Tony's unibeam, as it has so many times before, interrupts a monologue. It's almost funny, Malicant falling prey to his victim's foibles like that. (Then again, maybe Malicant is just that hammy all on his own. He definitely does seem fond of the "demoralization through melodrama" tactic.)

And the unibeam blast was not wasted. Tony can see Gene struggling against Malicant's influence. He's frozen, the black ring flickering on his finger, and the distortions created by it are pulsing eerily. He may not be winning, but he's making headway.

Tony watches the silent battle, agonized, torn by indecision. Now or never. But he still doesn't want to do it. He can't give up on Gene, not yet.

Gene gains the upper hand long enough to tell Tony to "do it! Do it now!" and Tony still hesitates. It's tearing him apart, the knowledge of what he needs to do and what the consequences will be when he does it, and he nearly howls, "no, no, no, I can't, Gene, I can't!"

But he can. And he does.

He'd installed the dampening device in his gauntlets, reformulating his father's rifle designs to integrate the necessary hardware into his armor. The beam looks almost like a repulsor, except when it hits, instead of knocking Gene back, the armor goes dead and Gene collapses under its weight.

Tony runs over, yanks the gauntlets off the de-powered armor, and flings them away - he doesn't have time to pull the rings off one by one, and the boon would make that pointless anyway. All he needs is for Gene to be unarmored long enough to get off one shot.

As soon as the gauntlets and rings are gone, the Mandarin armor vanishes, leaving Gene defenseless, unarmed, and at Tony's mercy.

And Tony levels his repulsors at Gene.