"SHUT UP, JARVIS!"
Tony's voice cracked with indignation, though his eyes never wavered from tracking Ben's position. "I've been with hundreds of cover models, and not one of them has ever called me fast!"
The banter was forced, desperate—anything to maintain focus while facing an opponent who moved faster than human reflexes could follow. One moment of distraction could be fatal.
"To be precise, the target is moving at three hundred miles per hour," Jarvis replied with characteristic literalism, apparently missing the subtext of Tony's complaint.
Three hundred miles per hour—roughly four hundred and eighty kilometers per hour. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn't be impressive. The Mark III could easily exceed those speeds in flight, outpacing even the most advanced fighter jets.
But raw velocity wasn't the real threat here. The difference between traveling fast and fighting fast was like the difference between driving on an empty highway and navigating rush-hour traffic at the same speed. What made speedsters truly dangerous wasn't their top speed—it was their reaction time.
Take A-Train from The Boys, for example. All the speed in the world meant nothing if you couldn't process information fast enough to use it effectively. He was a living example of power without precision, speed without skill.
Ben was demonstrating the opposite—perfect control at impossible velocities. The fact that he could move at three hundred miles per hour through the confined space of an abandoned factory while executing precise attacks spoke to reflexes and cognitive processing far beyond human limitations.
As long as the Mark III relied on human reaction times, it would never match that kind of performance. And three hundred miles per hour was clearly just Ben's casual cruising speed—like a human's walking pace. His true maximum velocity would be beyond what cameras could capture, requiring slow-motion playback just to glimpse shadows.
Where the hell did this thing come from? Tony thought grimly.
He'd only been Iron Man for a few months, still adjusting to a world that had seemed relatively normal until recently. The supernatural threats, the cosmic horrors, the interdimensional nightmares—none of that had emerged yet. This was supposed to be simple: stop criminals, save civilians, maybe tangle with the occasional terrorist organization.
Instead, he was facing something that looked like it had crawled out of a paleontologist's fever dream.
Ben stretched his arms and legs with predatory grace, preparing for another assault.
"Round two, Tony Stark!" he called out, dropping into a runner's starting position.
The black visor slid down over his face once again, and when he spoke, his voice carried the cold precision of a surgical instrument.
For Ben, the remaining transformation time felt almost luxurious. Several minutes was more than enough to finish this fight and still make it to school on time. He could afford to be thorough.
"Come on, baby dinosaur!" Tony shot back, trying to project confidence he didn't feel.
Behind the bravado, he was already implementing contingency protocols. Since his human reflexes couldn't keep pace with the raptor's movements, he'd have to rely on technology to level the playing field. Control of the armor's defensive and offensive systems transferred to Jarvis, the AI's response times measured in microseconds rather than the fractions of seconds that limited human cognition.
Targeting systems locked onto Ben's position while weapon pods emerged from the armor's shoulders and elbows. If human reactions were too slow, maybe artificial intelligence could bridge the gap.
"You said you'd finish me in three minutes," Tony continued, stalling for time while Jarvis calibrated the attack algorithms. "Let's see what you've got. Two and a half minutes left on the clock—"
His words died as a streak of black filled his entire field of vision.
The impact felt like being struck by a freight train traveling at highway speeds. Tony's ribs compressed against the armor's internal padding, the force threatening to crack bone despite the suit's shock absorption systems. He'd known intellectually that Ben was fast, but experiencing that speed firsthand was like being hit by a living missile.
Even with Jarvis controlling the armor's responses, even with targeting systems designed to track supersonic projectiles, Ben had moved too quickly for the technology to compensate. The AI might have been able to follow the movement, but translating that information into defensive action took precious milliseconds that Ben simply didn't allow.
"Mark III damage assessment: twelve percent," Jarvis reported with clinical detachment.
But the attack wasn't finished. Ben's clawed hands clamped around the armor's head like the grip of some mechanical harvester, and suddenly Tony found himself being dragged out of the factory at impossible speeds.
The acceleration was brutal, overwhelming. If Jarvis hadn't immediately engaged reverse thrusters to counteract the g-forces, Tony would have lost consciousness instantly. As it was, his vision grayed around the edges, his stomach lurching as his inner ear struggled to process the violent changes in direction.
Ben wasn't simply carrying him—he was using Tony as a battering ram, pressing the armored figure against every building they passed. Concrete and brick exploded into dust clouds, sparks cascading like fireworks as titanium alloy scraped against stone and rebar.
The city blurred past in a kaleidoscope of destruction. What had taken decades to build crumbled like sand castles before their combined mass and velocity. The Mark III's pristine red and gold finish was being stripped away layer by layer, metal screaming against masonry in a symphony of controlled demolition.
"Suit damage now at twenty-six percent," Jarvis updated, his tone as calm as if he were reporting the weather.
"Thanks for the play-by-play!" Tony gasped, tasting bile as his stomach rebelled against the motion. "Any chance you could actually do something about it?"
The breakfast he'd eaten that morning painted the inside of his helmet in an abstract expressionist nightmare. He made a mental note to install waste management systems in the Mark IV—assuming he survived long enough to design it.
"Must remember to pack airsickness bags in the next iteration," he muttered, then grabbed Ben's arms with both gauntlets.
Every thruster in the suit fired simultaneously, jets of superheated plasma erupting from the armor's extremities. Tony killed the left-side propulsion systems while maintaining full power on the right, creating an asymmetrical thrust pattern that threw off Ben's balance.
The sudden shift in momentum did what Tony had hoped—Ben's grip loosened as he fought to maintain control, and Tony broke free just as they both tumbled toward the ground at terminal velocity.
For any normal person, a fall from this height and speed would be instantly fatal. But Ben wasn't normal, and XLR8's physiology was built for exactly this kind of punishment.
He curled into a tight ball, transforming himself into a living projectile designed to dissipate impact energy. Each bounce against the earth left crater-sized holes in the pavement, like stones skipping across water. The impacts grew shallower with each successive contact until he finally rolled to a stop, grimacing but intact.
"I'm beginning to understand why XLR8's species has such advanced regenerative capabilities," Ben muttered, testing his joints for damage. "Without accelerated healing, most of them would probably vibrate themselves to death."
In the few seconds it had taken Ben to recover, they'd traveled several kilometers from the original factory. Fortunately, Ben had deliberately led Tony away from populated areas—the last thing he needed was civilian casualties complicating an already messy situation.
Tony managed to arrest his own fall through a combination of repulsors and careful vectoring, his armor spinning like a figure skater to bleed off excess momentum before stabilizing in a hover pattern.
"One minute and nine seconds remaining," he announced, consulting his HUD's chronometer. "Running out of time to make it back to your terrarium, aren't you?"
"More than enough for what I need," Ben replied, his voice carrying the confidence of absolute certainty. "I just hope you have time to get back to Stark Industries and order yourself a replacement heart."
Tony's blood turned to ice. "What are you planning?"
The answer came in the form of action rather than words. Ben moved with the speed of lightning itself, his target unmistakable—the arc reactor that kept Tony's heart beating.
Tony saw it coming, understood the implications, tried desperately to evade. But against XLR8's velocity, his efforts might as well have been in slow motion.
CRACK!
Black claws punched through the reactor's outer casing with surgical precision.