Tony Stark wore one of the T-shirts over a tailored long-sleeved shirt. He stepped up to a microphone at the front of the crowd.

"I'd like to thank you all for coming out today, and those of you who work for me for stepping away from your work to come join us. As you know, Stark Enterprises has recently had some tough times."

The crowd quieted down a little bit as the Stark CleanJet disaster entered their minds.

"But we are still going strong, thanks to the dedicated employees and to our business associates, who never lost faith in us. Our new PDA unit, the Stark Handprint, has hit the market, and is overtaking the units that are already out there. It's our most successful consumer product to date, and that's due in great part to your efforts. That's why we're having this celebration today."

Stark cleared his throat.

"Now, before we get down to partying, I'm going to talk about some of the things that Stark Enterprises is aiming for in this new fiscal year that's starting soon."

Stark barely got the words out of his mouth before a thunderous earth tremor rocked the plaza in which he was speaking.

"Earthquake!" someone screamed.

"Don't panic, everyone!" Stark shouted. "This is California, remember? This stuff happens all the time. Let's hold on a moment...if there's another tremor, we'll go to our emergency earthquake stations."

Security guards seemed to materialize from within the crowd and got ready to start moving people at Stark's word.

The crowd stood still, waiting for the next tremor to come. The festive mood had instantly been replaced by one of fear.

Suddenly, there was a crackling noise as the pine trees around the courtyard began to catch fire.

One after the other, the proud, tall trees began to light up, then to crackle with flame. The speech attendees started to panic, as they realized they would soon be pinned in by fire.

Stark tried to calm the crowd. "Okay, everyone, please don't panic." He quickly dialed a four-digit number on his portable cell-phone-watch and called the on-site fire department to come put the trees out.

"Security, I want you to lead our guests out of the courtyard slowly and into the buildings. Everyone please proceed calmly and everything should go all right."

Stark was beside himself. Two natural disasters at once?

As more trees caught fire, Stark Enterprises' fire department arrived, and began to attempt to put them out. Stark remained at the front of the courtyard, making sure that the speechgoers were ushered into the safety of nearby buildings quickly.

One of the firemen let go of the hose he was holding and looked off away from the fire.

"What's going on, Steve?" another one of the firemen asked. "We gotta put this fire out before it spreads to the bushes and the hills!"

"I know. It's just, like, I hear somethin... like water rushing..."

"It's the fire hoses, dummy! Now get back to work and do your part holding up that hose."

But water was indeed rushing toward them, and not from the firehoses. A 10-foot wave suddenly began rushing into the courtyard from out of nowhere, sweeping the firemen and some stray bystanders away. Some unlucky souls got smashed into the sides of a building in the courtyard by an unforgiving wave.

Stark knew this was no natural occurrence, and he was determined to find out who was behind it.

"All right, whoever is doing this, come out and show yourself!" he shouted over the microphone. "Leave these innocent people alone!"

At that moment, four threatening figures emerged from near the courtyard with the noonday sun behind them. Another one hung behind, letting the others step forward.

As the four walked into the courtyard, their evil visages passed into view. One wore a black T-shirt that clung to a muscular chest, and his hands seemed made of pure water. Another was a beautiful and musclebound woman with an outfit that had a seismograph on it. One wore a medieval green costume with a hoot and carried a strange stone in his hand. One wore a containment suit with two oxygen packs on his back, and little jets of flame leapt from the two flamethrowers he carried. Tony could not get a good look at the fifth villain, but he had a feeling that the others were holding him in reserve, in case they needed to even the odds out quickly.

"Come with us now, Stark, or we're going to start attacking the people directly," the woman said.

"No one threatens my workers," Stark replied angrily. He rolled up the sleeves of the dress shirt that sat under his T-shirt.

"Suit yourself," the woman sneered. Energy seemed to crackle around her as she struck the ground with a mighty fist. A rift opened up in the earth quickly, and Stark almost fell into it. The rift in the earth had stopped just in front of one of the buildings in the courtyard. If it had gone any farther, it would have rocked the foundation of the building.

Tony Stark took advantage of the distracted gloating of the villains to speak quickly into his watch. "Guardian angel to the courtyard," he said.

The villains closed in. The medievally-garbed villain picked up his magic stone and shot a ray from it that turned a tree next to Stark into pure lead. The tree instantly tipped over, and Stark jumped out of the way just in time.

"Never doubt the power of Dr. Alchemy!" the villain shouted. "Now to turn you into aluminum, so we can roll you up and take you away!"

A repulsor ray smacked Dr. Alchemy to the ground as Iron Man roared out of the bushes and into the air near the group of villains.

"Stark's bodyguard!" shouted Hydro-Man.

"He had to show up sometime," Arclight responded. "Somebody pick up Dr. Alchemy and put him back in the stealth-jet--we don't want him questioned, even though he's a doofus."

Hydro-Man grabbed the unconscious villain and instantly teleported away.

Iron Man used his aerial advantage against the group. He zoomed through the air toward them, strafing the ground where they stood.

A repulsor ray from Iron Man's gauntlet knocked Firebug to the ground.

"That's two of us down!" Arclight said to herself. "It's time for us to bring out our ace in the hole."

Arclight waved to the containment-suited figure who had not fought yet. He walked over to where the battle was taking place.

Slowly, he took the orange metal gauntlets which kept radiation from leaking from his body off. He raised his crackling hands up, and clapped them together. A mighty beam of visible radiation burst forth. It hit Iron Man square in the middle of his armor.

Iron Man's armor struggled to deal with the radiation blast. His external shields automatically shifted their energy to drain off the effects of the radiation blast. This was hard work for the armor, however, and Iron Man had to land in the courtyard to allow his armor a moment to recharge itself.

Tony Stark was busy coordinating the building of a makeshift dam to hold back some of the flood that had been created by Hydro Man when he saw Iron Man land, drained of his power.

"This is not good," he muttered.

Hydro-Man teleported back into battle and joined Arclight. The villains walked over to where Stark was. He ordered his security forces to stop working and to take cover.

The containment-suited villain walked over to where Iron Man was recharging to gloat at his impending victory over the Golden Avenger.

"I'm Neutron, Iron Man," he said. "And I'm going to kill you."

Iron Man said nothing, and weakly raised his hand to fire his repulsor ray.

Neutron punched him full in the chestplate, sending a surge of radiation energy across Iron Man's armor. Iron Man fell to the ground, although his armor was working hard to absorb the power from the impact of Neutron's fist.

"I thought you would have had something smart to say back to me, hero. Well, that's fine with me. Just lay there and die."

Neutron started to walk over toward where the other villains were.

Tony Stark realized that the villains had won the day. The courtyard was pretty well evacuated by now, even though smoke still rose from the scorched pine trees.

He reached for a holdout pistol he had stored in the sole of his shoe when Hydro-Man fired a flume of water at the ground right next to him.

"Your bodyguard's toast, Stark," Hydro-Man sneered. "Now come along quietly."

Tony Stark walked toward the villains, who roughly grabbed him by the shoulders. They instantly teleported away.

When they reappeared, it was in an empty wheatfield not far from Stark Enterprises. Neutron carried the prone form of Firebug up the stealth-jet's boarding ramp. Arclight strapped herself into the pilot's seat and warmed up the craft's engines. In a matter of moments, the stealth-jet took off into the air.

"Looks like your bodyguard couldn't save you after all, huh, Stark?" Hydro-Man chuckled mockingly.

Tony Stark said nothing, but knew that he had fooled the villains with his robotic Iron Man armor. If he ever got out of this mess, he thought, he would have to program the armor to have more of a personality.

Oddly, the villains had not bothered to restrain him, beyond Arclight keeping the point of a nasty-looking pistol with a silencer pointed at his chest.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked her.

"Like we would tell you. Hydro-Man, did you search Mr. Stark here for any weapons, computers...anything?"

"Already did. He's got nothing on him. I kept his Rolodex and the PDA he had in his coat pocket. That PDA is nifty, Mr. Stark. Too bad you probably ain't going to live long enough to make any money off it!"

"Shut up, Hydro-Man," Arclight said. "Give his PDA to me. The boss might want some of the information on it."

"Who's the boss?" asked Stark, trying to be sneaky even with a gun pointed at him.

"Again, like we would tell you now! You'll see soon enough," Arclight sneered as she steered the craft into the sky.

"Hmm....this is a setback. I want Stark taken care of, but if he's killed, he'll just be a martyr and a symbol for his company to gain strength...if he dies, he'll be an industrial legend...and I'll never know the joy of having beaten him."

Luthor picked up his phone. "Tess, get a message to Tiresias to find out whatever he can about a hit on Tony Stark. Promise him a little more than the usual sum...that should get us some answers soon."

Luthor scratched his chin and then went back to his contemplation.

But his muscular aspect did not properly display how intelligent he was. All alone, he could monitor the readouts of 10 monitors, and, if questioned, could tell you the exact details of the reports on each of them.

The figure scratched his goatee as he stopped to examine one of the monitors.

"Still no Tony," the figure muttered to himself. "He never skips talking to me on Monday nights. Either he's got another chick, or something's wrong."

The figure's strong hands moved skillful fingers over a keyboard to query a Global Positioning System about Stark's whereabouts.

"Hope ya don't mind your old partner peekin' in on ya," the figure chuckled. "It isn't like Oracle has anything else to do with himself on a Monday night..."

Once they were inside the building, the group were greeted by a group of armed guards and a slim man in a red dress suit and red sunglasses. Tony could sense the man's high intelligence even in the measured way he took his steps. When the red-suited man stepped near Tony, he could feel his mind buzzing, as if it were being probed. Clearly this man was a telepath or something, and was trying to read Stark's mind.

"Greetings, Stark. I am Mentallo, and I have need of your skills."

"What would you need with me?" Stark asked. "Why did you attack my company's headquarters?"

"To get your attention, and to show you a lesson in humility. Notice, however, that I had my henchmen let you live. You work for me now."

Stark chuckled snidely. "I don't remember sending you a resumé."

"Well you will work for me now," Mentallo ordered, and the order seemed to be pushed into Stark's mind. "You designed the Iron Man armor, and now I'm going to have you design one for me, that's better than your previous ones. Now come along, Stark."

Mentallo gestured to his guards and they roughly marched Stark down the hallway. Stark's head hurt from Mentallo's mental intrusions. He had fought all manner of technological villains as Iron Man, but few with this kind of mental power.

"Take him to the machine shop I've set up for him," Mentallo shouted down the hallway. "And tell him to get busy...he has a lot of work to do!"