Chapter 9 – It looks like someone attended Online Close-Up Magic University
…
A rooftop in Hollywood
"I swear, if those idiots aren't here in the next five minutes, I'm going to kill them twice as dead," Tony muttered, crouching in his red and gold armor as he awaited the Mandarin's promised attack on the city of dreams. "I mean, I get that he's an evil bastard and all, but he could at least be punctual. Don't you think, Jarvis?"
Silence answered him.
"Still not talking to me, huh?" Tony asked.
Still more silence.
Tony sighed. "Look, I get your concern with the whole 'wearing the suit again might kill me' thing. But I'm already here, I'm already wearing it, so how's about you help a brother out and tell me if there are any reports about the Mandarin's little tin men?"
Even more silence.
With that, Tony abandoned the faux cheery tone. "He hurt my son, Jarvis," he said quietly. "Let's face it: I would have come here with or without my armor just on the off chance of being able to force one of the Mandarin's goons to tell me where to find him. Sure, my palladium poisoning is bad enough by now that simply wearing this suit may be enough to push me over the edge to well-dressed corpse, but at least now I have a shot at surviving these armored lunatics long enough to track the Mandarin down." His gaze darkened. "And to make him pay." Shaking his head, he resumed his fruitless focus on the street. "So, do you want to make my job harder and force me to stay in this suit even longer, or do you want to help me out?"
Finally, Jarvis sighed. "There have been no reports of Mandarin attacks since the incident at the hearing," Jarvis admitted. "Nor have there been any reported sightings of any other suits besides your own."
Hearing a sound from the street below, Tony watched as a squadron of heavily armed Humvees full of troops wearing National Guard uniforms rolled down the main boulevard, the soldiers manning the turrets keeping their heads on a swivel. Overhead, they were shadowed by military choppers crossing back and forth across the sky as they joined in the hunt for the Mandarin's "disciples."
"Well, that's something you don't see everyday," Tony idly commented, regaining his usual devil-may-care attitude, even if it was only a very thin mask over his deeper turmoil and a haunting feeling of frozen numbness that grew deeper every time he pictured Harry's comatose form.
Just then, an explosion erupted from what sounded like a couple of blocks over, followed by the desperate rattle of gunfire.
"Ooh. Is that for me?" Tony asked, firing his suits thrusters and taking off into the sky, headed towards the sound of even more explosions.
As he cleared another rooftop, he paused, hovering in the air as he took in the scene.
"It is," he remarked in vicious satisfaction as he spotted the ongoing battle.
In the street, one of the Mandarin's crimson armored soldiers was simply walking unrelentingly towards a Humvee that currently had its front end wrapped around a light pole. The turret still worked, though, and the soldier manning it was certainly not scrimping on ammo as he fired continuously at the approaching suit. However, other than some ricochet sparks dancing across the surface of that gleaming scarlet armor and an ever so slight stagger in the armored foe's steps, the bullets had virtually no effect, and the man continued his deadly approach.
Worse than that, though, the man wasn't alone, as another of the goons wearing a knockoff of Tony's own armor danced in the air around one of the military choppers, dodging gunfire as it returned fire of its own from the guns mounted on its forearms. Meanwhile, as those two "disciples" kept the military busy, down on the ground, yet another of the Mandarin's armored goons simply strode down the boulevard unopposed, missiles firing indiscriminately from his shoulder-mounted turrets to decimate the faces of the buildings he passed as throngs of civilians screamed and ran.
As Tony watched, the military chopper spun out of control, belting out fire and smoke as it spiraled to the ground to destroy still more of the once gleaming city, the armored goon fighting it landing to join his fellow in the carefree destruction of the buildings around them.
Hidden behind his mask, Tony gave a grim, bloodthirsty smile.
There were three of the Mandarin's goons down there. And he only needed one to still be able to answer his questions when he was finished.
"Happy birthday to me," he whispered, repulsors whining as they charged up to full power.
The hospital
Harry slowly blinked as he stared up at the blank white ceiling, reacclimating to the feel of being back in his body once more.
It was … less than pleasant.
For one thing, everything felt heavier than it did when he was a spirit. Like he was lying underwater, and there was a light but very noticeable pressure constantly weighing down on him.
For another, everything hurt.
Though, that probably had more to do with the rampant burns stretching across his skin than with simply being in a living body once more.
Almost without thinking, he reached for that strange power inside that he had become so reliant on in the astral plane. It felt a bit more sluggish in the physical world, a bit weaker and slower in answering his call, but answer his call it did.
He gave a reflexive sigh of relief as his power filled his aching body, soothing the stabbing pains that throbbed and spiked with every beat of his heart. Unfortunately, it replaced the feeling with a faint but relentless itch across virtually every inch of his skin, which he didn't much care for, but admittedly, it was still preferable to the jaw-clenching agony, so he maintained his hold on the power.
However, as he tried to raise his arms to scratch, he learned two things.
His right arm was inexplicably unresponsive. And his left felt like it was strapped to the bed or something.
Looking down, though, he saw a very familiar mess of brown hair resting on his left bicep, while the girl's arms were wrapped tightly around the rest of his limb like she was a human python, and he her prey.
He smiled at his friend's behavior before turning to his other arm.
His smile faded.
Ending less than halfway down to where his elbow should be was just a bandaged stump.
For several long moments, he simply stared, his eyes tracing the empty stretch of blanket where his mind kept insisting his arm was supposed to be.
But it wasn't.
Almost without thinking, he tried to lift his nonexistent hand so he get a closer look and verify that it wasn't there.
He snorted at the asinine impulse.
Curiously, though, while he consciously recognized that his arm was gone, it still felt like it was right there just as it always was, his jumbled mind insisting that he should be looking at a clenching fist right that second.
But he wasn't.
However, as his disoriented mind still made him attempt to move and flex a nonexistent right arm, his left registered the feel of movement from the girl currently cutting off circulation to his one remaining hand.
Turning, he saw her lift her head and blearily blink at the room in dim, sleepy confusion as she woke up. Mercifully, she unwrapped one of her arms from his lightly tingling limb in order to rub at her eyes. As she did, though, he made note of one interesting and highly important fact.
"You've been crying," he said aloud, a teasing smirk spreading across his face.
"No I haven't. My eyes were sweating," she reflexively rebutted, pausing in rubbing the sleep out of her eyes in order to glare at him as he let out a snicker. Suddenly, though, she froze dead still as her sleep-drunk brain processed just what the sound of his voice and the glimmer of mirth in his open eyes meant.
"You're awake," she breathed, staring down at him in shock.
"No, I'm just talking in my sleep," he informed her. "Don't warn the tadpoles!" he suddenly yelled to a random corner of the room as if he was still dreaming.
For several moments, she simply sat there staring at him with her mouth opening and closing silently.
Without a word, she threw herself at him in a hug, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and inadvertently pulling on one of his IVs in the process, causing him a sharp stab of pain followed by a more profound itching sensation.
He silently acknowledged that he probably deserved that.
As she pulled back, he noticed a renewed wetness in her eyes.
"Shut up, Harry. You're already in the hospital, but I'm not above making you need a few more bandages," she preemptively warned him, wiping her eyes and shooting him a threatening glare.
He wisely kept his mouth shut.
After all, he could always use this on her later instead.
As much as she seemed to want to maintain her glare to make sure her warning sank in, though, she just couldn't seem to manage it, her wide eyes staring as if drinking in the sight of him finally awake.
This time, her hug was more gentle and careful, but no less fierce as she wrapped him in her arms in a blend of pure relief and near possessiveness.
"I'm so glad you're back," she whispered, squeezing him more tightly.
His own traitorous eyes watering slightly, he reached up to envelop her in his own arms, momentarily forgetting about his missing appendage in the process as his confused brain still insisted that the limb was right there and currently wrapping around her waist just like he told it to, thank you very much.
Lightly shivering, she pulled back slightly, staring deeply into his eyes as her soft brown hair draped down like a curtain shutting out all the world except for the two of them as he stared back at her.
Suddenly, she smirked.
"You're crying too," she gloated as she took in the wetness lining his bright green eyes.
"Am not. They're just a little watery because of all these fluids they're pumping into me," he argued defensively.
"Mm-hmm," she responded disbelievingly as she sat back lightly snickering at him.
After a moment, though, her smile faded, replaced by a somber look of concern.
"How are you feeling?" she asked quietly, her eyes determinedly fixed on his own even as their light twitching revealed that she was consciously forcing them to avoid looking at something else.
Harry, on the other hand, had no such compunction about turning and staring at his bandaged nub, which his brain still insisted led to a perfectly healthy and simply invisible limb.
"Like I should take up drumming and tour with Def Leppard," he answered dryly.
After a moment, she wordlessly took his left hand in hers, gently entwining their fingers as she looked at him in soft comfort and unrelenting support.
He squeezed her hand back in gratitude.
As they quietly looked at each other, though, she suddenly sat up straight with a bolt of alarm.
"Wait a minute, you're awake! I need to get your doctor!" she exclaimed, pawing at the tangle of blankets and wires next to his hand to find the button that would summon a nurse. However, he quickly grabbed her hand with his own to stop her.
"Wait," he told her. "What's happened since I've been asleep? And where is everyone?"
"I don't know," she confessed with a helpless shrug. "I've been here with you. The last I saw Tony and Pepper was when some redheaded woman I didn't recognize told them there was something they needed to see and they left. She seemed worried, but I don't know what it was about. I … I didn't want to leave you alone." She squeezed his hand more tightly.
He nodded in appreciation, but also concern. The pit in his stomach hadn't let up upon making it out of the astral plane. He had a bad feeling that something terrible was happening, and wherever it was going down, he needed to be there.
"Please tell me you brought my earpiece," he begged her.
She gave him a flat look. "Please. What do I look like?" she rebutted with a smile, reaching into a small pouch at her waist and producing a tiny black device.
"A beautiful, beautiful person," he answered with a grin, gratefully accepting the device and placing it in his ear.
She smiled brightly at him.
"Harry!" his virtual intelligence Jo exclaimed the moment the device was in place. "Are you alright?"
"Hey, Jo. Yeah, I'm fine, I think," he assured her. "Though I'm concerned about what all I might have missed. What's happened? And where's Tony?"
After all, whatever this bad feeling he had was about, even money said Tony was somehow involved.
"At the moment? My guess would be Hollywood," Jo answered.
"I get the feeling he isn't just there to take in the sights, is he?" he asked, that bad feeling growing worse.
"While you were asleep, the Mandarin hijacked most of the television networks on the western seaboard, broadcasting a threat to attack Hollywood and challenging Tony and the military to try and stop him."
"And Tony suited up to try?" Harry asked rhetorically. "When is this attack scheduled to take place?"
"About five minutes ago," Jo admitted.
Without hesitating, he lifted his left hand to his face and began gnawing at the tape holding the IV in place.
"What on earth are you doing?!" his friend exclaimed in shock as he pulled the IV out of his hand with a tug of his teeth and a stab of pain before she could gather herself to stop him.
"Getting out of here," he told her, grabbing at another cluster of wires taped to his chest.
Before he could, however, she grabbed his shoulders and pushed them flat against the bed.
"Harry, stop! You're hurt! You need to stay here in the hospital!" she insisted.
"And let Tony face whatever the Mandarin wants to throw at him all by himself? I don't think so," he argued, struggling to throw off her tight grip, though succeeding only in pushing her to grab him more tightly as she leaned on his shoulders with all her weight to keep him restrained.
"He'll be fine! He's Iron Man, after all!" she pointed out to him, grunting as she fought against his struggling.
He didn't waste time arguing with her. He simply struggled harder to free himself so he could get out of there, not even noticing the distinct lack of pain that should be coming from all his burns thanks to his thrashing.
Just as he didn't notice himself drawing more and more deeply on his power in response to his distress.
I've got to get out of here, he kept thinking. I need to get home, see if just maybe he hasn't finished suiting up yet. And if he has, I need to gear up myself so I can help him.
Grunting, he found himself wrapped even more tightly in his stubborn friend's grip as she tried to force him to stay in bed.
I've got to get home, he thought again, more desperate and determined than ever as his power crackled unnoticed beneath his skin. I have to!
With a loud crack, the pair of struggling teens vanished from the upscale Malibu hospital.
The Chinese Theatre
With an almighty crash, Tony's battered form came to an abrupt rest in a pile of broken seats and tangled reels of film.
"Doing well, are we, sir?" Jarvis asked in a mixture of cheekiness and concern.
"Of course. I've got them right where I want them," Tony assured him, staggering to his feet only to trip and fall back into the pile of rubble as the room around him spun.
Meanwhile, the lightly damaged trio of armored Mandarin soldiers dropped from the vaguely Tony-shaped hole in the roof to hover in the air in front of him.
"Alright, here's the deal, Idiots One through Three," the battered billionaire called out in a faint slur as he climbed to his feet with moderately more success. "Two of you are going to be dying shortly. I know, so sad." Their near featureless helmets turned as the armored terrorists looked at each other. "But … whoever surrenders first will have the honor of living slightly longer than your two buddies. So, any takers?"
As one, their shoulder-mounted missile launchers turned to aim at him with a mechanical whine.
"I guess not," Tony remarked as the four of them continued to very thoroughly destroy the famous landmark theatre from the inside out.
Elsewhere
As the pair of alarmed teens hurtled through space at the unintended behest of Harry's magic, Harry found himself remembering his experience using his power to gently and easily teleport about in the astral plane.
This felt absolutely nothing like that.
All around him, some unknowable weight seemed to press down on every inch of his skin, squeezing and dragging at his body as if he was being forced through a rubber tube not much bigger than your standard hose. And all the while, his vision was assaulted with swirling, broken images of who knows what rushing past at a breakneck pace.
Without warning, all of it simply stopped dead between one crushing, dizzying moment and the next, leaving them both to collapse painfully and gratefully onto what felt like concrete.
As he lay there, his ears caught the sound of vomiting, which he certainly sympathized with as his own stomach heaved and lurched dangerously.
"You alright?" he asked weakly.
The sound of more hurling answered him.
Groaning, he leveraged himself to his feet, where he stood swaying for several moments as he teetered on the fine line between standing and collapsing.
Finally, his unwitting travel partner stopped her hurling long enough to croak at him.
"What … the hell … was that … Stark?" she demanded hoarsely, still on her hands and knees as she clutched her mouth to keep from adding to the disgusting puddle in front of her.
"Magic," he answered her. "I think."
Turning, she fixed him with a beady, red-eyed stare of incredulity.
"Yeah, apparently, I have magical powers," he brought her up to speed. "Found out about them during my little power nap. Crazy, right?"
Her red-rimmed eyes narrowed dangerously. "You know, that threat I made in the hospital still stands," she warned him, clearly not believing his "I have magical powers" story, for some reason.
Sadly, they were interrupted before he could assure her that he did, in fact, have magical powers.
"Young sir? My sensors didn't register you entering the premises, though I am certainly glad to see you are feeling well," Jarvis suddenly sounded from around them.
It was at this point that Harry finally paid attention to where they had ended up and saw that they were in the mansion workshop, older models of Tony's suits lining several of the walls around them.
"Jarvis," Harry greeted. "I heard about the Mandarin's threat. I don't suppose Tony–"
"Grabbed a suit and ran off half-cocked? Would you expect him to do any different?" Jarvis sardonically replied.
"Well, it would make for a nice change of pace if he did," Harry replied with an annoyed head shake, shrugging off his lingering dizziness and striding towards one of his desks. Grabbing a vaguely hearing-aid-shaped device, he somewhat clumsily wrapped it around his right ear using his left hand.
"What do you think you're doing?" his now recovered friend asked somewhat waspishly as she watched him finish situating the neural transmitter and step up to a nearby computer, where he slowly and awkwardly began typing in commands.
"Planning a flight to Majorca. I hear it's lovely this time of year," he answered facetiously as he hit the last key.
With a low, mechanical noise, plates in the floor slid back, and one of the suits adorning the walls slowly moved towards the center of the room along a revealed conveyor belt.
"Are you not hearing me, Harry? You are not well!" she yelled, stalking towards him with a furious and resolute glare. "You need to go back to … the … hospital."
Her voice trailed off uncertainly as she caught a glimpse under one of his bandages, which had come loose at some point, whether due to their struggle in the hospital or their rough landing after his inadvertent teleportation.
The reason she froze, though, was that the skin underneath wasn't burned.
Following her gaze, Harry stared in surprise at that very detail himself. Reaching up with his left hand, he peeled more of the bandage away from his skin along his ribs. Large stretches of smooth, undamaged skin revealed themselves along the edges of the wound, though near the center of what once was likely a grievous burn, the skin was still a bit red and blistered. Even as they watched, though, those damaged areas ever so slowly shrunk, his skin healing before their eyes at a slow but noticeable rate.
"How … how is this possible?" she whispered in shock as she traced those retreating edges of the wound.
Harry, while shocked as well, knew just the answer.
"Magic," he answered again, finally understanding the itching sensation he had been experiencing ever since he embraced his power back in the hospital.
It was his skin slowly healing under the influence of his power.
Her fingers froze. "Why do I get the disturbing feeling that that isn't just a really bad joke?" she asked.
"Because it's true," he told her, peeling another bandage away from his chest, revealing more of the small and continuously shrinking burns that once blackened large swathes of his skin.
"You with magic powers," she tried to process, "… this is not a comforting thought."
"Hilarious," he informed her, watching as the armored suit came to a stop at the assembly platform, where it waited to be equipped.
"Wait a minute, Harry," she told him, as she saw him prepare to put on the suit and just fly out of there. "Just because your burns are healing doesn't mean you're totally out of the woods. What about all the stuff that happened to your brain to put you in that coma? What about any internal injuries you might have? Just stop and think about this, please."
He stopped and looked deep into her eyes. "Tony's out there fighting the Mandarin alone," he said quietly. "Sure, maybe there won't be much I can do, and maybe it'll be dangerous for to even try, but he's family. And tell me you wouldn't be willing to risk everything to help a parent who needed you."
She remained silent, unable to make that claim, just as he knew she couldn't.
Into the silence, Jarvis interjected himself with a synthetic throat clearing. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but the situation is a bit more dire than I think you believe."
"How do you mean?" Harry asked, a pit of dread settling in his stomach.
"Mr. Stark forbade me from informing anyone about his current condition," Jarvis began, "but since his illness has already been forcefully disclosed to you, along with everyone else, I can now freely tell you that his palladium poisoning is at dangerously high levels."
That cold pit of dread grew colder. "How high is 'dangerously high'?" he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
"High enough that simply wearing his suit in combat may be enough to push him into the terminal stage of his condition," Jarvis explained.
"It's that high …" Harry breathed, his eyes distant and unseeing as he tried to understand. "But that doesn't make sense. His condition shouldn't be anywhere near that bad yet!"
"Wait, you knew about this?" his friend asked in surprise and confusion.
"Of course I knew about it," he told her. "I use arc reactor tech too. I have for years. Tony may have innovated the tech, but I'm probably as much of an expert in it as he is by now. So yes, I knew what it would do to him to have the thing actually inside his body all this time. But none of my calculations suggested that his condition would be this bad already. The numbers I ran indicated that he should still have years to go before it became this severe! It doesn't make sense!"
"I am afraid that continued use of the Iron Man suit accelerates his condition," Jarvis clarified. "And Mr. Stark hasn't exactly been stingy with its use in recent years. At this point, however, its use may be enough to make his condition fatal. I informed Mr. Stark of this eventuality before he left, but he dismissed my concern."
Harry's eyes were wide. "Using the suit … accelerates his condition," he slowly repeated. "I … hadn't considered that."
After several moments, he was jolted out of his stunned reverie by a soft hand resting gently on his shoulder. "What are you going to do?" she asked.
His mind racing, he darted back to his desk, tossing aside file folders and lazily forgotten tools before he found his notebook. Pressing it flat against the table, he hastily flipped through it with his left hand, muttering furiously under his breath all the while. Finally, though, he found what he was looking for.
"I'm going to go give Tony some backup and get him out of his suit as quickly as I can," he answered her, pointing to the hand-drawn designs covering the opened pages. "And you're going to build this."
Curious, she stepped forward, only for her eyes to bulge as she saw what he was pointing to.
"Are you crazy? I can't build that by myself!" she protested, eyes nearly crossing as she scanned the formulae covering the page supplementing the ridiculously advanced technobabble.
"You have to. If what Jarvis says is true, then we're running out of time. I can't be in two places at once. If I'm going to save Tony, I need you to do all you can to get at least this part up and running while I'm gone. Use our lab. There's gotta be some machines with parts you can modify to make this easier. Like Trial 14B. That should have some of what you need."
"And what is all this?" she asked, struggling to interpret the designs.
"Hopefully? The first step," he answered. "Like I said, I've known about his condition for a while. Even though I thought he had a lot more time, I've still been busting my ass to find a solution."
"And this is it?" she asked.
His face twisted into a grimace. "No," he admitted.
She looked at him in confusion.
"I've never been able to figure this whole thing out," he told her. "There was always something missing, or something I just couldn't figure out how to make work. But this design should at least be a start, as a lot of my theorized designs used it as a foundation, even if none of them turned out to be feasible in the end. I'll just have to figure out what I need to make this work while I'm saving Tony, somehow." He clenched his jaw tightly as he recognized how much of a fruitless wild goose chase this was probably going to be.
However, yet again, her soft hand on his shoulder snapped him out of it. "Alright, Harry," she told him. "I won't pretend I understand all this already," her brows furrowed in concentration as she scanned the design, "but it's starting to make some sense the longer I look at it, and I think I see what you're talking about with how the machine for Trial 14B could be modified to work here. I'll take care of it." She turned back to him. "Just … make sure you don't land yourself back in the hospital, alright? Because I definitely won't be able to pull this off myself."
Slowly, a smile worked its way across his face. "Me neither," he admitted.
Smiling warmly, she pulled him into another hug, clutching him fiercely as he returned the favor, even with just one arm.
Even though his stupid brain still insisted his second arm was still there.
Finally, though, they let each other go.
"Okay, Jarvis," he called out to Tony's VI. "Let's get me suited up. I have an idiot to save."
With a mechanical whir, robotic arms reached out from the ceiling and floor to dissemble the gleaming silver armor of the Mark II Iron Man suit.
"Wait, your bracers!" his friend suddenly remembered, staring down at his bare (if bandaged) forearms in near dread, knowing what could happen if he didn't have those devices pumping arc reactor energy into his body.
Stepping into the boots of the armor, he looked back at her with a grin. "Oh, don't worry about that," he told her as the system started to arm him in the suit. "I've outgrown those things. I think it's time we found out exactly what I can do when I'm not shackling myself."
By the look on her face, this was a notion that filled her with both curiosity and horror.
"The world is doomed," she prophesied, gathering up his designs.
The hospital
Having grabbed yet another cup of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee in order to fortify herself, Pepper tiredly stepped back into Harry's room, preparing to sit and fret over Harry while also sitting and fretting about Tony.
She was an exceptionally talented multitasker.
However, two steps into the room, her spine went rigid in shock, the cup of gritty black water slipping from her nerveless fingers to splash unnoticed all over the pristine white floor.
"Ms. Potts? Is everything alright?" Natalie asked, poking her head in the door after hearing the sudden clatter of her not-coffee cup. However, no answer was necessary, because she quickly saw what had frozen the other redhead.
Natalie's eyebrows climbed halfway to her hair.
Turning, Pepper bolted past Natalie to fetch the doctor. Meanwhile, Natalie simply stood there staring at the empty bed that not five minutes ago had held a completely comatose and badly burned teenager, who had somehow just disappeared without anyone being seen entering or leaving this room.
Even by her.
Reaching up, Natalie tapped a small earbud discretely placed in her ear, her gentle, approachable expression vanished behind a mask of cool professionalism.
"Sir? We've got a situation …"
Not the hospital
As Harry zipped through the skies in his forcibly borrowed Iron Man suit, he was forced to face one rather annoying detail.
These things were almost impossible to fly with only one hand. As he learned when he was sent spiraling through the air for about the umpteenth time as the result of just a minor course correction, all because he couldn't use the repulsor in the right glove to correct himself.
Plus, the fact remained that he hadn't ever actually flown in one of these things before, and it wasn't exactly as simple as riding a bike, as he regretfully discovered.
And so, yet again, his attempt at using his left gauntlet and right boot jets to compensate for his inability to use the one in his immobile right arm spun him out of control before he was sent crashing to the ground, bouncing across the unforgiving pavement before coming to an inelegant stop wrapped up in a now thoroughly mangled street light.
"You are truly your father's son," Jo commented in amusement at his very Tony-esque landing.
"Hey, don't make me lock you in a Twilight fandom server," he threatened as he shook his head clear.
Jo demonstrated a grand gift for silence after that.
Climbing to his feet with a groan, the embarrassed teen looked around at the blessedly empty highway before turning and glaring at the gleaming silver arm dangling stiffly and uselessly at his right side.
Even with the fairly intuitive control over the systems granted to him by the neural transmitter, his adaptation of the tech that allowed Tony to control his suits without having to verbally articulate every single command to Jarvis, the fact remained that the suit was intended to follow and enhance the natural movements of one's body. Without his own arm to guide it, the suit's right arm was nothing but dead weight.
And he didn't exactly have time to screw around with this suit long enough to master sustained three-jet flight.
"Time for Plan B, I guess," he reluctantly muttered.
Once again, he slowly gazed all around him, carefully verifying the complete absence of any other living thing in his vicinity.
This time, though, he was concerned about far more than embarrassing cellphone videos of his flight attempt.
"Alright, Harry, you've got this. You've done it a hundred times, after all," he nervously tried to psych himself up. "The only difference is this time, it'll be you in control and not some psychotic spirit." His left hand clenched and unclenched. "I hope."
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he closed his eyes and controlled his breathing, embracing one of the many mental exercises he'd learned over the years to help control his dusty little problem.
It was a little more nerve-wracking this time, though, because he wasn't trying to suppress the creature.
He was trying to use it.
Fighting off the long-ingrained reflexes currently screaming at him, he reached down into the core of himself and made contact with the swirling, amorphous entity, willingly drawing it out into the living world for the first time in his life.
Opening his eyes, the advanced HUD system inside the helmet spazzed, glitching and flashing warning lights at him as he watched his left arm, and the gleaming silver armor enveloping it, transform into an idly swirling cloud of black dust. Ignoring how the suit's systems were trying to reconcile what registered as entire swathes of the armor simply disappearing, he slowly continued to draw the creature's power out, sinking into it like a nervous swimmer gently easing himself into an ice-cold pool.
Every remaining muscle in his body felt tense as the shifting black mass creeped along every inch of his body, slowly replacing it with itself, until all that remained was his head, held stiffly aloof from the creature's form like he was desperately keeping his face from submerging underwater.
Until finally, he let go.
The last inch of his body transformed, and for several moments, he simply … stood? … there, acclimating to the strange, alien feel of this new form.
The fist thing that grabbed his attention was that, even though he didn't have eyes, he could still see.
In fact, he could see everything.
The sky above him, the ground below him, the ocean crashing off in the distance beside him, the empty stretch of road before and behind him, everything. As if his entire form was taking in light and translating it for his non-existent brain, he took in a completely 360-degree vision of the world around his shifting black form.
His non-corporeal head spun, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unstructured stimulus flooding into a very human mind that wasn't really designed to handle anything more than binocular vision.
It was too much. He had to tune it out. Head still spinning, he tried focusing on just one thing, staring intently at the mangled post he had crashed into. As he did, the rest of his 360-degree vision gradually fell to the wayside, drifting out of focus like extremely robust peripheral vision.
Carefully, he moved his focus from the post, slowly tracking his vision across the street and delicately raising it to stare at the horizon, and his intended target. As he did, he felt his focus come under strain, the rest of the overwhelming visual stimulus pressing in on his mind, but he pressed on, maintaining his concentration.
So intense was his focus, it took him several moments to register the rest of the sensations coming from his non-corporeal body.
It felt light, just like he had back in the astral plane. Turning his visual focus to his body, he was amused to notice that he had contained his shifting black form to a dense, vaguely humanoid shape. Once again fighting his panicky impulses, though, he loosened more of his tightly held control over that form, allowing it to flex outwards until it once again resembled a slowly shifting black cloud of inky-black dust that sparked with emerald green light, assuming its native form rather than trying to stay closer to his human one.
And all this while, he felt not a hint of the creature's vicious, all-consuming mind.
It was really gone.
He was finally free.
Unable to help himself, he let out a delighted laugh, which echoed out from the creature's form that had previously only ever screeched or clicked or growled.
Honestly, the distorted, chorusing laughter was much creepier than any of those sounds had ever been.
Thankfully, that helped to snap him out of his reverie, reminding him of the urgent deadline he was on.
"Alright. Time to see what this baby can do," he said aloud, the creature's "voice" distorting and self-chorusing his voice.
However, he had barely thought about moving before the creature was suddenly darting into the air in a sudden, lightning-quick burst of speed.
The screaming he did actually sounded relatively close to what the creature's "voice" was used to emitting, though slightly more tinged with shock and alarm than the creature's usual rage and hunger for destruction.
Meanwhile, as Harry desperately wrestled with the creature's jittery, lightning-quick powers of flight, he came to realize that using this creature's power wasn't exactly like the self-powered flight he had expected it to be.
It was more like being strapped to the roof of a racecar that didn't really have any speeds other than completely non-moving and screaming along at a few hundred miles per hour, and didn't bother with petty things like accelerating or decelerating, either, simply jerking to a sudden stop or blasting back to top speed at the faintest hint of a related thought from him. On top of that, it also seemed completely uninterested in the laws of inertia, frequently pulling lightning-quick 90-degree turns with no loss of speed, again at just the hint of a thought from him.
He was suddenly very glad he didn't possess a stomach in this form, as he suspected he'd be redecorating the road quite heavily with its contents if he did. As it was, all he could do was hang on for dear life and try to keep this alien, still uncontrollable form (if in a different way than it used to be) headed in at least the general direction of his target.
At the speed at which this new form moved, however, it didn't take long before he left the mostly empty Malibu highways and started passing over the dense city streets of West Hollywood.
Unfortunately, that was when he had a passing thought about moving closer to the ground to get a closer look at things.
Which the obscurus' power apparently interpreted to mean spike yourself straight into the asphalt in front of everyone.
Going by all the terrified screaming and wildly veering cars, he gathered that watching a living black dust cloud suddenly faceplant into the street with enough force to pulverize asphalt was a somewhat alarming experience.
"Sorry!" he called out as he forced his new form out of the crater and back into the sky. Though, given the nonplussed and even outright disturbed expressions from the watching civilians, hearing a terrifying dust creature apologize in a clicking, self-chorusing growl was less than comforting.
Oh well.
Once more passing over the rooftops, he relinquished some of his tightly held focus on his sight, allowing himself to start processing more of his 360-degree vision, primarily involving what he could see below and in front of him. Even that felt somewhat overwhelming, making him almost wish he was capable of getting a headache in this form in order to help ground the sensation, but no such luck.
He was, however, able to get a pretty all-encompassing bird's eye view of the city. Which made it fairly easy to spot the columns of smoke rising off in the distance, which quickly grew as a chorus of explosions rocked the area.
"Oh, but Tony, how ever will I find you when you are busy being so subtle?" Harry asked himself in quiet amusement.
The obscurus' growly, clicky voice didn't quite capture sarcasm all that well, but it was the thought that counted.
Swooping over the rooftops, Harry made a beeline for the fight in progress, ready to save Tony's stupid metal ass yet again.
He should really start a punch card or something.
Cresting the final building top, he passed through the billowing column of smoke rising from a downed chopper, making it seem to all the world as if that noxious column of black smoke had simply come alive and was gathering itself overhead, preparing to devour those below. However, he didn't particularly care about what he looked like at that moment. His focus was solely on the trio engaged in pitched battle in the street below.
Zipping low about the rubble-strewn street in front of what may have once been the famous Chinese Theatre, a trio of armored Mandarin soldiers were demonstrating an impressive amount of airborne agility, given the bulkier, more heavily armored suits they wore. This was doubly impressive due to how their suits were torn and battle-scarred, most of their blood-red paint scraped away. However, their heavy armor plating still seemed to be holding up annoyingly well, as the damage they had sustained seemed to be doing little to hinder the suits' functions as they flew and fired on the lighter, even more agile red and gold form of Tony.
As for Tony, his armor seemed to be in rougher shape, constantly spitting bursts of sparks from his damaged servos, and the whole thing looked like it had been repeatedly run over with a lawnmower, with deep gouges and scars decorating virtually every inch. However, his suit's flight and weapons capabilities still seemed operational, and combined with Tony's vastly superior experience in using both, he seemed to be holding his own against his opponents' obvious edge in numbers.
But only barely.
However, as Harry watched, one of the Mandarin soldiers managed to land a hit with his own repulsor blast, violently driving Tony into the side of an abandoned car. The car crumbled around his stunned form, enveloping him like a heavy metal straitjacket as the trio of Mandarin soldiers hovered in front of him, weapons about to fire.
Harry saw red.
Without thinking, he let out a vicious screech that finally perfectly suited his furiously writhing black form as it echoed out across the ruined street. Startled, the trio of soldiers paused in their attack and looked up, spotting his ghastly form at last.
He didn't give them time to do more than that, however. With a thought, his amorphous form snapped forward, slamming into the motionless soldiers and sending their heavy metal forms flying as if they were nothing more than tennis balls.
Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones struck by his new alien form. Tony joined them, hit with enough force to drive him completely through the crumbled car and send him bouncing across the pavement, sparks flying from where armor met asphalt.
Shocked, Harry simply hung there, his shapeless black form shifting more slowly as he stared at Tony's downed form.
Whoops, he thought in chagrin.
Fortunately, Tony wasn't called a superhero for nothing, and he soon climbed painfully back to his feet, armor dented and scarred even further, but still functional. However, the armored billionaire barely even seemed to notice. He was simply standing there staring at Harry's shifting black form, utterly motionless.
Harry instinctively tried to cock his head in confusion, but all he succeeded in doing was causing part of his ceaselessly shifting mass to whirl about even more randomly.
Suddenly, though, Tony's mask slid up, as if he had to see what he was looking at with his own two eyes.
And he looked horrified.
"Nooo," he heard the man breath in a tone of chilling despair.
At that, Harry finally realized what the man's problem was.
Tony didn't know he had gained control over the obscurus. He thought he was looking at the raging black creature of death that didn't really have any hobbies besides chaos and mayhem.
Oh, this is just going to be too much fun, Harry thought with an internal grin.
"You know, I wasn't exactly expecting streamers and a parade, but you could at least act happy to see me, you know," he petulantly chided the man.
Tony's face. Was. Priceless.
"… Harry?" the man finally asked, looking more lost than he had ever seen him.
"Well of course it's me! Who else would I be?" the shapeless black mass that had formerly been known as nothing but an uncontrollable beast with a penchant for mindless carnage and destruction answered in a tone that said Tony was fairly slow to even have to ask.
The renowned genius looked like he was experiencing a short in his brain.
Deciding to help him out, Harry slowly relinquished the obscurus' power, pushing it back to that place deep inside and forcing his own body to slowly re-coalesce from the roiling black dust.
Finally, he was left standing in front of Tony in all his human glory, even flipping the mask up to prove to the flabbergasted Tony that yes, it was indeed him. In the back of his mind, though, Harry felt a crushing disappointment when he noticed that he still seemed to be missing his right arm, despite how his entire body was just disintegrated and reformed out of virtually nothing, which he had quietly hoped would mean his body would be fully restored when it reconstituted. However, he also recognized that he didn't yet understand the mechanics of this eminently alien creature's power. It was possible that the human form it returned him to was decided based on some kind of residual self-imaging on his part, crafting him a body that matched his internal conception of himself, thus maintaining his missing limb simply because he subconsciously knew it was missing in his human form. Or, it could be that the creature's power had normally returned him to what the obscurus itself had considered his default human state, and when he destroyed its mind back in the astral plane, he had destroyed this knowledge as well, essentially forcing a hard reset of this power and making it establish a new conception of what his default human shape should be when he next assumed the obscurus' form, and since he was already missing his arm when this happened, this missing limb was simply considered a part of his body's natural state, and so he retained the injury when his human body was reformed.
Or, in even simpler terms, "Because magic was weird" seemed like a decent explanation.
For now.
At the moment, though, Harry was more focused on Tony, who was still staring at him speechlessly. Idly, he wondered how the man would react. Would he try to give him a hug? Or maybe ask how he had finally managed to gain control of the obscurus? Or would he simply ask how he had woken up from his coma? Or maybe he'd go with the generic 'How are you feeling'.
Tony opted for none of the above.
"… Are you wearing my suit?" the man asked instead, narrowed eyes fixed on the gleaming silver Mark II armor.
Harry gaped at his adoptive father.
"Seriously?! That's all you have to say to me?! I don't even get a 'Hello'?! Or even a 'Glad you're feeling better'?!" Harry demanded in outrage.
"Yeah, hi, good to finally see you out of bed. Are you wearing my suit?" Tony repeated fixedly.
Harry simply stared at him in silent indignation, even as the armored Mandarin soldiers finally made their reappearance with a clatter of shrugged-off rubble and the mechanical grind of mangled joints.
"You're an ass," Harry informed Tony, lowering his mask. "And your friends are back for more."
"Yeah, let's just keep the focus on the whole 'You're wearing my suit' issue here," Tony requested, even as his own mask fell into place and he assumed a combative stance.
One of the terrorists fired a volley of missiles at them both, forcing him and Tony to scatter, Harry using the suit's jets far more easily when it involved short bursts rather than sustained flight.
"You know, I can't believe you," Harry called out to Tony while firing a repulsor blast from his suit's left gauntlet at an approaching Mandarin soldier. "I practically come back from the freaking dead, and all you can do is gripe that I'm using one of your old suits to help save your ass!" As another Mandarin soldier approached, Harry used the erratic movements of using only three out of four repulsor jets to force himself into a spin, driving the sole of his left boot into the armored face of the terrorist with bone-crushing force and a bright blue repulsor blast, sending the man flying. "I mean, all this thing was doing was collecting dust anyway!" he continued griping to Tony, who was engaged in airborne warfare against another opponent.
"It's the principle of the matter," Tony insisted, performing wild airborne maneuvers to evade the seemingly endless supply of missiles from the opponent flying after him only to turn around and blast the terrorist with a pair of repulsor blasts directly to the face, sending the man spiraling to the ground. "I don't like people touching my stuff."
"You think that's bad? Wait till you find out I'm not wearing any pants under here," Harry told him, firing an anti-tank missile from his suit's forearm to blast another terrorist, who unfortunately tossed a car in front of himself at the last minute, saving himself from being completely annihilated, even if he was still sent flying from the blast.
Tony, meanwhile, was simply staring aghast at Harry, who made sure to do some deep lunges in his borrowed armor to nettle the man even further.
"Oh, you are so dead meat when we get home," Tony threatened, grabbing a busted light pole and swinging it like a bat into another of the Mandarin soldiers, sending the man flying into what remained of the pretty thoroughly pulverized building fronts around them. "I'm talking grounded for life here."
"Yeah, yeah," Harry flippantly replied, centering himself as he reached for the obscurus' power once again. He drew it into himself more quickly and easily this time, as he wasn't fighting himself so much now that he'd confirmed that its mind was really gone and that it wouldn't be attacking everyone when he transformed. And so, his armored human form quickly disappeared into the roiling, inky black mass of the obscurus, which once again made his head spin with its overwhelming 360-degree vision.
"Freaky," he heard Tony comment as the man stared at his monstrous form. However, he tuned Tony out, trying to focus his jarring new senses on the three armored foes in front of him.
However, as he considered attacking them, his new form suddenly erupted in raging black tendrils that did indeed strike those three terrorists with monstrous force, but also tore into the pavement beneath him and the buildings around him.
And also slammed into Tony, who was standing next to him.
"Okay, we're now looking at consecutive life grounding sentences here," Tony groaned as he climbed out of his new crater.
Grimacing internally, Harry pushed his new power away, re-assuming his armored human form.
The obscurus may not be battling him for control any more, but he still didn't understand the creature's innately alien power yet, or how to use it.
Which meant he couldn't use it safely in a fight, for the time being.
So maybe it was time to use the other power he had recently unlocked.
As Tony flew past him, charging at the now recovered trio of armored terrorists, Harry remained behind, brow furrowed in intent focus as he once more reached deep into the core of his being, but this time, he passed over the quietly waiting power of the obscurus and instead reached for a power that gently hummed in anticipation.
Watching Tony battle with the Mandarin soldiers, Harry once again felt his newly discovered magical power start thrumming through his veins, making every nerve tingle with electricity as he prepared to magically stomp some terrorist ass.
One of the armored goons broke away from the fight with Tony, heading towards Harry while his two fellows contended with Iron Man. The Mandarin's "disciple" likely thought the silver teen would be easier pickings.
Harry was about to disabuse him of that notion.
Filled with his power, Harry lifted his left hand, and unleashed it.
…
… nothing.
Frowning, Harry tried pushing his power out, tried to force it towards the still approaching metal figure.
It didn't work. Unlike in the astral plane, where magic had flowed from him like water, here it felt bound, and contained, either unable or unwilling to simply pass through his body and into the physical world.
Eyes wide, Harry remembered the armored man just in time, firing his jet boots and throwing himself backwards just in time to avoid a barrage of missiles. Skidding on the broken ground, Harry landed, pulling more deeply on his power to try and force it to work. Straining, it felt like pushing against a thick rubber barrier. It gave, but it didn't break, keeping his power trapped inside where it was of exactly no use to him.
With a crunch of crumbling stone, the hulking armored terrorist landed right in front of him. Still struggling with his power, Harry lifted his left gauntlet and simply tried to blast the man with a repulsor. However, the man's suit proved its worth when the man ducked out of the way with a mechanically enhanced, unnaturally quick movement, only to step forward and seize the teen's left arm in a crushing grip.
"Shit!" Harry cursed in a panic, unable to pull the limb free, and beyond the help of the distracted Tony currently dealing with two of this guy's fellow psychopaths. With a mental trigger, panels slid open on top of Harry's armored shoulders, firing a series of shots directly at the face of the armored terrorist, but with the man's heavy plating, they did little besides create sparks and make the man's head jerk back.
On instinct, Harry drew even more deeply on his power, making it feel like he was about to burst from the amount of power coursing through him, but he still couldn't figure out how to force any of it out into the physical world.
Without a word, the armored lunatic simply raised his own left gauntlet, revealing a bright blue repulsor disk that hummed with power as the man prepared to take the shot.
And in a moment of pure, thoughtless reflex, Harry reached up with his right arm and stopped him.
For several long seconds, Harry didn't even realize anything was odd as he grappled with the taller man, his left gauntlet trapped in the man's right, and the man's left gauntlet trapped in his own unwavering right hand. But finally, Harry's head snapped to stare in shock at that right arm, no longer hanging limply at his side, but instead pushing against his opponent's hand as if it wasn't simply a hollow metal shell.
With a start, Harry suddenly realized that while couldn't figure out how to force his power outside of his body, his magic seemed to have forgotten that he was missing his right arm, filling that metal gauntlet just as it ran throughout the rest of his body.
And, going by the brilliant emerald light streaming from beneath those metal fingers, the power coursing through his gauntlet wasn't quite as thoroughly contained as all the rest.
Grinning fiercely, Harry drew even deeper, forcing his power into the crackling, sparking right arm of his gleaming silver suit, making his fist glow more and more brightly with coruscating emerald light as it slowly crumpled the metal fist of the panicking armored terrorist.
And then, Harry fired the repulsor.
With a thunderous crackle, a massive incandescent beam of brilliant green energy fired from the gauntlet, streaming down the street and leaving a wide, glassy streak of melted asphalt in its wake as it passed through one of the armored terrorists fighting Tony, utterly vaporizing his screaming metal form before continuing on to detonate against a half-ruined building, removing the "half" from its descriptor.
Tony and the non-vaporized terrorist previously fighting him stared in slack-jawed astonishment that was clear even with their masks hiding their expressions.
As for the armored terrorist in front of Harry, his entire left arm was gone at the shoulder, along with much of his body armor and part of his torso, leaving the gasping man to fall to his knees before collapsing onto his face.
Stunned, Harry stared at the crackling, slightly melted right arm of his suit, which still moved and felt just like his own arm as it still thrummed with power, even if the amount of magic filling his body felt like it had very noticeably depreciated with the blast.
"Where the hell'd that come from?" Tony asked in astonishment, still standing next to the motionless Mandarin soldier. However, upon registering that his two fellows had been taken out with that last blast, the final remaining terrorist seemed to realize that he was in serious mortal danger from the silver-armored teen. However, rather than try to run, the remaining terrorist instead launched himself at Harry, determined to try and take down the teen while the latter was still distracted by his green-glowing arm.
Unfortunately for the terrorist, though, Harry's attention wasn't completely absorbed with his arm. As the armored lunatic flew at him, Harry lifted his glowing emerald arm and took aim, building up power even as the armored terrorist fired the last of his salvo of missiles at the teen.
Harry fired the repulsor, and once again, the street in front of him was lit by a coruscating beam of crackling green energy. However, this time, as it struck both the armored terrorist and his salvo of missiles, it didn't simply disintegrate them. Instead, Harry watched, incredulous, as they turned to glass right before his eyes.
As the beam faded, it left nothing but perfect glass sculptures of missiles and an armored terrorist, which all shattered as they finally hit the ground.
For several moments, both Harry and Tony stared at his sparking right arm.
"Okay, that grounding thing can be negotiable," Tony admitted nervously.
Grinning, Harry was about to make a retort when his right arm suddenly exploded in agony as a blast of energy tore through the half-melted metal arm of his suit, removing it above the elbow.
"Harry!" Tony yelled as the teen was driven to his knees, overwhelmed with both pain and astonishment at the fact that he experienced pain from his nonexistent right arm in the first place. Turning, Harry saw that the similarly one-armed terrorist was still alive, and had managed to flip himself onto his back and blast him with his one remaining repulsor glove, even as he panted and bled out from his own wound.
The repulsors on Tony's boots charged up with a whine as the man prepared to charge at the downed terrorist, but he paused as both he and Harry saw what extended from the mangled remains of his suit's arm.
It was a translucent, green-glowing image of Harry's arm, recognizable to the teen as what his body had looked like in the astral plane.
Staring, Harry moved the astral limb, twisting its wrist and clenching its fingers, watching as it answered his every command just like any flesh and blood arm would. Curious, Harry funneled his power into the strange limb, watching as it glowed even brighter from the magic coursing through it. With a flick of his wrist, he tried to release that power, aiming to turn a lump of broken rubble into glass just like his power had done to that terrorist. However, as the rock was bathed in a green glow, only parts of it successfully transformed into warped, slightly cloudy glass. The rest simply sparked and crumbled.
Harry frowned at the limb. Apparently, the thing made it easier to channel his power, but his magic still didn't work anywhere near as easily or intuitively as it had back on the astral plane.
At least, not on its own, it doesn't, he reflected, eyeing the mangled remains of his suit's gauntlet lying on the ground.
However, while he and Tony were distracted with staring at his new ghostly arm, the terrorist still lying on the ground managed to overcome his own shock long enough to charge up his repulsor gauntlet with a whine, drawing Harry's attention back to him at last.
Firing his boot jets, Harry launched himself at the downed terrorist, clenching his ghostly hand into a fist and burying it deep in the man's glowing arc reactor as he flooded that limb with power.
The man's bright blue reactor coursed with energy, swiftly being overtaken with a brilliant emerald glow from Harry's magic as it began to overload. However, Harry didn't want to detonate that reactor like he had to Vanko. Instead, he tried tweaking his magic, experimenting on how much he could control this new power of his even as the man's gauntlet prepared to fire.
With a sudden whine, that gauntlet went dead, instantly powering down as Harry removed his ghostly appendage from the chest of the man's armor, his once brilliant blue reactor now cold and dark, nothing but a dull black lump of coal where the advanced power source once rested.
Tony stepped up beside him to stare down in shock at what remained of the dying man's reactor.
"Did you just perform elemental transmutation with that weird glowy ghost hand of yours?" Tony asked.
"I did indeed," Harry answered.
The red and gold king of quips stared at the downed terrorist. "… Huh."
Frowning, Harry glared down at the crippled terrorist. "So where's your boss at, metalhead?" he asked.
The man said nothing, simply turning from the dead power source in his chest to stare at the teen responsible. To Harry's surprise, though, the once glowing red eyes in the man's mask suddenly lit up once again, suggesting a backup power source.
Though, the way they began flashing and beeping threateningly suggested something much worse.
"Bomb!" Harry yelled, blasting off with his jet boots. Moments behind him, Tony did the same, barely clearing the area before the downed terrorist detonated with a thunderous boom, scattering the ruined fragments of his metal armor all over the demolished street.
The ruined fragments of the man inside the suit were somewhat worse to look at, though.
Tony landed neatly on the street, while the teen in one-armed silver armor crashed with far less grace.
"Well that was disappointing," Tony remarked, flipping his mask up as Harry climbed back to his feet. "I was really hoping to go all Zero Dark Thirty on his ass." He coughed as he inhaled dust kicked up by the man blowing himself up.
"Yeah, what were you going to do, talk at him until he became so desperate for peace that he told you whatever you wanted to know just so you would grant him the sweet release of death?" Harry asked, flipping his own mask up as he continued to stare at and flex his strange new limb.
Tony gave him an indignant glare. However, that expression quickly faded as he stared at the son he had been so sure he had lost.
Reaching out, he hesitantly and awkwardly patted the teen on the shoulder. "Good to have you back, kid," he lamely informed him.
Harry raised an eyebrow at the man. "Calm down, Tony. You're becoming hysterical," he dryly responded.
"You wanna see hysterical? Just look in the mirror when I hand you the bill for the multi-million-dollar suit you just trashed," Tony bit back, gesturing to the suit's missing arm.
Before Harry could point out that he trashed it saving Tony's life, though, the air was rocked with the sound of distant but immense explosions that almost seemed to strike them with physical force.
Turning, both Harry and Tony spotted the source of the explosions on a nearby mountainside glimpsed over the remaining rooftops.
"I was wrong," Tony admitted. "If you want to see hysterical, just turn on the news after this."
Harry nodded in agreement. After all, he somehow doubted there would be a lot of calm reaction to the destruction of the famed Hollywood sign.
"Misdirection, huh?" Harry asked, looking at the remains of the armored terrorists that seemed to have been at least partially intended as a distraction while more of their number set up explosives behind the enormous and much beloved sign.
"We've got to get over there," Tony declared, coughing again. "The goons who set those charges might still be there."
Harry never got the chance to respond, though, because as Tony started to fire up the thrusters in his boots, he suddenly bent over hacking and coughing even harder.
Oh no, Harry thought in horror, watching blood splatter across the rocks as Tony coughed wetly.
Pausing, Tony gasped for breath as he stared at that blood himself.
"Well, that's not good," he weakly observed before collapsing.
"Tony!" Harry yelled, reaching down and flipping the armored man over onto his back. Tony's eyes were closed, and his rough breathing occasionally coated his lips with more drops of blood.
"Vitals," Harry ordered Jo, his voice hoarse.
"His heartbeat is becoming increasingly irregular," his VI informed him after scanning the unconscious billionaire. "I'm afraid he's entering the final stages of his palladium poisoning."
He swallowed. "And that is?" he finally asked, even though he knew the answer.
"Organ shutdown," she quietly answered anyway.
Nodding jerkily, Harry reached out and gently rested his ghostly limb on top of Tony's armored chest, filling himself with his power and making that limb glow brighter.
"Then I guess we'd better hope she got the designs up and running," he said absently. "And that I figure out what the hell it's still missing. Because at this point, I'm guessing that the only thing that'll save Tony will be replacing the palladium in his reactor with an element that doesn't currently exist on the periodic table."
And on a day like today, what was just one more utterly impossible feat?
With a loud crack, Harry and Tony vanished from the ruined Hollywood boulevard.
Author's note: Hey guys! Thanks for your reviews. I'm glad to see so many of you enjoyed the previous chapter :) There's actually something I meant to mention last time, but I completely forgot. You see, back in the early chapters of this story, a number of people (very aptly) pointed out that Harry didn't really act like a kid his age—specifically, that he was far more competent and intelligent than any kid his age would reasonably be (i.e. surviving on the streets and becoming a high-class thief all before even reaching puberty), and that his mannerisms likewise weren't very "childish." However, this was actually fully intentional on my part. You see, as revealed in the last chapter, when Harry was very young (about five or so), the life memories of Voldemort started flooding his mind. While these memories were soon largely suppressed by his magic, this experience still left its mark on his young mind, which included forcing his mind to adapt to the experience by mentally maturing far beyond what would be reasonable for anyone his age. While this didn't exactly make him an adult in a child's body, it did affect his mannerisms and mental capabilities, making him far more mentally mature and intelligent than his peers. This is also something that helped contribute to him becoming a Stark-level genius even at such a young age.
So there you go. Not exactly a crucial detail, and one that would be kind of difficult or clunky to bring up or explain in-story, but it's still one that I thought you might be interested in :)
Oh, and some people have expressed confusion on this point, so I'd like to clarify that I'm using "VI" as short for "virtual intelligence," a term I'm borrowing from Mass Effect in order to distinguish between programs like Jo and Jarvis and full-blown self-aware AI ("artificial intelligence") such as Ultron.
Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
