Tony Stark sat on his designer leather sofa in the middle of his sprawling Malibu workshop, staring blankly at the projection before him. The screen was a frozen image of the Javier Military Base—or what was left of it. The scale of the impact, the sheer volume of dust that had been kicked up, and the absolute erasure of several thousand tons of structural engineering had left a heavy, uncomfortable knot in his chest.
He closed his eyes for a long moment, the afterimages of Leander's golden-violet power dancing behind his eyelids. When he opened them again, the uncertainty was still there, but it was being pushed down by a familiar, stubborn determination.
"So, what am I actually worried about?" Tony muttered to the empty room. "Leander is my friend. He's a good kid—polite, smart, probably the most sensible person I know under the age of forty. He's not going to wake up one morning and decide to dismantle the planet."
He reached for the half-empty glass of Scotch on the side table and took a slow, methodical sip. His mind, as always, began to drift into the realm of technical countermeasures—not because he hated Leander, but because Tony Stark was a man who lived and breathed control. It was his default setting.
'If a metal projectile is accelerated to Mach 20, the friction alone should melt standard alloys,' he thought, his eyes tracking the telemetry data. 'But if he's transmuting the air resistance or reinforcing the structural lattice of the metal as it travels... the kinetic energy becomes impossible to calculate. How do I stop something that can turn my own suit into a coffin before I can blink?'
This wasn't malicious speculation. It was the "Stark Knot"—the inescapable compulsion to solve a problem before it became a crisis. He watched the video again, his expression complex as he saw Leander toy with the Abomination.
On the screen, the first phase of the fight played out. The steel tendons had already trapped the monster, and the metal spikes were striking with surgical precision. Tony's mouth curled into a grim smile. He had no sympathy for the Abomination; the creature was a biological aberration that deserved every ounce of pain Leander was dishing out.
But then, the six-meter-tall crimson behemoth appeared on the recording. Tony stood up so fast he nearly knocked his glass over.
"Holy crap, what is that thing? What did they pump into him?" Tony shouted at the projection. "He's a walking Chernobyl! Is he even human anymore?"
He watched the data Jarvis had extrapolated. The bone spikes being fired from the monster's arms carried the kinetic force of a high-caliber sniper round. The physical strength was off the charts. If the Mark VI armor were to face that thing head-on, Tony realized with a chill that he'd be forced to play a very dangerous game of long-range kiting. It would be a fight of lasers and missiles against raw, regenerating meat.
And yet, there was Leander. The kid was treating a six-meter-tall avatar of destruction like a training dummy. He watched as Leander manipulated the metal to invade the monster's sensory organs—eyes, ears, nose. The Abomination rolled on the ground, a mountain of scarlet muscle thrashing in a level of agony that made even Tony wince.
"Did he send the metal inside?" Tony whispered. "He's attacking the nervous system from the interior."
Then, the recording hit a blank spot. Leander had tucked his glasses away. For several minutes, there was nothing but a black screen with audio of muffled roars and the sound of vibrating metal. When the image finally flickered back to life, the scene had changed completely.
Leander was standing perfectly still in front of the giant. The kid looked tiny, yet the monster seemed frozen. With a casual, almost dismissive kick, Leander touched the creature's leg, and the entire six-meter frame shattered into thousands of pieces.
"Jarvis, frame by frame. Enhance the energy signatures," Tony commanded.
The playback slowed down. Tony saw the golden light erupting from inside the Abomination's body. It wasn't an external cut; it was a structural collapse of the creature's very molecular bond. The Abomination hadn't just been killed; it had been dismantled.
Tony sat back down, a cold sensation crawling up his spine. "He has an ultimate move. Something that ignores durability."
The silence in the workshop was absolute. Jarvis, sensing his creator's mood, didn't offer any dry observations. Tony just sat there, the burger-fueled adrenaline of the night before completely evaporated, replaced by the weight of a world that was getting far too complicated for a man in a tin suit.
The soft click of the elevator door broke his trance.
Pepper Potts walked in, dressed in casual clothes, her hair tied back. Ever since the incident with Ivan Vanko, their relationship had moved into a strange, unspoken territory of domesticity. She looked at Tony, saw the empty glass and the haunted look in his eyes, and sighed.
She poured a glass of ice water, walked over, and placed a fresh cheeseburger in Tony's hand.
"Jarvis told me you were pulling another all-nighter," Pepper said, her voice soft but firm. "You need to sleep, Tony. You're starting to look like a conspiracy theorist in a bunker. What's going on?"
Tony looked at the burger, then at Pepper. "Hey, Pep. Question for you. What do you think of Leander? Honestly."
Pepper sat down beside him, surprised by the gravity of the question. "Leander? Why are you bringing him up now?"
She thought for a moment, her eyes softening. "The first time I saw him was at your 'I am Iron Man' press conference. He was this mysterious kid sitting in the front row, and you were so insistent on finding him. I thought he was some long-lost relative or a protégé."
"And now?" Tony asked.
"Now? I think he's a wonderful kid. He's smart, incredibly polite, and he has this... well-behaved quality that's rare these days. But he's also very sensible. Sometimes when I talk to him, I forget he's a teenager. He carries himself like an adult who's seen too much."
She smiled, leaning back. "He has a very strong sense of justice, Tony. I have a very good impression of him. Did something happen? Did he break something in the lab?"
Tony looked at the burger in his hand, then at the frozen screen of the desert wasteland. He thought about the days they spent building the Mark II together, the way Leander had helped him solve the palladium poisoning, and the quiet, humble way the kid lived his life in Queens.
'I'm overthinking it,' Tony decided. 'He's not a threat. He's a friend who happens to have a very big hammer.'
The tension in his shoulders vanished. He took a massive bite of the burger, the grease and salt grounding him back in reality. He turned to Pepper with his trademark smirk.
"You're right. He's a great kid. Now, check this out—I was thinking about the New York project. What do you think of this? I want to put a massive, glowing 'STARK' sign on the side of the tower. I want people in New Jersey to be able to see it at three in the morning."
He flicked his hand, and a holographic model of the Stark Tower appeared. The giant letters were indeed dazzlingly bright.
"Oh, Tony... no," Pepper said, though a small smile played on her lips. "That's so incredibly... you. It wasn't in the original blueprints."
"It's an upgrade! A branding necessity," Tony insisted, talking around a mouthful of burger. "Anyway, you should get to the office. Pepper, you have a tower to build. I'll be there in a bit to look at the renewable energy core."
"Go to sleep first," she warned, standing up and shaking her head. "And stop playing with the armor for five minutes."
"I'll take a bath. I promise. Bye, Pep."
Once the elevator doors closed, Tony finished the burger and stood up, feeling significantly more human.
"Jarvis, delete the footage from the Javier Base. Clear the cache, wipe the local logs. I don't want anyone—not S.H.I.E.L.D., not the Council—stumbling onto that recording."
"Understood, sir. Deletion complete."
Tony walked toward the bathroom, humming a tune. He felt lighter, though he had missed the final part of the recording—the part where Leander turned Emil Blonsky's remains into a pile of gray, metallic dust.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters - Underground Levels
Nick Fury walked through the dimly lit corridors of a facility that didn't officially exist. Behind him, Dr. Erik Selvig followed, his eyes wide as he took in the sheer amount of high-tech equipment surrounding them.
"I've been keeping an eye on your work in New Mexico, Doctor," Fury said, his voice echoing in the sterile hallway. "Your theories on the Einstein-Rosen bridge have caught the attention of some very important people."
"It's unprecedented work," Selvig said, clutching his briefcase. "The Foster theory... it's a gateway. We're talking about other dimensions, other worlds. I need more data, more power."
Fury stopped in front of a heavy, reinforced silver vault. "Legend and history often share the same roots, Doctor. Sometimes, the stories we tell kids are actually warnings."
He entered a long sequence on a keypad and the vault hissed open. Inside, resting in a vacuum-sealed chamber, was a glowing blue cube. It hummed with a low-frequency vibration that made the air feel electric.
"What is that?" Selvig whispered, mesmerized by the light.
"Power, Doctor," Fury replied, his eye reflecting the blue glow. "Untapped, unlimited power. And we need you to find a way to use it before someone else does."