The desert wind carried the stench of cordite as Leon hovered three hundred feet above the smoldering crater. Tony's grip tightened around his brother's forearm – not from fear of falling, but from the vertigo of moral freefall.
"Last chance for a farewell speech," Leon quipped, nodding at the cave that had been Tony's prison. "Your five-star cave suite comes with complimentary demolition service."
Tony's retort died as his gaze locked onto the Stark Industries logo stamped on a half-melted missile casing below. The crimson letters bled into scorched earth like an open wound.
"Burn it all." The words tasted of ash.
Leon's eyes flared.
The ensuing explosion birthed a miniature sun in the Afghan wastes. Shockwaves rippled across dunes, sculpting glass from sand. Eisen watched the mushroom cloud's shadow swallow the horizon, its shape mirroring the darkness behind his eyelids when he blinked.
"Clean slate," Leon declared as embers rained around them. "Now where's my five-star Yelp review?"
Tony remained silent until the military base's radar towers pierced the horizon. "I should've listened." The confession tore free like shrapnel. "When you said to shut down weapons... I thought..."
"Thought I was a naive kid quoting Gandhi between video game sessions?" Leon adjusted his grip as thermals buffeted them. "Relax. Even Buddha needed forty-nine days under the Bodhi tree."
The reference startled a laugh from Tony. "Since when do you study Eastern philosophy?"
"Since I realized sunlight charges more than my cells." Leon's gaze tracked a vulture circling below. "That arc reactor in your chest – it could power cities, not just ego."
The base's perimeter lights winked into view. Leon descended like falling maple seed, depositing them gently as handling antique glassware. A signal flare gun materialized in Tony's hands.
"Wait." Tony's finger whitened around the trigger. "The Mark I blueprints in the cave—"
"Already pulped by your walking nuke of a brother?" Eisen ventured.
"Pulped? Please." Leon's smirk held lightning. "I memorized every weld while dodging bullets. Your 'toys' will be waiting in Malibu – along with a little surprise."
Tony's protest about industrial espionage died as Leon's afterimage faded from their retinas. The sonic boom that followed shook loose a memory – Howard Stark tossing eight-year-old Tony into their pool to "teach buoyancy through practical application."
Eisen squinted at contrails dissecting the dawn. "Won't satellites track that?"
"Track what?" Tony lit the flare with practiced nonchalance. "Some desert mirage that vaguely resembled my idiot brother? I hear heatstroke causes wonderful hallucinations."
As orange smoke spiraled upward, Tony's thumb brushed the shrapnel fragments in his pocket. They hummed with residual heat, or perhaps that was the arc reactor's whisper: Next time. Do better.