Rise of the Champions - Chapter Twenty

Author: Milady Dragon

Tony rubbed his eyes, trying to get the exhausted grit out of them and mostly succeeding.

The moment he'd gotten back from the Council meeting, he'd locked himself in his workshop, the sudden need to get his latest project done thrumming across every nerve, especially after Fury's announcement about what should have been a hairbrained scheme but actually made a hells of a lot of sense.

The Avengers Initiative.

It had a certain melodramatic ring to it. Just like the bastard who'd come up with the notion.

The thing was, he wasn't wrong, as much as Tony wanted to find fault in the idea. They really needed some sort of first strike team that answered only to the Council of Barons, one that would be able to handle the larger threats that a group of mundane magistrates couldn't. And, as magic kept growing, those threats were sure to come more often. Loki would be only one of many that would crop up.

Such a strike force would most likely have been sent out against the Dark One and his crew, if it had existed back then.

He was still boggling that staid, bland Phil Coulson had been the Dark One. At least he could see Fury as Marcus Johnson, because he was more of the mercenary type. But Coulson? No, he never would have put that together, and he was a genius, damnit.

It hadn't been a surprise when the Council had ratified Fury's suggestion. He knew that there would be at least one high-level Wizard in their group, and Tony thought he could guess a couple of the others. At the very least, Steve Rogers would be asked, even if the truth about him being the long-lost Paladin of the Western Lands never came out. He would also be willing to bet that Fury would put Natasha Romanov up for membership, her being the Widow and all…not that many people knew that little fact, but she was still as deadly as a pit viper and could kick the ass of anyone who stood in her way.

Barton, too, perhaps…he was the deadliest archer in the country, maybe even the world, but now that he had kids Tony kinda doubted he'd accept. That sort of thing wasn't for a family man.

Or maybe it was. After all, when someone had more to lose than just their life, they fought like every demon from every hell was after them. Barton might be perfect, after all.

As for the Wizard…that one was harder to pinpoint. Tony would have suggested one of the Grand Masters, if they didn't already have all the other shit that went into running the Guild on their overstuffed plates, and Ianto wasn't even a citizen so he would be out of the running. He could see Coulson going after Loki, though, after being killed by the bastard in the first place. That would motivate anyone…not that anyone else would wake up from being killed. Unless that anyone was the Deathless. Or Ianto Jones. Or Phil Coulson. Those three would get a lot of satisfaction of kicking the ass of whoever murdered them.

Tony leaned back from the fiddly welding he'd been doing, his spine popping in painful relief. He was on the final length of his work, and he'd need to get this finished as soon as possible if he wanted to join up with the Initiative.

When he'd started this project, it had been all about the invention. Invention was almost a biological imperative with him; the need to build, to create, to make things better for people. It motivated him in nearly everything he did, because while magic was awesome it was pretty well limited. There were…what, about six hundred Wizards worldwide? Pepper would know the exact number, but it wasn't many. All of the innovations that came with magic could only reach a few, no matter how altruistic the Guild was. Wizards, on the whole, wanted to make life better for the common man, but there just wasn't enough of them around to help everyone.

Tony just wanted to help.

But it hadn't always been that way.

The Stark fortune – and the Barony itself – had been built on weapons creation. Non-magical weapons. The original Howard Stark, back during the Century War, had made a killing – pun certainly intended – with weaponry for the war effort. He'd started out with coming up with a way to mass-produce armor and swords and, while the quality hadn't been as high as the individually crafted stuff, it had worked at the time, when more and more weapons were needed for combat and master metalworkers couldn't keep up with demand.

Then had come other sorts of ways of mass destruction. Explosives, projectile weapons…the Starks had had their fingers in every sort of deadly contraption out there. Anything with the Stark name on it was sought-after, knowing that it was the best way to murder the most people with the least amount of effort.

There had been a time when Tony had been proud of that, boasting to everyone and sundry that he was a Stark, and could come up with several new ways to kill people before breakfast.

And then, he'd been kidnapped.

At the time, Tony hadn't really shown all that much interest in either the business or the Barony, unless it was inventing stuff. He'd gotten so far into the habit of rebelling against authority – thanks, Dad – that, when his parents had been killed he'd been completely unable to run anything. His father's best friend, Obadiah Stane, had stepped in, and Tony had been more than a little grateful to him for it.

His genius, though, had earned him his place within the family business, and his natural charisma had made him the best salesman the Barony had. It hadn't hurt his ego any that Obie would tell him those sorts of things over and over, and now Tony knew it was to keep him working and pliant, to make sure he kept up the good work that should have put money in the Baronial coffers, by pandering to his pretty massive ego.

But, of course, the majority of that wealth had gone into Obie's pockets instead.

He didn't know that at the time, though. How Obie had basically mismanaged the Barony in order to make himself richer. The accounting when Tony eventually took over hadn't been on par with what he'd seen with Barony Shandling, or what was rumored to have been with Triskelia when Fury had taken over, but it had still been ugly.

Obie had arranged the kidnapping, convincing the inventor to go on the sales trip to the Middle Kingdoms, to show off their newest technological marvel. He knew Tony, knew his brilliance, and really believed that, one day, Tony would want the Barony back. That had been so far from the truth; it fact, it had been Obie's actions that had made Tony grow up so fast and accept his responsibilities, and if Obie had left well enough alone, chances were, Tony never would have even thought to ask for his birthright back.

So, maybe he had to thank him for that, or rather thank Obie's rotting corpse, for showing him what his responsibilities truly were.

The kidnapping hadn't gone to Obie's plan, because the guys he'd hired had been greedier than even Obie had been, which didn't seem possible. They'd wanted to use him to build a better weapon, one that would take out Wizards. The problem was, they'd had to blow Tony up first before they could get to him.

He'd come to with a magical stone in his chest, keeping him alive.

Thank you, Yinsen.

To this day, Tony had no idea how the terrorists had gotten the stone. Yinsen had claimed that they'd told him they'd simply found it and had wanted to know how it worked, the better to break it, but the genius wasn't so sure that was all there was to it. The kidnappers had been both pissed off and grateful in equal measure, because the last thing they'd wanted to do was to lose their cash cow, but it had taken the stone out of their hands. The stone was magic, and those idiots had been against any of that sort of thing, hence the need for something that would take out a Wizard and not be affected by their power.

Tony had tried to tell them that it was impossible. That magic could affect the physical world in such a way that only magic would keep it from working, which defeated the purpose of having a non-magical weapon.

He definitely hadn't mentioned Vibranium to any of them. The last thing he'd wanted was for a bunch of idiots to go and try to steal from Wakanda. That would have been ugly, and Tony liked Prince T'Challa a little too much to sic thieves on him and his people. They had enough problems with that sort of thing as it was, and it was just damned lucky that their security was so good that any thief after Vibranium was hardly ever successful. In fact, he could think of only one who had been.

Fingers brushing unconsciously over the area where the stone sat under his tunic, the fabric hiding its soft glow, Tony glanced toward the suit of armor in the corner. The pinnacle of his inventing genius, it glittered brightly under the lightbulbs that cast their glow over the entire room. The stone had given him the idea for the armor, although he still wasn't sure exactly what the stone did.

He'd eventually managed to escape, and he was pretty sure the stone had helped him, even though he honestly couldn't remember that part. He'd hoped to get Yinsen out as well, but his friend had been murdered right in front of him just before he'd somehow managed to find himself outside the cave and running away.

Maybe that death had been the catalyst for however the hells the stone had gotten him away. Chances were, he'd probably never know.

He'd come out of the kidnapping with a renewed sense of duty. He'd kicked Obie out of the Baronial Seat – and Obie had attempted to assassinate him for his trouble – and had stopped the Stark business from making weapons anymore. Things had been bad in the beginning, since it had caused a lot of people to lose their jobs at first, but in the end it looked as if it would work out even better. There were so many things he'd been able to do, to create new and non-magical devices for the ordinary person, and Tony was truly proud of himself for the first time in forever.

The armor, though…

Things hadn't really taken off until Bruce had come onto the scene. Tony had used a lot of his theoretical equations in the creation of the armor but having the man actually in the workshop had been a marvel. Bruce might not have been a Wizard with magic, but he was one with theory, and the knowledge he had of even the most arcane of ideas had been worth its weight in the gold that he wasn't paying, since Bruce had insisted on a regular wage and not the exorbitant amount that the Baron would have been willing to throw at him.

Yes, he could have gone to Pepper, but he honestly didn't think she knew as much about theory as Bruce did. Even his wife had admitted that Bruce's grasp of magic was even better than most Wizard's, and that was without benefit of actual, hands' on, practice.

Speaking of Bruce… "How's it going?" his friend and brother in invention inquired, from where he'd been dozing on the couch Pepper had insisted be put into the workshop, for Tony to use when a work bender had him staying there for days at a time.

He stretched. "I think I've got the actuators stabilized. We'll be ready to test the armor tomorrow."

"Tony, we still don't know how the stone will interface with the power cells. It might not have enough juice to run the armor, much less connect at all."

"Gotta have faith, Brucie! After all, I built it! Of course it's going to work!" A healthy dose of certainty usually went a long way toward convincing the skeptical.

There was a reason why he'd been the best salesman the Barony had ever had.

"Your ego is going to be the death of you one day."

"Maybe. Probably. But not tomorrow. The armor is going to work. Just wait and see."

"I wish you had your confidence."

Well, Tony could understand why he didn't. After all, being cursed by the father of the girl he loved in order to keep her from contacting him ever again was bound to cause more than a few confidence issues. That didn't even count those thick-skulled idiots who'd claimed that Bruce wouldn't know what he was talking about when it came to magic, since he wasn't a Wizard himself.

Honestly, he was just happy that the positive reinforcement Bruce had received from all three Grand Masters had helped quite a bit. Hells, Coulson and Jones both had even admitted to using some of Bruce's theories in their own magic, and Strange had tried to convince Bruce to come and speak at the Wizard's School. So far, Bruce had demurred, but it looked as if none of them were going to give up on asking.

Tony might give them all grief, but he was really grateful to them for encouraging Bruce to step out of his shell and pass along all that knowledge in that big brain of his. It really deserved to be shared, and not hidden in monographs and papers that no one but higher-level Wizards would ever read…if they'd decided to give them a look anyway, since they'd been written by a non-Wizard.

Sometimes Wizards could be so fucking condescending.

At that moment, the door to the workshop opened, and Jarvis stepped inside. "Your Grace, Dr. Banner, Mistress Pepper has asked me to fetch you for breakfast."

"Breakfast?" Tony was confused. "What happened to supper?"

"You missed it, Your Grace." There were only a few people who could put that much dryness into a reply. Honest to Gods, it made Tony thirsty just to hear it.

"I want to finish this." He turned back to the actuator that was lying on his workbench. It was the last one…which meant he could actually test the armor today. Damn, time really flew by when he was in the throes of building something.

He could practically hear Bruce rolling his eyes. "Leave it for a little while, Tony. I'm hungry, and you are too because your stomach is rumbling loud enough I'm surprised people aren't reporting a groundquake in town."

Bruce was exaggerating, of course, about how noisy Tony's stomach was being, but he certainly wasn't lying about him being starved. He tossed his tool down onto the bench, sighing loudly. "Alright, you win. Let's go and eat."

As he left the workroom, Tony glanced over at the armor one last time, his eyes drawn to the hole in the breastplate where the stone would shine through, and thought about flying under his own power.

The armor would work. He just knew it. Then, he could see about showing them a thing or two about being an Avenger.