"Tony…"
The whisper wasn't really enough to wake him, but the fear in the tone of voice had him sitting up before his eyes were even open. He turned to Peter, who was standing beside his bed. The boy's face was pale and scared.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. Something, though."
Stark pushed the blankets back, carefully getting out of bed to avoid disturbing Pepper.
"Your injury?"
"No." Peter limped out into the living room and through it to the door, turning to make sure he was following. "Something's wrong. Will you look again? Please?"
"Yeah."
He didn't argue. He couldn't have. Not when Peter looked so upset. There was fear lurking in the boy's expression as he opened the door wearing only the sweats and sweatshirt that he'd been wearing when Tony had gone to bed. He didn't snap at him to get a coat on, he just followed him out onto the porch and then around the side of the deck to the side that faced one of the sharper mountain peaks.
Tony followed Peter's gaze and activated the Ironman suit.
"Friday?"
The scan only took a minute.
"There's no one out there, boss. Just wildlife."
He deactivated just the helmet.
"There isn't anyone in the snow, Peter."
"It's not a person, Tony," the boy told him. "It's more serious than that. It has to be."
"What?"
"I don't know." He sounded frustrated, but there was no hiding the fear in his expression. "Something terrible. Something is happening. I can-"
They were interrupted by a very low rumble that seemed to roll through the darkness toward them. Not a loud sound; it was ominous and seemed to come from every direction, echoing through the falling snow, reverberating off the mountains all around them and sending goosebumps along Peter's entire body and the hairs on the back of Stark's neck on end.
"What the-" he activated his helmet. "Friday?"
This time the scan wasn't for people. The AI turned the suit's sensors toward the mountain and Tony swore immediately. A huge section of unstable snow had broken free under the weight of all of the new fallen snow. It was coming down the mountainside above them, snapping trees like they were popsicles and pulling them along the deadly path of the avalanche to add to the weight of the debris that was heading straight toward the cabin. And pretty much everyone Tony loved.
"What do we do, Friday?" Tony asked, reaching for Peter's collar automatically with one metal clad hand and instinctively pulling the boy behind him. Not that he could block a mountain of snow with his body alone, but they had the resources of the entire suit – and that was formidable. "How do we stop it?"
A hundred different displays came through his heads up as the AI sifted through the data at speeds even he couldn't keep up with. His hand came up. There was no way they would have time to wake everyone and evacuate them. There wasn't any place safe that they could get to in the 30 seconds that Friday was telling him it would take for the wall of snow to hit the cabin – which meant trying to use a repulser to try to clear a path of snow around the house to at least spare the structure. He'd have to wait, though, and time it just right.
"Brace, Peter!"
It was all the warning that he had time to give, and more than he could afford those still sleeping in the cabin.
The movement beside him would have gone unnoticed if it had been just him. He was focused on the snow. The avalanche was crashing down the mountainside, now, and the low rumble had turned into a freight train. The air pressure preceding the slide was enormous and threatened to suck the oxygen right out of the air around them. Friday, however, had no problem tracking the trajectory of the snow and every other detail around the Ironman suit. Some were more important than others at that moment, though, and the multiple flashing strobe light behind them didn't matter to the AI anywhere near as much as the fact that Peter had stepped out behind Tony's suit and had raised his hands as well.
Right before Stark activated his repulser to try to blast through the snow, there was a flash of orange light and his scanners screamed at him that the air pressure was increasing. The leading edge of the avalanche was almost on them. Tony had the momentary thought they had to somehow be able to get Strange to use his time stone, somehow, and get them back far enough in the past that they could clear the cabin – or do some avalanche control to stop the thing from happening completely.
Then he realized what Friday was already telling him. The avalanche was right on them. Or it should have been. He'd activated his repulser and the limitless force of energy went right at the wall of snow, exactly as planned, but the wave of snow hadn't crested. Instead, crazily and defying every law of physics and nature that Tony knew – and he knew them all – the avalanche had stopped, almost as if frozen in time for the briefest of moments.
Then was being pushed backward by some unseen force. Not just the wall of packed snow, but the broken trees and the boulders that had been broken off the mountainside and caught up in the slide as well. It was all moving backward. Slowly at first; since the crushing weight of so much destruction wasn't going to be stopped in an instant, but then a little more. The energy of its downward momentum gone, the avalanche lost its fury and the entire wall of debris stopped some 500 feet shy of the cabin, well into the tree line that protected the little clearing.
Tony stared, shocked, his arm still upraised at the now placid mountain. Friday nudged him, and he turned, looking at Peter who was standing beside him with his arms both raised, as well. The boy's face was pale and as Stark watched, he dropped his hands and then leaned drunkenly to the side, catching himself with a hand on the railing. Tony reached out and caught his arm, supporting him as he realized what must have happened even as Friday started analyzing the snow in front of them for any weaknesses that might pose a further threat to the cabin and those who were in it.
"It's stable, boss."
Tony deactivated the helmet, his attention on the boy, now.
"Peter?"
He didn't get an answer. Leaning heavily on the rail, and on Tony, Peter felt like he'd been turned inside out. He hadn't understood what was happening until he saw a flash in his mind of what Friday was showing Tony and had then felt himself moving out from behind Ironman's protective shadow and had raised his hands, feeling a force of energy well up inside himself like nothing he'd ever felt before. Before he even had a chance to be afraid – and the wall of snow he could see through Tony's heads up display was terrifying, indeed – he felt that energy build even more, had seen an orange tinge reflect off the falling snow and had suddenly felt all the energy inside him release in a controlled blast that left him numb with exhaustion. And weak with relief when he realized whatever he'd done had worked.
Not only was the avalanche stopped in its proverbial tracks, but the screaming spider senses were now silent. Either because the danger was gone, or because he didn't have the energy to feel them just then.
Stark shook him, concerned by just how terrible he looked.
"Peter?"
He jerked his attention from the tree line to the man beside him, the concern enough to clear his head just a moment, at least.
"Yeah. I'm okay."
They both heard a clatter behind them, and turned. Elmer Rupp was only a few feet away, completely unnoticed in the drama that had unfolded in front of him. His eyes wide and his face pale, the Idahoan had dropped the camera he'd been holding to the deck.
"What the hell?"