Chapter Thirty-Four: Winds and Clouds Converge

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“Lynn, who was that who just came by?”

Jessica sat in the car with Lynn on their way home, chatting idly as she ate a waffle she had bought from a roadside stall.

“Looked like a reporter. A reporter with quite a story to tell, if you ask me.”

Lynn’s psychic mutant ability could not function out of thin air. He needed to use either his own psychic tendrils or his body, so naturally he had no idea that the woman who had just come by was Betty Ross, Bruce Banner’s girlfriend.

The brilliant biologist, who should have been working in a laboratory, was now a host at New Vision Television. She was also the highly educated woman who had sharply denounced Norman Osborn on a television program two days earlier.

“Hmm… Is she planning to hold a press conference?”

“As far as I know, Kara didn’t arrange anything like that. She probably saw those tiny promotional notices in the newspaper—the ones that looked almost like scam advertisements—and came here because of them.”

“Speaking of which, Lynn, why don’t you spend some money on those giant billboards or television commercials? That’s what Osborn Industries does.”

“Hmm. No need. I’ve always been opposed to television advertising.”

“By the way, Lynn, are you really planning to keep running the fried-chicken shop? What about Midtown High?”

“I’ll naturally wait until you graduate. Speaking of which, what university are you planning to attend? You interrupted the conversation last time, so I still need to ask.”

“Can I not go to university?”

Jessica clearly had little interest in studying. Lynn was just about to say something when he suddenly slammed on the brakes. In his perception, something utterly terrifying had appeared directly in front of him.

The tires screeched against the pavement, leaving behind a faint, almost imperceptible mark. At last, Lynn saw what the enormous, seemingly infinite mass of energy in his perception actually was.

A middle-aged man—perhaps somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-three—stood in front of the car. He had a bushy beard and was wearing a teal hoodie marked with several stains. Lynn’s sudden braking had startled him badly.

He wore a pair of glasses. Without his somewhat disheveled bird’s-nest hair and thick beard, he might have looked rather more refined.

“Uh, sorry. I didn’t notice you were driving this way…”

Lynn got out of the car, while Jessica leaned out through the window and sat on the door.

“Are you all right, sir?”

For no apparent reason, the terrifying energy vanished from Lynn’s perception. The energy within the man’s body returned to a level indistinguishable from that of an ordinary person, as though Lynn’s earlier sensation had never existed at all. The strange change made Lynn study the man a little more closely.

He soon reached a conclusion.

“Should I call an ambulance for you? Or take you to the nearest clinic? There are plenty of clinics in Brooklyn, and several of them are still open at this hour.”

“No need. I’m fine. The police and an ambulance aren’t necessary. Thank you for your kindness, but I have something else to take care of. If your car is all right, perhaps we can simply go our separate ways?”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m feeling perfectly fine. I don’t need any of that. But if you really insist on giving me some compensation, as you can see, I don’t have a penny on me. Could you spare me enough money to get a change of clothes?”

The man was clearly unaccustomed to asking others for favors. His words came out awkwardly and haltingly.

“Of course.”

Lynn pulled several crisp green bills from his pocket.

“You’ve saved me the trouble of calling the police or taking you to the hospital. I hope this is enough for you to visit the nearby clinic. Turn onto the main street ahead; it’s the third shop.”

The man took the money and thanked him two or three times in succession. Then he hurried into a nearby alley, took off his outer clothing, threw it into a trash can, and ran toward a motel across the street.

Watching him disappear around the corner, Lynn had a pretty good idea who he was.

“Lynn, is that man all right?”

“Hm? Don’t worry. He’s fine.”

To put it another way, there was no chance this little car could have killed him. If this man had appeared in New York, it meant that the city’s peaceful days were probably coming to an end once again. Bruce Banner had returned to New York, and that would inevitably bring a manhunt with it.

To this day, Lynn still had not heard that any general in the military had resigned in disgrace or been impeached.

The origin battle between the Hulk and Blonsky was probably about to begin.

“Let’s go home. Today I’ll teach you three ways to make fried chicken. If you don’t want to go to university, you might as well learn how to make fried chicken.”

“I have to learn how to cook?”

“Of course. I don’t want you to be incapable of frying chicken—either burning it into a pan of charcoal or serving it half raw.”

“But your cooking is delicious, Lynn. Can’t I just keep eating with you?”

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“Then you can wash the dishes from now on.”

“I don’t want to wash dishes either.”

“You won’t learn this, and you won’t do that. What exactly do you want to do?”

Lynn frowned and tapped Jessica on the forehead. He then started the car. On the surface, he looked quite angry, but Jessica did not seem frightened in the slightest. She continued eating her waffle and said nothing for the rest of the journey.

By the time they finally returned to the little house in the Ebony District and parked the car in the garage, Jessica had finished her waffle.

“You’d better think it over carefully. This is the last time I’m asking you.”

“I decided a long time ago. Lynn, stop asking me all the time. I’m going to wash the dishes!”

With that, Jessica jumped out of the car and ran into the house, leaving Lynn alone inside. He closed the door, locked the garage, and looked at the entrance before smiling.

Lynn returned to the house. Warm yellow lights illuminated the living room and kitchen. The little girl he had picked up in Hell’s Kitchen was washing dishes, and the two of them looked utterly different from how they had appeared yesterday in Nosferatu’s underground palace.

Lynn sat down on the sofa and suddenly spoke.

“How is the Prototype G-Unit doing? The parameters haven’t shown any major problems in these tests, but the technology is extremely unstable. After my improvements, it has become far more reliable, but to be honest, it’s still in the debugging stage.”

“I feel perfectly fine physically. Nothing seems unusual. By the way, Lynn, are you going to give me anything to do in the future?”

“Not for the time being…” Lynn paused. Then, as though he had thought of something, he changed his answer.

Enough time had passed. Considering Stark’s declining stock price, Lynn suspected that Obadiah Stane might soon be unable to sit still.

With his rivals taking advantage of Stark’s troubles and seizing its market space, the situation at Stark Industries was hardly encouraging—and all of it had been caused by Tony’s stubborn insistence on doing things his own way.

“We have a performance coming up soon, and if you want to go, Jessica, I can let you try it.”

“What kind of performance?”

Jessica dried her hands, put the dishes into the sterilizer, and immediately leaped over to sit beside Lynn on the sofa.

“Hmm. Have you or any of your classmates seen the latest sensation on television?”

“The latest sensation?”

Jessica thought for a moment, then shook her head. She had no interest in the things her classmates followed every day. She seemed to remember something, yet not quite. “Do you mean Spider-Man? The one the Daily Bugle attacks every day?”

“No. I mean this.”

As if on cue, the television showed a peacekeeping hero. Wearing a suit of armor, the mysterious hero appeared frequently in various parts of the world. People called him Iron Man, but the identity of this superhero was still a mystery.

Some people believed Iron Man was Tony Stark. Others thought he was someone else entirely. There was still no definite answer.

“Ah! I remember now. Patricia told me about him. She seems to like that sort of superhero—the little spider who flies all over New York every day.

“And Iron Man is like that too. She gets really excited whenever she talks about them. She fantasizes about becoming a superhero herself one day. She even showed me a suit of armor she designed.”

“Oh? Was it good-looking?”

“To be honest, it was pretty ugly. She has no sense of style when it comes to clothing. I can imagine exactly what she’d look like wearing it.”

Jessica was not nearly as happy when talking about the superhero as she had been when mentioning Patricia.

“Lynn, does this performance you mentioned have anything to do with Iron Man?”

“It does have something to do with Tony Stark. After all, in a few days, he’ll probably end up battling his uncle on the roof of Stark Industries. And I need you to do something, Jessica.”

“Can’t the vampires do it?”

“They could.” Lynn smiled. “But then it wouldn’t count as a performance, would it, Jessica?”

By then, the television had begun airing the eight o’clock soap opera. The basic plot involved a man being pursued by two beautiful women with powerful mind-reading abilities, leading to a sensational love triangle between the three of them.

A soap opera with a touch of science fiction. It was quite popular in New York.

“I feel like I’ve seen this plot somewhere before…”

“By the way, Lynn, when you say performance, do you mean going to rip off Tony Stark’s armor?”

“His armor?”

Lynn looked at Jessica and laughed aloud.

“No. I’m not interested in his armor. What I care about is the thing in his chest.”

Lynn took out his phone and showed Jessica the glowing object embedded in Iron Man’s armor.

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“I’ll explain what this thing is and what I need you to do afterward. Listen carefully, Jessica…”

Lynn explained Tony’s armor and everything that was going to happen next. Jessica did not understand why Lynn knew all of this, but she instinctively ignored that question and concentrated on listening to the task he was assigning her.

As he spoke, Lynn continued asking questions to make sure she understood his arrangements.

The expressions on their faces looked nothing like those of two people plotting to take advantage of the chaos and attack Tony Stark’s building. They looked more like a father telling his daughter a bedtime story.

“Do you understand, Jessica?”

“It doesn’t sound too difficult. But will this really happen? Lynn, how do you know all this?”

“The details may differ somewhat, but the overall plan should remain more or less the same. Tomorrow during the day, I’ll work out the specific arrangements with Kara. You should come too.”

“Really? Hooray!”

“Not so loud. Now you need to go to bed. You have school tomorrow.”

“What? I thought I didn’t have to go to school anymore.”

“What’s the matter? Attacking Stark Industries and going to school are two separate things.”

A thoughtful expression appeared on Jessica’s face. Soon afterward, she clapped her hands, apparently understanding what Lynn meant.

“Like how you still have to keep selling fried chicken and working as a teacher?”

“More or less.”

“So we’re the bad guys now?”

“We’re saving the Earth.”

Jessica nodded and walked upstairs, speaking as she climbed.

“So Lynn and I are bad guys who are saving the Earth. That’s actually pretty cool.”

After all, Lynn had not denied it, so she took it as confirmed. She had no idea what Lynn meant by saving the Earth, but if Lynn had said it, she naturally believed him completely.

—

Obadiah Stane was a shrewd businessman, an elite who would stop at nothing to build a commercial empire, and a kindhearted man who cleaned up the Stark family’s messes.

Of course, that was how the outside world viewed him.

In truth, Obadiah Stane was currently staring at the prototype Iron Monger.

The crude machine already possessed everything required of a competent weapon of war.

“Tony built something like this and still wants to leave the weapons industry…”

Obadiah glanced at the Ten Rings underling standing motionless before him. When he had first arranged Tony’s assassination, he had actually felt quite guilty. He had even considered abandoning the plan.

But ever since Tony had returned and stubbornly insisted on doing things his own way, the guilt that had briefly begun to surface within Obadiah vanished without a trace. He had no more reservations. His desire to eliminate Tony had flared up once again.

“To be honest, if you had followed through on our agreement and killed Tony from the beginning, I would have had an easier time. Now I have to kill him all over again. Do you know how miserable this whole period has been for me?”

He now had the original Iron Monger design schematics in his hands. He understood nothing about the ergonomic design or the transmission systems, but that hardly mattered.

Obadiah Stane was a successful businessman, and naturally he had a successful team working under him.

Obadiah glanced at the Ten Rings underling, who had been paralyzed in place by poison, and rubbed his brown, bald head.

“Technology is always a barrier, isn’t it?”

With that, he walked out of the tent. By then, every fighter in the Ten Rings camp had been slaughtered by the Sincarian mercenaries Obadiah had hired.

“Pack up everything in the tent and take it with us. Destroy everything else.”

Obadiah had obtained the design schematics he wanted. From here on, things would be simple. All he needed to do was restart the production line. With his connections and accumulated wealth, he could easily operate independently.

Tony’s survival or death was no longer important.