{Yo guys, sorry, wrong chapter}
Now, everything finally made perfect sense to Tony.
He had just sent Pepper to the Stark Industries mainframe to investigate the unauthorized shipping logs—specifically the people who were secretly selling high-grade Stark weapons to terrorist cells overseas.
With Obadiah’s sudden, violent betrayal right here in his own home, the puzzle pieces fell into place with terrifying certainty.
It was definitely done by Obadiah Stane.
But as Tony sat on the floor of his workshop, catching his breath, the realization cut even deeper.
If Obadiah was corporate raiding his technology now, then his entire kidnapping in Afghanistan months ago wasn’t a random stroke of bad luck.
It was highly probable that Obadiah had ordered the hit himself to clear the path for total control of the company.
That meant Pepper wasn’t just doing a routine compliance check anymore.
She was walking straight into a trap.
She was in extreme danger.
“Jarvis, call Pepper right now and tell her to get out of the building immediately!” Tony ordered, his voice tight with panic.
“Sir, I am currently unable to contact Ms.
Potts,” Jarvis responded smoothly.
“Her cellular device appears to be completely unreachable, likely due to a localized signal jammer within her sector.”
“Shit,” Tony cursed, slamming his fist against the floor.
He needed his primary life support back, but more importantly, he needed to secure Pepper.
“Jarvis, do you know where Pepper kept the original arc reactor?
The one from the cave?”
“Yes, Boss.
It is currently being stored safely inside her second house.”
Tony let out a sharp breath.
Although he trusted Pepper completely with his life, that arc reactor was a once-in-a-generation invention with immense destructive potential.
Therefore, he had previously instructed Jarvis to keep an eye on its location until it could be properly dismantled or destroyed.
Fortunately, she hadn’t actually gone through with destroying it yet.
Her sentimentality was about to save his life.
“Send Happy the exact coordinates right now.
Tell him to pick it up and bring it directly to me as fast as humanly possible,” Tony commanded, struggling to stand up.
“And send every single available Stark security guard to Pepper’s last known location.
Quick!”
With the orders dispatched, Tony dragged himself toward the main garage bay.
He needed to modify the Mark 2 armor immediately.
The silver prototype wasn’t fully optimized for the older, less stable prototype reactor Happy was bringing, so he had to manually adjust the internal power routing to accept an external power flow.
As he rewired the suit with shaking hands, the thought of calling Eric crossed his mind.
But asking for Eric’s help once again made him feel intensely embarrassed.
He had just been rescued from actual medical death a few minutes ago.
If he couldn’t even protect the woman he liked without running back to a mysterious teenager for magical assistance, his ego wouldn’t survive it.
Most importantly, he stubbornly convinced himself that the current situation wasn’t desperate enough to warrant begging.
“This damn pride,” Tony muttered to himself, wiping sweat from his forehead as he tightened a bolt on the chest piece.
Meanwhile, Eric directly went back home.
Main reason?
He had absolutely nothing better to do recently.
Although Tony had almost died due to the massive butterfly effect Eric had caused by obliterating the terrorist cave, Eric didn’t take the matter seriously at all. This story is hosted at g.com.
In his mind, it was a minor, easily fixable hitch in the timeline.
Sure, Obadiah had taken action much earlier than expected and technically managed to kill Tony for a brief moment.
But Eric reasoned that since he had pulverized the original Mark 1 prototype in Afghanistan, Obadiah wouldn’t have any advanced blueprints to build a giant armored suit anyway.
He figured Tony would easily deal with a regular human corporate villain once he got a backup battery.
So, he directly pushed the whole matter to the back of his mind.
He slumped onto his living room couch, staring at his console, trying to decide which video game he should play to pass the afternoon.
Suddenly, Rebecca’s voice sounded from right behind him, breaking his concentration.
“Hey, Eric.
When exactly are you planning to start going to school again?
Your break has been long enough.”
Eric blinked, completely caught off guard.
Wtf, he thought to himself.
He had almost completely forgotten that in this reality, he was legally still a high school student who was supposed to care about attendance and diplomas.
“No,” Eric said casually, not moving an inch.
Rebecca, who was just about to sit down on the cushions beside him, paused entirely.
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“What do you mean by ‘no’?”
“I don’t think there is any other interpretation of the word ‘no’ beside ‘no’, Mom,” Eric replied, shifting his gaze toward her.
“I will be dropping out.”
Rebecca’s face flushed with instant parental outrage.
“You bastard boy!
You’ve actually started to fight back against your own mother now?
What, you think you’re too big to get beaten?” She raised a hand, looking around for a suitable slipper or rolled-up magazine.
“Mom, no.
I’m serious,” Eric said, his tone entirely level and firm.
Rebecca’s aggressive movements suddenly paused.
Her eyes focused intently on Eric’s face, searching for any sign of a joke.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?”
“Yeah,” Eric nodded.
“There is literally nothing else left for me to learn in that place anyway.
It’s a waste of time.”
Looking at the cold, unshakeable certainty in Eric’s eyes, Rebecca knew deep down that there was absolutely nothing she could say to change his mind.
Although Eric looked exactly the same as before, she could clearly feel that he had drastically changed on a fundamental level.
As his mother, she could tell that his loving, protective attitude toward her hadn’t changed at all.
But his attitude toward the entire rest of the world had shifted completely.
He looked at society as if it were a minor playground, entirely detached from its rules.
She knew that if she used her authority to force him, Eric might begrudgingly obey her out of pure filial piety, but it definitely wouldn’t lead to a good result.
It would only cause unnecessary friction.
But even if she could analyze the situation rationally, she still couldn’t truly understand the root cause of this sudden maturity.
She needed a scapegoat.
“Ever since he transferred that three percent stock of Stark Industries into your name, you’ve completely changed!”
Eric’s mouth twitched violently at the sudden accusation.
“Eric, you have become completely drunken on money!” Rebecca directly started to wail loudly, throwing her hands in the air like a tragic soap opera actress.
“My own son, after getting a taste of extreme wealth, no longer needs his poor mother!
He directly tosses me away into the corner!
What a cruel, heartless world we live in!”
“Mom, stop acting like a literal child,” Eric sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with money.”
“Hmmph!
Every single rich person says the exact same thing!” Rebecca snapped, crossing her arms and turning her head away with a massive pout.
“First it’s ‘it’s not about the money,’ and next thing I know, I’m being sent to a luxury retirement home against my will!”
Deciding it was best to completely ignore his mother’s wild, unprovoked antics, Eric picked up the remote and turned on the television to find a distraction.
Wtf.
The very first image that flashed onto the news screen made him curse out loud.
The broadcast was a live, chaotic feed from a major highway in Los Angeles.
The camera was shaking violently, capturing a scene of absolute devastation.
Cars were smashed into scrap metal, concrete barriers were shattered, and thick black smoke filled the air.
But it wasn’t a standard corporate dispute.
Right there on the screen, a massive, bulky metallic suit—the unmistakable design of the Iron Monger—was brutally hammering Tony Stark, who was desperately trying to defend himself in the unpainted, silver Mark 2 armor.
That alone would have been fine, but standing right alongside the Iron Monger, tearing through a city bus with its bare, mutated hands, was a massive, sickeningly deformed green-gray monster.
The Abomination.
Eric stared at the screen, his brain working at high speed.
How the hell did the Abomination get involved in this event early, and why is he teaming up with Obadiah?!
The Iron Monger alone was already a massive threat to a low-powered, improvised Mark 2 armor.
But adding General Ross’s failed rogue super-soldier project into the mix?
There was absolutely zero suspense left in this fight.
If Eric didn’t intervene within the next few minutes, Tony Stark was going to be turned into a literal tin-can pancake.
He would be forced to say a permanent hello to Lady Death all over again, and this time, a simple healing potion wouldn’t fix a pulverized soul.
Eric directly stood up from the couch, his casual, lazy demeanor completely vanishing.
Tony Stark was his very first slave…
uh, he meant, his very first high-value future corporate employee.
How could he possibly let his absolute ace future worker die before he could even extract a single bit of profit from him?
The investment return on saving him twice would be massive.
“Be careful,” Rebecca’s voice suddenly sounded from right behind him.
The playful, dramatic, and childish attitude from a moment ago was completely gone.
Her eyes were wide with genuine, deep motherly concern as she stared at the terrifying monsters causing chaos on the television screen.
She knew her son possessed incredible powers, but a mother’s instinct to worry never truly faded.
Eric didn’t say a word.
He simply gave her a reassuring, confident nod before waving his hand through the air.
A shimmering, golden spatial portal tore open right in the middle of their living room, humming with power.
Without a second thought, he stepped directly through the tear in reality, leaving the quiet comfort of his home behind.