Can't get enough? Why not read ahead?
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!
Your support means the world to me. Check it out and enjoy the story even more!
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Steve felt like the ground had just split wide open beneath his combat boots. A thousand questions, tangled and chaotic, jammed in his throat, threatening to shatter the stoic, unshakeable walls he had spent decades building around his heart.
Bucky was alive.
The word repeated in his mind like a broken record, loud and dizzying.
'Alive.'
For seventy years, Steve had carried the crushing guilt of that icy fall in the mountains. He had memorized the exact shade of the snow, the horrific sound of the wind, and the absolute finality of losing his best friend. He had built a whole new life in the modern world around that empty space. Yet, right now, the ghost that had haunted his dreams was standing in front of him in the flesh. Breathing, blinking, and looking right back at him.
Every single instinct inside Steve screamed at him to drop his shield, run over, and grab Bucky by the shoulders just to make sure he wouldn't vanish into thin air. But the heavy weight of the star on his chest reminded him of a brutal truth: he was a soldier first. And right now, the air around them was practically buzzing with impending violence.
Forcing the emotional hurricane deep down into his chest, Steve tore his eyes away from Bucky and looked up. Hovering a few stories above the tarmac was the sleek, crimson-and-gold silhouette of Iron Man.
"Iron Man," Steve said. His voice was terrifyingly steady despite the chaos in his chest. He raised his vibranium shield, locking it into a tight, defensive stance. "There's been a mistake here. We need to talk this through. Stand down."
The response from the suit was instantaneous and chillingly cold.
"This doesn't concern you, Captain."
The repulsor nodes in Tony's palms flared to life, a blinding, dangerous blue light reflecting off the pavement. Through the armor's synthetic vocalizer, Tony's voice sounded like sharpened steel. "Move. Get out of my way."
Steve didn't hesitate. He didn't take a single step back. "I can't do that, Stark."
Behind him, Bucky remained wound up like a spring, tense and ready to fight to the death. Steve knew they couldn't win a drawn-out battle here; they needed time, and more importantly, they needed distance.
Glancing just a fraction to his left, Steve called out, "Hawkeye."
Clint didn't need a full explanation; he'd been reading the battlefield before the first word was even spoken. "On it," the archer muttered.
In an instant, Clint's posture shifted. The strange avian-hybrid traits dormant in his DNA flared to life. Sleek, dark feathers rapidly sprouted along his arms, and with a sharp, heavy snap, a pair of massive, powerful wings unfurled from his back, catching the wind. It was a stunning, fierce transformation. Before the dust could even settle, Clint lunged forward, his grip locking securely onto Bucky's tactical harness.
With a massive, ground-shaking sweep of his wings, Clint launched them straight into the sky. A loud *WHOOSH!*echoed across the tarmac as the pair tore through the air, rocketing toward the heavy grey clouds above like a missile.
Inside his helmet, Tony's eyes widened as his heads-up display tracked the rising heat signatures. Panic and fury flared in his gut. 'No way.' There was absolutely no way he was letting his parents' killer slip through his fingers again.
"Not fucking happening," Tony growled.
The thrusters in his boots exploded with a deafening roar. Columns of superheated energy slammed into the ground, launching Iron Man upward with terrifying, neck-snapping speed. He was a streak of red and gold, locked entirely onto the fleeing targets.
But Steve was already tracking his trajectory. Planting his back foot, Steve pivoted and whipped his right arm forward with every ounce of super-soldier strength he possessed.
The vibranium shield sliced through the air, spinning so fast it became a silver blur, making a lethal *WHIRRRR!* sound.
Tony's sensors screamed a warning, but it was too late.
*CLANG!*
The shield slammed dead-center into Iron Man's chest plate with the force of a wrecking ball. The brutal impact shattered Tony's momentum, violently knocking him off course. His flight stabilization system glitched, sending the armored Avenger spiraling back down until he crashed heavily onto the tarmac.
"Rogers!" Tony roared, the synthetic filter failing to hide the raw, bleeding fury in his voice. "Get bent!"
He snapped his hand up, and a concentrated, blinding beam of repulsor energy erupted from his palm.
Steve's reflexes saved him. He threw himself into a hard, desperate roll across the pavement. The blue beam missed his shoulder by a fraction of an inch, striking the solid ground right where he had been standing a millisecond ago. The sheer power of the blast tore the tarmac apart, sending smoking chunks of asphalt and dust exploding outward like shrapnel.
The second Tony stabilized his thrusters to take off again, the sky above them tore open with a rhythmic, deafening roar.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
Heavy, high-caliber gunfire rained down from above. Tony looked up through his visor to see the Quinjet hovering ominously, its automated turret systems fully locked onto his armor. The jet was pouring a relentless wall of suppressive fire right into his intended path, creating a deadly barrier of bullets.
"Son of a..." Tony muttered, throwing the suit into a sharp, sickening bank to the left.
He swerved hard, his thrusters screaming as he dodged a stream of bullets that would have shredded his plating. He dove, twisted, and rolled through the air, but the Quinjet's pilot was relentless, tracking his every move and keeping him pinned down. Every second he spent dancing around the gunfire, Clint and Bucky were getting smaller and smaller, fading into tiny specks against the dark horizon.
"I am officially sick of all of you!" Tony snapped, his patience completely evaporating.
He was done playing nice. With a sharp mental command, the weapon pods on Tony's shoulders clicked open, revealing rows of sleek micro-missiles. The targeting system painted the Quinjet in bright, flashing red squares.
*THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!*
A swarm of miniature rockets hissed out of the pods, leaving trails of white smoke as they arced gracefully toward the aircraft.
But the Quinjet wasn't defenseless. The onboard AI immediately detected the incoming threat. Bright, blinding flares burst from the jet's underbelly, scattering across the sky to confuse the heat-seeking sensors. Simultaneously, its automated interception turrets fired a wall of counter-bullets.
A split second later, the sky detonated.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*
A chain reaction of fiery explosions blossomed in the air, creating a massive, suffocating wall of black smoke, orange fire, and burning metallic debris. Every single one of Tony's missiles had been intercepted, blown to pieces before they could touch the ship.
Tony blasted straight through the fading wall of fire, his armor completely unscathed, but his frustration reaching a boiling point. He glared through the smoke. Steve Rogers was still standing below, holding that damn shield. The Quinjet was still hovering above. And Clint Barton was successfully carrying Bucky away.
Every single tick of the clock was giving the Winter Soldier more distance. More time to disappear into the shadows. And as the realization settled in, Tony felt a cold, hard resolve lock into place. He wasn't going to let them win.
Not this time.
For several agonizing moments, the sky above the hidden facility turned into an absolute war zone.
It was a chaotic, dizzying masterpiece of destruction. Blinding explosions ripped through the heavy cloud cover, tracing jagged lines of fire across the grey sky. Bright blue repulsor beams and arcs of micro-missiles cut smoking paths through the air, completely illuminating the dark afternoon.
Standing on the fractured tarmac below, Steve Rogers could only watch the madness unfold, a sinking feeling settling deep in his chest.
Before he had officially signed up with S.H.I.E.L.D, Nick Fury had pulled him into a dark corner of the Helicarrier to give him a warning. It wasn't about Tony Stark, the billionaire playboy, or even Tony Stark the tech genius. It was about Iron Man.
Fury had been completely deadpan, his single eye locked onto Steve's. He explained that ever since Tony had acquired the Devil Fruit called the Arms-Arms Fruit, his combat capabilities hadn't just improved; they had skyrocketed to an absurd, terrifying level. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top analysts estimated that Iron Man now packed enough raw, adaptable firepower to dismantle an entire military fighter squadron all by himself.
At the time, Steve had secretly thought Fury was just being his usual paranoid self, exaggerating to keep his soldiers on edge.
But now? Watching a state-of-the-art, military-grade Quinjet desperately struggle just to keep a single man at bay? Steve realized with a chill that Fury hadn't been exaggerating at all. If anything, the director had understated the danger.
"Alright," Tony's voice crackled through the sky, his patience finally snapping like a brittle wire. "You guys asked for this."
High above, the sleek armor began to shift. With a series of sharp, metallic clicks, the heavy plating across Tony's right forearm began to rotate and slide backward. New, intricate components emerged from the suit's interior, assembling themselves in real-time into a massive, heavy-barreled weapon configuration. It was a perfect, terrifying demonstration of the Arms-Arms Fruit's power.
A brilliant, blinding crimson glow ignited at the center of the newly formed emitter.
Then…
*SHHHHHHHHHHH!*
A solid beam of highly concentrated laser energy tore through the sky, cutting through the distance instantly.
The Quinjet never stood a chance. The laser sliced clean through the aircraft's heavy left wing like a hot knife through butter. For one eerie, breathless second, the massive transport tried to keep flying on pure momentum. Then, physics caught up.
The crippled craft rolled violently to the side, losing all balance. Inside the cockpit, warning alarms began to scream a deafening chorus of doom. The Quinjet entered a catastrophic, unrecoverable tailspin.
"No, no, no!" the pilot's desperate voice cut through the comms before being completely swallowed by the roar of the wind.
The aircraft spiraled downward, a burning streak of metal falling fast and hard.
*BOOOOOM!*
The Quinjet slammed into the concrete courtyard. A massive, roaring fireball erupted into the sky, swallowing the wreckage in a wave of bright orange flames and thick, choking black smoke. Twisted pieces of metal rained down across the pavement.
Tony didn't even bother to look at the destruction. He didn't care about the high-tech jet or the crew inside. He had total tunnel vision, and his sights were set on exactly one target: Bucky Barnes.
The armor pivoted in mid-air, its advanced tracking systems whirring as they locked onto the distant horizon, preparing to resume the hunt.
But Steve Rogers wasn't about to let that happen.
The Captain planted his combat boots firmly into the cracked pavement, lowering his center of gravity. Every muscle in his body coiled tightly, winding up like a massive spring. And then, with an explosive burst of speed, he threw a devastating punch forward.
Not at Tony. Not at the armor. He punched the completely empty air right in front of him.
*CRACK!*
The sound that ripped through the courtyard was absolutely deafening. It didn't sound like a normal punch, or even an explosion. It sounded deeply wrong, unnatural, as if the very fabric of reality had just fractured right before their eyes.
Inside the suit, Tony's heads-up display instantly flashed bright red, screaming warnings of an incoming threat. But it was already too late to dodge.
An invisible, monstrous wall of pure kinetic force erupted outward from Steve's fist. The very air distorted, warping visually as a massive, violent shockwave slammed directly into Iron Man.
*BOOM!*
The impact hit Tony like a runaway freight train. The suit's internal stabilizers fought a losing battle, sparks flying behind the visor as the armor was violently hurled out of the sky. Completely out of control, Iron Man tumbled end-over-end through the air before crashing brutally into the ground.
The impact carved a deep crater into the concrete, sending a massive cloud of dust and debris exploding outward, completely burying the golden avenger.
"Jarvis!" Tony gasped, coughing as he forced himself up onto one knee, shaking off the daze. "What the hell was that?"
His voice was laced with pure disbelief.
"Analyzing now, sir," Jarvis's calm, synthetic voice echoed in his ears, though a series of rapid data streams began to flood Tony's visor. "Detecting an unidentified kinetic-energy phenomenon. The sheer energy output of that strike drastically exceeds any expected physical parameters for a human being."
Tony's eyes narrowed behind his glowing visor. Slowly, he turned his head to look through the settling dust.
Steve Rogers was standing calmly amidst the smoking rubble. His iconic vibranium shield was held firmly in his left hand, his expression completely steady and unshakeable.
For the first time since this nightmare started, a realization washed over Tony. Steve hadn't just been sitting around; the Captain had consumed a Devil Fruit of his own. And judging by the fact that he had just cracked the air and knocked Iron Man out of the sky, it wasn't a weak one.
Worse still, the opportunity to catch Bucky was officially dead. Clint Barton's aerial speed was already a nightmare to track under normal circumstances. Now, with the delays from the Quinjet and Steve's insane intervention, their trail had gone completely cold.
The realization made a wave of hot fury boil up in Tony's chest. He glared at the super-soldier.
"You bought a Devil Fruit too," Tony growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, metallic rumble that echoed through the suit's speakers. "Didn't you, Rogers?"
Steve didn't say a word. He just shifted his stance, his silent resolve speaking volumes.
Tony's armored fists clenched so tightly the metal groaned. "Fine. Let's find out exactly what you've been hiding behind that pretty little shield."
With a mental command, the missile ports across Tony's shoulders clicked open again. The targeting reticle painted Steve in a flashing red lock-on.
*THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!*
A dozen micro-missiles launched simultaneously, arcing high into the air before screaming down toward Steve from multiple angles. They were fast, incredibly precise, and completely lethal.
Yet, Steve didn't flinch. He didn't panic, and he didn't run. Instead, he took a single, confident step forward, drew back his fist, and punched the empty air a second time.
*CRACK!*
The same eerie, glass-shattering sound echoed across the battlefield. A visible, warping shockwave rippled through the air, colliding dead-on with the incoming swarm.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*
A wall of absolute fire swallowed the battlefield, throwing jagged fragments of shrapnel and burning metallic debris in every single direction. Yet, despite the sheer violence of the blast, not a single piece of debris touched Steve Rogers. The overlapping shockwaves he had unleashed violently shattered, redirected, or completely absorbed the incoming attack before it could even scratch his defensive perimeter.
Inside the heavy armor, Tony's eyes narrowed into slits behind his glowing visor.
'What kind of Devil Fruit is this?'
His genius mind instantly shifted into overdrive, launching into full analysis mode. At lightspeed, hundreds of entries from the public Devil Fruit Encyclopedia flashed through his memory files. He rapidly compared Steve's reality-cracking abilities against every known Paramecia, Logia, and Zoan classification he had ever studied.
Nothing matched. Nothing even came close.
The sheer, raw destructive force of those vibrations was completely off the charts. I've never seen anything like this in the databases, Tony thought, a sudden, dark suspicion forming in his mind. 'Did Rosh release a classified, top-tier fruit without anyone knowing?' It was the only logical explanation left.
Across the ruined courtyard, Steve remained heavily planted amidst the swirling smoke and rising flames, his boots melting slightly against the hot tarmac.
"Iron Man, stand down!" Steve's voice boomed, carrying clearly across the burning battlefield. "Bucky's gone!"
Steve widened his stance, his grip tightening on his shield as he completely refused to back an inch. "Whatever this is, continuing to fight right now won't solve anything!"
Tony's response came without a single second of hesitation. "It solves one thing."
The armor's eye-slits flared with a sudden, brilliant blue light. "It helps me vent my rage."
At this point, logic didn't matter anymore. Reason didn't matter. The horrific security footage of his parents' murder was playing on a loop inside Tony's head, burning itself into his retinas. Every single time he blinked, he saw it. He saw Howard Stark's skull being brutally crushed. He saw Maria Stark gasping, struggling desperately for a breath she would never get. He saw Bucky Barnes' cold, emotionless face.
And that agonizing fury demanded an outlet.
Right now.
With a harsh mental command, the weapon limiters built into the suit completely disengaged. The targeting systems expanded across Tony's visor, painting the entire area in flashing red grids. Tony stopped holding back.
Heavy missile bays clicked open across the armor's shoulders. Mini-mortar launchers deployed from his back, and micro-launchers unfolded from hidden compartments along his thighs. For a terrifying moment, Iron Man looked less like a hero in a suit and more like a walking, high-tech military fortress.
Then, he opened fire.
The afternoon sky completely disappeared beneath a terrifying storm of heavy ordnance. Missiles, mortar shells, and highly explosive payloads hissed through the air, dozens upon dozens of deadly projectiles converging on Steve's location from every single angle.
*WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!*
It wasn't just an attack; it was a full-scale artillery strike meant to level a city block.
Steve's eyes sharpened. He didn't run. Instead, he threw his hands forward, punching the air with everything he had.
*CRACK!*
The atmosphere shattered like glass again. Another massive shockwave exploded outward, colliding with the front line of missiles. But Tony's attack was relentless, so Steve kept moving, his fists blurring with disciplined, military precision.
*CRACK! CRACK!*
Every single strike generated a fresh wave of vibrating force, weaving together into an overlapping, invisible wall of pure kinetic energy.
Deafening explosions filled the air, the noise growing so loud it vibrated right through the ground. Massive fireballs swallowed the courtyard, and thick dust clouds rolled across the shattered tarmac. For several terrifying seconds, Captain America completely disappeared within the raging inferno.
But there was a brutal catch: Steve Rogers was still human.
He was an enhanced super-soldier, sure, but he wasn't a machine. Every single Tremor-Tremor punch required massive physical effort. Every shockwave drained his energy. Meanwhile, Tony's high-tech arsenal from his Arms-Arms Fruit was completely automated. The armor's weapons never grew tired. They never slowed down, and they never hesitated.
Eventually, the sheer volume of incoming fire became too much to handle.
One missile slipped past the vibrating barrier. Then another. A third exploded directly against the weakening wall of force.
Steve's eyes widened in pure alarm. 'Damn it!'
A heavy micro-missile broke entirely through the defensive grid, detonating mere inches from his face.
Pure soldier instinct took over. Steve managed to pull his vibranium shield up, crossing his arms tightly before his chest to shield his vital organs. A split second later—
*BOOOOOOM!*
The explosion hit with the force of a detonating bomb. The violent shockwave launched Steve completely off his feet, sending his body hurling across the tarmac like a broken ragdoll.
*BANG!*
He slammed heavily into the concrete, rolled, bounced violently, and rolled again, finally coming to a hard stop amid a scattered field of sharp rubble and smoking concrete.
An explosion of white-hot pain tore through every single muscle in his body. His ribs felt cracked, his shoulders burned like fire, and his arms screamed from the sheer effort of absorbing that horrific impact. The world spun dizzily around him, his vision doubling as a piercing, high-pitched ringing echoed through his ears.
Honestly, the fact that he was still conscious was a miracle. A direct missile strike should have torn a normal human to pieces; only the Super Soldier Serum running through his veins and his trusty vibranium shield had saved him from a fatal injury.
Slowly, painfully, Steve groaned and pushed himself up onto one shaking knee, blood dripping onto the dust.
Suddenly, a heavy shadow fell over him.
Steve looked up through his blurred vision. Iron Man was hovering just a few feet overhead. The repulsor nodes in his palms were glowing a dangerous blue, but the armor itself was pristine. Untouched. Perfect.
Tony looked down at him through the glowing white eyes of his helmet, his expression hidden but his posture completely cold.
"Stay out of my way, Rogers," the synthesized voice muttered. It was almost a whisper, yet somehow, it sounded a thousand times more threatening than a shout. "This is your one and only pass."
Steve glared upward, breathing heavily, wiping a streak of crimson blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his glove.
Tony's gaze didn't soften for a fraction of a second. "If you interfere again..." The repulsors in his palms brightened significantly, humming with lethal energy. "I won't be this gentle."
For several long, suffocating seconds, neither man moved. The tension between the two was thick enough to choke on.
Then, the boot thrusters ignited with a deafening roar.
*WHOOSH!*
Iron Man shot straight up into the sky, going higher and faster by the millisecond, until he became nothing more than a tiny crimson streak disappearing into the heavy cloud cover.
Slowly, the chaotic battlefield fell silent. Thick gray smoke drifted lazily across the ruined courtyard, and small fires crackled from the burning, twisted wreckage of the Quinjet.
And right there, in the very center of the destruction, Captain America remained kneeling in the dust. He was bruised, bleeding, and aching all over, fully aware that Tony Stark's lethal hunt for Bucky had only just begun.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Next Chapter: You Die By The Sword
Next Next Chapter: The Parkers Visit
Next Next Next Chapter: The Fruit That Changes Spider-Man's Tragic Destiny
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!