"So, let me get this straight. The one time we actually need the literal God of Thunder to act as a giant, indestructible lightning rod, he's completely off-grid?!"
Tony Stark's holographic projection paced furiously across the Avengers Tower laboratory. He was currently broadcasting from the secure, heavily shielded basement of his Malibu mansion, three thousand miles away from the crisis. Given Max Dillon's new, insatiable energy form, Tony had been strictly benched.
Tony tapped the glowing blue circle in the center of his chest. "If that walking spark-plug gets within fifty yards of me, he drains my armor. Worse, he drains the localized arc reactor keeping the shrapnel out of my heart. The electromagnet dies, the metal shreds my cardiovascular system, and I'm a dead man. I am functionally useless here."
"Thor said he had to go to Svartalfheim to help the Dwarves repel a Fire Giant invasion," Hank Pym replied calmly. He didn't look up from the workbench, his magnifying goggles pulled down over his eyes as he carefully welded a micro-circuit into a dark, woven fabric. "If he were here, we wouldn't be sweating over a sentient lightning bolt. But he isn't. So we work with what we have."
Standing beside Hank, Peter Parker adjusted the calibration on a spool of insulated, anti-gamma polymer. He was in his civilian clothes, his fingers moving rapidly over the high-tech mesh.
"The Fantastic Four are still cleaning up the Wasteland universe," Steve Rogers muttered, standing near the holographic tactical table. The Captain's jaw was tight, his heavy leather gloves creaking as he crossed his massive arms. "And Banner?"
"Off the grid looking for Betty Ross," Tony sighed, taking a sip from a green vegetable smoothie.
Steve looked down at his vibranium shield resting against the table. He felt entirely out of his depth. Punching a Hydra agent in the jaw was one thing; trying to punch a being made of pure, intangible voltage was suicide.
"What about the X-Men?" Peter asked, handing Hank a specialized soldering iron. "Can't Emma Frost or one of the telepaths just shut his brain down remotely?"
"I just got off a secure channel with Frost," Steve shook his head grimly. "She tried. Dillon's neural pathways are firing at the speed of light. He's generating so much raw electromagnetic static that it completely scrambles any psychic intrusion. If Emma pushes any harder into his mind, she'll fry her own frontal lobe."
"Alright, so we're entirely on our own," Tony clapped his hands together, the hologram shimmering with the movement. "Let's review the tactical breakdown. Based on Spider-Man's after-action report, Electro can absorb and release astronomical amounts of electricity, but he cannot re-absorb his own expelled energy. If we plunge his immediate environment into a total blackout, he starves. He weakens until his containment field collapses. Step one: we kill the main Arc Reactor beneath the Tower. Janet, are you in position?"
The lab monitors shifted, pulling up a live feed of Janet Van Dyne standing in the cavernous, humming sub-basement of the skyscraper.
"I'm at the primary terminal," Janet said, casually typing a heavy override sequence into the main console. "Don't worry, Tony. I might not be a quantum physicist, but I am the CEO of a multi-billion dollar tech firm. I know how to pull a plug."
"Excellent. Step two," Tony pointed at the workbench where Peter and Hank were assembling the dark mesh. "The rubber-suit approach won't cut it. Dillon burns too hot. So, Hank and I designed a bio-electric capacitor suit. It uses an adaptive polymer weave—similar to the anti-cosmic radiation fabric Reed Richards uses for the Fantastic Four."
Hank lifted his goggles, resting a hand on the unfinished chest plate. "Since Peter is the only one here whose biology naturally generates and expels bio-electricity, the suit is tailored to his specific venom-blasts. The polymer will insulate him from Dillon's external voltage, while simultaneously looping Peter's own internal current back into his musculature. It acts as a closed-loop battery. Every time Peter expels energy, the suit stores the kinetic blowback and uses it to hyper-accelerate his physical speed."
"Wait," Peter paused, a stray blue spark dancing across his knuckles. "What if the capacitor burns out? What if we can't weaken him enough to contain him?"
Hank fell silent. He traded a heavy look with Tony's hologram.
"Then we have to execute the lethal contingency," Hank said softly. "You have to grapple him, force a complete, unshielded grounding, and violently scatter every single electron holding his consciousness together. You bleed him out into the Earth's atmosphere."
Peter swallowed hard, looking down at his hands. It would completely erase Max Dillon from existence. "Let's hope the suit works, then."
A sudden, violent shockwave of displaced air exploded through the laboratory, sending loose schematic papers flying like confetti.
A silver blur materialized next to the workbench. Pietro Maximoff pulled his aerodynamic goggles down around his neck, not even breaking a sweat.
"All major hospitals in Manhattan have been successfully evacuated to backup facilities in New Jersey," Pietro announced proudly, grabbing an apple off a nearby tray and taking a loud bite. "Major corporate mainframes are on localized battery backup. I hit every high-priority target on the list."
Steve Rogers' eyes widened slightly. "Good work, son. That was incredibly fast. If you ever want a full-time spot on the roster, you've got my vote."
Pietro smirked, tossing the apple core into a trash can. "Wait, seriously? Is that an official Avengers invitation?"
"First of all, no, it isn't," Tony's hologram interjected dryly. "And secondly, even if Cap officially drafted you, you'd still have to get your permission slip signed by your old man. And considering Magneto wears a bucket on his head and hates our collective guts, I don't see that happening."
"Speaking of old men who hate us," Steve looked at the monitors. "Did the Military respond to the blackout request?"
"Surprisingly, yes," Tony smirked, taking another sip of his green smoothie. "I fully expected Ross to send a fleet of F-22s or some Stark-tech knockoffs to try and shoot the lightning bolt, which would have just given Dillon a dozen free batteries to snack on. But once they realized an Omega-level energy absorber was heading for the East Coast, the White House order him to backed down. They're leaving it to us."
"Jarvis," Tony called out to his AI. "Start the 3D atomic fabrication for Peter's suit. Give me an ETA on our glowing friend."
"Based on current satellite telemetry, Max Dillon will breach Manhattan airspace in precisely one minute and fifty-two seconds, Sir," the crisp British voice echoed through the Malibu mansion and the New York lab simultaneously.
"Alright, Sonic the Teenager," Tony pointed his holographic finger at Pietro. "Run to California and pick up the package."
Pietro didn't even reply. A sonic boom shattered the air, and he vanished.
Thirty seconds later, Tony was just setting his empty smoothie glass down on his Malibu kitchen counter when a gust of wind nearly knocked him over. Pietro stood in the center of his living room, tapping his silver sneaker impatiently.
"My god," Tony muttered, staring at the kid. "You literally crossed the entire continental United States in half a minute."
"The scenic route," Pietro grinned.
Tony shook his head, turning to his workshop door. "Jarvis. How much longer?"
"One minute and twenty-two seconds until Dillon arrives, Sir."
"Not the villain, Jarvis. The suit."
"The bio-electric speed-suit will complete fabrication in exactly thirty-seven seconds."
"Perfect," Tony said, a cold, calculating edge entering his voice. He walked over to the massive, panoramic glass windows of his mansion, looking out at the calm Pacific Ocean while pulling up a digital map of the East Coast. He was entirely sidelined for this fight, but he still controlled the board.
"Janet has the Arc Reactor offline. The hospitals are clear," Tony stated, resting his hand against the glass. "Jarvis. Black out New York."
PS: Telepaths like Emma Frost and Professor X are incredibly powerful, but they actually have a major biological weakness: pure, overwhelming electromagnetic static! In the comics, the human brain operates on faint electrical impulses. When a character like Electro or Magneto completely floods an area with massive amounts of raw, chaotic electromagnetic energy, it acts like jamming a radio signal. Telepaths physically cannot push their minds through the static without frying their own neural pathways!