Chapter 269: The Birth of the MK Armor
"How can this guy named William Stryker be so evil?"
On the private beach of the Long Island manor in New York, Gwen was having a noon BBQ. While personally skewering meat onto bamboo sticks, she watched the tablet on the table in front of her play the footage of William Stryker's trial, along with lines listing the many crimes he had committed. Her face was filled with anger.
The young high school girl had never imagined that the world could have such a dark side. Or rather, like many students who still lived inside an ivory tower, she had never truly thought about it.
The darkness of human nature was now fully shown to people through the descriptions of Stryker's crimes and the cruel laboratory footage.
Especially when some of the victims were only a few years old.
That sight made the kind-hearted Gwen feel heartbroken.
Puffing up with anger, she skewered the meat with extra force, as if the lamb in her hand were Stryker and she was stabbing him to death herself.
"Exactly. That bad guy deserved to die," Carrie said angrily as she helped Gwen skewer meat beside her.
"Hey, didn't I tell you two not to watch that? Can you even eat after looking at it?"
Not far away, in front of the grill, Matthew, who rarely came out to relax after his hard training, spoke in annoyance while turning the meat roasting over the charcoal fire.
The footage of Terra's public trial had already spread across social media around the world.
And its popularity had exploded.
After all, many things related to Terra were already receiving huge attention. Even the slightest movement could attract countless eyes.
Terra publicly executing Stryker was not only meant as a warning. It was also meant to comfort the mutants and make people feel sympathy toward them.
Mainly because it was too tragic.
Anyone with even a little compassion would naturally sympathize with mutants as a vulnerable group.
Especially when many of the victims were young children—a line no society could ever tolerate being crossed.
Even though the West had its own monsters, and horrors like cannibal islands existed, they were usually kept hidden in the shadows and never exposed to the public. Once they were, they became scandals of enormous proportions—something ordinary people would never tolerate.
Because of years of deliberate propaganda by certain interest groups, mutants had long been feared and hated. But when people saw children being abused, mutilated, and experimented on, that hatred would inevitably give way to outrage.
Matthew used this method to reduce the conflict between ordinary people and mutants as much as possible.
It would help keep Terra internally stable as its population continued to grow in the future.
And clearly, it had worked very well.
Judging from the direction of public opinion on social media, the vast majority now stood on the side of the mutants.
They all expressed that this was a crime against humanity.
At the same time, many began to think further. William Stryker had been a former colonel in the American military, yet he had committed such evil. Then aside from Stryker, were there others in the military who had not been exposed?
Were there more people like Stryker around the world?
Public outrage soon shifted toward demanding that the Terra government search the world for other facilities using mutants as test subjects.
People called on Terra to arrest those guilty of crimes against humanity and execute them publicly.
Some even hoped the Terra Empire would send people to their own countries to track down serial killers, rapists, and other criminals who had never been caught, bring them to justice, and execute them as well.
The movement quickly gained momentum. Across the world, people began posting online about the countless criminals in their own cities whose crimes had never been punished.
That struck fear into certain people.
Many criminals had always believed they were too clever to be caught, convinced the police would never uncover what they had done.
Some had committed crimes and stayed hidden for ten or even several decades.
But if Terra truly investigated, they really believed they might not escape.
After all, Terra truly had a god.
How could mere human intelligence compare to the almighty divine power of a great god?
If they could even kill demons, then finding them would be easy, wouldn't it?
Because of that, those people became terrified. Quite a few were frightened so badly that they lost all sense of what to do and finally chose to turn themselves in.
If they were arrested by their own countries, they might still avoid the death penalty.
Many countries had already abolished the death penalty. With money and lawyers, they could even reduce their sentences by quite a lot.
But if Terra caught them, they would be miserable.
During the public execution, the Inquisition had announced its sentencing standards. As long as someone met that standard, they would all be executed, without the slightest delay.
There was no such thing as legal procedure.
If the evidence was complete, the verdict was passed on the spot, and the execution plan was carried out on the spot.
Human rights? The Terra government did not discuss human rights with serious criminals.
Because those people were not human.
They also announced what kind of treatment the death penalty involved.
Just listen to what the Inquisition's inquisitor said—what did it mean to slow down a person's conscious thoughts? What did it mean to make someone experience a hundred years, a thousand years, or even ten thousand years of loneliness and torment during that period?
Was that something a person could endure?
Many clever netizens had already turned into frame-by-frame analysts after learning about this. They captured Stryker's micro-expressions and eyes in the few fractions of a second before his death.
After detailed enlargement and rendering, they could clearly see the numbness in William Stryker's final expression and the emptiness in his eyes.
Clearly, it matched exactly what the inquisitor had described.
Who would not be afraid?
Just one execution had also warned those who wanted to commit crimes, forcing potential criminals to consider whether they might be caught by Terra.
The probability might not be high.
But who would be willing to gamble?
"Hmph. All the evil people in the world should be sent to the Inquisition for judgment," Gwen said angrily.
She was not joking; she was entirely serious.
Just like many netizens speaking on social media, she now hated those criminals deeply.
If it were only words, many people might calm down and think criminals needed freedom and rights too.
But once they personally saw the cruel crimes those criminals had committed, their anger would be stirred at once.
Gwen was the same. In the past, the person she admired most was her father, George. Under George's influence, she had always believed that legal procedural justice was extremely important. Without it, she believed accidents could easily happen.
Social unrest, and things like that.
But now, she suddenly felt that although procedural justice was important, sentencing standards were too humane and cared too much about human rights and freedom.
"Exactly, exactly."
Carrie continued agreeing with her.
The two girls then started chattering about how many loopholes American law had, while looking at the posts on social media and the vicious crimes described by netizens.
The more they talked, the more they felt that the law needed to be harsher.
Matthew listened while grilling the meat and couldn't help but chuckle softly.
He really had not expected even a girl like Gwen to be influenced so subtly.
It seemed that even if Ghost-Spider truly appeared in the future, she would no longer be the kind of superhero who only knocked enemies down instead of killing them.
While grilling the meat, Matthew raised his brows and suddenly looked in a certain direction, surprise appearing in his eyes.
"That guy actually managed to develop it after all?"
"Looks like sometimes, no matter how much fate changes, the things meant to happen will still happen in the end."
"I just wonder what kind of future you will step toward now—Tony Stark, the man cursed with knowledge."
"Or should I say, Iron Man?"
…
Inside the underground laboratory of a seaside villa in New York, an excited, strange shout echoed.
"Woohoo! It's finally a success!"
"Congratulations, sir. The MK I has been successfully developed and calibrated, but it still requires further checks and testing."
"No, Jarvis. As my late father used to say, practical application is the best method of verification."
"Suit me up."
Inside the remodeled, spacious underground laboratory, Tony left behind the completed progress bar on the holographic projection before him. Excited, he strode toward the suiting area. On both sides of him were powered devices specially designed to help equip the MK armor.
He spread his arms, and the mechanical arms on the devices carried pieces of armor toward him. After finishing calibration with his body, they began installing the pieces onto him one by one.
Once all the bolts connected every part of the armor perfectly, the helmet was placed over his head, sealing him inside completely.
The faceplate lowered into place, and a complete suit of armor emerged.
Its entire body was bright silver metal. Its silhouette was sleek and angular, with rectangular blue-lit eye slits in the helmet. A round, glowing blue Arc Reactor was set at the center of its chest, while the armor plates were covered with fine rivets.
The overall design was full of a simple, sci-fi mechanical feel.
"Jarvis, open the doors. We need to fly."
"Very well, sir. Environmental scan completed. Satellite line of sight connected. No aviation control detected above us for the moment. Do we need to block satellite monitoring?"
"Of course. We can't let those guys catch wind of the MK I."
"Satellite monitoring images have been modified. Ground surveillance cameras will be interfered with and altered."
"You have fifteen minutes of flight time."
"That's plenty."
Under the helmet, the corners of Tony's mouth rose. Flames burst from the ion beam nozzles in his palms and feet, and the powerful thrust slowly lifted him into the air. As his body moved forward, Jarvis adjusted and calibrated his direction.
Tony slightly changed the angle of his hands, and in the next instant, he turned into a silver beam rushing through the underground parking corridor.
He was fast, yet he could turn flexibly within that limited space without crashing.
In the end, he shot straight into the sky.
"Woohoo!"
Tony let out an exhilarating shout.
A silver humanoid armor soared through the sky at high speed.
It also marked the official beginning of an age where superheroes would rise.
However, ten minutes later...
Crash!
The silver MK armor smashed through the ceilings of two floors in the sea-view villa before crashing onto the hood of one of Tony's collectible luxury cars, flattening it completely.
Pfft!
A nearby mechanical arm detected the impact and immediately swung into action. Its preset program activated, spraying the armor sprawled across the crumpled hood with a thick cloud of white suppressant.
It was trying to extinguish any fire before one could even start.
"Ugh..."
Tony's pained groan came from behind the faceplate.
"Jarvis, looks like we still have one small problem to solve."
"Yes, sir. It has already been recorded."
...
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