Chapter 201: Old Guard vs. New Wave
The one who had suggested using the Mind Stone to control the AI was Bruce Banner.
The moment the words were out, every set of eyes in the room swung back to him.
"...Honestly, that idea frightens me." Black Widow broke the silence first. "That kind of power is not something any of us can handle at this stage."
"And how exactly would you guarantee the AI doesn't turn around and use the Mind Stone against us?"
Steve's voice was measured, but the weight in it was real. "Dr. Banner. I trust you haven't forgotten what Loki did on Earth the last time he had that thing."
"It has no business being on this planet."
"And now you're suggesting we not only keep it here, but wire it into an artificial intelligence..."
"What if — and I mean what if —"
"What if it falls into the wrong hands? What if we end up with a repeat of Loki?"
On the sofas along the edge of the room, Pietro, Peter Parker, and Wanda exchanged a blank look as the argument in the middle of the room escalated.
AI they understood. The Mind Stone was something else entirely. This conversation had moved somewhere they couldn't follow.
"Hey, Peter..." Pietro kept his voice low.
Peter shifted in his seat and leaned slightly closer. "What's up, Pietro?"
"Do you actually understand what they're talking about? Because I can't follow any of it."
He glanced toward the group in the center of the room, where the argument had passed the point of exchanging ideas and moved into something considerably more personal. "And at this rate, it looks like they might actually start throwing punches..."
This was nothing like his mental image of the Avengers. He'd imagined something more composed. What he was looking at right now had the energy of a neighborhood argument that had spilled out onto the street.
Peter followed his gaze toward the increasingly heated conference room and dropped his voice further. "Pietro, you joined the team pretty recently, so you might not know the full context."
"That thing they keep calling the Mind Stone: it's an artifact that can directly control a human mind. Extremely dangerous."
"The person behind the Battle of New York, Loki, used it to take control of Clint Barton." He indicated Hawkeye with a subtle look. "That one, over there."
That cleared it up. Pietro finally understood why Steve's reaction to the Mind Stone had been that immediate and that strong. "...I see."
The two of them murmured quietly on the sidelines while the center of the room came fully apart.
From the moment Banner proposed using the Mind Stone to control the AI, Tony had seized on the idea with immediate enthusiasm. Steve was flatly opposed to applying the Mind Stone to any AI system at all. The philosophical gap between them had now widened past the point of debate and moved into something more direct.
"Rogers. I completely understand that you're a man out of time: someone who jumped from the Second World War straight into the modern era with all of that era's thinking still running in the background."
"But if you actually want to keep up with the world as it exists now, you might consider expanding your perspective. Learning to accept technological progress. Moving forward."
"Rather than reacting like I've pulled out a live grenade every time you hear a word you don't recognize." Tony had both legs crossed, leaning back, and delivering every word with the precise calibration of someone who knew exactly how much each one would land.
Steve stood slowly. When he spoke, he looked directly at Tony without flinching. "Stark. You're right that I'm behind the times. But I can still tell the difference between dangerous and safe. I'm not following along blindly."
"If a so-called advanced technology puts all of humanity at serious risk, then I'd say being a little behind the times is not the worst thing to be."
"Ah, so by that logic, humanity should probably just stop advancing altogether."
"Two hundred and fifty thousand people are killed by firearms every year. Dangerous doesn't begin to cover it."
"If we're that worried about danger, let's just throw every gun away and go back to carrying spears and shields like our ancestors."
Tony let his gaze settle on Steve and then, as if something had just occurred to him, let out a short laugh. "Ha — sorry, sorry. I forgot. You already use a shield. You've been carrying one this whole time."
Steve: ...
"Without that metal suit, you couldn't take me in a fight. You know that."
"Oh?" Tony raised an eyebrow.
He pressed his palm slightly. The water in the glass on the table beside him began to boil immediately. Both forearms lit up with the deep red glow of molten heat running just beneath the skin.
"I don't, actually."
"Want to step outside and settle it?"
"Fine by me. But when you lose, the AI project moves forward exactly the way I said." Tony was on his feet before he'd finished the sentence.
Nearby, Fury watched the two of them accelerate from argument toward something with physical consequences, and decided he was no longer able to pretend he hadn't noticed.
"Steve. Stark. That's enough."
"The AI question goes up the chain for review. Nothing gets decided based on a three-minute argument in a conference room."
"And you two still have to work together after today. If you actually start fighting."
"Don't worry, Nick Fury." Steve's voice was even. "I'll hold back."
"Think of it as a way to pass the time."
He clearly did not expect Tony to give him any real trouble. He'd pull his punches. That would be enough.
Tony heard the undercurrent in that perfectly and clicked his tongue. He turned to Fury. "Exactly. Friendly competition. Sport, not war."
"Antiques are hard to come by in this century. I'll be careful not to break him."
He was already walking toward the door as he said it.
Fury called after him twice. When it became apparent Tony had stopped hearing anything coming from that direction, Fury gave up.
"Natasha. Barton. Go keep an eye on them. Make sure it doesn't turn into something we have to explain later."
"Got it." Both of them stood without argument.
Peter Parker watched the group file out, then looked toward Pietro on the sofa beside him.
But the spot where Pietro had been sitting was empty.
He'd apparently decided the moment there was something worth watching, the correct move was to be there first. The sofa had been vacated at some point while Peter wasn't looking, and Pietro was already gone.
"...Director Fury, I'll just go make sure nothing goes too sideways." Peter delivered this to the room, then headed out at a jog.
Fury looked around the conference room, which had emptied considerably, then let out a slow breath. "Anyone else want to go watch?"
"...Sure." The remaining few, Banner, Carter, and Wanda, stopped pretending they were going to sit there and followed.
SHIELD Combat Training Center.
The overhead lights were cold and white, the kind that turned every surface in the room to something close to silver. The air had a chill quality to it that the light somehow made worse.
Tony and Steve walked in and spread out across the floor.
Steve glanced at the standard boxing ring in the corner, rope boundary and all, then looked back at Tony with the faintest edge of something at the corner of his mouth. "Do we need the ring?"
"Probably not. This won't take long."
Tony made a small sound of amusement, both hands in his pockets, posture loose enough that he might have been stopping in for a cup of tea. "I'll give that line straight back to you."
"One more thing —" He tilted his head and let his eyes move deliberately across Steve's frame. "Steve. Do you want protective gear?"
Steve rolled his neck once. The joints cracked in a quick, clean sequence. "To be safe, I think you should wear some."
They looked at each other. Neither of them moved toward the ring.
The roped boundary might as well not have existed. For both of them, the entire training center was the arena. The edge of the mat, the distance to the walls, the placement of the equipment: none of it was a limit. All of it was terrain.
Pietro arrived to find them already positioned.
He blinked out of his trajectory and reappeared at Peter's side, a faint rush of displaced air marking where he'd been.
Peter jogged in a moment later. Behind him came Black Widow and Hawkeye, both moving at an unhurried pace. Natasha went to the wall and leaned against it with her arms crossed, her expression communicating something in the range of let's see how far this actually goes.
Then Carter, Banner, and Wanda.
Everyone settled around the edges without being told, leaving the open center of the floor to the two people who had apparently decided to settle this in person.
"Pietro — if either of them actually gets into trouble, or if it stops being a spar, step in." Peter kept his voice low.
Pietro gave a single nod, held up a hand in an easy OK, and cracked a small grin while he was at it. He dropped onto a vaulting box nearby with one leg crossed, elbow on his knee, with the relaxed energy of someone who'd secured the best seat in the room. "Don't worry. If it actually goes wrong I'll pull them apart."
"Serious question though, Peter. Who do you think wins?"
"...I genuinely don't know." Peter shook his head, making no attempt to be diplomatic about it.
"The Captain's got more combat experience, and his physical conditioning is impressive."
"As for Mr. Stark..."
He didn't finish, but Pietro understood what he meant.
Tony Stark, someone with the kind of close relationship with Umbrella's leadership that implied he'd been through their enhancement program. The extent of those enhancements was something neither of them knew.
In the center of the floor, the two of them stood facing each other.
The overhead lights threw long, dark silhouettes behind them across the mat.
The room was quiet enough that the ventilation ducts above were audible, a low steady sound moving through the ceiling.
Tony's hands were still in his pockets. His chin was slightly raised. The expression on his face had the quality of something that had been earned through practice — the kind of look that made people want to do something about it.
He pulled his right hand free and curled a single finger at Steve in an unhurried, deliberate gesture. "Age before beauty."
Steve absorbed this calmly, drew in a slow breath, and let it out.
It was a long breath. The kind that needed the full capacity of both lungs to contain whatever was building behind it.
Then he moved.
The sound wasn't a footstep. It was the anti-slip mat taking the force of a sudden explosive push and giving back a sharp, dense tear of friction under compression.
Three meters of distance compressed under him.
Everything built into a single connected release.
The push, the acceleration, the punch — three actions flowing together as though they were one.
His right fist came out like something launched, the full kinetic weight of his body behind it, driving directly at Tony's face.
The air in front of the strike opened and closed around it, and the wake of that movement produced a pressure wave in the cold white light that was nearly invisible and completely unmistakable.
Tony's pupils contracted.
His brain issued the instruction to move. Steve was too fast.
The punch had come without any setup, without any tell, and Tony only managed half a sidestep before Steve's fist connected cleanly with the left side of his cheekbone.
Steve had pulled back three tenths of his actual output at the moment of contact. He'd made the calculation ahead of time. He could blow out a heavy bag with a single punch. Full force, landed square, and an ordinary person's skull would deform. He wasn't here for that. He wasn't here for that.
The impact still hit like an iron hammer on steel plate.
A dull, dense crack echoed through the training center.
The hardness of the contact surprised Steve. He looked at Tony, who had not gone down.
Tony's head had snapped to the side. The muscles in his neck had pulled to their limit. The force pushed him back half a step, shoes dragging against the mat with a sharp squeak.
Along the wall, Peter's spider-sense fired without warning. His fist closed on its own.
Pietro's grin stopped moving. The crossed leg he'd had up came down without him noticing.
Even Natasha, who had been leaning against the wall with both arms folded, shifted her weight slightly forward without making it obvious.
"Is it over?" Wanda asked.
"..."
"It's the opposite," Natasha said, and she meant it.
Tony had not gone down.
He turned his head back slowly. The left side of his face was carrying a faint deep red glow. Not on the surface of the skin — from beneath it, as though whatever ran through his blood vessels and muscles was generating heat, the outline of his cheek faintly lit from inside.
Where the strike had landed: no bruising. No swelling. No mark at all.
The red glow pulsed for a few seconds, then faded, as though nothing had happened.
Steve's expression shifted.
He hadn't finished processing it when Tony's fist came for his midsection.
Tony's punch carried the same deep red warmth, like iron pulled fresh from a forge, a wave of heat arriving ahead of the strike itself.
Steve couldn't pull his own hand back in time, but his combat instincts moved faster than his thoughts. His left arm dropped sharply, forearm catching Tony's wrist on the outside, knocking the trajectory a few centimeters wide.
The heat from Tony's fist passed close enough to scorch the fabric of the tactical suit, and the temperature came through the material to raise a fine layer of sweat on the skin beneath.
Tony's right hand missed. He didn't pause.
His left came up immediately, angling from below, a tight uppercut aimed at Steve's jaw.
The angle was well chosen. Tony's training showed in the mechanics of it.
Steve leaned back. Tony's knuckles cleared his jaw by a margin, and in the same motion Steve brought both hands in, gripped Tony's extended left arm, twisted from the hips, and threw him.
A standard judo shoulder throw, cleanly executed.
Tony left the ground, arced through the air, and hit the mat.
The impact was heavy enough to make the floor shudder across the whole room.
"That —" Pietro caught his breath.
"That landed." Peter's voice matched his expression.
Tony was already up.
His back was still venting heat, the deep red glow spreading from the line of his spine outward to his shoulder blades, something churning under the skin.
No broken bones. No dislocated joint. Not even a disrupted breathing rhythm.
"That all you've got?" Tony tilted his head, the insufferable expression fully intact. "I've taken worse falls than that. A lot worse."
Steve said nothing.
But something changed in his eyes.
That throw had been seven tenths of his actual force. A normal person took that and spent thirty seconds on the floor before they could think about standing. An enhanced soldier would need a few seconds and several breaths before getting up.
Tony hadn't stopped for a single second.
This wasn't a question of technique.
This was a straight physical mismatch.
This man... was he also a super-soldier?
A super-soldier whose raw physical conditioning might actually exceed his own?
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