Marvel: The Enlightened One#215+216: Hawk and Tony's Bet, HYDRA's Frankenstein Cloth?

Rhyolite ghost town wasn't actually called Rhyolite Ghost Town.

Its real name was Rhyolite.

It was in Nevada. And ever since the last resident died back in 1923, the town had been completely abandoned.

Hence the "Ghost Town" nickname.

But that was all ancient history.

Back in 1904, massive rhyolite deposits were discovered here, and the town was founded. By 1908, the population had peaked. Then the economic crisis hit, people started leaving, and eventually, once the mines were tapped out, everyone cleared out for good. Now all that remained were crumbling ruins and desert, desperately clinging to the memory of past glory.

But tonight, the place was lit up like Times Square. Especially around the entrance to the old mining shaft—people were constantly going in and out, hauling stuff from deep underground.

If you didn't know any better, you'd think some company had picked this godforsaken place for a team-building retreat.

It wasn't far off.

These were SHIELD agents. And the reason they were here was, naturally, HYDRA.

Even though Hawk had recently made a lap around the continental United States and wiped out HYDRA operatives across the country, he'd only eliminated the ones operating in the open.

HYDRA had been embedded in SHIELD for years, quietly training agents in the shadows. The sheer number of sleeper agents was staggering.

So, SHIELD had been running operations all over, following leads and rooting out HYDRA remnants.

And this place was one of their recent discoveries.

Leading the operation was none other than Tony Stark.

At the moment, Tony was having JARVIS contact Gwen to ask her to tell Hawk—if he was free—to swing by.

Just then—

Gwen, still on the call, interrupted him.

"Uh, Tony, Hawk already left."

"Left?"

Tony blinked at Gwen's words. "Where'd he go?"

The moment the words left his mouth, a voice answered from directly behind him.

"To see you."

"..."

Tony instinctively spun around. Seeing Hawk—who had somehow appeared right in front of him without any warning—he jumped slightly, reflexively said goodbye to Gwen, then hung up. His gaze dropped to Hawk's current getup.

White T-shirt.

Black shorts.

Left arm in a cast, suspended in a sling.

Tony's faceplate lifted, and he looked at Hawk with genuine curiosity.

"That injury—"

"Don't ask."

Hawk raised his good right hand and cut him off immediately.

He'd originally considered just smashing the cast off his left arm. After all, showing up like this didn't exactly look great, and it limited his combat effectiveness.

But...

When Hawk thought about the treatment he'd been getting ever since the "injury"—

He figured one arm was more than enough. His left arm could stay broken. Hell, he was even considering ways to extend the recovery period once the hundred days were up.

After all, if lounging around felt this good once, it would feel even better if he kept it going.

Physically speaking.

But that was something he obviously couldn't tell anyone.

Hawk decisively cut off Tony's question and asked with curiosity, "What are you doing out here?"

Tony's expression turned serious. "Fighting HYDRA. It's everyone's—"

Hawk turned and walked away.

Are you kidding me?

The world's biggest capitalist talking about civic duty?

You're probably just bored at the office, sick of Pepper Potts dragging you through company business, and used "fighting HYDRA" as an excuse to escape.

Hawk kept those thoughts to himself, ignored Tony behind him, and headed straight for the entrance to the underground mine tunnel.

The moment his Sixth Sense had expanded upon landing, he'd detected something interesting down there.

Deep in the underground mine, someone had carved out a massive space. At some point, they'd built a base—covered in dried blood and littered with corpses—and in one of the rooms deep inside that base—

The moment Hawk materialized in the room, his gaze locked onto what sat on the table in front of him.

His Saint Cloth.

Or more accurately, the remains of the Saint Cloth he'd worn when fighting the Dark Elf Malekith—the one that had been completely destroyed.

That was why Tony had mentioned detecting his energy signatures over the phone.

Hawk stared at the painstakingly reassembled armor with genuine amazement.

There was no nostalgia in his eyes for his first Saint Cloth. Only pure curiosity.

This armor had been completely shattered at Stonehenge in London. Pulverized into fragments no bigger than a fingernail.

And yet—

"Damn."

"HYDRA's got some serious dedication. My Saint Cloth was literally ground into dust, and they still had the patience to put it back together?"

Hawk blinked, genuinely impressed.

Just then, Tony Stark walked in from outside. Unlike Hawk, he couldn't teleport. He had to run the old-fashioned way.

That's when Hawk learned how Tony and SHIELD had found this place.

After Maria Hill was promoted to SHIELD Director, she'd launched a massive internal audit.

And boy, did she find some surprises.

Turns out the black site prison holding cloning expert Dr. Merrick—code-named "The Fridge"—hadn't just lost Merrick. Over a dozen other criminals SHIELD had captured had been swapped out too.

The Sandbox, SHIELD's secure warehouse for dangerous artifacts, had also lost a lot of items that had been logged in their inventory.

Among those missing items were the fragments of Hawk's first Phoenix Saint Cloth, collected from Stonehenge in London and stored in the Sandbox.

The bad news?

SHIELD had lost a ton of stuff.

The good news?

Because facilities like the Slingshot, the Sandbox, and the Fridge were all located in remote, uninhabited parts of the world, the HYDRA operatives embedded there didn't even know HYDRA's second uprising had failed.

So, SHIELD got leads. They could track the missing items.

Originally, Maria Hill had wanted to prioritize finding Hawk's Saint Cloth.

SHIELD's systems were compromised, and the Insight Helicarrier systems needed complete rewrites. JARVIS was helping SHIELD rebuild from the ground up.

So when Tony found out Hawk's Saint Cloth was missing, he volunteered to take the job.

He was curious about Hawk's armor. Simple as that.

And sure enough, With Marvel's rare genius Tony Stark and his top-tier AI on the case, they'd tracked it down pretty quickly.

"But when we got here, it looked like they already knew they'd been exposed."

"All the systems inside were destroyed. JARVIS is seeing if he can recover anything."

"..."

Hawk listened to Tony's explanation, thinking about the dried blood and the corpses with bleeding eyes and ears his Sixth Sense had detected earlier.

Still—

Hawk glanced at the reassembled Saint Cloth and couldn't help laughing. "Why the hell would they study a broken suit of armor? Were they planning to replicate it?"

Were Saint Cloths important?

Of course they were.

But what made them important wasn't the armor itself—it was the connection to his Cosmo.

The moment this Saint Cloth shattered, its link to his Cosmo was severed. Without that connection, it was just a suit made of unusual materials.

The armor of a Saint... Only when worn by a Saint did it earn the title of "Saint Cloth."

If it wasn't worn by a Saint? Heh.

It was just fancy clothing.

So, Thinking about what HYDRA had most likely been planning, Hawk let out a derisive snort.

Tony, standing nearby, noticed.

"You're not worried they'll replicate it?"

"Worried?"

Hawk raised an eyebrow, turned to Tony, and his expression turned completely serious. "Tony, if you want, I can lend you my current Black Phoenix Surplice. If you can replicate it—no, scratch that—if you can build a suit that's even remotely comparable, I'll grant you one favor. Any favor. No conditions, no restrictions. You can call it in anytime, anywhere, and I'll honor it. How about that?"

Tony heard Hawk's words and smiled.

"Really?"

"I rarely joke around."

Hawk smiled back, giving Tony his definitive answer.

If Tony could actually build a suit on par with the Black Phoenix Surplice through his own efforts, granting him one favor was nothing.

Forget one favor—he'd grant ten.

The reason was simple.

He'd just found his future dedicated Saint Cloth craftsman.

So, He'd be making out like a bandit.

Just as Hawk was thinking this, Tony laughed and agreed without hesitation.

"Deal."

"You don't want to think about it?"

Hawk looked at Tony—who'd agreed way too quickly—and smiled. "If you succeed in replicating it, I'll unconditionally grant you one request. But I haven't mentioned what happens if you lose yet."

Tony extended his hand.

"Name it."

"If you lose, you give me a hundred million. How about it?"

"...Are you seriously hurting for cash?"

Tony had expected Hawk to make some major demand. He hadn't expected something as simple as a hundred million dollars. He looked at Hawk curiously.

Hawk shrugged.

"Can't help it. I've got a virtuous wife at home. I said I'd borrow some money from the Big Five, and she told me no. Said we should be good people."

"Thank God for Gwen."

Tony silently thanked Gwen in his heart, then stepped out of his Iron Man suit, walked over to Hawk, and extended his right hand. "Deal. If I lose, I give you a hundred million. If you lose, you grant me one request."

Hawk looked at Tony—who seemed afraid he'd back out and was rushing to seal the deal—and smiled as he extended his own right hand.

"Deal!"

"Deal!"

The two men shook hands. Brief but firm.

The next second, A strange smile spread across Tony's face as he looked at Hawk.

"Follow me."

"..."

<><><><><><><><>

Tony turned and headed for the door.

Hawk raised an eyebrow, let out a short laugh, and followed.

Soon enough, The two of them left the room housing Hawk's Saint Cloth fragments, passed through a corridor, then took a right turn into another chamber. This one had silver walls and was outfitted like something straight out of a futuristic sci-fi lab.

Hawk's gaze locked onto a mannequin at the far end of the room, specifically onto the armor it was wearing.

The armor was entirely silver.

The faceplate looked similar to his Phoenix Cloth's visor.

Embedded in the mannequin's chest was a diamond-shaped energy core glowing with a pale blue light.

The design looked like a bastardized fusion of his Saint Cloth and Tony Stark's Iron Man suit.

A Frankenstein's monster?

Two SHIELD scientists were currently stationed around this bizarre hybrid armor, running diagnostics.

Tony raised his wrist and tapped his watch. A projection shot out, materializing in the air between them.

A surveillance video appeared.

The footage showed the same underground base, though in what looked like a testing facility. A burly, bearded man with a build like a grizzly bear was being helped into a silver suit of armor—the same one standing in front of them now—by several technicians.

Once the bearded man finished suiting up and gave a nod indicating he was ready, the diamond-shaped energy source on the armor's chest slowly began to glow.

The next second, An agonized scream tore from the bearded man's throat. Then—SPLAT—the man inside the silver armor was crushed as if caught in an invisible vice.

Blood sprayed everywhere. The armor collapsed to the ground in pieces with a series of metallic clangs.

As for the bearded man?

He was gone. Completely vaporized.

Hawk watched the projected surveillance footage, raised an eyebrow, and in a flash, vanished from where he stood and reappeared directly in front of the mannequin. He placed his uninjured right hand on the armor.

The sudden appearance made the two SHIELD scientists jump.

Tony walked over, glancing at Hawk—who had one arm in a sling and the other resting on the silver armor. "JARVIS just recovered and restored that footage from their deleted system files."

Hawk pulled his hand away from the armor and offered a blunt assessment. "Clever idea. But incredibly stupid execution."

Clever because it was obvious HYDRA had put serious thought into how to replicate his Saint Cloth.

They'd realized that simply copying the design wouldn't give them access to the energy Hawk's Cloth possessed.

So they'd borrowed a page from Tony Stark's playbook—specifically, the miniaturized arc reactor that powered the Iron Man suits.

Except, The energy source embedded in this armor's chest wasn't an arc reactor.

It was vibranium energy.

Energy extracted from vibranium using Wakandan technology.

As for the stupid part?

Vibranium energy output was massive.

Hawk already understood what HYDRA had been trying to do.

HYDRA had intended to use vibranium energy as a substitute for the power his Saint Cloth naturally generated, hoping it would allow this knockoff armor to replicate his abilities.

But the energy stored in vibranium was enormous.

Hadn't they noticed that even Wakanda built dedicated containment chambers just to safely release vibranium energy?

HYDRA had been idiotic enough to think an ordinary human body could withstand that kind of power output. And the result was inevitable.

Just like what had happened to the bearded guy in the surveillance footage.

The vibranium energy hadn't even been active for a full second before the sheer force tore him apart.

That was exactly why Hawk had called HYDRA's idea clever yet profoundly stupid.

Tony, standing nearby, clearly understood Hawk's meaning. Still, he looked at the armor with genuine curiosity. "If the armor and vibranium energy could achieve perfect integration, how would it compare to your Cloth?"

"Compare to my Cloth?"

Hawk glanced at Tony, thought about it seriously, then gave an honest assessment.

"Compared to my first Cloth? Maybe sixty percent. And that's assuming someone could actually survive wearing this thing."

"But you don't think anyone can?"

"Correct."

Hawk nodded, then seemed to remember something and added, "Steve might be able to pull it off. He's been enhanced by the super-soldier serum, so his physical conditioning could probably handle it. But you? Don't even think about it. If you tried putting this on, you'd end up exactly like that bearded guy."

Just to be safe—and to prevent his future designated armor-smith from doing something catastrophically stupid—Hawk made sure to emphasize that last point with complete seriousness.

After all, Tony Stark was going to be his armor-smith down the line.

In the future, Hawk planned to have Tony forge all the Bronze and Silver Cloths for his Cosmo.

His personal Cloth, however, was a different story.

Hawk had already picked out the craftsman for his true Phoenix Gold Cloth.

The Dwarf King.

That's right.

The same Dwarf King who had forged Mjölnir, Stormbreaker, the Infinity Gauntlet, and countless other legendary weapons.

If the Dwarf King made it, it was top-tier.

So, Hawk's plan was to commission the Dwarf King to forge his Phoenix Gold Cloth.

But there was no rush.

His Cosmo hadn't reached its peak yet, and he still hadn't figured out the Seventh Sense. Going to the Dwarf King now would just result in a subpar product.

Hawk's thoughts drifted as he finished his warning to Tony. Then, having lost interest, he shook his head. "I thought you were going to show me something impressive. Instead, it's this. Boring. I'm heading back."

He should be lying in bed right now, not standing here with Tony looking at a piece of scrap metal.

Yes.

Scrap metal.

He'd told Tony that if someone could actually wear this armor, it might achieve sixty percent of his Cloth's capabilities. But that comparison was against his first Cloth—the broken one.

And when had Hawk worn that Cloth?

Right after awakening his Cosmo. Back then, he hadn't even unlocked his Sixth Sense yet.

Now?

If you compared this thing to the Black Phoenix Surplice currently resting in his Underworld Palace?

The Black Phoenix Surplice's aura alone could crush this armor into dust.

So yeah... Scrap metal.

If Alexander Pierce had been willing to die rather than reveal this, and if Strucker had been so confident when he'd said, "Everyone dies eventually—you're no exception," and this was supposed to be their ace in the hole?

All Hawk could say was:

What a letdown.

Hawk scoffed internally, then yawned, turned on his heel, and vanished from Tony's sight.

Tony stared at the empty space where Hawk had been standing, then turned his gaze back to the silver armor Hawk had just dismissed as scrap metal.

....

Bleecker Street.

Gwen stood in the bathroom, blow-drying her hair while humming a cheerful tune.

She was in a good mood.

Because Hawk probably wasn't coming home tonight, which meant she could finally get a full night's rest.

Just as she finished drying her hair, opened the bathroom door, and prepared to climb into bed, she found Hawk already back—and already lying in bed, smiling at her and waving.

"Hey!"

Gwen stared at Hawk. "Don't you ever get tired?"

Hawk shrugged.

"I'm not the one doing the work."

"..." Gwen seethed for a moment, then her eyes darted around as an idea struck. She looked at Hawk. "You know what? You're right. I was wrong. Why don't you take that cast off? Tony called you over in such a rush—it must have been urgent. Having your left arm in a sling like that is really inconvenient."

Hawk shook his head.

"It wasn't anything important. He just found my Saint Cloth fragments. Apparently, HYDRA collected the pieces and tried to replicate it."

"Collected... replicate?"

Gwen's eyes lit up. Her expression shifted from exasperation to genuine curiosity. She climbed into bed, pulled back the covers, and sat down, staring at Hawk with wide eyes.

The look clearly said: "Tell me everything."

Hawk chuckled and gave her the short version, describing what he'd just seen—including HYDRA's attempt to merge his Saint Cloth with Tony's Iron Man technology, resulting in what he considered nothing more than a glorified pile of scrap.

Gwen instinctively glanced down at her neck.

But it was bare.

She blinked in confusion, then remembered. She threw the covers off, padded barefoot back into the bathroom, and returned holding her Andromeda Cloth necklace.

"Like this one?"

"Not even close."

Hawk blinked, then shook his head with a wry smile. "If someone actually managed to survive wearing that scrap heap, I wouldn't even need to step in. You could put on your Andromeda Cloth, hit them with one Nebula Chain, and knock them out cold."

Even though Gwen's Andromeda Cloth was made from the same materials as his original Cloth—

There was a crucial difference.

Hawk's original Cloth had been forged when his Cosmo was still in its infancy.

But the Andromeda Cloth he'd given Gwen? That had been forged using his Sixth Sense Silver Cosmo. And the Andromeda constellation was currently rotating within his Silver Phoenix Cosmo.

Hearing Hawk's dismissive assessment, Gwen relaxed. She set the Andromeda Cloth necklace on the nightstand and lay down.

"Alright. Time to sleep."

"Hey."

Hawk wasn't about to let Gwen distract him that easily. He looked at his fiancée, who had just closed her eyes, clearly hoping to dodge the conversation.

Just then—

Gwen's eyes suddenly snapped open, as if she'd just remembered something. She turned to Hawk.

"Oh, by the way—Grandpa wants you to come visit over winter break. He wants to meet you."

"..."