"How did it get this bad?" A genuine flicker of surprise crossed Huang Wen's eyes.
He had expected the billionaire to be struggling, sure, but the man standing before him looked like he was one bad cough away from a casket. The timeline was shifting. In the original story, Tony Stark had spent months spiraling into a mid-life crisis fueled by nihilism and alcohol, practically inviting death to a party. But this Tony? This Tony was focused. He was terrified, yes, but he was hunting for a cure with a desperation that only a man who had been warned beforehand could possess.
"You're asking how?" Tony let out a hollow, raspy laugh that turned into a wheezing cough. He leaned more heavily against his armor's internal stabilizers. "The palladium is a miracle fuel, Huang. It's also a slow-acting poison that I'm forced to inject into my chest every second of every day just to keep my heart beating. It's a bit of a Catch-22, don't you think?"
"To what extent has it actually progressed?" Huang Wen asked, stepping closer to observe the dark, necrotic webbing beneath Tony's skin.
"Seventy-nine percent toxicity," Tony said, his voice dropping into a somber, clinical tone. "I've run the numbers through every simulation Jarvis has. I've tested every known element on the periodic table—and quite a few that aren't even on it yet. Nothing works. They either don't provide the power density or they're even more toxic than the palladium. If I had another six months, maybe I could synthesize something new. But looking at these veins? I don't think I have six days."
He stared intently at Huang Wen, a spark of hope—fragile and burning—in his eyes. "You're the guy who defies logic. You warned me about this months ago when everyone else was calling me a hero. You knew. So, tell me... do you have a rabbit in that hat of yours, or should I start writing my will?"
Huang Wen didn't answer immediately. He was puzzled by the lack of certain key players. "Palladium poisoning... it's a mess, for sure. But I have to ask—didn't Nick Fury come to see you? The one-eyed guy with the long coat? And what about your staff? I thought Stark Industries was hiring some... highly qualified new secretaries lately?"
As he spoke, Huang Wen glanced over at Zhong Qiang. The "beautiful secretary" he was referring to was, of course, Natasha Romanoff. In the original plot, S.H.I.E.L.D. had already embedded her into Tony's life to monitor his decline.
"Nick Fury? The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Tony frowned, genuinely confused. "I've had a few annoying emails from their legal department about the suit, but I haven't seen the man in person. And secretaries? Pepper handles all the hiring. If she'd brought in a supermodel, I think I would have noticed. Why? Is there a spy I should be worried about?"
Huang Wen went silent, his mind racing. The butterfly effect is real.
Because Huang Wen had been so vocal and aggressive in his warnings, Tony hadn't gone on a self-destructive bender. He hadn't gotten drunk at his birthday party and fought Rhodey in a suit. He had locked himself in a high-security villa, cutting off the world to find a cure. Between that and the fact that Nick Fury was currently preoccupied with the fallout of the mutant uprising and his own internal struggle with Hydra, the "Avengers Initiative" was stalled on the launchpad.
In fact, Nick Fury was currently halfway across the globe, personally overseeing the excavation of a certain ice-bound super soldier. He needed Captain America not just as a hero, but as a moral compass to help him purge the rot he suspected was growing inside S.H.I.E.L.D.
"You don't have a way, do you?" Tony's voice was barely a whisper. His shoulders slumped, the weight of his impending mortality finally crushing his bravado.
"I didn't say that," Huang Wen replied, snapping back to the present. "I can fix the symptoms. I can rip those shrapnel fragments out of your chest without a single scalpel, and I can purge the palladium toxins from your bloodstream. But I can't fix your battery problem. If I clean you up and you just plug that same reactor back in, you'll be right back where you started in a week."
Tony's eyes widened. "You can remove the shrapnel? Now? Without a surgery theater?"
"I don't need a theater," Huang Wen said. "But you're right about the element. You can't find a replacement because you're looking at what exists. You need to look at what was left behind. Think back, Tony. Your father... Howard Stark. He wasn't just a businessman. He was a visionary who was limited by the technology of his time."
"My father?" Tony scoffed, though he looked intrigued. "The man was a cold, distant workaholic. What could he possibly have left me besides a company and a drinking habit?"
"The 1974 Stark Expo model," Huang Wen said, planting the seed. "He told you once that you were his greatest creation. He wasn't just being sentimental. The layout of that Expo... it's not just a city plan. It's an atomic blueprint for a new element. He discovered it years ago but didn't have the tools to build it. You do."
Tony froze. The memory of the old film reels flickered in the back of his mind. "The Expo model... Jarvis, pull up any archived files on the '74 layout."
"I'll help you with the immediate threat first," Huang Wen interrupted, signaling to his disciples. "Zhong Qiang, watch the front. I'm taking our guest downstairs to the lab."
Before Tony could ask where they were going, Huang Wen grabbed his shoulder. The world blurred into a kaleidoscope of light. When Tony's vision cleared, he wasn't in the martial arts academy anymore. He was in a vast, sterile, high-tech underground base.
"Jarvis, where are we?" Tony asked, spinning around in his armor.
"Apologies, sir," the AI responded, sounding unusually strained. "All external signals are being localized and scrambled. I cannot pinpoint our coordinates. However... Sir, the super AI I mentioned earlier? It is directly in front of us."
A blue holographic projection of a young girl in a red dress appeared. "Welcome, Mr. Stark. I am Silly Girl. I have prepared the medical platform as requested."
"Silly Girl? Really?" Tony muttered, though he was eyeing the holographic tech with professional jealousy. "That's some high-grade light-bridge projection."
"Armor off, Tony," Huang Wen commanded.
Tony went to reach for the manual release, but Huang Wen simply waved a hand. The internal energy (Qi) flowed like invisible fingers, unlatching the complex servos and plates of the Mark IV. Within seconds, the billionaire was standing in his undershirt, looking small and fragile without his gold-titanium shell.
"Your trick is a lot like that Magneto guy," Tony noted, his teeth chattering slightly from the chill of the lab.
"Magneto is dead," Huang Wen said flatly. "He tried to push me. I don't like being pushed."
Tony swallowed hard. He hadn't realized the stakes were that high.
"Lay down."
As Tony settled onto the platform, Huang Wen didn't waste time. He reached out, his hand hovering inches above the glowing arc reactor. With a sharp tug of his will, the device popped out of its socket. Tony gasped, his lungs suddenly feeling like they were collapsing as the magnetic field keeping the shrapnel from his heart vanished.
"Hold still," Huang Wen muttered.
He didn't use a knife. He used the perfection of the Legendary Sword Technique refined into a microscopic level. Sharp, focused strands of Qi entered Tony's chest cavity.
"Hiss!" Tony winced, his face turning an ashen gray.
In an instant, three jagged, blackened pieces of metal flew out of his chest, suspended in a globule of dark energy. They clattered into a biohazard bin. But the treatment wasn't over. Huang Wen pressed his palm against Tony's sternum, pouring a massive, purifying wave of Internal Energy into his system.
"Gah!" Tony arched his back, his veins bulging.
From the pores of his skin and the open wound in his chest, a thick, foul-smelling black liquid began to ooze out. It was the concentrated palladium waste, being forcibly expelled by the sheer pressure of Huang Wen's Qi. The liquid was caught by an invisible force and swept into a wastewater drain.
Minutes later, Huang Wen pulled back. He was breathing slightly harder, but Tony looked... different. The gray tint to his skin was gone. The dark veins had receded.
"I guarantee," Tony wheezed, clutching his chest as Silly Girl applied a rapid-healing medical foam to the incision, "that is the most inconsiderate bedside manner in the history of medicine. A little morphine would have been nice."
"You're alive, aren't you?" Huang Wen countered. "The shrapnel is gone. The toxin level is down to less than five percent. Your body can handle the rest, provided you don't plug that old reactor back in."
Tony sat up slowly. He took a deep breath—a real, full breath—for the first time in years. He looked at his hands, then at Huang Wen. The cockiness was still there, but it was tempered by a profound, rare sense of debt.
"You saved my life," Tony said seriously, his voice steady. "And you didn't do it for the money or the fame. So, talk to me, Huang Wen. What does a man like you want as a 'thank you'? I know you're not short on cash, you've got your own private fortress here, and you could probably kick the Hulk's ass in a fair fight. I'm actually struggling to find something I can offer that you don't already have."