Even after stepping through the portal, Eric still could not completely make sense of how the situation had developed like this.
The timeline was officially running around like a headless chicken.
By saving Ho Yinsen back in the desert, the entire trajectory of Tony Stark’s immediate future had shifted.
Because his friend hadn’t died a tragic, motivating death in that damp cave, Tony was no longer hung up on making a grand, public spectacle about closing down the Stark Industries weapons department so urgently.
Instead, the billionaire had quietly returned home and directly started to use his immense resources to investigate exactly who inside his company was illegally selling high-grade armaments to terrorist cells.
In hindsight, the fact that Obadiah Stane had moved to eliminate Tony wasn’t particularly surprising.
The moment a rat realizes the lights are turning on, it bites.
But there were two massive, glaring logical black holes that Eric couldn’t fathom.
First, he had completely destroyed the original Mark 1 armor in Afghanistan, leaving nothing but scorched earth and molten slag.
If there were no blueprints and no metallic scraps to salvage, how on earth did Obadiah still manage to build the giant Iron Monger suit?
And second, which was infinitely more baffling: why the hell was the Abomination here helping to beat the absolute brakes off Tony?
Did Tony somehow manage to offend him somewhere?
Eric paused on that thought, a dry smile forming on his lips.
Well, knowing Tony Stark’s naturally insufferable personality, he definitely must have offended the mutated soldier somewhere along the line.
But even so, was a casual insult really enough to make a gamma-irradiated monster completely cross over into a different cinematic genre?
The Abomination was supposed to be ignoring everything else in pursuit of his true love, the Hulk!
Why had he suddenly changed his life’s target to Iron Man?
“Whatever,” Eric muttered to himself, shaking his head.
“Let’s just catch those two first.
I can always beat the answers out of them eventually.”
Deciding to keep his identity under wraps for now, Eric pulled a dark hood firmly over his head to obscure his face and stepped fully out of the golden portal.
He materialized on a wide concrete terrace overlooking a major metropolitan highway.
Below him, the scene was one of pure, unadulterated chaos.
Terrified civilians were running in absolutely every direction, their loud, panicked wailing echoing off the glass skyscrapers.
Abandoned cars slammed into one another as people fled the active warzone.
Although Eric didn’t possess any sort of righteous superhero complex, he was still a normal human being at his core.
He definitely didn’t mind helping someone out if he happened to see them in life-threatening trouble right in front of his eyes.
His shadow began to violently wiggle and churn around his legs, spilling out across the concrete.
Within a matter of seconds, several dark, imposing shadow soldiers rose from the darkness, their forms radiating a chilly, protective aura as they filled the entire terrace.
“Go,” Eric commanded quietly, gesturing toward the fleeing crowds.
“Save as many civilians as you can.”
With a silent nod, the shadow soldiers leaped from the terrace, melting into the environment to intercept falling debris and steer civilians away from danger.
With his vanguard deployed for rescue duty, Eric turned his attention toward the main battleground.
His eyes locked onto the metallic struggle taking place in the center of the shattered highway.
He watched as Tony’s silver suit was repeatedly battered across the asphalt, but as he observed the rhythm of the fight, he suddenly felt that something was profoundly wrong.
Right now, Tony was piloting the unpainted Mark 2 prototype armor, which was running on a literal dogshit, outdated scrap arc reactor that Happy had scrambled to retrieve.
The power output had to be miserable.
By all rights of basic physics and power scaling, Obadiah alone should have been able to punch a hole straight through him.
But even after adding the terrifying, concrete-shattering physical might of the Abomination to the equation, Tony was somehow still alive, breathing, and actively kicking.
He was in an incredibly terrible, dented shape, but he wasn’t dead.
“The plot armor in this world is truly a terrifying concept,” Eric whispered, genuinely impressed by the sheer, stubborn resilience of a main character.
Not wanting to waste any more time watching the billionaire get used as a multi-million-dollar ping-pong ball, Eric’s physical form directly dissolved, vanishing completely into the dark depths of his own shadow to close the distance.
Two hours prior to the chaotic highway brawl, the atmosphere in the Malibu mansion had been frantic but entirely focused.
It actually hadn’t taken Tony too much time to modify the internal systems of the Mark 2 armor.
His genius mind operated at a blistering pace when fueled by raw adrenaline and betrayal.
Using his mechanical tools, he swiftly adjusted the power regulators in the suit’s chest cavity to safely fit the larger, older prototype arc reactor that Happy had rushed to deliver.
The moment the silver armor’s arc reactor slot hummed to life with a pale blue glow, the diagnostic screens flashed green.
Tony let out a confident breath.
With his armor fully operational, he foolishly thought everything from here on out would be an easy, straightforward cleanup mission.
Furious, armed, and fueled by a desire for immediate answers, Tony bypassed any sort of strategic planning and flew directly toward Obadiah’s private sector office at the Stark Industries facility to catch the traitor red-handed.
When he broke through the upper levels of the facility, he found Pepper Potts frantically trying to escape the building, clutching a flash drive filled with incriminating data.
But blocking her path was a towering, heavily armored mechanical monstrosity that looked like a walking tank.
Tony descended from the ceiling, landing heavily between Pepper and the massive suit.
He stared at the heavily armored behemoth in sheer disbelief.
“Okay, Pepper, are you telling me this giant steel garbage can is Obadiah?”
“No!
That massive thing isn’t him,” Pepper yelled over the deafening whine of the machine’s mechanical joints, her voice filled with panic.
“But Obadiah is inside of it!
He’s controlling the entire thing from the cockpit, just like you control your suit!”
Tony’s mouth twitched behind his metallic visor.
He looked at the oversized arms, the mounted minigun, and the thick, heavy-duty plating.
“I see.”
In that split second, a major question that had been bothering him was instantly answered.
He had been wondering why an ambitious, ruthless man like Obadiah would go through the trouble of paralyzing him on his couch, only to take the miniature arc reactor and leave him alive to slowly suffer.
If Obadiah wanted total corporate control, killing him outright was the logical choice.
But now it made sense.
The old man didn’t just want him out of the picture—he desperately needed the unique, miniaturized power source to act as the heart and engine for this oversized metal toy.
Without Tony’s heart, this giant suit was just an expensive, immobile paperweight.
Before Tony could think any further, the Iron Monger’s thrusters roared to life.
The massive suit directly flew over the shattered glass partition, swinging a massive, mechanical fist straight toward them with terrifying momentum.
He hurriedly grabbed Pepper by the waist, engaging his boot thrusters to back off at maximum speed, narrowly avoiding the crushing blow as Obadiah’s fist pulverized the concrete floor where they had been standing a millisecond prior.
Hovering a few feet in the air, Tony’s mind quickly started to calculate a viable countermeasure, but the diagnostic readings blinking in his peripheral vision were deeply discouraging.
Looking at the large suit, it was obvious that the Iron Monger lacked his own suit’s agility and aerodynamic speed.
However, it possessed triple the raw mass, heavy military-grade firepower, and thick armor plating.
More importantly, Tony was currently running his entire system on a heavily degraded, low-output scrap arc reactor.
His energy reserves were already depleting at an alarming rate just from maintaining basic flight stabilization.
In a prolonged war of attrition, the math was simple: Tony would definitely lose first.
His battery would die long before he could breach that thick armor.
“Boss,” Jarvis’s voice echoed within the helmet, completely calm despite the impending doom.
“Based on current tactical projections and our severe power limitations, it is highly recommended to call Mr.
Eric for immediate assistance.”
Tony scoffed, dodging a stray burst of heavy machine-gun fire from the giant mech.
“Are you kidding me, Jarvis?
Do you honestly think I need help from a teenager to settle a family dispute?”
Jarvis’s modulated tone sounded through the comms without a single hint of embarrassment or hesitation.
“Yes.”
“No need!” Tony huffed, executing a sharp banking turn in mid-air.
“I can take care of my own damn trouble.”
“Boss, with all due respect, this is mathematically not the optimal time to act on your fragile ego.
Please reconsider.”
“Shut up, Jarvis.
I swear, the moment we get out of this, I am absolutely downgrading your personality modules.”
As Tony rocketed out of the shattered facility doors and onto the nearby highway to draw the fight away from the collapsing structure, a somewhat familiar figure in a pristine, dark tactical suit caught his eye amidst the fleeing crowd below.
Tony quickly descended toward the ground, landing with a heavy slide right in front of the man.
Before the agent could even open his mouth to speak, Tony directly dropped a thoroughly terrified Pepper into his arms.
“Hey!
Take care of Pepper!” Tony barked, his faceplate snapping down as he looked up at the agent.
“It’s Agent Coulson, right?
Keep her safe.
I’ll deal with the big guy.”
Instead of running away or continuing his tactical retreat to preserve his dwindling battery life, Tony entirely changed his strategy.
He planted his boots firmly into the asphalt, turning around to face the roaring form of Obadiah’s Iron Monger, which was charging down the highway toward him, crushing civilian cars under its heavy metal tread.
Tony ignited his thrusters to absolute maximum capacity, the old arc reactor in his chest screaming under the sudden, immense strain.
He rocketed directly toward his traitorous mentor like a silver bullet.
“Bastard, let me show you what is actually called premium goods!” Tony roared through his external speakers, breaking the sound barrier as he closed the distance in a straight line.
Boom!