To the three hundred Hydra soldiers flooding the subterranean cathedral, the Iron Man was a blur of gold and crimson violence, a streak of light that defied the eye. But to Tony Stark, the universe had frozen into a crystalline tableau of cause and effect.
Bullet Time engaged. The roar of three hundred assault rifles charging dropped to a low groan. Tony watched the hammers falling, the firing pins striking primers and the first sparks of ignition blooming like slow motion flowers at the muzzles of the guns.
Using his Cognitive Multitasking, Tony fractured his consciousness. His mind dividing into four high definition streams of intent.
Stream 1: Calculated the ballistic trajectory of every single incoming round, plotting thousands of vectors in a three dimensional grid overlaying his vision.
Stream 2: Scanned the structural integrity of the Hydra exo suits, identifying the micro fractures in their ceramic plating and the unshielded power couplings at the neck and joints.
Stream 3: Reached out with Alpha Level Magnetism, seizing the fundamental ferrous reality of the room, feeling the weight of every bolt, beam and bullet.
Stream 4: Monitored his own biology… the rapid fire knitting of his High Speed Regeneration and the integrity of the Mark IV's gold titanium alloy against the impending thermal spikes.
The soldiers opened fire.
Thousands of high velocity rounds filled the air, a wall of copper jacketed death.
Tony moved with the effortless grace of a kinetic god, his Super Soldier reflexes allowing him to dance through the gaps in the lead storm. As he moved, his Magnetism caught the spent brass shells ejecting from the soldiers' rifles. He suspended them in the air, spinning them at ten thousand RPMs until they screamed, transforming the harmless casings into a golden saw blade of superheated brass orbiting his body.
With a mental flick, he reversed the polarity.
The "orbitals" shrieked outward. The spent shells became hyper velocity shrapnel, guided by his Technopathy to seek the heat signatures of the gaps in the Hydra armor.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
In the first ten seconds, fifty men fell, their throats opened or their visors shattered by their own discarded brass. The silence that followed the initial volley was broken only by the wet thud of bodies hitting the concrete.
Tony reached out with his gauntleted hands and the heavy metal supply crates scattered around the bunker tore open with a screech of tortured steel. Millions of feet of micro filament unspooled into the air at his command.
He moved like a conductor of a symphony of slaughter. His Magnetism seized the cables, turning them into whips that moved faster than the speed of sound. The air cracked with sonic booms as the wires lashed out. He was a whirlwind of wire and wrath. He reached up, ripping the massive industrial ventilation fans from the ceiling, their blades still spinning and turned them into lethal discs. He launched them with a thought, the blades decapitating the front line of the Shadow Guard in a spray of oil and red mist.
"Is this all you have?" Tony's voice boomed through the bunker, amplified and distorted, his Eye Boy vision glowing a spectral blue through the faceplate. "I expected a god, Pierce. All I find is a grave."
The remaining two hundred soldiers closed in, realizing their rifles were useless. The heavy troopers fired shoulder mounted mini missiles, trails of smoke painting the air.
Tony used his Technopathy to seize the missiles mid air, hacking their guidance chips in a moment. He rewrote their targeting code and sent them spiraling back into the dense ranks of the Hydra elite.
BOOM.
The explosion was a wall of concussive fire, but Tony walked through it, the flames licking harmlessly against his armor. His High Speed Regeneration instantly repaired the micro tears in his lungs caused by the superheated air. He grabbed a Hydra soldier by the helmet, his Super Soldier strength crushing the reinforced titanium like a soda can and then used the man's magnetized exo suit as a flail to clear the next dozen enemies, breaking bones with every swing.
As the last of the Shadow Guard fell, a heavy blast door at the rear of the bunker hissed open.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
A man stepped out. Long hair. A tactical mask covering the lower half of his face. And a left arm that gleamed with the dull shine of Soviet starred metal.
Tony froze. This was the man who had wrapped his fingers around Maria Stark's throat. This was the weapon that had extinguished the light of Tony's world.
Alexander Pierce backed away toward the escape vector, a smirk returning to his pale face. "You might be a god in that suit, Stark. But he's the man who killed the legend."
Tony's faceplate retracted with a hiss. His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on the metal arm. His Eye Boy sensors saw the mechanical wear on the Soldier's shoulder joints… the exact same model, the exact same signature that had been used in 1991. The same dead stare.
"You," Tony whispered, the word heavy with eighteen years of grief.
The Winter Soldier blurred forward with a speed that rivaled Tony's own Super Soldier enhancements, a missile of flesh and cybernetics. He threw a punch with his metal arm that carried enough kinetic force to flip a tank.
Tony caught it.
CRACK.
The sound of the impact sent a shockwave through the room, cracking the reinforced concrete floor beneath their feet. Dust ballooned outward. Tony's Magnetism flared wild and hot, trying to rip the cybernetic arm from the Soldier's shoulder, to crush it into a ball… but the arm didn't buckle.
The Winter Soldier was prepared. The arm was made of a non magnetic alloy… a classified Siberian blend of high grade titanium and carbon fiber, resistant to magnetic manipulation.
"Smart," Tony growled, feeling the bones in his hand fracture and instantly knit back together thanks to his High Speed Regeneration. "But not smart enough."
Tony's Cognitive Multitasking kicked into overdrive. While he engaged in hand to hand struggle with the Winter Soldier… his Technopathy was silently dismantling the bunker's core reactor to prevent Pierce's escape.
The Winter Soldier was a masterpiece of combat, a ghost of the Cold War. He pulled a combat knife with his organic hand, moving to find the seams in Tony's armor, his movements perfected by decades of assassinations.
But Tony had Bullet Time.
He saw the knife moving in slow motion, glinting in the emergency lights. He calculated the angle. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch, the blade whistling past his ear, cutting a groove in the gold paint. Then, Tony slammed his armored forehead into the Soldier's face with the force of a pile driver.
The Soldier's mask shattered.