Let’s see what you have.”
From below, Leon looked up at the suit — at the light on its surfaces, the way it moved with Tony’s breathing, the engineering density of what Tony had produced in three days in a garage in Malibu.
“It’s extraordinary,” he said.
Tony waited for the but.
“Titanium alloy frame, new-generation reactor core, full system integration,” Leon continued, walking a slow circuit.
“A genuine piece of engineering that the rest of the world won’t catch up to for years.” He completed the circuit and stopped. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“But there was gold in your spare materials.
You didn’t use it.
That’s going to be a problem.”
Tony tracked him with his gaze.
“Gold is decorative.
I’m not building jewelry.”
“In a few minutes, you’ll see what it’s for.” Leon pushed up his sleeves.
On each wrist: a band, approximately three centimeters wide, with a surface that pulsed with a faint internal light.
Simple.
Understated.
The kind of thing that, if you weren’t looking closely, looked like an accessory.
“This,” Leon said, “is my armor.”
He looked at the ceiling.
“JARVIS — activate.”
The bands lit red.
From somewhere upstairs came the sound of significant structural activity: rapid, sequential, the kind of disharmony that implied a large object moving through a space it had not originally been designed to move through.
Tony looked up.
“Something just went through my ceiling,” he said.
“Mostly around it,” Leon said.
“Here it comes.”
He spread his arms and rose off the floor.
A red-and-blue oval object shot through the garage entrance, trailing twin plumes of roaring fire.
It arrived fast enough to visibly compress the air around the door, shedding speed with the sudden, violent deceleration of a missile choosing to stop.
Tony opened his mouth.
“Is that a— that looks like a— how—”
The capsule reached Leon and came apart.
Not catastrophically — deliberately.
The outer shell unfolded as it closed the final meter of distance, segments separating and redistributing in the air around Leon’s outstretched arms, each piece finding its corresponding position with a precision that didn’t allow for guesswork.
Chest assembly locked to torso.
Back unit followed.
Limbs, joints, helmet — each component arriving in sequence and adhering, the whole process taking approximately four seconds from first contact to complete configuration.
When the suit finished assembling itself, Leon stood in it.
Blue, primarily, with red at the accent points — shoulders, forearms, the channeled lines that ran along the propulsion systems.
The overall silhouette was more lengthened than the Mark II, with a surface finish that was slightly less uniform and considerably more intentional: curves where curves distributed force better, flat sections only where flat was genuinely the optimal geometry.
The eyes of the helmet lit the same cool blue as the power source, and every joint adjusted fractionally as Leon moved, tracking him with the responsiveness of something that had been fitted specifically to this body.
Fire from the back thrusters and the boots, and Leon was airborne.
Tony stared at all of this for several seconds without speaking.
“Let me show you the specs,” Leon said, which in context was almost funny.
He held up one arm.
“The bracelets are the primary deployment node — when idle, the suit operates as a remote flight capsule under JARVIS coordination.
If I need it, it comes to me.
If I need it gone, it leaves.” He gestured along his torso.
The back propulsion unit frees both hands during flight, which means I can actually do things other than maintain altitude.”
Tony found his voice.
“That assembly sequence—”
“Took me about half a day to work out the deployment geometry.
The hard part was the sequencing logic.” Leon paused.
“I also added a liquid filtration system for extended flights.
It allows the pilot to manage biological necessities without—”
“Stop.” Tony held up one hand.
“Stop.
Did you just say what I think you said?”
“Urinary management during flight operations,” Leon said.
“Standard quality-of-life feature.”
“That is,” Tony said, “possibly the least elegant thing I have ever heard described as a feature.
You built a suit of armor that you go to the bathroom in.
On purpose.
As a feature.”
“I thought you’d find that forward-thinking.”
“I find it appalling.
I find it a fundamental misunderstanding of what armor is for.” Tony pointed at him.
“A battle suit is not a mobile restroom.
That is a failure of vision.
That is what happens when you let comfort interfere with purpose.”
He will show this off in exactly the same words to a crowd at a party in a few years, Leon thought, watching Tony’s indignation.
He’ll be very proud of it.
He noted, but did not mention, that Tony’s current objection was probably less about principle and more about having had his thunder partially stolen by someone who had thought of something he hadn’t.
“So I’ve won the functional comparison,” Leon said.
Tony’s expression, which had been building toward something, pivoted fast.
“No,” Tony said.
“No, no, no.
A battle suit is a weapon system.
Functional frills are noise.
What matters is combat performance — speed, adaptability, structural integrity under pressure.
That’s the actual evaluation.” He extended a finger.
“Those are the categories.”
“Fine,” Leon said.
“How do we test those?”
“Speed,” Tony said immediately.
“Altitude.
We fly.
Whoever goes faster and goes farther wins the relevant category.”
“Agreed.” Leon increased his thruster output and started toward the garage entrance.
“Let’s go outside, JARVIS calls the start, and then—”