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Chapter 17: A Message to the Mandarin

I raced through the hospital, holding my heels in my hands as I ran. I had been watching the news when Pepper called me. The Mandarin had laid claim to the attack at Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard just hours before. There had been a fiery explosion that destroyed most of the surrounding area had claimed dozens of lives and injured many more. Happy Hogan had been amongst the injured. Pepper didn't give me all the details over the phone and I could tell she was trying to keep Tony from hysterics. She asked me to go to the hospital where Happy had been taken.

The nurse leaving Happy's room didn't even give me a second glance as I stood in the doorway, catching my breath. Happy was strapped to the bed to keep him from rolling off in case of a seizure. He had an IV in one arm for saline and one in the other for blood. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and there was a ventilator tube down his throat. His left wrist was in a cast and his left eye was covered with gauze. There were ugly purple and black bruises all over his exposed body. I immediately went for his patient chart at the end of his bed.

It was Bad News Bears.

"Contusions to the face, arms, legs, and hands," I whispered to myself, "Broken collar bone, fractured left ankle, broken left wrist, bruised kidney, broken nose, second-degree burns to hands and arms…oh Happy…"

I set the clipboard back in its position and walked around to the side of his bed. All of his vitals were steady and the blips on the EKG were normal for a man in a medically induced coma. I looked back towards the door to see if the nurse was coming back. When I thought it was safe, I took Happy's right hand in mine. I felt the warm sensation of my accelerated healing flow into his hand. The bubbly red skin on his hands and arms began to sink back into is skin and return to its fleshy color. I knew it wasn't much, but at least I could try and make Happy more comfortable while I was with him.

The TV, which had been playing Downton Abbey, suddenly switched to a Breaking News Report. Tony was on TV, he was standing in front of the hospital. I frowned. He must have left through the front as I was running in through the back. The media was hounding Tony. All of the reporters and photographers were pushing their way into Tony's personal bubble. Despite all of the noise, Tony kept his head down as he tried to walk through the swarming media. I gently set Happy's hand down and I walked over to the TV, unmuting the sound and catching a question from a particularly loud reporter.

"Hey, Mr. Stark! When is somebody gonna kill this guy?"

The camera had caught Tony stop in his tracks. Tony turned to the reporter who was holding an iPhone in his face. "Is that what you want," Tony scoffed at the man. He looked around for a moment before he spoke again. "Here's a little holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the Mandarin. I just didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name's Tony Stark and I'm not afraid of you. I know you're a coward. So I've decided that you just died, pal."

Tony whipped off his dark sunglasses, scowling right at the camera, making his next intentions very clear not just to the Mandarin, but to the whole world. Revenge. That was the game Tony wanted to play. Just him and the Mandarin. The second Tony announced his home address to the world's biggest terrorist, I was scrambling out of the hospital, on the phone within seconds.

Tony Stark was the biggest idiot in the world. He never thought before he spoke. That is one hundred percent why four news helicopters were circling his house and every news channel in LA were broadcasting down the street. Nick Fury had been no help to me. He'd said that if Tony Stark was stupid enough to give a terrorist his home address, then it was Iron Man's own problem. I didn't know who else to call. Steve and Natasha were on some assignment; Clint and Bruce were off the grid; and Thor was unreachable on Asgard. It looked like I was the only person who could help. But I was too late.

As I was driving up the two-late road to Tony's house, I saw the cloudy trail of a missile headed right for the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A scream was caught in my throat as I violently turned the wheel of my car to the right, suddenly stopping on the side of the road as the ground shook and the cliff exploded with the force of the missile. Three black helicopters narrowed in on Tony's destroyed house.

My heart raced as I pressed on the gas, racing passed news vans up towards the crumbling mansion. More thunderous blasts filled the air as three, then four, and five more missiles were directed at Tony's cliff-side mansion. I was pushing my Stark-bought sports car almost to its limit to reach the top of the hill. I almost crashed as I jerked the steering wheel left around the roundabout and pressed on the break. There were two bodies lying on the grass out front; brunette woman and an Iron Man suit. When the person in the suit turned around, I was surprised to see it was Pepper.

I nearly threw myself out of the car, falling to my knees at her side. I yelled over the sound of the crumbling foundation, "Where's Tony?!"

"He's still inside," Pepper panted, terrified. The other woman groaned in pain. I moved to get up but the ground shook again and the cliff gave way once again with a loud CRACK! "NO," Pepper shrieked, grabbing my arm. The front overhang of the house came crashing down where the front door had been, trapping Tony inside his crumbling house. Pepper and I both shrieked.

"TONY," I screamed and screamed as I released myself of Pepper's tight grip, rushing to the front of the mansion. I kept yelling over the roaring, groaning cracks of the foundation. I beat at the stone slab until my fists became bloody.

Another missile hit the cliff and I was thrown back. Pepper surged forward to drag me back as the cliff and the mansion started to fall forward into the ocean. I was suddenly pushed away from Pepper as the Iron Man armor started peeling away from her body. Piece by piece broke off and flew towards the falling mansion. Machine guns began to fire into the house as the final piece left Pepper's unharmed body.

"He's still alive," I heard the woman behind us murmur in shock.

The three of us watched helplessly as the mansion teetered on the cliff for a moment, then it all collapsed. One of the black helicopters was suddenly above us, swinging violently in the air as smoke poured out of the cockpit. It crashed and burst into flames across the street behind us. A second helicopter burst into a fireball in the sky over the ocean when a shot from a repulsor hit it right on the nose. A look of sheer terror was set on Pepper's face as we watched that helicopter spiral towards the house and probably right at Tony. I pulled Pepper down, shielding her from flying debris as the house exploded, sending fire and rubble everywhere. The other woman fell flat on her stomach, covering her neck. More missiles barraged the falling house as more sections of the Malibu home fell into the ocean.

Pepper wriggled her way out of my arms. The stone slab that had been blocking the front of the house had been completely destroyed, leaving only boulder sized pieces. I called for Pepper to come back as she ran into what remained of the front room. I ran after her to the edge of the cliff, staring down at the raging, foaming ocean water. Suddenly, my chest tightened. My hands and fingers started to tingle with a familiar sensation. I felt as if my whole body were a weight and my legs couldn't take the strain. I stumbled back, eyes squeezed shut as I tried to block out the cold numbness what was seeping into my bones. Why was it so cold? Then my eyes shot open. Panic set in.

Pepper was in my face. Her dirt and tear streaked face was concerned but there was fear and despair in her eyes. She was speaking to me with urgency. I couldn't hear her. Everything sounded too muffled; like cotton had been shoved in my ears. One of her arms circled around my shoulders as the other turned me around none too gently. My nose and lungs burned with ash and smoke and dust. Pepper had led me back to the front of the house where police, firefighters, paramedics, and news crews descended on the land where Tony Stark's house once had been. The woman who had been with Pepper was sitting in the back of an ambulance getting a nasty cut on her head checked out. I was still shaking in Pepper's arms. But it should have been the other way around. Pepper had just lost her love; her person. And yet, she was trying to comfort me.

Pepper had pushed away numerous paramedics who had tried to look at either of us. She just held me firmly and looked me right in the face. My hearing was coming back and I could faintly hear her telling me to breathe in through the nose deeply and exhale through the mouth slowly. My breath was so shaky, I hardly recognized it as mine. When Pepper was sure I was going to be okay, a sad smile appeared on her face.

"You're okay," she whispered. "We're okay."

"Pepper," I croaked. My lead-filled arms were thrown around her neck. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

"There's nothing you could have done," she breathed into my hug. "I saw the suit. He's alive."

I released Pepper and the breath I didn't realize I had been holding, "We didn't lose him."

"We don't know where he is or what kind of condition he's in," Pepper shook her head. "But no one can know."

I nodded my head vigorously, feeling a twinge of a headache. As Pepper finally let a paramedic look her over, I stared up into the smoky blue sky. I hoped to whatever god was listening that Tony was okay. I hoped that he'd be safe, wherever he was.