Edwards Air Force Base.
The harsh California sun beat down on the tarmac, and the distinct smell of jet fuel hung in the air.
Tony Stark, sporting a pair of flashy gradient sunglasses, stepped out of a priceless Audi R8. He casually slammed the door, which closed with a heavy thud.
He was in a good mood today, an exceptionally good one.
He'd squared things away with Pepper, letting her touch his deepest secret with her own hands. The feeling was even better than closing a ten-billion-dollar deal. Riding this wave of triumph, he decided to pay a visit to his old friend, Colonel James Rhodes.
He needed a top-tier pilot, a partner he could trust implicitly, to help him complete the grand, world-changing plan brewing in his mind.
Rhodey was overseeing a ground crew as they serviced an F-22 Raptor. Dressed in a gray Air Force flight suit, his expression was serious and meticulous.
"Rhodey! My boy!" Tony threw his arms wide and strode over, a signature grin plastered on his face—the kind that drove reporters wild. "Miss me? I bet you did. After all, without my weapons, you guys are like toothless tigers."
Rhodey turned at the sound of his voice. Seeing Tony, his brow furrowed involuntarily. He didn't walk over to greet him, simply stood his ground, watching him with an appraising, almost cold gaze.
"Stark," he said, his voice as flat as an official report. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd washed your hands of the business, gone off to focus on your charities and new energy."
Tony's enthusiasm hit an invisible wall. The smile on his face faltered for a second before he smoothly recovered.
"Don't be so cold, buddy. I've got a new idea, a big one." He leaned in closer, his voice low and laced with a mysterious excitement. "A solution that could solve the problem once and for all. But I need a pilot. The best in the world."
He pointed at Rhodey and raised an eyebrow.
Rhodey's expression didn't change in the slightest.
"So, you shut down the entire Stark Industries weapons division, forcing us to scramble for replacements and throwing countless defense programs into chaos, and now you show up saying you have a 'new idea'?"
His voice wasn't loud, but each word was a precisely aimed nail hammered into Tony's ego.
"Tony, the military isn't your personal lab, nor is it a playground for you to assuage your guilt. We have rules. We have a mission." Rhodey turned his back on him, his gaze returning to the cold fighter jet. "Take your 'idea' and find someone else to build it. I'm busy."
The rejection was curt and absolute, leaving no room for argument.
The smile vanished completely from Tony's face.
He stood frozen, staring at his best friend's back. The familiar Air Force uniform suddenly seemed alien and distant. A nameless anger surged up from within him, mixed with disappointment, indignation, and the sting of betrayal.
He thought Rhodey would understand.
He was wrong.
"Fine," Tony said, his eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses. "Just fine."
Without another word, he turned and walked away. The R8's engine let out an angry roar, and its tires left a black mark on the tarmac as it tore off.
***
Stark's Malibu Mansion.
*BANG!*
Tony kicked the door open, tossed his expensive sunglasses onto the entryway table, and irritably tore at his tie.
His fury echoed through the empty living room.
He needed an outlet, a breakthrough. He needed to prove Rhodey wrong, to prove everyone wrong!
"J.A.R.V.I.S.!" he yelled into the air. "Where's the kid? Where's Paul?"
"Master Paul is in the garage, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s calm voice replied.
Without a second thought, Tony stormed toward the basement.
The heavy scent of motor oil and welded metal hit him.
Paul was lying next to a Chevrolet Camaro that had been stripped down to its chassis. He wore a holographic visor and held a high-precision laser welder, his attention focused on adjusting a complex mechanical joint.
"Hey, kid!" Tony strode in, his voice carrying an undeniable tone of command. "Stop playing with your toys. Show me something real, something that'll blow my mind. I'm having a terrible day and I desperately need a spark of genius to save it."
Paul took off his visor and shot him an annoyed look.
"Define 'real'." He wiped the grease from his hands. "I just solved the structural interference problem between the shoulder ball joint and the inner door panel during Autobot transformation. Does that count as real?"
"Autobot?" Tony paused, then waved a dismissive hand. "I don't have time to talk about cartoons. I want... something that takes care of problems. Something... destructive, but elegant."
Paul looked him up and down as if inspecting a petulant man-child.
"What are you planning on blowing up now? Did that whole 'pacifism' speech from the press conference expire already?"
"Not 'blow up'!" Tony paced around the garage, agitated. "'Disable'! 'Neutralize'! Like... like that stuff you mentioned before, the thing that makes metal brittle!"
He suddenly remembered something. His eyes lit up and he stared intently at Paul.
Paul sighed, as if he'd known this day would come. He set down his tools and led Tony to another corner of the garage.
There sat a custom-made, blast-proof glass case.
Suspended in the center of the case was a pigeon-egg-sized, completely black metal sphere.
"A tungsten carbide alloy sphere," Tony recognized it instantly. It was one of the hardest man-made materials on Earth, second only to diamond. "What are you gonna do with it? Crack walnuts?"
Paul ignored his sarcastic remark and simply manipulated a control panel on the side.
A delicate mechanical arm extended from the top of the case. At its tip was a micro-dropper containing a single drop of a transparent, slightly viscous liquid.
The dropper slowly descended, precisely depositing the liquid onto the surface of the black metal sphere.
"Watch closely," Paul said succinctly.
One second.
Two seconds.
Five seconds.
The metal sphere remained unchanged.
Tony's patience was wearing thin. "Kid, my time is valuable. If you just wanted me to watch a water droplet slide off a ball..."
Before he could finish, the impossible happened.
*Crack...*
An incredibly faint, crisp sound.
A spiderweb of cracks suddenly appeared on the surface of the incredibly hard tungsten carbide alloy sphere.
Then, the cracks spread at a speed visible to the naked eye!
*Crackle... SNAP!*
Under Tony's stunned gaze, the sphere, which could have withstood a round from a heavy sniper rifle, crumbled like a dried-out cookie with a single, sharp snap!
It didn't explode or shatter. It simply disintegrated into a pile of fine, gray dust that settled softly on the bottom of the glass case.
Tony instinctively took a step forward, his face nearly pressed against the blast-proof glass.
He stared at the pile of dust, his eyes filled with disbelief.
"What... what is that?" he asked, his voice a little hoarse.
"A targeted chemical catalyst," Paul stated calmly, as if explaining a simple chemistry problem. "It selectively breaks down the chemical bonds between metal atoms, disintegrating its structure at a molecular level. Simply put, it makes hard things 'soft'."
"I call it 'Metal-pocalypse'."
Tony's breathing quickened instantly.
All the frustration, anger, and disappointment he felt were obliterated by a jolt of pure ecstasy and excitement.
He spun around and grabbed Paul by the shoulders, his grip so tight it made the boy wince.
"You're a goddamn genius!"
A crazed fire burned in Tony's eyes. He began pacing back and forth in the garage, speaking at a machine-gun pace.
"Rhodey... the military... they're all fools who can't see the future! We don't need them! We'll do it ourselves!"
He stopped abruptly, pointing first at the pile of dust, then at Paul.
"We can build our own! An army! Drones, with you designing the core and me building them! They'll be fast as lightning, ruthlessly precise, and equipped with your 'Metal-pocalypse'! We don't need to kill anyone. We just need to turn our enemies' weapons into scrap metal!"
His voice, filled with ambition and hope, echoed in the spacious garage.
"We'll call it... the 'Sons of Steel' project! You and me, father and son! We'll be this world's guardians!"
"Sons of Steel?" Paul's initial look of pride soured into one of disgust. "Seriously? That name is so cringey. It sounds like some third-rate comic book villain group."
He pulled away from Tony's grip, rubbing his sore shoulders.
"Besides, combat drones? Do you have any idea about the ethical risks and technical black holes involved? If the AI's judgment logic deviates, who's responsible? You? Can you guarantee your 'sons' won't go haywire and level a city?"
Paul's string of questions was like a bucket of cold water dumped on Tony's fanaticism.
He saw a brilliant engineer's reverence for the unknown and consideration of responsibility.
Tony, on the other hand, only saw a shortcut to solving a problem.
"We can add safety protocols," Tony's tone softened slightly. "We have J.A.R.V.I.S., and we have you... We can make it foolproof."
"There's no such thing as foolproof in this world. Especially when it involves you, Dad." The way he said "Dad" was pointed.
Tony's face hardened.
He wiped all expression away, his gaze becoming sharp and resolute.
"I need your help, Paul," he said, enunciating each word. "This has to be done. With or without you, it's happening. But I'd rather it be with you."
It wasn't a request. It was an announcement.
The air in the room froze.
Paul looked at the man before him. He saw the fear hidden deep in his eyes, saw the paranoid control freak who'd emerged from that cave, desperate to control everything.
He was annoyed. He hated being dragged into this kind of grand, life-or-death mess. All he wanted was to build his Transformers in peace.
But he also knew that if he refused, Tony would stubbornly push forward on his own, and would probably screw it up and create a massive disaster.
In the end, he'd be the one left to clean up the mess anyway.
"Sigh..."
A long, weary sigh filled the garage.
Paul didn't say "yes" or "okay."
He simply walked back to his workbench in silence, picked up his holographic visor again, and pulled up a new, blank design document.
"The power-to-weight ratio is going to be a major issue," he said without looking up. "And the drone's core AI needs a completely new ethical algorithm. We can't use J.A.R.V.I.S.'s base architecture; the risk is too high."
Tony watched the small, slim figure dive back into his work, and a slow grin finally spread across his face.
He'd won.
"That's my boy."
He walked over and stood beside Paul, watching the complex lines and data streams that quickly filled the holographic screen.
Father and son stood side-by-side, bathed in the blue light of the data stream.
A mad plan, one with the power to upend the world order, had quietly begun in this garage filled with parts and motor oil.
An indescribable tension hung in the air, as if Pandora's box had been cracked open, just a sliver.