As it turns out, Tony does have another bad idea.

The Stark Industries car that was built to race in the Grand Prix sits on the track. The race is being broadcasted live, the footage appearing on the screen back at the hotel. Upstairs, the TV in Grace's room is playing it as she draws a picture of Happy, who's sitting in the room with her.

Meanwhile, Tony has on a Stark racing suit as he pushes through a small crowd of cameras and reporters. There isn't a single mention of his daughter — only the race, and a little bit of the Expo. Tony smiles and jumps over the low barrier between the audience and the side of the track where all the cars are parked.

The cameras are on him, the footage appears on the TV. Grace drops her picture in surprise and watches intently, saying nothing. Happy looks up when he hears Tony's voice through the speakers: "Well, what's the use of having and owning a race car if you don't drive it?"

"Is he driving?" Grace asks, not taking her eyes off the screen.

Happy sighs. "I think he is."

"Is he going to get hurt?"

"Probably."

"He's not very smart sometimes, is he?"

"No, kid, he's not."

Then, Pepper, waiting for Tony at an empty table downstairs, sees him on the TV, too. She sees the original driver throw his helmet down and walk off in a rage. Her heart drops into her stomach, and then her stomach drops into the floor. "Natalie. Natalie!"

Natalie runs over, a covered plate and silverware in her hand. "Yes, Ms. Potts?"

"Did you know about this?"

She looks at the TV, then suddenly sounds concerned and stressed. "This is the first that I've known of it."

"This... This cannot happen," Pepper says, watching as they change the original driver's name to Stark on the screen.

"Absolutely, I understand, how can I help you?"

"Where's Happy?"

"Upstairs."

Almost on cue, Pepper's phone rings with a call from him. She looks at Natalie. "Switch with him. Quickly." She answers Happy.

Grace watches as Tony puts his helmet on and climbs in the race car. She barely listens as Happy talks with Pepper on the phone.

Then, Natalie walks in, holding the covered plate, and Happy leaves. Natalie sets the plate and silverware on the table, then sees what's on the TV and grabs the remote. "Maybe we should-"

"No," Grace says. "Leave it on."

Tony, like the other racers, revs his engine. The countdown begins, then ends almost just as quickly. All of the cars take off, shooting out of the starting line. Grace follows Tony's car, never taking her eyes off it.

Everything seems to be going fine for a while, though there's an underlying feeling of unease.

Then, a man seemingly from someone's pit crew calmly walks onto the track. The cameras are on him in an instant. Grace keeps her eyes on the screen. "Natalie, who is that?"

She sounds worried when she replies. "I don't know."

The man takes his helmet off. The announcer is talking frantically, but not in English. Everyone downstairs is looking at the TV, including Pepper.

The man opens the orange jumpsuit he's wearing, revealing a chest piece that looks like a black version of Iron Man's, an arc reactor in the center. He pulls out electrified whips as his the top of his jumpsuit literally burns off of him. Grace's heart stops, and, downstairs, so does Pepper's.

The chest plate is wrapped around the man at his shoulders, elbows, forearms, and wrists, and it connects in the back. All this time, he's been walking down the track, toward the speeding cars. A red one races towards him, and he hits it with one of his whips. There's an awful, shocking sound as the car is cut clean through where it was hit, and it flips.

Grace feels like she's going to puke, despite the fact that she hasn't even eaten yet. Natalie sits down next to her and gingerly puts an arm around her.

Pepper, meanwhile, spots Happy near the exit with the suitcase containing the Iron Man suit. They run outside and jump in the car.

"Go, go!" Pepper shouts from the backseat.

Happy punches the gas, neither of them bothering with seatbelts. The tires squeal on the pavement as Happy drives straight toward a yellow barrier meant to block the public from the Grand Prix track. "Hang on!" Happy says. He drives straight through it.

They turn onto the track, going in the opposite direction of the race cars. Happy has to swerve to avoid them. The cameras turn onto the car, and Grace and Natalie watch, recognizing it immediately.

The crowd begins to evacuate, the cars still flying around the track. They don't know what's happened yet.

Then, Tony's car approaches the man.

"No, no, no, no, no," Grace repeats under her breath, watching as the man hits the car and sends it flying. It lands upside down. She sees no movement from inside it. The camera switches again to Happy and Pepper, preventing her from knowing what's happening to her father. "No!" she shouts.

Natalie goes to get up to turn the channel, not wanting Grace to see whatever's about to happen, but Grace grabs her arm and pulls her back. She watches Happy and Pepper flying down the racetrack in the wrong direction.

In the car, there's more panic.

"Give me the case!" Pepper says, leaning forward.

Happy hands it back to her with one hand. "Here, take it!"

"Where's the key?!"

"It's in my pocket!"

Happy turns a little, trying to get it, but then Pepper shouts, "Car!"

He swerves, narrowly missing a yellow race car. It nearly gives Grace a heart attack watching it.

The camera switches back onto the man, who's just standing there as people scream and put out the fires he's caused. He lops off the front of the Stark race car, looking for Tony.

Grace doesn't know whether to feel panicked or relieved when she sees her father sneaking up behind the man, holding a large sheet of metal. He swings and hits the man in the back of the head. The man just turns, using one of his whips to knock the metal out of Tony's hand.

Tony falls to the ground. The man swings the whips at him, but he dodges. Each time, Grace cringes. 

Tony gets up and starts to run, but the man swings his whip and Tony crashes into an overturned car, hitting his head on it. He falls over, and the man just slowly walks towards him, holding the whips. He looks as if he's already won.

He cracks the whips against the ground. Tony doesn't move. Not until the last second, when he quickly gets out of the way and lets the man hit the car. It explodes, erupting in fire.

"Dad!" Grace shouts, knowing he can't hear her. She can't see him anymore. Then, she spots a figure patting his arm, which is on fire. It's Tony.

The man starts coming at him again, so Tony jumps up to climb the fence blocking the audience from the main track. However, a car comes racing in — Happy and Pepper — and hits the man, driving him straight into the fence. He slumps onto the hood of the car.

"Are you okay?!" Happy shouts.

"Yeah," Tony replies, walking around to the open driver's side window. Pepper's gasping in shock in the back of the car. "So, were you aiming for me or him? 'Cause I couldn't tell."

"I was trying to scare him!"

Pepper looks at Tony through the open window in the back. "Are you out of your mind?!"

"Better security!" Tony replies.

"Get in the car-!"

"I was attacked-!"

"Right now!"

"Get in the car!" Happy shouts. He gets ignored.

"You're the CEO!" Tony continues, walking around the back of the car. "Better security measures! This is embarrassing!" Tony opens the back door, muttering, "First vacation in two years-"

He's cut off by the man getting up and cutting the door in half with his whip. Grace, still watching it all unfold, jumps.

Pepper screams while Happy puts the car in reverse, then drives into the man again. "I got him!"

"Hit him again, hit him again!" Tony shouts frantically.

Pepper pulls the case up, trying to hand it to Tony as what's left of the door opens and closes between them. "Take the case, take the case!"

"Give him the case!" Happy yells. The man's chest piece and whips are sparking as Happy hits him over and over again.

"Stop banging the car!" Pepper yells back.

The air bag deploys, hitting Happy in the face and giving the man a chance to swing down his whip and slice the entire car in half. Grace's breath catches, and so does Natalie's, but she hides it well.

Pepper screams as the man swings the whips down again, absolutely destroying the car while also missing Pepper and Happy. Tony runs around to the other side. "Give me the case! Come on!"

Pepper tosses it out of the newly-made hole in the car, and it lands at Tony's feet. As it turns into the Iron Man suit and Tony puts it on, Grace starts to feel a little relieved.

The people still in the crowd cheer, watching the suit lock into place. The helmet comes up and covers Tony's head.

He kicks the remains of the car out of the way and turns to the man, who steps forward and swings at Tony. It hits the suit, preventing him from getting off a blast. When he finally does, though, the man swings his whips and they absorb it.

The man wraps one whip around Tony's arm, then the other around his neck. Any relief Grace felt is now washed away, and she gets up and walks over to the TV, reaching up to touch the screen without thinking. Tears are falling down her face as she watches the man fling her father from side to side and force him to his knees. The electricity causes the suit to spark. 

Tony looks up, wrapping his arm around around the whip holding him. He pulls himself toward the man and punches him in the face, then flips him over using his own whips. He wastes no time in walking over and ripping the arc reactor right out of the man's suit, rendering it and the whips powerless.

Police rush over and grab the man, lifting him. He spits at Tony, laughing as he's dragged away. "You... You lose. You lose, Stark."

Grace, hearing none of that, sinks to the floor and begins crying in relief as Natalie hugs her.

Downstairs, Justin Hammer smiles.

~~~~

Tony destroyed the man's arc reactor at the scene, and he took what was left with him.

Now, he's in a French prison, where the man who attacked him is being held. The officer walking with him tells Tony that they ran his prints, but nothing came back.

Tony asks for five minutes alone with him, and he's lead into a large, mostly empty room. The man sits in it on a bench, handcuffed. His back is to Tony, but he doesn't look at him.

Tony says, "Pretty decent tech. Cycles per second were a little low." He walks around him, looking at his face. "You could have doubled up your rotations." He walks toward him. "You focused the repulsor energy through ionised plasma channels. It's effective. Not very efficient. But it's a passable knock-off." He sits down on the bench, a few feet away. "I don't get it. A little fine tuning, you could have made a solid pay check. You could have sold it to North Korea, China, Iran, or gone onto the black market. You look like you got friends in low places."

The man looks over at him. He has an accent — Russian. "You come from a family of thieves and butchers. And now, like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your own history. And you forget all the lives the Stark family has destroyed, and you continue to grow it. You just couldn't help yourself, could you?"

Tony pauses for only a moment, then redirects the conversation. "Speaking of thieves, where did you get this design?"

"My father," the man says. "Anton Vanko."

"Well, I never heard of him."

"My father is the reason you're alive."

"The reason I'm alive is 'cause you had a shot, you took it, and you missed."

The man almost seems amused. "Did I? If you can make God bleed, the people will cease to believe in Him. And there will be blood in the water. And the sharks will come. The truth, all I have to do is sit here and watch as the world will consume you."

"Where will you be watching the world consume me from?" Tony asks, hardly concerned. "That's right. A prison cell." He stands to go. "I'll send you a postcard."

"Hey, Tony," the man says. "Before you go: Palladium in the chest, painful way to die... But I'd imagine the thought of Grace growing up without her father is even more painful."

"Shut up," Tony says. He knows he should just walk away, he knows the man probably knew her name based off what the media has said. But he can't help it.

"What is she now?" the man asks. "Eight?"

"Shut up." How does he know that?

He chuckles. "It seems I've hit a nerve."

Tony has his hand on the door handle. "I would tell you that if you hurt a single hair on my little girl's head, I would kill you in the most slow, painful way imaginable, but I don't need to. Because you can't. Prison cell, remember?"

He leaves the cell before the man can say anything else, bile rising in his throat.