Mud and a Jerk (Part Two)

"Hello, Mr. Stark. Your uncle often mentioned you to me…"

Stark rolled his eyes and said without any attempt to hide it, "He mentioned you to me often too, Admiral Robert. He said you were an idiot with only half a brain…"

The faces of the uniformed men across from him darkened.

Stark was in a terrible mood. He had just argued with Venom. That ravenous Symbiote wanted to eat people’s brains wherever it went, and it also liked dragging Stark into walls. Stark had just gotten a bump on his head from it, and he was currently cursing the Symbiote out in his mind.

"Please, have a seat." Admiral Robert pointed at a chair.

"No need. What did you call me here for? If you have something to say, say it quickly. If not, I need to get back to my experiments."

The military men seemed completely unable to adapt to Stark’s straightforward style. After all, their usual negotiations involved thirty minutes of pleasantries, another thirty minutes of rambling, thirty minutes of reminiscing about the past and imagining the future, twenty minutes of finding common ground and enjoying each other’s company, and then finally ten minutes of discussing actual business.

Stark had no interest in playing along. It was not that he could not learn to dance around the issue, but he saw no need for it. He did not want to waste another word on these people. In Stark’s words, every sentence he spoke to them was wasting time that humanity could have spent progressing.

In the end, Stark still sat down.

Admiral Robert stubbornly kept to his own pace and began probing Stark again and again.

Stark did not want to deal with him at all. Venom said in his mind, "You seem to really hate him. Then I can eat his head…"

"No. Eating stupid people’s brains lowers your IQ."

"Really?"

"Of course."

"Can’t you hit him?"

"No."

"Why? What about those hard clothes of yours?"

"Hard clothes? You mean my Iron Man suit?"

"I want to wear that too."

"You need clothes?"

"It looks interesting."

"No, you can’t. You don’t know how to operate it. You’ll break my suit."

"I can operate it. Trust me."

At that moment, Stark heard Admiral Robert say, "We are very sincere about cooperating. I heard that one of your friends has recently been troubled by a similar situation, just like Obadiah. I deeply sympathize with what happened to my old friend. As it happens, the military has obtained a drug that can stimulate the nerves comprehensively and awaken brain activity."

"Experiments have proven that it works exceptionally well on patients in comas. It can restore consciousness to their brains and allow them to regain control of their bodies."

Stark raised an eyebrow. "So you people do handle some real business after all."

A lieutenant general walked in and saluted. Then two researchers carried over a box and placed it on the table. When the lid was opened, white mist drifted out, and a syringe sat in the center of the box.

Stark did not know much about medicine or pharmacology. Just as he leaned closer to inspect the syringe, Venom suddenly became excited in his mind. "This is delicious!! Kill him and take it! It’s delicious! It’s good for you! Good for me too!"

Stark frowned. "What exactly are you basing that conclusion on?"

"My genes told me!!"

"Are your genes really reliable?"

Stark could feel Venom growing more and more agitated, even somewhat deranged. When General Robert saw Stark shudder, he said, "I know Stark is in a difficult situation right now. We would be happy to help you, for your uncle’s sake…"

"We would even provide this drug free of charge. The military is very interested in the Nano-Armor you developed. Of course, we are not asking for those armors. Our cooperation with the Osborn Group has been going very smoothly, and biological armor is also a promising direction…"

"However, nanotechnology can give us the upper hand in information warfare and intelligence warfare. You understand, we cannot afford to lose to others on those two battlefields. This is also for the safety of more soldiers. If intelligence were more accurate, fewer people would have to die…"

Robert spoke with apparent emotion. "I know Stark Industries is not what those reporters make it out to be. I know young Stark is just like his father. You are both heroes who care deeply about ordinary people…"

"Looking at it from another angle, cooperating with the military can also save more soldiers’ lives. After all…"

Just then, Robert noticed Stark trembling. He thought he had successfully broken through the genius’s psychological defenses and was about to press his advantage when he suddenly saw a strand of black Slime crawl up Stark’s neck.

Then, in an instant, a huge black monster with sharp fangs appeared in his field of vision.

Venom swallowed Admiral Robert’s head in one bite, grabbed the box containing the drug, and smashed straight through the window.

No one had expected such a turn of events. One second, Stark had been sitting there perfectly fine. The next, a mass of Slime had covered his entire body, turning him into a black monster nearly three meters tall.

The black monster had a long crimson tongue and a mouth full of sharp fangs. It bit off an admiral’s head in one bite and stole the drug.

Everyone else descended into chaos, but several helicopters quickly caught up with Venom’s fleeing figure.

Venom leaped rapidly across rooftops. Even the helicopters’ Burst Fire could barely hit him.

When he reached an open area on the outskirts of the city, Venom stopped and directly hurled a boulder at one of the helicopters. The unlucky aircraft was struck in the rotor, began smoking, and crashed down.

The other helicopter had also run out of ammunition. It could only hover at a distance, not daring to approach.

Before long, the Armament Department arrived on the scene. Venom and Stark’s struggle for control of the body had slowed their escape, while Stark desperately used his willpower to suppress the overexcited Venom.

At last, Venom regained some clarity and returned to Stark’s body. Stark turned back into an ordinary man, but what faced him was layer upon layer of armed troops.

Seeing Stark revert to normal, their commander did not let down his guard. Several unusually equipped soldiers stepped forward.

Stark saw that they were wearing armor, but it had been built using the technology Stark had previously provided to the military. It looked somewhat old-fashioned and outdated.

As for Stark, he simply took out a cigarette, and a brand-new, beautiful suit of armor equipped itself onto his body. With no small amount of smugness, he made a taunting gesture and said, "These outdated relics you stole from me should be taken back for your grandpas to wear! They’re probably a little more useful than canes, right?"

Around a dozen armored soldiers stepped forward. The leader glanced around, raised an arm, and said, "Suit!"

Stark then saw a gelatinous membrane spread from the bottom layer of the armor, instantly covering its outer surface before sealing the gaps. The entire armor became a seamless green biological suit.

Stark exploded with rage.

"How dare you use Osborn’s stupid method to insult my work!!!!"

Stark had never felt so furious. Even when the military had used public opinion to smear him before coming out to play the good guys, he had not been this angry.

At the end of the day, what Stark was proudest of were the inventions created by his genius mind. Yet these military men had actually taken his armor and handed it over to the Osborn Group for modifications!

They had even used a lump of sticky glue to turn his armor into an incomparably ugly biological suit!!

Stark was truly about to explode with anger.

He took a deep breath and asked in his mind, "Can you really operate armor?"

"Definitely much better than they can."

"All right then…"

Stark extended the arm covered in metal armor and said, "Suit!"

In an instant, black Slime covered his entire body.

Unlike the gelatinous substance that looked sticky and soft, the black Slime was like a powerful Web, wrapping around every part of the suit.

Yet the Nano-Armor was not covered by the Slime. Instead, it was methodically dismantled by it, reshaped, and layered over the black monster’s body.

Venom had already been nearly three meters tall. Now, he had completely transformed into an iron monster more than four meters tall.

It was a monster covered from head to toe in jet-black armor. Venom seemed to have inherited Stark’s aesthetic sense. His body was no longer uneven Slime tissue, but sleek black plating with flowing lines.

His head was no longer a huge mouth filled with sharp fangs. It had become a Helmet with two pairs of spikes on either side, a diamond-shaped steel visor in the center, and a mask completely covering the lower half of his face.

It had to be said, the armor looked incredibly cool. It had roughly Venom’s original build but was taller and larger. Spikes made from metal entwined in black Slime protruded from its shoulders, legs, and wrists. The mask resembled a gas mask, carrying a terrifying beauty and a savage charm somewhere between metal and punk.

More importantly, the one controlling this armor was a Symbiote connected to Stark’s mind. That meant Stark no longer needed to operate it himself. The armor could move as naturally as his own limbs.

Stark shook his arm. The sensation was simply wonderful. He could even clearly feel every outer component exposed to the air. For an armor fanatic, there could be no better feeling.

He was the suit, and the suit was him.

"All right," Stark said. "I’ll show you what a real biological battle suit looks like!"

The moment he finished speaking, he jumped straight up from where he stood. With a BANG, he crashed down beside the biological armor soldiers and smashed one of them in the head with a punch.

The biological armor soldier flew backward, and Stark shook his fist in surprise.

He did not know how to fight. In the past, he had always relied on Jarvis’s intelligent calculations in battle. But now, he actually felt like he was personally beating the enemy senseless with his own fists. It had to be said, that feeling was pretty great too.

The massive black armor turned and threw another uppercut. The biological armor soldier, only a little over two meters tall, looked like a chick before this giant and was sent flying with a single blow.

Those biological armors had originally been made to counter Stark’s Iron Man suit, not to deal with a biological armor monster more than four meters tall.

The biological Slime installed on their armor to restrict Stark’s movements, the echo fields used to track the flight paths of Iron Man suits, and the modified biological gel joints meant to improve mobility were now all useless. The Venom suit did not care about any of it. Slime spray? It tore right through it. Echo fields? Completely useless. Flexible gel joints? One punch and they all fell apart.

The Venom suit’s fighting style was completely different from Stark’s. To put it bluntly, the Symbiote fought by wildly swinging its fists. But its outrageously powerful physique and rapid Self-Healing gave it every advantage in a brawl like this.

Before long, Stark had beaten the entire group of biological armor soldiers to the ground.

However, the military’s heavy weapons soon entered the field. The Venom suit leaped onto a nearby skyscraper and continued sprinting away at full speed.

After shaking off all pursuers, Venom instantly retracted into Stark’s body. The Nano-Armor returned to Stark, and he looked down at his two completely uninjured arms and the still pristine armor metal covering them. He said:

"Not bad. Thank you, mud."

"You’re welcome, jerk."

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