[Third Person Pov]
“Honestly, just what are you trying to achieve here?!” Tony shouted, unleashing a searing beam of pure heat from his palms. The blast roared forward like a storm of white-hot fire, cutting through the air with ferocious intensity.
Wenwu thrust his hand forward in response. A howling winter storm erupted from his ring, icy winds and freezing shards clashing violently against Tony’s inferno. The opposing forces collided in a deafening thermal explosion, sending shockwaves rippling outward and forcing both combatants to slide backward across the shattered ground.
“Please, I beg of you,” Tony continued as he recovered, “don’t tell me this is some twisted ploy to get with my mother. Because I will literally sock you—and trust me, you would look so lame doing it.”
“No. It isn’t,” The Mandarin answered coldly, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. One of his ten rings flared with an inky black light, and the entire battlefield around them plunged into absolute darkness. The light seemed to be devoured whole, leaving nothing but pitch-black void.
Wenwu’s voice echoed from everywhere at once, reverberating through the suffocating haze like a haunting specter. “I have long since come to terms with the fact that she and I were never meant to be… no matter how much I once wished it so.”
“Okay, Romeo, dial it down a notch,” Tony scoffed, squinting uselessly into the blackness. He activated his techno-vision, but the enhanced optics were completely blinded by the unnatural darkness. It was too thick, too potent—almost alive.
“Friday, baby girl, I need you to be my eyes and ears,” Tony whispered urgently, launching probing strikes from multiple angles in the hopes of drawing out his opponent.
The attacks came without mercy. Ice suddenly encased his limbs in a crushing grip. Concussive beams hammered him from the shadows, a pillar of roaring fire exploded beneath his feet, and overwhelming gravity slammed down on him like an invisible mountain. Tony fired repulsor blasts toward the sources of each assault, but they vanished harmlessly into the void with no visible effect.
“Analyzing…” Friday’s calm voice announced as a loading bar appeared in his HUD, steadily filling.
“You think you’re really funny, don’t you?” Tony muttered with a straight face as a powerful gust of wind began swirling around him. The breeze rapidly escalated into a howling gale, then a full-blown tornado that lifted him off the ground, shattering the ice that bound him. A pulse of intense fire merged with the vortex, transforming it into a roaring, blazing inferno that lit up the blackened space from within.
Gritting his teeth, Tony channeled power into his palms and produced a crackling sphere of pure electromagnetism. With a fierce cry, he crushed it between his hands. A massive wave of disruptive energy exploded outward in all directions, snuffing out the fire and wind in a brilliant flash.
Tony landed hard on one fist and knee, the silver surface of his suit glowing cherry-red from the residual heat. When he looked up, Friday’s analysis had finally completed.
“Analysis completed. Commencing counterattack,” she stated smoothly.
“4 o’clock,” Friday instructed.
Tony spun instantly and unleashed a devastating beam of pure energy, striking true. A faint grunt of pain echoed through the darkness.
“7 o’clock. 12 o’clock. 3 o’clock,” Friday continued feeding him precise coordinates.
Tony moved with fluid, stylish aggression—thrusting his repulsors in rapid succession, flipping through the air in acrobatic maneuvers as bright beams of energy lanced through the void. He then brought both repulsors together, conjuring a larger, unstable sphere of electromagnetic fury. Raising it high above his head, he released it in a chaotic storm of lightning bolts that arced wildly in every direction.
One of the bolts found its mark. Wenwu cried out sharply as electricity coursed through his body, searing his skin and racing along his nerves. The excruciating pain shattered his concentration. The all-encompassing darkness fractured and dissolved, light flooding back into the battlefield once more.
Tony spotted the Mandarin standing amid the wreckage, his hair wildly disheveled and crackling with residual static electricity. Steam rose from his scorched clothing as he panted heavily, clearly rattled by the lightning strike but far from defeated.
Suddenly, every metallic object in the vicinity began to vibrate violently, lifting off the ground with an eerie hum. A heavy manhole cover shot upward like a projectile and slammed into Wenwu from behind with brutal force.
“What?” the Mandarin growled, spinning around angrily only to find no one there. As he turned back, a full-sized car hurtled toward him, smashing into his body with crushing impact. Before he could recover, another vehicle followed, hammering him again.
Metal beams, tangled wires, lamp posts, and thick pipes ripped free from the surrounding ruins, all flying toward him. Wenwu’s body grew increasingly magnetized, drawing the debris in like a powerful magnet until he was nearly buried beneath a growing mountain of scrap.
“Ahhhh!!” he roared at the top of his lungs, one of his ten rings blazing with ominous light.
A massive shockwave of electromagnetic energy exploded outward from the ring, violently repelling every piece of metal. Wenwu emerged bloodied and battered—covered in cuts, bruises, and fresh wounds—but his eyes burned with even greater fury. The displaced metal that had surrounded him now began orbiting his body in a deadly, high-speed vortex.
“Your mother isn’t the one I’m after, boy,” The Mandarin sneered, his voice thick with venom. “It’s your father. I want to see Howard Stark suffer. I want him to watch helplessly as I tear down the cursed Stark name piece by piece.”
With every bitter word, the orbiting metal spun faster and faster, creating a lethal whirlwind of steel. “You can call this sibling rivalry if you like. I won’t be satisfied until there’s nothing left of his legacy.”
“I’m sorry you have to bear the sins of your father,” Wenwu continued, his tone cold and merciless, “but if killing you will deepen his torment, then so be it. Blame your fate for having such a bastard as a father.” With a sweeping motion of both hands, he hurled the entire storm of levitating metal straight at Tony.
“Friday, the warp module again, please,” Tony said quickly. His helmet’s lenses and highlights shifted from bright blue to a deep, tactical black.
He raised his hands and began opening multiple warp gates with rapid thoughts. One after another, the deadly projectiles vanished through the portals only to reappear and rocket back toward Wenwu.
Another ring on the Mandarin’s hand activated. The atomic structure of the incoming metal instantly destabilized, transforming mid-flight into cascading piles of fine sand that harmlessly poured around his feet, forming small dunes on the battlefield.
“Dude, just what is up with those rings?” Tony groaned, rolling his eyes in frustration. “Instead of all that tired revenge crap, why don’t you tell me more about them? I’m genuinely curious.”
“Why? So you can figure out ways to take them from me?” Wenwu scoffed, sneering with clear disdain. “Sorry, but I’m not stupid enough to reveal my secrets to one of the world’s greatest minds.”
“Oh, you flatter me,” Tony replied with a low, sarcastic chuckle. “Don’t you know flattery will get you nowhere?”
Tony pressed the attack, creating a network of warp gates all around the battlefield and firing repulsor beams through them from unpredictable angles. Wenwu moved with surprising agility, dancing between the portals and dodging the energy blasts with fluid footwork. Then, in a bold counter, he thrust his hand into one of the active warp gates, seized Tony’s arm, and yanked him through.
As Tony emerged on the other side, Wenwu’s hand was already pressed against his stomach. The disintegration ring activated with a horrifying hum, rapidly eating away at the silver nanotech armor. Before Tony could react, Wenwu lifted him overhead and slammed him violently into the concrete with earth-shaking force.
Tony lay on the ground, now almost completely armorless, blinking in stunned surprise as the last fragments of his suit crumbled away. Wenwu stepped forward and planted a heavy boot squarely on Tony’s chest, pinning him down.
“I think you’ve been looking down on me far too much, nephew…” Wenwu said, his voice low and dangerous. “Killing you will bring me no joy.”