— It's a jackpot! No cops, no supers—rob as much as you can! It's like Christmas came early!
— Except you've been naughty this year...
Hearing the loud mechanical voice, the robbers exiting the bank building raised their balaclava-covered heads and saw a hovering figure in massive, gun-laden armor.
— Put down your weapons, and Santa won't give you coal. With a slight mechanical hum, a six-barrel machine gun appeared from behind the superhero's left shoulder, staring directly at the five unlucky criminals who had the misfortune of encountering War Machine, freshly returned from his lawful vacation and therefore very angry. — Twenty-five years in a maximum-security prison might not be the best gift, but it's still better than a bullet to the head.
— Damn, it's War Machine!
— I thought all the freaks were at the mutant rally!
— Run!
Recognizing one of the Avengers, the opportunistic thieves didn't try to kill him. Instead, they dropped their cash-stuffed bags along with their weapons and bolted... But they didn't get far. Marking the targets on his armor's display, Tony Stark's loyal friend gave the command to his suit's combat systems, and the machine gun on his shoulder roared to life with a quiet rumble. Stark's personally designed targeting algorithms rarely missed, and a single short burst was enough to turn five sturdy men into five bullet-riddled corpses.
"Idiots... Why couldn't they just stay home?"
Despite his military background, James "Rhodey" Rhodes was still a world-famous superhero, so he tried to avoid lethal force whenever possible. However, due to the mutant uprising, almost all the criminal scum of New York had crawled out onto the streets, and the city was in such terrible chaos that Stark, the leader of the Avengers, with Fury's approval, ordered the other Avengers not to hesitate with criminals and "Since there's a real war in the city, we operate under wartime rules!"
In other words, to curb the rampant crime and looting, anyone who broke the law and refused to surrender to the authorities was to be killed on the spot. And while the idealistic Captain America immediately "recused himself" after such an order, stating that the crime wave was just a pretext for tightening measures against the rebelling mutants and he wouldn't fight against citizens of the United States defending their legitimate rights, the former Marine pilot was less selective about the orders he carried out.
Marking the point of the prevented crime on the mini-map, the Black superhero picked up the bags of money dropped by the thugs and handed them to the bank clerk who had rushed out of the building, then soared into the sky to the applause of the grateful residents of New York.
"Another neighborhood taken care of, but there are four more banks with not-so-great security in the next one. Worth checking out." Rhodey's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an incoming call in his helmet, and a small window appeared on War Machine's internal display, showing a close-up of the face of the genius, billionaire, philanthropist, and so on... "What's up, Tony? You got problems?"
Since the criminals were acting chaotically and independently, the Avengers decided to act alone to cover as much of New York as possible. However, because, along with the usual scum, all kinds of supervillains had also taken to the city streets, Earth's defenders tried to maintain constant contact with each other so they could come to the aid of a comrade in trouble.
— Everything's just peachy! Our friend Abomination just turned a suit worth a small tropical island into scrap metal, made a steak out of me, and dropped a building with my favorite diner on top of me! Despite the trickle of blood running down his temple, Tony Stark's face wore his usual cocky grin. — No more spicy burritos with special chili pepper for me...
— Hang in there, I'll be right there! After plotting the shortest route to the glowing point on the mini-map labeled "Tony," the former Marine pilot was about to turn his suit in the right direction but was quickly stopped by Iron Man himself.
— Not so fast, cowboy. Our Asgardian friend is already on his way, and you've got another mission. Due to the chaos in the city, the Federal Reserve management decided to move the gold reserves stored in New York out of here, but a couple of minutes ago, the satellite tracking the trains malfunctioned, and contact with the cargo-carrying trains was lost. My reactor senses this is no coincidence, so fly to the coordinates I sent you and ensure the safe transportation of the cargo. The billionaire's mask of a cheerful major slipped for a moment, and Tony became deadly serious. — Look, I don't like this any more than you do, but if someone gets their hands on the U.S. gold reserve, the bastards in Washington will raise such a stink that the mutant uprising will seem like child's play at a kindergarten party.
— I'll do it, Tony, and be careful. Don't forget, Blonski is a former special forces soldier and can deliver plenty of unpleasant surprises...
— Rhodey, I just watched a giant pumped-up toad give a Scandinavian god a classic "two-piece" and knee him in the balls! I'm flying to help the Asgardian tourist, or at these rates, Odin will soon be left without grandchildren!
"Once again, instead of saving defenseless citizens from rampaging criminals, I'm sent to defend the financial interests of dirty politicians. As if I never left military service..." Sighing quietly, Iron Man's loyal friend disconnected from the communication channel and, feeding more energy to the repulsors located in his legs, headed toward the coordinates sent by Stark.
Accelerating his suit to tremendous speed, the Black superhero reached the site of the missing train in minutes and, seeing a column of black smoke rising into the sky, hovered in the air for a moment, trying to assess the situation. However, he didn't get to examine the scattered wagons along the exploded railway tracks surrounded by disabled combat bots for long. Almost immediately after War Machine's appearance, the alarm siren of the suit's protective systems blared.
— Attention! Threat detected!
Noticing a rocket launched from the ground and hurtling toward him with a radiation hazard symbol painted on its body, the former Marine pilot released flares and tried to break the distance... But as subsequent events showed, that's exactly what the unknown shooters were counting on.
Due to his military background, Rhodes was quite knowledgeable about explosives, but with all his experience, he didn't even roughly know what could be stuffed into a half-meter cylinder to make it detonate with the force of a small nuclear bomb upon impact. As soon as the rocket hit the cloud of decoys, the air shook with a deafening explosion, and the Avenger, who didn't have time to get out of the blast zone, was thrown aside by the shockwave. Losing control, the armored superhero crashed into the ground with a roar, raising a cloud of dust and plowing a decent-sized clearing with his metal suit.
— Attention! Extensive armor damage detected! Hull integrity—sixty-eight percent!
"Damn! These bastards were clearly prepared for the appearance of one of the Avengers! If someone softer had been in my place, this explosion would have scattered his insides all over the area."
While the slightly stunned man got to his feet, the figures of the robbers appeared in the raised dust, and sparks flew as bullets rained down on the metal figure. However, even despite the large caliber and high density of fire, the raiders' shots had no visible effect on the armor created by Stark... Unlike the shoulder-mounted machine gun of War Machine, which, following the suit's combat algorithms, emerged from behind its owner's shoulder and began mowing down Rhodey's enemies with long bursts right through the dust raised by the fall.
"First... Second... Third... These bastards are persistent." Getting to his feet, the Black superhero raised his hands with the "little brothers" of the shoulder weapon built in and unleashed a veritable hail of lead on the enemies surrounding him. But the thugs who attacked the train proved to be experienced fighters, and as soon as the Avenger began to put up serious resistance, they dispersed to cover, leaving only a few bullet-riddled corpses on the red sand. "Too coordinated and too well-armed for ordinary raiders. Most likely Hydra or the Syndicate; other criminal groups don't have that many specialists of this level. Damn! On the ground, I can't operate at full strength, but taking off is too dangerous—a single target in the air is too easy to hit, and who knows how many more 'nuclear' rockets the enemy has in reserve! I'll have to temporarily retrain as infantry..."
Marking the cover where the enemy soldiers were hiding on the screen, the former Marine pilot activated the rocket launcher located behind his other shoulder, releasing a swarm of small self-guided projectiles, and the sunset-lit desert echoed with the cannonade of explosions.
Thanks to the high-precision guidance systems, more than a dozen raiders were sent to the next world. However, War Machine couldn't develop his success and launch a decisive attack. A crimson beam appearing out of nowhere struck the back of the Black superhero's head with force, knocking him to the ground and cutting the six-barrel machine gun from James's armor.
"Invisible?" A tall male figure in a heavy exoskeleton, materializing from the air, picked up his trophy like a club and swung it with all his might, slamming War Machine's own weapon into his helmet and pressing the superhero's face into the red dirt.
— Attention! Extensive armor damage detected! Hull integrity—sixty-one percent!
Not stopping at the first blow, the thug in the exoskeleton-reinforced armor suit began pounding the Avenger's head into the ground with powerful strikes. But timing the moment between swings, the man managed to fire a repulsor from his wrist at the brute's legs, and with a clatter of servos, he collapsed to the ground next to the superhero.
"Got you!" Raising his palm, the Earth's defender tried to finish off the sprawled enemy, but suddenly, a massive metal boot descended on War Machine's hand, pinning the limb to the dirty red ground, and the wide muzzle of a large-caliber rifle was pressed against the protector's temple.
"Wh—"
The thug holding the weapon, with a skull painted on his helmet, silently pulled the trigger, and the armored helmet trembled under the onslaught of armor-piercing bullets hammering the metal. Although they didn't penetrate the titanium plating, they caused the Black superhero a lot of unpleasant sensations and didn't let him catch his breath.
— Attention! Extensive armor damage detected! Hull integrity—thirty-five percent!
After emptying the entire magazine, the brute brought the massive exoskeleton boot down hard on the back of War Machine's head, once again slamming Rhodes into the dirt. But by this point, the Avenger had already managed to come to his senses somewhat, and realizing that he would soon be taken apart bolt by bolt, the superhero tried to escape. Activating the repulsors in his legs, War Machine twisted out from under the brute's foot and, throwing the exoskeleton-clad enemy aside, soared into the sky... only to see a pair of rockets with the same radiation hazard symbol hurtling toward him, which the superhero no longer had time to dodge.
"Bad day." A bright flash of light momentarily caused the suit's visors to glitch, and a powerful explosion once again sent the Earth's defender... closer to the ground.
Crashing into one of the derailed wagons, James pierced the armored ceiling with his body and landed with a crash in a pile of gold bars, some of which spilled onto the former Marine pilot from above, covering him in a small mound.
— Attention! Extensive armor damage detected! Hull integrity compromised! Hermetic seal compromised! Air leakage detected!
"When I was young, I dreamed of getting rich and diving into a sea of gold like Scrooge McDuck... Well, dreams do come true." With a groan, War Machine crawled out from under the pleasant but not very comfortable pile, got to his feet, and in that very second, the superhero's body shuddered with unbearable pain. A pair of long metal claws appearing out of nowhere struck the gap in the armor created by the explosions, piercing the thin "under-armor" and embedding themselves in Rhodes' flesh. The battered Avenger then shuddered from the electric discharges running through his tortured body. — Argh!
For a moment, darkness clouded the superhero's vision, and the former Marine pilot came to his senses already in a completely powerless suit, kneeling before one of the raiders in a heavy exoskeleton.
While his accomplices carried containers of gold and the thugs killed by the Avenger to the nearby S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjets, the leader of the train robbers examined the arc reactor extracted from War Machine's armor, completely unconcerned about the superhero just two steps away. And as soon as Rhodes tried to lunge at the enemy, the reason for such bravery became clear. Having lost its power source, Rhodes' massive armor turned from an asset into a burden and hung on the Earth's defender, weakened by "electrotherapy," like dead weight, turning the formidable crime fighter into a completely defenseless paralytic.
— The moral of this fable is that even a lion can be taken down by a pack.
— This... won't go unpunished... The furious twitching of the Black man only caused his massive suit to fall on its side, but the undaunted superhero continued to stand his ground and tried to scare the enemy with possible consequences. — You've robbed the most powerful country on the planet, and now the earth will burn beneath your feet! And even if you hide with America's enemies—S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers will find you anyway!
— The question of the "most powerful country" is quite debatable, but even if it is... After tearing the arc reactor from the Black man's chest, the leader of the raiders approached the defeated Avenger and, with a powerful kick, flipped James face up. — You won't live to see the long-awaited moment of just retribution in any case. The poison injected into one Black ass is already doing its work, and the last moments of your miserable life, in any case, will be filled with bright but not very pleasant impressions. However, this is just a small insurance policy in case the upcoming experiment fails, in which our "Handy Club" plans to test how resistant Stark's creation is to the effects of implosion... Kid, pass the Holy Grenade!
Receiving a small cylinder with the same radiation hazard symbol from one of his henchmen, the leader of the raiders pressed it against the empty hole from the arc reactor and, with a sharp blow, drove the explosive right into the heart of the suit of the weakly resisting superhero.
— By the way, Blacks aren't allowed into Heaven, right? Then how will you get to Hell? Give my regards to Mephistopheles. You don't need to specify the name; he'll understand who it's from. After slapping the teeth-gritting but helpless superhero on the shoulder, the commander of the raiders ordered his men to pack up with a gesture. And the thugs who had finished loading the gold began to board the S.H.I.E.L.D. transports.
— And remember: the Ku Klux Klan lives forever! Raising his hand with the arc reactor clenched in his palm in a revolutionary salute, the bastard mocking Rhodes climbed to his men, and a couple of moments later, the silhouettes of the quinjets melted into the sunset skies, leaving the enraged crime fighter in proud solitude.
And to the Black crime fighter's immense regret, his interlocutor hadn't lied about the poison injected into James. Soon, the place of righteous anger was taken by complete agony, and the minute of waiting for his own death stretched into an eternity for the weakened War Machine.
The explosion that ended his suffering was a deliverance for the defeated Avenger.---