(2) Bring Me Home (T. Stark)

Chapter Forty-Two

Spencer slams the door behind her and moves away from the building. It is utterly silent up here. Eerie. Leaves her unnerved. She catches her breath, dials Tony her cell before setting it to her ear. She lets out a relieved breath when the line picks up.

"Tony" She warns a little. "Stane's got a whole assembly line under the Ark. He's inside one of them..."

"Where are you?" He asks her, panic in his voice. Spencer frowns though as she hears a thump from below her. The asphalt cracks. Another thump.

"What the....?" She asks, shifting on her feet when there is another thump. Spencer is knocked over as the asphalt bulges open to reveal the Dynamo's fist. Her cellphone skitters away. Stane pulls himself out of the ground, and finally rises to his full height. He turns, face-to-face with Spencer who lets out a shaky breath. She takes a step back away from him. "Stane" She warns a little. But Dynamo keeps coming, not a single forgiving feature in the steel-face and dead eyes. Her foot hits her cellphone and she grabs it. And now she's almost backed up against the Plexiglas of the Ark Reactor. "Tony" She whispers into the phone.

"Spence, I have one thing I need to say to you: DUCK!" Spencer dives as Dynamo stops, jerking his head up to see Iron Man, diving out of the sky at him, feet first. He lands on the Dynamo's shoulders, and the iron giants crash back into the hole Dynamo crawled from.

......

The two suits fall and hit a grating. Dynamo breaks through, plunging through pipes and into the water below, while Iron Man tumbles along the unbroken part of the grating and falls out of sight.

.........

Below Dynamo emerges out of the water, searching for Iron Man. He moves sweeping around the steel-maze with his infrared, but perforated steam pipes cast red plumes and confusing shadows everywhere. Giving it a very eerie glow.

"It's miraculous, Tony, it's your Ninth Symphony" Stane offers. "Trying to rid the world of weapons, you gave it its best one ever"

"This wasn't meant for the world" Still moving, still swivelling through the murk.

"How can you be so selfish? Do you understand what you've created?" Stane asks. "This will put the balance of power back in our hands for decades. Your country needs this"

"What kind of world will it be when everybody's got one?" Tony counters.

"Your father helped give us the bomb. What kind of world would it be if he'd failed us?" Iron Man emerges from behind machinery and girders. He doesn't see Dynamo, who charges Iron Man realizes too late that Dynamo is coming at him like a bullet train. He's hit, driven backwards in Dynamo's vice grip, and they smash into the cement wall and punch clean through it onto the highway. They crash into a truck trailer, passing through it and onto the highway, tossing vehicles aside. More cars screech, collide. A hydrogen-powered bus jackknife, narrowly averting disaster. People flee vehicles. In Tony's H.U.D., 'Incoming call' flashes with Spencer's name.

"Not now, Spencer" He argues as he picks up the line.

"There's a bigger problem at hand"

"I know, I'm in the middle of it" Tony argues.

"No, the reactor's been hit..." she tells him, he pauses a moment.

"Get to the control room. Shut it down..." He orders her, she hangs up on him. Dynamo rises first, grabs a Volvo station wagon with a stunned mother and kids inside. Iron Man rises as the Dynamo lifts the car over his head. "Don't. This is our fight"

"People are always going to die, Tony -- part of the chess game" Tony tries his palm repulsors. Nothing.

"Emergency power!"