"Hello, Stark. No, don't bother to greet me. Your mind is an open book to me." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Your work is proceeding well..."

"Yes, it is, Mentallo. What else did you expect?"

Mentallo grinned slyly. "Some vain attempt from you to sabotage your work in hopes of fooling me and somehow escaping from here. Yes...the desire to do that runs deep in you."

"Get out of my mind!"

"That's no way to treat your employer, Stark. But then, you aren't really used to working for anyone else, are you?"

Stark glared at him.

"Yes...you're so used to being the boss, that taking orders from someone else grates on you. Remember, I can read your mind."

"I know." Stark went back to his work, trying to clear angry thoughts from his mind.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in, Tess." Lex Luthor managed his best try at an accommodating smile. "Again, I'm sorry to keep you here late, but there's the possibility that I might need something, and you have enough things to work on to keep you busy.. ."

"You have a message from Tiresias, sir."

"What does it say?"

"He knows where Tony Stark is."

And then an e-mail arrived.

It was from a representative of Los Vengadores, a Latin-American super-team whose territory covered Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. An undercover agent of theirs posing as a supervillain had been hired by a mysterious benefactor and was working for him in the deserts of Mexico. As a reward for his employees' work, the benefactor was holding a massive gladiatorial spectacle later that week in an abandoned bullring. The main attraction was to be the killing of a rich, weak American industrialist.

The undercover agent had reported that there were many supervillains and other criminals present already at the bullring, including the ones that had initially captured Stark.

Over the course of a number of e-mails, the representative of the Vengadores said that they would try to rescue the industrialist, along with bringing in as many of the criminals as they could, including the ringleader of the entire operation.

The Iron Master armor was tall, golden, and bristling with weaponry. Stark had made it look more threatening than even his latest Iron Man armor. Its firepower was close to that of his current suit.

The door to his workplace slid open again, and in strode Mentallo with a couple of armed guards.

"I see that you have completed my armor, Iron Man. It is most impressive," he remarked. "Now, I have another task for you."

Stark was crestfallen. He had done all that work, just to have to do more?

"You will build another suit for yourself, to do battle with me. Don't waste any time, though. You have three days." With that, his guards took the Iron Master suit away, leaving Stark with a room full of fewer parts than he had started out with.

Three days.

"Thank you, Tess." Luthor took the paper and went back to watching a live satellite picture of the bullring at Piedra Seca. Luthor had made contact with an agent working for him down there, the Plantman. Plantman had given Luthor's satellites his geographical coordinates so they could beam a live picture of the goings-on back to Luthor's office in New York.

"Remember, Plantman, you'll remove yourself from the bullring when the time comes," Luthor reminded his agent.

"Exactly, Luthor. Plantman out."

Now things were more under Luthor's control. Luthor watched the bullring spectacle with a little envy at the large crowd his rival's imminent death had gathered.

"Our plan has proceeded excellently, Mentallo. Stark thinks it will be you he will be fighting, when in actuality it will be me!"

"Yes, sir. He'll never know who really killed him."

"Maybe I'll tell him right before I draw the last bit of life out of him," the grey-haired man said. "Maybe I'll tell him that he's being killed by... Justin Hammer!"

Hammer let out an evil chuckle and went off into another room to put on the Iron Master armor.

Stark thought that the bullring he was being marched through must have been one that the Spanish had abandoned, along with the rest of Piedra Seca, after the Mexicans drove them out.

As he entered the main bullring, Stark saw that the stadium had been refurbished just enough to comfortably hold the crowd of supervillains and other malcontents that were present.

He took a moment to look up into the jeering crowd, to see if there was anyone there that he recognized. In a box seat he could see some of the villains who had captured him: Arclight, Neutron, and Hydro-Man were there. Near them were Gizmo, Blizzard, and Man-Ape, villains he had fought when he and Batman assaulted Hammer Island. Either Hammer was involved in this somehow, or this was the most popular supervillain event in a long time.

His attention was jarred by the announcement that the combat was about to begin. A gate opened, and Firebug came out. The villain's fiery blasts had done a lot of damage to the Stark facility in Sunnyvale. Stark was almost glad to be fighting Firebug; maybe he would make him pay a little bit for the damage he had done.

Up in the stands, a man in a blue-and-orange leather suit did his best to jeer Stark along with the other super-villains, mercenaries, and common criminals gathered in the stands. He was the Bushmaster, and he felt sorry for the industrialist, who was sure to have no chance against Firebug. He fought the urge to charge down through the crowd and save Stark. That would blow his cover, and he would be failing both his team and his secret employer. So he sat back and jeered at Stark, along with the others, and waited.

Firebug came forward threateningly, waving his two fire-nozzles in the air. Stark cautiously allowed him to approach.

"I'm going to roast you alive, Stark! I didn't get to do it before, but now I'm going to turn that suit into a broiler!"

Stark knew he had to not act like Iron Man, and instantly stop the braggart. He had to act unfamiliar with his suit, to prevent suspicion.

Stark paced back, trying to make it look like he was scared of Firebug. A roar of laughter came up from the unsympathetic crowd. Thousands of miles away, Luthor stood close to his monitors. "He's toast. That must be why Iron Man wears the armors and Stark designs them." Luthor scratched his chin and watched his satellite feed intently.

Stark paced around, waiting for Firebug to get closer. It still seemed like he was avoiding the villain, but he was really waiting for Firebug to get closer.

Firebug got close enough. Stark pulled a specially-designed pistol from his holster and fired two energy bolts, one at each of the cables connecting Firebug's oxygen tanks to his suit. The tanks came loose and fell to the sandy ground, and the fire in Firebug's nozzles went out.

"Hey!" the villain shouted as he ran to grab the tanks.

Stark set his repulsors to a forceful stun setting and let Firebug have it. The villain crumpled in the corner of the arena.

The crowd booed Stark and threw trash at him. He didn't respond; he just wanted to get to fighting Iron Master.

Tony Stark had bested his first opponent in combat. Now he had to fight someone even more deadly than Firebug. Oracle hoped that his former employer and friend would survive, and hoped that Los Vengadores would make their move soon.

"I am the Slasher, Stark! Anything to say before I rip you to shreds?"

Tony didn't have to pretend to be a little afraid this time. The Slasher was deadly, and fast, faster than someone made of glass should be. The Slasher attacked him, and a quick thrust from him nearly sliced Stark in two.

To keep up the charade of not knowing how to use his armor, Tony deliberately did something stupid. He fired a repulsor ray straight at the Slasher, albeit a low-powered on. The ray bounced off the Slasher, and zoomed right back toward Stark, who made sure that it just barely missed him. The crowd roared with laughter at his seeming lack of skill.

"Thought you would be smarter than that, Stark, being a scientist and all. Rays made of light can't hurt someone who's mostly glass!" The Slasher chuckled.

Tony wished that he had his full Iron Man suit, because then he could have hit Slasher with a sonic blast and taken him apart. He had a bit of magnetic power in the suit, which he could use against the Slasher, if his costume was metal-based.

The Slasher attacked again and slashed through part of Tony Stark's armor, almost down through the last protective layer. Tony Stark used the suit's strength to push the Slasher away. He knew that using a reverse magnetic field was the only way out.

Stark paced in the dry dust and waited for the Slasher to come at him again. When the villain inevitably did so, Stark let loose with an anti-polarity blast. This shoved the Slasher away from him, into the arena wall. Pieces of glass-like metal were scattered everywhere, and the Slasher was dazed from the impact. Stark knew he had to press the advantage. He pushed again magnetically and shoved the Slasher away again, and again, until he was pounding a hole in the wall with the villain. The Slasher was almost unconscious when he extended his hand in a plea for mercy.

"Don't worry, Slasher. I'm not a killer, unlike you."

The crowd booed, but Stark held his composure. The Slasher was dragged from the arena by some armed guards.

Stark took a moment to look over what remained of his battlesuit. His armor was almost in ribbons from the battles with the Slasher and Firebug. The announcer heralded the main event, and a gate that had been used to let bulls into the auditorium opened up. A towering, gleaming figure emerged slowly into the midday sun.

The Iron Master looked even more awesome when it was in motion, and Stark knew that Mentallo was in the suit, waiting to test its effectiveness on Stark. It was odd that Mentallo wished such grand vengeance against a Stark, a man who had never met him before. It seemed like a lot of effort for an unfamiliar foe to go through just to kill him, Stark thought.

Maybe it wasn't Mentallo in that suit after all, but someone else...But now it was time to fight.

Iron Master leapt forward and punched Stark's suit. Stark went flying across the arena. Stark turned on the suit's thrusters and guided himself toward the softest landing he could manage.

The suit that Stark built couldn't handle much more punishment. He had already put it through a lot of punishment fighting Firebug and Slasher. But if things went as Stark planned, this fight would be over quickly.

The Iron Master thumped across the arena, and powered up his repulsors for a deadly blast.

"I'm going to blow your head off, Stark. It'll be hard for you to invent anything without your brain attached to your body."

It was at that moment that Iron Master's armor suddenly froze up. He just stood there, in mid-stride, in the middle of the arena.

"What the hell..?"

"You can't move, can you?" Stark asked. "That's because I programmed the armor to stop when I said so. And I purposefully worked on that part of the armor when you were away, when I couldn't feel your obnoxious thoughts peering into mine..."

"Now, it's my turn!" With that, Stark energized his armor and turned on a specially-designed energy sword. He thrust it deep into the chest plate of Iron Master, and shorted out a good amount of his enemy's electronics.

With that, the Iron Master keeled over and fell into the sand. Stark felt the urge to take the mask off, to see Mentallo's face full of frustration and rage.

But the villains in the stadium had flown into an uproar. Their benefactor had been defeated, along with two of their colleagues. But Tony Stark was primed for a fight. He had beaten Mentallo, the man who had enslaved him, and even if he were to die right here, fighting dozens of super-criminals, it would be a free death, a death of his choosing.

"Who's next?" he called out into the crowd. But his armor was exhausted, and it began to short out. He was a dead man for sure, but he might just stay alive long enough to take a few of them with him.

Suddenly, a blast of green flame came down out of the sky. A beautiful woman covered in green fire followed it. Another hero appeared at another side of the stadium and fired a ray that penetrated the crowd from his blue and gold shield. Another appeared, and used his cape to turn the steps of the stadium into a soft gold, which bent under the villains' feet and trapped a number of them.

One agile young man fired arrows from his quiver that trapped the legs of fleeing criminals. Another armored hero grabbed two pillars of the stadium and yanked them, corralling a group of villains. A charismatic young woman stood atop a fallen pillar and urged the group on. One man, who had been among the crowd of villains, was helping the group of heroes by slugging supervillains left and right with an alligator's strength.

One of the heroes came down to the middle of the arena to help Tony. "My name is Defensor," he announced proudly. "I am one of Los Vengadores, along with Armadillo, El Dorado, Bandera, Bushmaster, Flecha Verde, and Green Flame." Defensor seemed to be a Latin American version of Captain America, but in a conquistador-like costume. "Here you are, Mr. Stark, now get up slowly..."

"We have to catch the man in the Iron Master suit..."

"Don't move too much, Seņor Stark. You're injured."

Stark could see Arclight and Gizmo helping the Iron Master rush off to a stealth jet parked off in the distance. But he also noticed El Dorado and Armadillo dragging a captured Mentallo out from the center of the arena.

So the Iron Master was not Mentallo. Stark had figured that out through the vengeful way in which the Iron Master had fought him. If he wasn't Mentallo, then who was he? Stark was still racking his brain for the answer when he was gently led out of the arena toward the Vengadores' jet.

As another stealth jet soared up into the sky, Arclight used her strength to pry the useless helmet off of Iron Master's limp form. Underneath was the semi-conscious face of Justin Hammer.

"Unnnh...what did he do to me..."

"He tricked you, boss. Good thing is, he didn't know it was you. We got you out of there before those superheroes broke up the party."

"You are impertinent, Arclight," he said. "but you are a good employee. Mentallo failed me, but you remembered to get me out of there. Expect an increase in your next check. Now be a dear and help get this armor off of me."

The stealth jet soared over the Caribbean back to Isla Lagrimada. Hammer's plans had failed for now, but already the evil industrialist was concocting another scheme to get Tony Stark.