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XGO : Chapter 14 : Iron, Lodestone, and Last Laughs
🕑 Added 2025-06-22 15:15:49 +0000 UTCThe awkward, hate-filled staredown in the shattered biodome was a tableau of imminent violence, punctuated only by the distant screams of panicked civilians and the crackle of burning foliage. Lodestar and Tony Stark stood mere feet apart, the air between them thick with a tension that had nothing to do with the army of hostile drones still aiming their weapons at them.
Just as Lodestar was about to move, to unleash the magnetic fury he held so tightly in check, the War Machine armor—which had been relentlessly firing at their shield—suddenly seized up. Its spinning minigun whined to a halt. The targeting lasers flickered and died. The suit, which had been a puppet of Vanko’s code, went limp for a fraction of a second, then its internal servos whirred as Rhodey’s own commands finally broke through its hijacked systems.
"Did it… run out of ammo?" Lodestar asked, his metallic voice flat, his single green eye-slit fixed on the now-stationary War Machine.
Tony, inside his helmet, watched his HUD display flicker as incoming data streams stabilized. "Maybe," he said skeptically. "Or maybe…"
A new voice, calm and professional, crackled in his ear, overriding the suit's comms. "Tony, I have control of Colonel Rhodes' suit. Repeat, the War Machine armor is now under our control."
Tony's helmet display flickered again, and a three-way video feed materialized in his HUD. One screen showed Natasha Romanoff, her face taut with concentration, her fingers a blur as she typed furiously on a Stark-issued datapad she had clearly… acquired. A second screen showed a frantic Happy Hogan trying to navigate a luxury car through the panicked, fleeing crowds outside. And the third showed Pepper Potts, her face pale with a mixture of terror and overwhelming relief.
"Tony! Oh, thank God! What is going on?" Pepper’s voice was a torrent of panicked questions.
"Pepper, just a minute," Tony said, his own voice tight with urgency. He switched his focus to Natasha’s feed. "Nat! Nice work on the hack! Did you find Vanko?"
Natasha shook her head, never taking her eyes off her datapad. "Negative. He's not at the Hammer facility. He's controlling all this remotely. But I've managed to reboot Rhodey's OS and bypass Vanko's override. I could only get War Machine out of his control."
"Figured as much," Tony grunted.
Natasha looked up at the camera then, a hint of a wry smile on her lips. "Welcome back, by the way. For a minute there, I thought you were going to die from that palladium poisoning."
A dead silence fell over the comms. In the third window, Pepper’s face went white, her eyes widening in horrified disbelief. "What? Tony… you were dying?" Her voice was a choked whisper. "The blood tests… your behavior… Oh my God. Why didn't you tell me?! What else are you hiding from me?!"
Tony winced inside his helmet. Of all the ways for her to find out… "Pep, it’s not like that. It's handled. I fixed it. New element, clean energy, no more poison. It's a long story. I'll tell you everything, I promise, just—"
"Yeah, you should!" she yelled, her fear now morphing into righteous anger. "Or I swear to God, Tony, I will resign so fast it'll make your head spin!"
A third voice, metallic, bored, and laced with profound irritation, cut through their domestic crisis. "If you two are quite finished with your lovely-dovey, life-or-death drama," Lodestar said, his green eye-slit swiveling between the still-hostile drones and the arguing couple on Tony's HUD, "I could, perhaps, be persuaded to raise the shield down and will not need to save your sorry ass."
"I'll call you later, Pepper!" Tony said quickly, cutting the call. He turned to Rhodey, whose War Machine armor was now standing beside him, his movements his own again. "You back with us, buddy?"
"Yeah, I'm back," Rhodey grunted, the suit's minigun retracting. "And when this is over, you and I are having a very long talk about your definition of 'sharing'."
With that, the temporary truce ended. The remaining drones, their primary target no longer shielded by his friend, readjusted their aim and prepared to fire again.
"Alright, boys," Tony grinned, the familiar thrill of battle momentarily overriding everything else. "Let's take out the trash."
What followed was a symphony of destruction. Tony and Rhodey, Iron Man and War Machine, a devastating duo of red and grey, unleashed hell. They flew in perfect tandem, a maneuver born of years of friendship and shared flight time. Tony, with his Mark VI’s precision repulsors, targeted the drones' vulnerable joints and power cores, each blast a clean, efficient kill. Rhodey, with War Machine’s overwhelming firepower, simply filled the air with lead and explosions, his shoulder-mounted minigun spewing a river of bullets, his wrist rockets turning clusters of drones into scrap metal.
Lodestar joined the fray, a silent, floating god of magnetism. He didn't bother with precision. He raised his pincer-like claws, and a dozen drones were simply crushed in on themselves, their metal frames imploding with sickening groans. He tore the cannons off another group and used them as magnetically propelled battering rams to smash into their comrades. He was a force of nature, his methods brutal and terrifyingly effective.
The battle raged for minutes that felt like an eternity. The biodome, once a serene garden, was now a smoldering ruin of shattered glass, uprooted trees, and the burning wreckage of dozens of Hammer Drones. Finally, the last aerial drone was vaporized by a combined repulsor blast from Tony and Rhodey.
The three of them landed in the center of the devastation, standing back-to-back amidst the carnage.
"Well done, kid," Tony said, his faceplate retracting. He was breathing heavily, his suit smoking in several places, but he was grinning. "You got potential. Stick with me, and you could be the next superhero of America."
Rhodey’s faceplate also retracted. "He can't, Tony. He's the king, or whatever, of another country. Diplomatic immunity and all that."
"Well, then you can just be a hero," Tony shrugged at Alex. "We could use more of those."
Before Lodestar could offer a dry, likely insulting, retort, the night exploded in a flash of brilliant blue.
Two impossibly long, crackling whips of pure plasma energy shot out from the shadows of the ruined pavilion. They moved with the speed of lightning, lashing through the air with a sound like tearing reality. One whip wrapped around Lodestar’s metallic torso, the other around his legs.
An immense jolt of electricity surged through his form. Lodestar’s green eye-slit widened in surprise, and he was violently yanked off his feet, thrown through the air like a discarded toy. He was flung a hundred yards, crashing through the far wall of the biodome and disappearing into the darkness beyond, his surprised, metallic shout of "What the fu—" cut short by the impact.
Tony and Rhodey spun around, weapons raised, just as a new figure landed before them with a heavy, ground-shaking THUD.
It was Ivan Vanko. He was encased in a new, fully enclosed suit of armor, far more powerful and menacing than the crude harness he’d worn in Monaco. It was bulky, powerful, and wreathed in an aura of crackling blue plasma. The energy whips, now retracted, hummed with contained power at his wrists.
"We have to settle our score, Stark," Vanko snarled, his voice a distorted, hateful growl through the suit’s speakers.
Tony’s grin was gone, replaced by a mask of cold fury. "Well then," he said, his faceplate snapping shut. "Let's get rolling."
The fight was short and brutal. Tony and Rhodey, already depleted from their battle with the drones, were no match for Vanko’s raw, focused power. His whips were faster, more powerful than before. They cracked through the air, tearing chunks from the ground, easily deflecting repulsor blasts. He caught Rhodey with a vicious lash that sent the War Machine armor spinning, crashing into a pile of wreckage. He then focused on Tony, his whips moving in a dizzying, inescapable pattern, scoring direct hits on the Mark VI armor, causing systems to spark and fail.
Vanko slammed Tony to the ground, one whip pinning his legs, the other raised for a final, killing blow.
"Your father's legacy ends here," Vanko growled.
Just as the whip descended, a black, horseshoe-shaped blur slammed into Vanko from the side. It was Lodestar, back in the fight. He had torn himself free from the wreckage, his form sparking with residual energy from Vanko’s attack, but otherwise unharmed.
He didn't give Vanko a chance to react. Lodestar raised both claws, and Vanko's powerful whips were seized by an overwhelming magnetic force. They were torn from Vanko's gauntlets with a shriek of protesting metal. Vanko, suddenly weaponless, looked up in shock, just in time to see Tony and Rhodey, now free, aim their primary weapons at him.
"Party's over, Ivan," Tony said.
The combined force of their repulsor blasts and cannon fire hit Vanko's suit dead center. The armor buckled, sparked, and then exploded in a massive fireball.
Vanko was thrown clear, his suit shattered, his body broken. He lay on the ground, gasping, a bloody, triumphant smile on his face.
"You lose," he wheezed, his voice a death rattle. He looked around at the field of destroyed drones. "You think you have won? Do you have someone to save them all?"
A high-pitched, insistent beeping sound began to echo across the ruined Expo grounds. It started with one drone, then another, then a dozen, then all of them. A sea of tiny, blinking red lights.
"Oh, son of a bitch," Rhodey swore, his suit's sensors confirming his fear. "They're bombs. He rigged them all to blow."
Tony's blood ran cold. "The Expo… the crowds… Pepper, she's still here!"
"I'll take care of the bombs," Lodestar's voice cut through his panic, calm and authoritative. "You save Pepper."
"What? Kid, there are hundreds of them!" Tony protested. "How can you—"
"Get going!" Lodestar commanded, his form already rising into the air, a powerful magnetic pulse emanating from him. "Now!"
Tony didn't hesitate any longer. He and Rhodey blasted off, twin streaks of red and grey against the night sky, flying towards the main pavilion where Pepper had last been. They found her just emerging from a sheltered alcove, her face pale, her eyes wide with fear.
"Tony!" she cried, relief washing over her.
"No time to talk, honey!" he said, scooping her up into his arms before she could even start yapping about his recklessness. With Pepper secure, he rocketed upwards, getting her to a high, safe location on the roof of a nearby, undamaged building.
At the same time, below them, a miracle was happening. Lodestar hovered in the center of the Expo grounds, a silent, magnetic god. He raised his arms, and every single one of the beeping, flashing Hammer Drones—from the grounds, from the biodomes, even from the wreckage—was lifted into the air. They were ripped from the ground, torn from walls, pulled from debris, all flying towards him, drawn by his irresistible power. Soon, he was at the center of a massive, swirling vortex of hundreds of ticking bombs.
He didn't hesitate. With the entire swarm orbiting him like a metallic hurricane, he shot upwards, then arrowed out towards the dark waters of the Flushing Bay.
He flew far out over the water, a bizarre, self-contained storm of impending doom. Then, he plunged downwards, taking the entire swarm with him.
He hit the water, and a moment later, the bay erupted.
A colossal, blinding explosion tore the night apart. A wall of water, hundreds of feet high, was thrown into the air, illuminated from within by the incandescent flash of hundreds of simultaneous detonations. The sound, even from miles away, was a deafening, soul-shaking BOOM that shattered windows across Queens.
Tony and Rhodey, hovering in the air near Pepper, watched in stunned silence.
"What the hell…?" Tony whispered, his voice filled with a horrified awe. "Why did he go in with the bombs? He could have just dropped them…"
"He wanted to make sure they were deep enough," Rhodey said, his own voice hoarse. "To contain the blast… to protect the city." He looked at Tony, his face grim inside his helmet. "Tony… he was just a kid."
A wave of guilt, heavy and suffocating, washed over them both. The arrogant, powerful, infuriating kid… had just sacrificed himself to save thousands of people, including them. They had misjudged him. So badly.
As they stared at the churning, steaming water where the explosion had happened, a strange sight caught their eye. A small, dark, metallic bar-like object, no bigger than a remote control, was rising slowly from the depths, seemingly untouched by the cataclysmic blast. It hovered over the water's surface, then began to shift, to expand. Metal flowed like liquid, plates unfolding, limbs extending, reforming with impossible speed.
And there, hovering over the water, was Lodestar, completely unharmed.
He flew back towards them, landing lightly on the rooftop where they stood with Pepper. A final flash of blue light, and he was Alex again, dressed in his now slightly singed suit, looking completely unfazed.
He looked at their shocked, guilt-ridden, utterly bewildered faces.
He raised an eyebrow. "What's with your faces?"
Comments
firerock laser
They really don't know this kid if they believe that would be enough to kill him
