Author's Note: Oh god I am so so bad at the mundane daily crap, I tried to do like filler nonsense with like Batroc's Brigade and stuff but it was just noootttt happening.
So here begins our next, and first original arc, Atlantis Rising.
Also the introductions of both Hank Pym and Namor.
Callsign poll still running.
Chapter 14: Marine Mayhem
It was mid-September, Gohan and Tony were the only ones in the tower awake, they had been working on trying to complete the reverse engineering of the capsule technology and had hit a dead end weeks ago.
It was only recently, after great agonizing and personal shame, that Tony decided to call in a favor to get some outside help.
Hank Pym was nominally retired and quite the old curmudgeon. A relic of the Cold War, the eras of spies and the Secret War SHIELD had fought to keep enhanced beings under wraps. Tony had his suspicions since that revelation that Pym had been the Ant-Man, his wife had 'disappeared' around the same time that those sightings had completely died down.
And nobody had more advanced miniaturization technology than Hank Pym. So he was the obvious person to look over Gohan's designs and find out what they were doing wrong, because Gohan's supply of capsules was enough for personal use, but they really wanted to produce at least enough for all the Avengers. And perhaps SHIELD, if they felt nice.
It was only tonight that Pym was finally getting back to them.
"Alright, Stark. I'm somewhat interested," The old man's face said from the holographic display, "This could be simpler than my Pym Particles, mostly because it's not meant to work on living tissue."
Gohan nodded, "Yes Doctor Pym! We have no desire for the kind of quantum exploration your Particle experiments would allow, this is all about storage!"
"Hmm...so you're Stark's new protege? That Monkey Guy on the news? That arm of yours was pretty impressive, if this is your work then I suppose I can give you both some advice...for a price."
Tony winced, "How much?"
"Five percent of the royalties when it goes into public production. Ten percent when it's just military."
"Five across the board."
"Hmm you're planning to keep it under wraps for a while then, why?"
"We need to create counter measures to stop it from being abused for things like arms and drug smuggling, that's harder once it's public, those need to exist before then."
"Damn, that was actually a good answer, Stark. I want to find a flaw in it. Five and eight."
Gohan hummed to himself, "Tony, five and eight and consultation credit sounds fine."
Hank blinked and his image looked over at Gohan, "I didn't ask for credit, kid."
"No but if you get us past this wall we hit then you and by extension a company that shares your name, deserves it."
"Stark your pupil is a shit negotiator but a good person, and that's why I'll go with his offer. I'll send over the data by the end of the week. Might need a few more rounds of review between us all before we iron out what the issue is, but I think I've already got a direction pinpointed. And Gohan? Don't take this punk's shit," With that Hank hung up.
"Well he's pleasant as ever," Tony groused.
"Seemed fine to me," Gohan shrugged and started powering down the lab systems, like he did every night when they finished. Or morning, quite often morning was when they finally stopped.
Unfortunately even though it was two A.M. fate seemed to have other ideas for Tony and Gohan's plans to go to sleep.
"Avengers! We have a series of anomalous seismic events off the coast of Antarctica. The thing that makes this an Avengers situation is that the strength of these events is growing and that the epicenter is moving in a perfectly straight pattern, our satellite images show a tanker ship in the epicenter moving into the Weddell Sea. We don't know what is going on here exactly so Gohan and Iron Man will fly ahead to attempt to intercept, stop, or slow down the target while the rest of the team flies in on the jet. Do you understand me?"
Tony was glaring at the Director, frustrated at having not been allowed to sleep, and though Banner also seemed rather exhausted from being awoken, he also seemed to have understood the situation.
With some grumbling on Tony's part, and yawning on everyone else's, Tony and Gohan took off flying with the rest following behind in a Quinjet.
It took several hours to reach the freighting ship, and in that time the scale of the tremors had risen to where small tidal waves were pushing out from the ship a few times an hour, luckily losing their force before they reached land. So far.
Circling the ship once, Gohan reported that his ki sense was confirming what their eyes were telling them.
"Tony, it's just that one guy standing on top the deck, and he's giving off some weird power signals, a mix of mystic energy and something else. I think he's psionically causing the ship to move and the seismic activity! We should take him out fast and hard, but be very careful."
"Roger that, Star Monkey," Tony had started giving Gohan more and more ridiculous nicknames over the months as neither he nor the public had come to a real conclusion on his superhero callsign. There was even a running poll in the New York Times and Gohan had said in an interview that any name over fifty percent agreed on he would take if he still hadn't chosen by the time that consensus was made.
With a growl at Tony, Gohan joined him in swooping down at the enemy somewhere around mach two.
The sonic booms should have been enough to send the man flying, however both Tony and Gohan came to a painful, full stop twenty feet out from the man, slamming into and sticking to some kind of telekinetic barrier.
"Uh oh," Gohan let out as the man turned his eyes back and forth between the two.
"Indeed, very uh-oh, chaps."
Oh great, Tony thought, a British villain. The accent is going to be unbearable.
"Oh no my good man, I quite think you both fighting each other to the death and letting me go on my way will be the unbearable part."
Suddenly both Tony and Gohan grabbed their heads as they were psychically attacked.
"Kill. Kill. Kill your friend. Betrayal. Kill," assaulted their minds.
Tony was soon overwhelmed and turned to the evil purposes, flying backwards to begin charging his weapons. Gohan however, had had months of training in the mental aspects of the ki-arts through his time with Mordo and the Ancient One, and was able to force up a mental barrier and activate his mind palace's defenses.
However even as he shook himself free he had to shift his focus away from his true opponent, a unibeam blast came rocketing down and he just barely moved out of the way, allowing it to splash across the psychic barrier.
Soon a dozen afterimages of Gohan appeared, infused with enough ki to have heat enough to trick Tony's heat seeking mini-rockets that followed.
"Tony!" Gohan cried above the howl of the freezing Antarctic winds, "Snap out of it! Pull yourself back into control! You're stronger than this!"
A dual repulsor blast told Gohan that perhaps Tony was not stronger than this.
"Crapbaskets..." Gohan growled out as he began to charge a blast, "Fine! I'll knock you out and take care of this myself! Masenko!"
The shorter range blast than the Kamehameha took Tony by surprise, not having the full predictive talents he would if he were fully in control and dedicated to his task.
The armor was not heavily damaged but it was able to knock him back flying a good two hundred yards.
"Ok, new rule, we get home and all these armors are getting an override for if they get electronically or-" He dodged another barrage of missiles, "Psychically hacked."
He opened up a communication channel to JARVIS through his Avengers com, "JARVIS! Can you shut Tony off? He is being controlled telepathically!"
"I apologize, Gohan, I do not have the authority to do that unless Mr. Stark is unconscious, in that case I can take over control, to ensure a safe landing."
With a grunt of acknowledgement Gohan flickered out of the way of another blast and appeared behind Tony, only to have the suit let out a wide arc of electricity behind it, taking Gohan completely by surprise.
"Aaarrgghh!" Gohan screamed in agony, actually losing control of his flight and energy long enough to drop fifty feet towards the water before regaining control and pulling up.
Electricity was one of the few things that Saiyans and Ki users did not have a natural resistance to, there were precise techniques that could insulate, but the generic ki aura that protected them from heat and cold to high degrees without any effort did not apply to electricity, which in many cases directly assaulted the nerves.
Tony had added some new toys, specifically to deal with ki users, after sparring with Gohan so much.
With another grunt Gohan shifted his aura into a 'heat shield' which flared a slight reddish tinge, this way the increased energy output was turned into heat which would disperse electricity along the length of the aura.
He had plenty of energy to spare, not even being in Super Saiyan at the moment.
"Alright Tony, time to knock you out so JARVIS can fly you home, sorry about this."
Keep his heat shield up Gohan created a flurry of afterimages, including one directly behind Tony, and instead finished his movement above Tony's head.
As most of the electricity dispersed the afterimage in the rear, Gohan's shield shunted off the remaining smaller amount, and Gohan slammed both hands palm first over where Tony's ears would be underneath the helmet.
The helmet was padded and structured to prevent a lot of sonic damage as well as a lot of concussive damage. Gohan however knew that a perfect mix of both would allow just enough bleed through to render Tony unconscious.
And he managed to get just enough to bleed through to knock Tony out without permanently hurting him.
As the suit flailed around and headed towards the ground Gohan contacted JARVIS once more, "JARVIS are you taking over?" he asked in concern.
"Remote control in three...two...one. Process Complete. Returning to base."
The suit pulled up, a bit jerky, around seventy feet from the ocean and began to return to New York.
With a frown Gohan turned around and growled at the ship escaping into the distance.
He was going to catch up to this bastard and show him who was boss.
But first, he touched his com.
"Fury, Black Widow, call off the Quinjet, target is a psychic of unknown power levels. Everyone except myself and possibly the Hulk is a security risk. I am going in alone."
"Now wait just one damn-"
Gohan turned his com off.