"Humm..." Tony looked at the tir. 1 minute to go. "Well..." His energy suddenly skyrocketed as his body began to glow brighter and brighter with each passing second. "...Playti is over."
He raised one finger and pointed at Forge.
Forge smirked, preparing another tirade about Stark's arrogance. The smirk froze.
With a faint hum, his armor buckled. Plates shifted against his will. Lines of energy shorted out like faulty neon signs. Then with perfect, surgical precision, every component began peeling apart. The chest plate split down the center. The gauntlets unraveled like chanical snakes shedding their skins. The nanites weaving his armor together reversed their bonds, collapsing into their base fragnts.
In a heartbeat, Forge's armor was nothing but a floating cloud of stripped-down parts.
Forge's eyes widened. His mind went blank. He had been ready for brute force, for Tony's energy blasts, for shields and counters. He had not been ready for this.
"You…" His voice cracked with disbelief. "…you can control it?"
Tony twirled his finger in the air lazily. The fragnts spun around Forge like a halo of knives. "You look surprised. Too much for your little brain?"
Forge quickly gathered his mind and used Remote Technoforming. It allows Forge to biomystically conduct technological refitting with but a few simple words in order to reshape machinery to suit his needs.
"Refit. Mode 1."
The fragnts around him bent in defiance of Tony's will, pulling back together like rivers reversing course. tal flowed, nanites fusing into their armor shapes again. In seconds, the shell returned, locking around him, sealing his body once more.
Forge exhaled sharply, sweat forming on his brow. That had been too close. He snapped his gaze to Tony. He looked angry as hell. "You think you're the only one who can bend machines? I was born for this. I can—"
The words died as agony slamd through his skull. Forge clawed at his helt. A scream ripped out of him, raw and uncontrolled.
"ARGGGGGGG!"
The words died as agony slamd through his skull. Forge clawed at his helt. A scream ripped out of him, raw and uncontrolled.
Because he had just tried sothing dangerous.
He tried to scan the nanites that pulsed within Tony's bloodstream, hoping to twist them, to hijack the technology that turned Stark into sothing beyond human. But the instant he touched them, a wall of power slamd back. It was as if soone cracked open his skull and poked a knife into his brain while he was still conscious.
His vision blurred white. His mind felt like it was going to split into molten shards. He broke the connection instantly.
Tony floated there, smirking. "Oh, you tried to touch the toys inside , huh? Cute idea. Sha for you, my nanites aren't just tech. They're bonded with sothing that makes you look like a kid sticking a fork in an outlet. Next ti, you won't just get a headache. You'll pop like popcorn."
Forge panted, jaw clenched in fury. "You…"
Tony raised his finger again.
Click.
Forge's chest plate unraveled. His shoulders popped open. His helt fizzled into fragnts.
"Not again," Forge growled. He forced Remote Technoforming into play, snapping the armor back.
Click.
The left gauntlet disassembled into fifty floating shards.
Snap.
The right leg bent backward as the nanites broke down.
Forge groaned in frustration, refitting the armor each ti, only for Tony to flick his finger again and send it apart. The battlefield beca a ridiculous back-and-forth of disassemble and reassemble, like two kids tugging over a toy.
Tony leaned into it. He grinned, eyes alight with mischief.
He snapped his fingers and Forge's comms system blew out with a squeal of feedback that echoed painfully in his ears.
"FUCK!" Forge cursed, clutching his head. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT!"
Tony whistled innocently, then flicked his hand. A jolt of electricity surged through Forge's armor, shooting straight into the codpiece. The sound that ca out of Forge was half snarl, half strangled yelp.
"Oh man," Tony chuckled. "Did I just zap the family jewels? That's gotta sting. Maybe you should have worn a cup."
Forge's face twisted with rage as he pulled the armor back into shape. "I will kill you!"
"Hold that thought," Tony said. Another flick. The armor's stabilizers over Forge's backside overloaded, sparking into a small fiery burst. Smoke trailed behind him like a cheap firework.
Forge slapped at the flas, teeth bared in humiliation. "You bastard!"
"Oh, co on. Don't act like I'm not entertaining. You've got the whole villain vibe, but right now you look like a toaster having a seizure."
Forge raised his arm to fire an energy cannon. Before the blast could launch, Tony pinched his fingers together. The weapon peeled apart in a delicate unfolding of pieces, leaving Forge pointing an empty gauntlet like a mi with a toy gun. Then so wires around his ass short-circuited, causing a couple of nanites to explode.
The Ultimates on the ground were howling with laughter now. Johnny clutched his stomach, tears in his eyes. "He... hahahaha... He short-circuited his ass! Oh my god!"
Even Natasha cracked a smile. Yelena nearly fell off the stairs with her soda can.
Wanda, arms crossed, was trying to look unimpressed, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward.
"Hell yeah, blast his ass off," Lorna yelled with a large grin.
Ben transford back to his human form, "Haaa... That poor kid is never gonna walk straight again."
Forge, anwhile, was losing composure. His every attempt at attack turned into a humiliating slapstick routine under Tony's control. Sparks showered his face, his weapons misfired, systems rebooted mid-sentence. He was supposed to be a god of mutant-tech fusion. The deal with Subli enhanced his mutation beyond limits, yet it wasn't enough. He looked like Stark's favorite chew toy.
Tony finally stopped playing. He lifted his hand high, his aura glowing brighter. The fragnts floating around Forge vibrated. Then they pulled away from him all at once.
"No!" Forge bellowed, fighting to hold his armor together. His Remote Technoforming was straining. For a mont, he managed to keep the shell intact.
Then Tony clenched his fist.
Every circuit, every nanite, every tallic thread in Forge's creation tore apart simultaneously. The armor exploded into its smallest possible components, scattering across the sky like tallic confetti.
Forge was left floating, exposed, his skin burning with exertion.
"You lose," Tony said simply.
Forge shook his head violently. "No… Subli gave —"
The sky above them changed.
Miniature explosions rippled across the sky, faint but countless, like sparks in a dark ocean. They spread in perfect synchronization, detonations too precise to be random.
"Well, ti's up," Tony said before letting out a large yawn.
The world looked up as the night beca a sea of golden fireflies.
"What did you do?!" Forge yelled. He was barely floating in the air using the boosters that Tony left intact.
Tony's voice carried across the battlefield, calm, final. "I just released the Subli-killer. Every fragnt in the atmosphere is a seed designed to hunt the bacterial lifeform down, track him through his viral essence, and erase him. But it won't kill the host. Impressive, right?"
Forge's eyes widened with horror. "You… you released it globally?"
"Yep!" Tony's grin sharpened. "Think of it as fireworks for a very special occasion. The death of a parasite. Oh, my bad... Ancient Bacterial Lifeform."
The sparks continued to spread, covering the night sky in shimring clouds of golden light. It was beautiful, almost serene. But Forge could feel it. The connection inside him was fraying. Subli's voice, once a steady whisper in his mind, beca static.
He clutched his head, screaming, as his stolen strength began to falter. His body convulsed, muscles spasming without control. His armor fragnts hung around him, inert, no longer responding.
Tony watched without rcy. "You used humans and mutants since the beginning. You manipulated everything and created hatred against the mutants by manipulating the facts and events. You thought control made you a god. But unlucky you... You t . You piece of shit is nothing more than a freaking bacteria. And now…" He raised his hand, aura blazing. "…Ti to say goodbye."
"The mutants are nothing more than a freaking curse!" Forge's eyes went bright white as Subli's voice ca like a freaking boom box. "I was supposed to rule over them, the very ones who created . I shaped them. Molded them into tools for my will. They were to be my army, my eternal slaves. And you... You ruined it."
The ground shook with the force of Subli's words. The air itself seed to shiver.
"A filthy human. Weak, short-lived, crawling vermin who claw at scraps. Your kind were ant to kneel, to serve. To be vessels for my will. They were never ant to rule. Never ant to resist."
His voice cracked, laced with fury and desperation. "I am older than your kind. I survived extinction after extinction. I AM SUBLI. I CAN NOT BE KILLED. And make no mistake, I will rise again! You cannot erase , Stark. I am evolution incarnate!"
But as he raged, the golden dust above spread wider, filling every horizon. One by one, Subli's words turned ragged. His grip on Forge's body faltered. The light in his eyes flickered.
Around the world, hosts shuddered. Everywhere Subli's spores had seeded silently for decades—people collapsed, spasd, then gasped for breath as the infection bled out of them. Black veins faded. White, clouded eyes cleared. Humans and Mutants who had been controlled for years cried out, free for the first ti.
The counter agent sank into the earth, into the oceans, into the winds. Everywhere the bacterial threads tried to hide, they were hunted. Every trace of Subli's viral essence was burned away by Stark's design.
Forge's body jerked like a puppet with cut strings. Subli's voice broke into static. "No… no, not like this… not by a human… not by you…" His final scream split the air, half rage, half disbelief. "Mutants were mine! Humanity was mine! You cannot—"
Silence.
Forge collapsed, stripped of Subli's power, nothing but a broken man gasping for air. Tony caught him before he could fall. The golden clouds above faded slowly, dispersing until only the stars remained.
For the first ti in millennia, the world was free of Subli.
Tony floated in the sky, watching the last glow vanish.
"Checkmate."
...
[anwhile...]
Sowhere in Egypt...
A team of archaeologists who were researching a pyramid stumbled upon a giant underground space that looked untouched by ti. In the middle of the place was a giant tomb.
---
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