Chapter 29: Fast track to the hospital

Vanko. In all his mad Stark-hating glory.

He had shorn off his mangy hair since the last time I saw him. Clean-shaven and with a buzzcut, I would have almost said that being on the run with Hydra had been good for the Russian. However, every fiber of his being screamed unhinged at me.

Although Hydra had presumably given the inventor access to a broad range of resources, his suit, if you could call it that, left a lot to desire. It resembled his barebones equipment in Monaco more than a full-on power armor, an exoskeleton that wrapped around his bare upper body and ended in two powerful, crackling electric whips. I had to admit that it looked a lot sleeker and more powerful than the versions I was familiar with.

I slowed down and stayed in the air, wary of entering Vanko's range.

I barely had the time to worry about my teammates before Tony announced his wellbeing by shooting his way out of the debris that had him buried. Not a second later, another hill moved, assuring me that Steve was fine as well.

"Ah, isn't this nice," Tony snarked, slightly out of breath, "another point of our checklist. I'm feeling so productive right now."

Sadly, Wanda wasn't in the mood for friendly pre-battle banter. With an enraged cry, she thrusted her hands forward and sent a wave red at, who would've guessed, Tony.

I startled out of passivity and shot forward to intercept her attack with a Tao Mandala shield. Through thoroughly experimenting in spars with Mordo, I noticed that my ring constructs were a whole lot more difficult to uphold when confronted with a magic based attack. The Tao Mandalas did not come as natural to me, but for Wanda's magic they were the logical counter.

Wanda growled and let out a frustrated scream.

"Don't stand in my way! I'll rip Stark to pieces!"

"Wow, you made a lot of fans, Tones," I called over my shoulder, absentmindedly adding another layer to the mandala.

Interesting, with how focused on Tony she was, her backstory seemed to solely align with her MCU version. If Magento was her father, she either didn't know about it or she didn't care. Magneto's death by my hand had been widely publicized after all.

"What can I say, I'm simply irresistible," the billionaire snarked back while dodging Vanko's whips.

Said Russian was not one to be ignored though.

"Don't worry. I have not forgotten about you, Bluelight," he laughed.

Uh oh. That did not sound good.

"He is Stark but I'm Bluelight? That feels unfair," I complained halfheartedly.

Probably by design too, my reluctant acceptance of that superhero moniker had been made into a meme and entered the mainstream knowledge. Vanko seemed like the kind of person to pettily online stalk their sworn enemies.

Sadly, he wasn't to be underestimated either. I shifted my stance slightly to get a better overview of what was going on behind me. Half of my attention was directed at Wanda who barraged my shield with increasing ferocity, the other half was focused on finding out what Vanko had planned.

But he seemed fully occupied with dealing with both Ironman and Captain America at once. I had just decided that he was bluffing and that I was better off taking care of a certain witch when I heard a humming in the air.

I frantically scanned the battlefield with my ring, my eyes glued to the sky. When the scans came up empty at first, I widened the perimeter twice before I found what I was searching for.

"Fuck," I cursed under my breath as I stared at the interlay that Ree displayed for me.

Dots, hundreds of dots. Each one standing for an armed drone.

The humming started to get louder, and I could spot the first metal contraptions in the sky.

"Er, Tony?" I called out with a slight tremor in my voice.

"Kind of occupied here, buckeroo."

Vanko let out a booming laugh.

"Don't you like my present?" he asked.

I could not see him, but I could hear the shit-eating grin on his face.

As if the drones had waited on his command, they started firing.

That much wasn't unexpected. I had waited as long as possible before deploying a construct as a shield. It was much larger than I was comfortable with however I had no choice but to cover most of the base. A base that was still filled with highly trained soldiers in the process of fighting Hydra goons and my teammates.

What did surprise me was the power of the drone fire. It wasn't just normal ammunition. Vanko had loaded the drones up with anything and everything that could make my life difficult.

Having not expected that, my first shield failed. It was only by pure reflex that I got a second shield up before we were all blown to bits.

The Tao Mandala in my hands nearly failed as I had to spent most of my concentration on the construct above our heads.

Of course, Wanda noticed the short flicker and resumed her attack with glee, ignoring how her chest was heaving from exhaustion.

My head nearly split in half at the effort it took to uphold both shields simultaneously.

"Are you insane?! You would have blown up everyone here! Yourself included!" I shouted at the madman.

Vanko just laughed.

"That is what Bluelight is good for, da? I have full confidence in you!"

Thankfully, his deranged laughter was cut off by a grunt as he had to concentrate fully on his fight.

Letting out a range of colorful curses, I tried to think of a way out.

The drones weren't letting up and neither was Wanda.

The witch looked like she would not be able to keep up much longer, but she only had to outlast me. And my reserves were fading fast at this point.

Already, there were black spots in my vision and the battle noises around me became muted.

I did not have time. I did not have energy.

There was only one thing I could think of. Slowly, I removed a hand from the mandala and flicked it in a practiced motion to pull a certain prototype through a portal.

My puppet project, Bert, hadn't seen real battle yet. Turned out that making something destructive wasn't the hard part. Training the puppet to fight was surprisingly easy. He could even hold a whole conversation, though I did find it mildly disconcerting that he insisted on being called Bert.

The hard part were the pesky morals.

In the name of efficiency, Bert tended to be a bit more… deadly. Which wasn't ideal. Until I fixed that nasty habit of his, he had to abide by a whole bunch of constrictions that made him pretty useless in a fight.

But well, desperate times.

"Bert, just the drones!" was as much as I was capable of telling him through my headache.

I tuned his answer and the rest of the battle out, trying to keep going as long as possible. I would just have to trust that the rest of the team pulled through. I hardly had the presence to let Ree help me with making a big enough hole in my construct for the puppet get out.

Luckily, after what felt like a millennium or so, Wanda let up on her attack. With a last annoyed burst of energy, she lashed out at my shield before she let her arms fall and stared at me with fury in her eyes.

"You can't protect him forever! He'll pay for the lives he took from us," the witch swore, well, at least that was what I thought she said. Understanding anything over the ringing in my ears was rather difficult at that point.

She turned around and ran to the edge of the roof. After hesitating for a moment and looking around, she jumped off.

I dropped my arms and with them the tao shields. Not bothering with bringing up the energy to turn around and see how Tony and Steve were faring, I dropped to my knees and clang with everything that I had to keeping my construct up.

Whether or not Bert was doing his job, I could not tell. Maybe there were less drones firing at my teal shield, maybe it was slowly getting easier to uphold. I could not tell.

I was shaken from my semi-trance by a hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and squinted.

Weird, when had I closed my eyes?

I looked up groggily and had barely enough time to notice that the hand belonged to Tony before everything went black…

Waking up was not fun.

Well, I never liked it, but this time, this took the cake. My head was killing me. I imagined that this was like waking up after a particularly intense night of drinking. Gods – and people do this willingly? That was hard to grasp at that moment.

Without opening my eyes, I became painfully aware of my body posture but didn't dare to move in fear of agitating my head. I slowly inched into a more comfortable position, one that hopefully didn't end up giving me back pain.

I let out a pained hiss.

Correction, giving me more back pain. I was barely moving my muscles, but they felt like I had been through a whole-body workout. I did not remember moving that much.

"Mr. Ravenstock? Are you awake?" a smooth voice questioned me.

I grumbled. I was really not in the mood to interact with anyone.

"Mr. Ravenstock," the voice persisted.

I sighed and a slowly opened one eye to take in my environment.

Hospital room. I was the only patient in the room. Domi was sitting to my left, bowed over in his seat and looking at me with way too much concern for my liking. Next to him stood Pepper, she had a hand on his shoulder, comforting him. On the end of my bed stood the person who belonged to that voice.

"What's Bonkyhort Cunkerdick doing here?" I mumbled out, confused and dissatisfied.

If the scrub-clad man hadn't looked unamused before, he certainly did so now. Then he frowned.

"Maybe they weren't so wrong to call me after all," he said in a tone that made me unsure on whether he was being honest or not.

I blinked.

"Was that snark? I think that was snark," I whispered to myself.

Bendyblob Cumberduck rolled his eyes. Pretty sure doctors weren't supposed to do that. Bedside manner and such.

"Mr. Ravenstock, my name is Dr. Strange. May I ask what the last thing is that you remember?"

I narrowed my eye at him before deciding not to pursue my objections. It took me a second to recall what exactly had been going on.

"The raid on a Hydra-base, fight against Vanko and the witch. I had to go beyond my healthy limits because Vanko is an absolute mad man," I recounted grimly.

I sat up lightly, my humor gone.

Figures that it was Vanko who found a way to exploit my weaknesses. I had been very, very careful to not expose those. Hell, after my initial time of training in space, I had never even approached my limits again. And to be fair, Vanko's plan was insane. Forcing me to make a strong and big enough shield by endangering everyone in the area, including himself, was just… nonsensical. Suicidal even.

His hate for Tony must have been stronger than I thought.

If I hadn't made Bert, by complete coincidence, a few months before, I would have been toast.

Speaking of-

Just then the door opened and Bert came in, merrily talking to a perturbed looking Tony.

Tony brightened up considerably when he saw that I was up.

"Hey, sleeping beauty awoke!" he exclaimed and threw up his arms in celebration before mustering the doc critically. "Don't tell me he actually kissed you awake."

I snickered at Cumbersnickle's affronted expression.

"You really did have us worried for a while," Domi explained, still watching me as if I would fall over any second.

"You were unresponsive for three days, the first of which you suffered through multiple seizures," Bert cheerily informed me.

Yikes, I did still have to work on him. Looking at yourself happily recounting your medical troubles was more than a bit creepy.

"Thank you for that," the doc intercepted, giving the puppet a healthy amount of side-eye, "the seizures are why I have been called. I am a bit overqualified for making sure you don't have epilepsy, however the hospital decided to throw me at you because of our respective reputations."

"Aka, optics. To be fair, even the President asked after you," Tony threw in.

"Yes, and one of your seizures lasted long enough for us to have to intercede and medicate you. Which means that finding the cause of your seizures has been a priority. An EEG led us to exclude epilepsy. An ECG and an ECHO showed no abnormality with your heart. Technically, you are in perfect health, but we still don't know what caused your seizures, so we'd like you to keep you for observation," Dr. Strange explained in one long breath. Impressive.

"Now," he started again, "you mentioned how Vanko made you go beyond healthy limits?"

I nodded, mildly uncomfortable with how dissecting the doctor's gaze was.

"Yes, it's my ring. If I draw on too much energy, my body shuts down. That's normal and also why I try to balance it with sorcery."

No sense in keeping the secret now. Any enemy with more than two braincells could figure it out after that fight.

"Normal? Al, I saw what you looked like, you had blood pouring from your nose and eyes, you were completely out of it!" Domi interjected, clearly upset.

I grimaced. Oh boy, no wonder everyone was so worried. Not to mention that watching someone having a seizure was also extremely scary. Me saying that I was fine was probably ringing even more alarm bells in their minds.

"On the flipside, the ring also boosts my health and recovery. Which is why I am not freaked out about this. Now, I would really like to know what happened."

Dr. Strange cleared his throat to draw the attention back to him.

"Great, that would make any further involvement on my part superfluous. I'll take my leave then."

With that he turned around and powerwalked out of the room.

Pepper sent a distrusting look at the door.

"You are not leaving the hospital until you have been cleared thoroughly," she warned me sternly.

I raised my hands in mock-surrender. While I didn't like hospitals, trying to get around this would not do me any favors judging by my friends' expressions.

"Now that you are assured that I am not dying and that I am staying put, may someone finally tell me what happened after I passed out."

Tony grimaced. However, before he could start explaining Bert did it for him.

"The Hydra operative identified as Wanda Maximoff fled the scene successfully. I eliminated the drones deployed by Vanko per your orders. Vanko himself is in a medical coma after he tried to go after Ironman in last ditch effort. He is currently in an undisclosed S.H.I.E.L.D. location. The Hydra operative identified as Pedro Maximoff is being held in another such facility," he rattled off.

His cadence was eerily similar to mine, in a bizzarro-world kind of way. His choice of words was maybe a tad too factual, everything else would have fit just fine – had he been talking about the weather. His tone being that tiny bit too cheerful made it uncanny.

Well.

It would have been boring if he was already perfect.

"Thanks Bert. Which reminds me- are you sure about, you know, wanting to be called Bert?"

Bert grinned at me winningly.

"Yes, just as sure as I was the last 14 times you asked."

"Alright, alright," I grumbled, "Just making sure. Could've been a bit more creative."

"I wouldn't call 'Bert' the most common of names," Pepper spoke up magnanimously.

I sent her a look.

"Bert? You mean like Albert? Know anyone else by that name?"

Understanding dawned on her face.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh," I sighed.

"Out of curiosity, what would you have named me?" Bert piped up.

"Frank," I answered immediately, which drew some confused glances from the majority of the room.

Only Tony got it right away and started laughing. Domi raised an eyebrow in Pepper's direction, but she just shook her head to tell him that she was just as clueless.

"You wanted to name him after Frankenstein's monster!" Tony gasped out between breaths.

I studiously ignored the combined weights of both Domi's and Pepper's admonishing looks and pouted at my billionaire friend.

"'s fitting and funny," I mumbled under my breath.

"I agree, though I still prefer Bert," the puppet said.

"See?!"

I pointed at Bert in triumph.

Domi groaned.

"Of course, the puppet has his sense of humor. He is going to be unbearable now," he said towards Pepper.

"I take offense to that!" Bert and I proclaimed at the same time, to Tony's unending amusement.

Domi on the other hand started to massage the bridge of his nose. Pepper patted him on the shoulder in consolation.

"Now," Pepper prepared to change the topic, "tell us, what was this about the consequences of you using the ring too much?"

Oh no. That was her lecture tone.

"Er, you know, I am kind of tired, I should really sleep some more…"

I sank back further under my blanket to hide from Pepper's fierce gaze.

AN:

Damn, this took me a minute. But ya know, irl stuff. Who would've thought that looking for a decent apartment is even more stressful than looking for a job. Not me, that's for sure -_-

But, here it is! A new chapter, with a side of 6-year-old Tumblr memes cause why not.

For the medical stuff, am not an expert (shocker, I know) but I did have the help of a med-student currently working on her doctorate, so it shouldn't be that far off. Dr. Strange sneaking in here wasn't entirely planned but it made sense in the context of the story and I thought it's funny. :)

As always, tell me what you think.