Harry absolutely had fallen in front of Heimdall. With any magical travel more violent than stepping through a portal, he just couldn't seem to correctly time keeping his feet underneath himself. Fortunately, only his immediate friends seemed to have noticed, save for a brief flick of the towering gatekeeper's orange-irised gaze. The Bifrost control room was an amazing masterpiece of golden magical technology, but they only got to see it and the rainbow-hued crystal bridge connecting it to Asgard for a moment. Fandral stepped back out of the landing area dragging his luggage, bid them goodbye, and without a word Heimdall moved the giant sword that seemed to be the key to the machine back into position to start the room spinning.
Harry also fell on his butt when they landed in the private lawn behind the London sanctum, scorching a complex knotwork crop circle into the ground. "How're ye such a good seeker?" Oliver Wood asked, helping him up.
Harry just shrugged, as confused as anyone.
Everyone who wasn't connecting through the sanctum to Kamar-Taj, New York, or Hong Kong got to take a moment getting the tour of the building before meeting their parents out front. Harry felt like it was probably another sales pitch for joining up with the Masters after Hogwarts, and Seamus did give the place an appreciative look. Harry and Hermione bid farewell to Dean and the Patils as they broke off for the door room, then went outside.
"There's Happy!" Harry noticed Tony's driver waving to him from a parked black Mercedes a little ways down Whitehall Place. He was easily visible in the late Saturday afternoon. A bit surprisingly for London, it was a nice day, with lots of people out walking.
"And there's my dad," Hermione said. "See you at the Market. Don't forget to text!"
"Will do. Have fun in France!" Harry said. She gave him a quick, intense hug before rolling her trunk down to her father's car.
"That's the one with the weird name, right?" Happy asked, as Harry walked up. He helped Harry get his rolling trunk into the car's trunk, and nodded with a straight face, "Nice."
"She's not my girlfriend," Harry corrected, but with less heat than he had previously. With the series of goodbye hugs he'd been getting from his female friends throughout the day… "She's not."
"Of course not," Happy rarely smiled, but Harry could tell he was smirking internally. He opened the back door of the car for Harry and asked, "So why'd we pick you up here? I thought you came in on a train?"
"Different travel because of the early summer," Harry said, sliding in and seeing Pepper already in the back. As he hugged his aunt, he finished explaining yet another of the hopefully-consistent lies they'd invented, "It's a club that has a bunch of my school's alumni as members. Dean and I actually had a room here for Christmas."
"Looks swanky," Happy said, getting in the driver's seat in front of Harry (Harry had finally gotten used to it being on the right side when he was in London). "But you didn't go to this school, Ms. Potts?"
"No, the curriculum wasn't for me," his aunt half-lied. "And why are you calling me Ms. Potts after over a decade of calling me Pepper?"
"Well, you're the boss now," Happy shrugged, signaling and then pulling out into traffic.
"You're the boss?" Harry asked. "Wait, where's Tony?" He was suddenly worried that he'd missed the man dying in a superhero fight.
"At the hotel," Pepper said. "And, yeah… I'm the boss now. Tony was doing too much being Iron Man to run the company, so he made me CEO." She said it with self-deprecation, as if she couldn't believe it.
"That's great. Congrats, Aunt Pepper!" Harry hugged her again, relieved. "You basically ran the company anyway, yeah? Now you just don't have to wait for Tony to sign stuff."
"See, the kid knows," Happy agreed.
"Thanks, Harry," she smiled, glad that he wasn't upset about the upheaval. "Of course, there's going to be even more scrutiny now…"
"I'm getting used to it," he shrugged. "Did I tell you about Colin Creevey?"
"Wait…" she thought for a second and said, "Related to Mark Creevey?"
"His son," Harry nodded. "He's in my dorm. Was trying all fall to be my best friend to try to network for his dad. I feel bad that he was out sick the rest of the year, but it was a lot easier for me."
She agreed, "Mark has cornered me twice at parties trying to get us to promote his app." She thought about it for a second as they wove through the busy downtown London traffic and asked, "So… if you don't mind the scrutiny, how do you feel about giving a speech to the Boy Scouts of America later this summer?"
Harry gave her a confused look and said, "But I didn't even make it into Webelos." Harry's stint in Boy Scouts had been very limited, since he hadn't really loved camping and it was hard to work the meetings around Pepper's schedule.
"Tony donated our entire art collection to them, so there's going to be an event," she shrugged. "Makes more sense for you to do the speech than me."
"I bet Rhodey was an Eagle Scout," Harry suggested. "We could ask him tomorrow?"
"That's not a bad idea," Pepper considered. "But he's not joining us in Monaco."
"But Rhodey always joins us?" Harry frowned.
"After Tony stopped making weapons, the military isn't his biggest fan anymore," she explained. "And with him being so busy being Iron Man, they haven't really hung out…"
Harry rolled his eyes and powered up his phone. "That's dumb. They're best friends even if they don't work together anymore. I'm texting him."
Pepper gave a small smile, "If you can talk sense into those two, I'll take it. I don't think Tony's been feeling very well, and maybe having his best friend back will help."
Harry nodded and texted Rhodey's number with a very manipulative, "Why aren't you going to be at Monaco? Did I do something?"
He was never sure if he'd get a text back right away. Rhodey got away with carrying his personal cell phone a lot of places that probably should have been more secure. But it wasn't long before he got the reply, "Not U. Working. Sorry 2 miss."
"Dumb. :( :( :( We better see you at Tony's birthday party." Harry sent back. Was it weird that a twelve-year-old had better typing etiquette than a grown Air Force colonel?
"K. Games upstairs again?"
"You know it," Harry finished the conversation. "He says he's working. But at least he's coming to Tony's birthday party. Which means I have to go again," he smiled angelically at his aunt.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Ten-year-old Harry probably never noticed the debauchery at a Tony Stark party. Nearly-teenaged Harry, however… "We'll see. Let's get you some clothes that fit for tomorrow, and then you can let me know that you didn't do anything new to get grounded this summer."
They had pulled up next to an upscale tailor's, and Harry had to admit that his existing wardrobe was starting to show a lot of ankle and wrist for a Monaco restaurant. "I brought a teacher this time!" Harry argued. "It wasn't my fault that he was a terrible chaperone…"
Pepper got most of the story out of Harry while the tailor was out of the room, and the rest when they had a moment alone before he was allowed to crash in his hotel room for the night. She ultimately agreed that he'd done his best to be responsible, and was just worried that so many threats kept coming after him. Of course, she wasn't altogether surprised that the Malfoys were in the middle of some kind of mind control scheme, since they'd long been suspected of being dark wizards. "You're not grounded. But keep the cloak handy and never be afraid to use it and run," she ultimately decided. "Now get some sleep."
"Yes, Aunt Pepper," he agreed. "Congrats again on the promotion."
He got to sleep fairly easily, especially since the Vanaheim-to-London jetlag wasn't as bad as the Vanaheim-to-London-to-New-York-to-Los-Angeles jetlag he'd suffered the previous year. But, he still had the time difference getting home to dread after the Grand Prix.
They had, of course, arrived at the private plane and been sitting for half an hour before Tony showed up, looking hungover. That was actually a pretty fast time for Tony. They'd discovered he hadn't slept at the hotel the previous evening, and went ahead and packed up without him.
"What was her name?" Pepper asked, as if she didn't care.
"His name was Val Belokon, and we didn't even kiss," Tony answered, sliding into his chair. "Guy owns a soccer franchise. They won a big match last night. He throws a good party. Turns out Latvians can drink." He took a massive green smoothie from the hostess as the plane started taxiing out to its takeoff position, and began to slurp it down.
"Is chlorophyll really that good for hangovers?" Pepper asked, mollified.
"Leafy greens are good for you," Tony said. "What's more green and leafy than pure chlorophyll?"
"It's really good for detox," Harry agreed. "Binds to a lot of different types of toxins so the body can flush it." Leaves rich in chlorophyll were major ingredients in the various anti-poison potions on the next year's chemistry curriculum, and the study group had read ahead already.
"See," Tony said, then lowered his sunglasses as if just realizing Harry was there. "Maverick. Don't you go to school until July?"
"Gas leak," Harry shrugged, dropping the lie that he and Pepper had worked out.
"What?"
"School had a gas leak," Harry elaborated. "A few kids got sick. They fixed it, but they'd torn up so much of the building looking for the problem that they just sent us home so they could do repairs."
"And they're taking the opportunity to add electrical and network cable runs?" Tony checked.
"No such luck," Harry shook his head. "Every stone and cabinet placed back the way it was when dinosaurs roamed the earth."
"Yay, tradition," Tony said, sarcastically, reclining back in his seat and letting his sunglasses rise back into position. "Flight's two hours, right?" he checked. "I want to hear all about gas leaks after we land. You know, during the car ride to Monaco…" And then he was unconscious. Tony was even better than members of the military for grabbing sleep where he could, after doing without for ridiculous periods.
During the flight, Pepper quietly caught Harry up on the ten months he'd missed, which had been pretty eventful. Tony, never a sound sleeper, for all the ease at which he could nap on a plane, would periodically groggily mumble corrections to Pepper's story. She finally asked, "Do you need us to move to the other end of the plane so you can sleep?"
"No, 'm good," he mumbled. "Jus' get the facts right."
"Fine," she rolled her eyes, "The word he used for the entire Senate subcommittee was 'ass clowns.' In front of a full live hearing and TV cameras. I'm sure it was his proudest moment."
"Heh. Ass clowns," Tony chuckled, shifting in his seat to get comfortable and going back to sleep.
They landed at the Nice airport after Tony had finished his nap, and decided what to pack while Happy went to get the car they'd be using for the thirty-minute drive to Monaco. Harry left most of his belongings on the plane, since they were taking it back to LA after the Grand Prix. Tony didn't take much either, except for a weirdly-shaped red-and-gray briefcase.
It took Harry a minute to make sense of it and ask, "Woah! Did you get the suit down that small?"
"The Mark V," Tony nodded. "Less armor, basically no weapons other than the repulsors, and no real flight capabilities. But it should stand up to small arms fire. Bodyguard in a box."
"We're calling it the Football," Pepper added as they were walking down the stairs into the hangar, where Happy had pulled a new Rolls Royce up for them. "Happy bought some handcuffs so he can carry it around like he's in a spy movie."
"Security," Happy agreed, jingling the handcuffs as he took the case from Tony and then attached it to his wrist. "Lot of governments would love to get a suit of Iron Man armor."
"Can you drive like that?" Harry checked.
Happy frowned and fumbled in his jacket for the key, admitting, "I'll put it back on when we get to Monaco."
Harry sat shotgun while Tony and Pepper took the back, and he told carefully-edited stories about his school year on the drive. This involved slight elaborations on the gas leak story, careful dancing around the subjects they were learning, mentions that he was finally taking some advanced math and languages for his third year, and explaining that he was probably going to be an alternate for "team sports" because being a primary had required too much time. At least the story about the fencing teacher that barely remembered to teach class because he was too busy telling tall tales went over well.
"Martial arts and fencing as electives, huh?" Tony mused. "What are they going to teach you next year for this class? Shooting? Demolitions? Escaping police custody?"
"I… umm… I did kind of take an escapology class over winter break?" Harry admitted, demonstrating his ability to get Happy's handcuffs open with a paperclip.
"I need to learn that trick… for the bedroom," Tony chuckled.
"I've been teaching Mr. Stark boxing," Happy added. "But he cheats."
"It's mixed martial arts!" Tony argued.
"It's dirty boxing!" Happy groused.
"What style?" Harry asked.
"Wing chun, I think," Tony shrugged. "Mostly got it from online videos."
"That's the center-line one, right?" Harry asked. The Masters had started teaching them several variants of mostly kung fu in their previous year's summer camp, though Harry's fighting style presently was a strange hodge podge of Dean's karate, the alien martial art Gamora had been teaching them, and what little they'd picked up in Kamar-Taj.
"Yeah," Tony nodded. "Seemed apt for fighting in armor. Though if I fight someone I have to have a real brawl with, something's gone wrong."
Harry coulded explain that if any Asgardians came to Earth, Tony couldn't rely on his tech making him the strongest human-sized person on the planet. It was probably good for him to actually learn how to fight rather than relying on brute force. Instead, he shrugged and said, "Hermione's dad was telling us about some green sasquatch that was smashing military bases a few years ago."
"Huh," Tony considered. "Do you think the cryptozoology fans would be mad if I beat up a green sasquatch?"
"I'll go ahead and draft a press release, just in case," Pepper snarked.
Monaco was controlled chaos before the Grand Prix, a huge track of public streets obviously blocked off for the race cars that would be starting soon, but Tony Stark's Rolls Royce didn't have to concern itself with road closures. Traffic control was optimized to get the rich race attendees to their restaurants of choice, and they had two motorcycle police leading them to the Hotel de Paris.
Harry's continuing assertion that he wasn't a celebrity was challenged by the people outside the hotel shouting as they recognized Tony, and, thus, Pepper and probably him by association. Fortunately, it was a very short walk into the hotel as a uniformed employee opened the barricade to let them in.
Inside, the hotel lobby was just shy of a madhouse, as a concierge motioned them into hotel's restaurant. It didn't instill confidence when Tony told Pepper, "You know, it's Europe. Whatever happens in the next twenty minutes… just go with it."
"Go with it? Go with what?" she asked.
And then the woman in the red dress showed up. "Mr. Stark?" she greeted, all smiles. "Hello. How was your flight?"
Harry missed the next bit of conversation, though it was clear that she was lining up photographers of some kind. Instead, Harry grabbed Happy before he could walk off and asked, "Who is that?"
"Huh," the driver had almost missed her, himself. "Miss Rushman. Natalie. She was from legal. I bet Mr. Stark hired her as his new assistant. Pepper's going to be unhappy about that." He gave it a moment and added, "She also cheats at boxing."
"New assistant, huh?" Harry summed up. He remembered, "I'll make sure they get you something to eat?"
"Thanks, kid. I'll be nearby, with the Football," Happy said, gesturing with the case that he'd handcuffed back onto his arm, and heading over to wherever most of the support staff for the restaurant-goers hung out.
Harry made it back up as Natalie noticed him and said, "I think that's everyone. Right this way."
"You look fantastic," Tony complemented Natalie, and Harry watched his aunt hide her annoyance by grabbing a drink from a tray. The new assistant's thanks was run over by Tony saying, "But that's unprofessional. What's on the docket?"
As Natalie pattered with Tony, Harry put a comforting hand on his aunt's elbow and said, "It's going to be okay."
"Very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit," she muttered to Harry, taking a sip of her drink. "Just waiting to happen." Harry was sure that wasn't why his aunt was actually annoyed at the gorgeous twenty-something.
They followed Tony and Natalie to where he was clearly demanding the corner table and she was going to have to scramble to inform the wait staff. That was a pretty common Tony Stark power move. Pepper was deliberately ignoring Tony for a moment and on the way to say hello to Elon Musk. "Don't forget the self-driving cars," Harry reminded her. "I'm going to see if there are any other kids here."
She nodded absently. Harry was not actually going to look for other kids.
Despite his protests before Valentine's Day, Harry was very much a nearly-thirteen-year-old. His entire body had been saturated with ever-increasing amounts of hormones for the past several months. It was only that all of the girls at the school wore fairly form-concealing robes that had allowed him to keep his eyes on their faces most days. And the trip back when they'd switched to summer travel wear had been tough.
It was probably part of why he kept tripping coming out of Bifrost.
And then, suddenly, into his life came the absolute in teen fantasies: a beautiful woman just enough older than him to be safely unattainable but close enough that it wasn't weird, like dating someone his aunt's age, in his daydreams. Harry had no idea yet that she was a former model. He definitely didn't know that she had spent literally her entire life training in seduction and subterfuge, unintentionally hitting Harry with the secondhand effects of testing Tony. All he knew was that the last time he'd seen women of Natalie's caliber in this kind of proximity, he hadn't gotten near enough to puberty to really notice. Now, he was imprinting like a hormonal baby duckling.
His therapist would have a rich seam to mine about how Natalie's coloration wasn't that different from Harry's mother's. But he was years from being able to find a therapist cleared for all his secrets. And at least she wasn't green, so that was Captain Kirk-esque fixation on Gamora seemingly dodged.
Harry had not realized that he had basically just stopped in the middle of the room, zoned out, staring at the young woman arranging the table, speaking to the concierge in fluent French. He was very embarrassed when she suddenly finished talking to the staff, noticed him (she'd never actually lost track of him), and gave him a coy smile. "Harry, right? I'm Natalie, Mr. Stark's new assistant."
He nodded, managing, "Yeah. Happy told me. I'm Harry." Then he winced at realizing he didn't need to introduce himself. "Um. In at the deep end?" he somehow choked out. Suave, Potts, he berated himself.
"Oh, no, this part is easy. But I don't think your aunt wanted me to do the job?" He didn't realize that she was guiding him to as secluded a spot in the bustling restaurant as she could find to interrogate the newly-available resource. "Are she and Tony…"
"Nobody knows," he answered honestly. The reminder of his aunt and her issues allowed him to manage a pretty-coherent, "She'll probably like you better if she, you know, doesn't think you're trying to get with Tony? He may try to get with you… not to imply you'd want that…"
"Thanks for the advice," she said, giving him another one of those smiles that made him really glad for the comfortable set of newly-tailored slacks and long sport coat he was wearing. "Uh, oh. Looks like Mr. Stark may need a rescue."
He followed her gaze to where Tony had run into Justin Hammer at the bar. Pepper had already abandoned him, and he was wincing as he was forced to take a photograph with one of the worst technology CEOs on the planet. "I'll save him," Harry offered, half to impress Natalie and half because he would have anyway. Not waiting for approval, he dodged his way through the crowd to reach the bar.
"Actually, it's on hold," Justin was explaining about his defense contract, as Harry walked up.
"Hey, Mr. Hammer," Harry butted in, placing himself in between Justin and Tony as Tony was trying to walk away. "Are any of your family here today? Hunter? Timmy?" Despite Tony hating the man, Harry had met a surprising amount of his family.
Stumbling to a halt, Justin clearly mentally recalibrated. "Ah, Harold," he recognized the boy, though he was constantly trying to be super formal with names to annoy people, the same way Tony gave them nicknames. Harry wasn't even short for Harold, but Justin had never cared. "No, not today. Christine, do you know that my nephew Timmy's a big fan of Iron Man? It's not like we're rivals."
Harry had barely noticed the blond reporter who had been following along behind Tony and Justin, but she seemed to recognize him. "Harold?" she considered out loud for a moment before realizing, "Harry Potts?" Weirdly, she reached out to brush his bangs back and momentarily reveal his scar for confirmation. It wasn't exactly a secret on Earth, but he wasn't famous for it the way he was on Vanaheim, and his eyes narrowed. "I'm Christine Everhart, from Vanity Fair. Can I get a quote from you later about your aunt for our Powerful Women issue?"
Glancing to see that Tony had successfully cleared off, Harry said, "Sure thing, ma'am. She's going to be a great CEO."
"Harold," Justin said, before he could escape, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Can you ask Anthony to get me a slot at the Expo?"
"Will do," Harry agreed, and then slipped back to the corner table.
"Where's Tony?" Pepper asked, the only one at the table.
Harry shrugged, "I saved him from Justin Hammer. Who wants an Expo slot. Also that blond reporter wants to interview me about you…" he lowered his voice, "Do you think she's magical? She seemed to recognize me by my scar."
Pepper gave him a considering look and said, "Well Tony thought she was magical for an evening last year. But, yeah, that's weird. Hold off on talking to her without me. Maybe Tony's in the washroom. You should wash up, too."
"Yes, ma'am," Harry said, only slightly insouciantly, and went off to find the bathroom.
As he pushed his way inside the well-appointed facilities, Tony was clearly having some kind of internal conversation as he stared in the mirror, and Harry thought he heard Tony mutter to himself, "Got any more bad ideas?"
"We could invite Aunt Pepper, Ms. Everhart, and Natalie to all eat lunch with us?" Harry suggested, startling Tony. "You know. As bad ideas go?"
Tony chuckled, getting the joke, but asked, "Maverick… if you owned a race car, would you let someone else drive it?"
"Do I know how to drive a race car in this bad idea?" Harry checked.
"How hard can it be?" Tony shrugged, grinning.
"Are you going to drive in the race? Aunt Pepper is going to kill you. You're trying to get her to kill you, right?" Harry checked. "With the Natalie thing, and now this?" He paused and said, "I mean, it sounds super fun and, yeah, do it, but I just want to know whether to tell her you knew she was going to kill you."
"Bucket list, Maverick," Tony nodded, and tried to spin it like it was just a joke. But there was something really serious behind his eyes. "Cover for me?"
"Don't crash," Harry ordered him in implicit bargain.
"Good man," Tony nodded, slipping out of the bathroom on what was obviously a mission to give Pepper gray hairs.
Harry washed up and noted Tony slipping out the back before heading through a circuitous route to the corner table, where Pepper was waiting. "Did you find Tony?" she asked.
"Don't get mad?" Harry asked, knowing full well that would start her getting mad but it was worth a shot. "He's marking something off his bucket list."
"Something?" she asked, looking around and sighing with relief when she spotted Natalie's red dress moving around the restaurant floor nearby.
"He's… going to drive in the race," Harry winced, waiting for it.
The relief that Pepper felt knowing Tony wasn't off with his new assistant immediately evaporated. "This… this cannot happen," she said, with grim finality. "Where's Happy? I need Happy."
"Happy's nearby," Harry shrugged, but then said, "But it's happening." He pointed at the screen behind her where Tony was already appearing on TV, having switched into a blue, form-fitting racing onesie in really admirable time. The coach of the racing team looked upset that Tony was swapping himself in for their presumably-talented driver.
"Why didn't you stop him?" Pepper sighed in exhaustion.
"I'm not his dad?" Harry countered. Left unspoken was that Pepper wasn't his mom. Honestly, Harry didn't have enough understanding of adult relationships to venture the concrete idea that maybe Pepper and Tony had never gotten together because she didn't know whether she wanted him to be her son or her boyfriend. Harry probably did have a bit of unexamined resentment about how much more time Pepper spent mothering Tony than she did him.
More tired than he'd ever seen her, his aunt, quietly defeated, just said, "I think he's trying to kill himself."
Oh. The seriousness of that statement made Harry suddenly evaluate his interactions with Tony over the last few hours. He was obviously not even quite a teenager yet, so didn't have a wealth of knowledge about human psychology. But Vanir culture, Gryffindor in particular, was rife with stories about warriors and inevitable death in battle. "He's been fighting terrorists all year, right?" Harry checked. She nodded sadly, and he suggested, "Maybe he just knows that the armor's not going to protect him forever. Eventually someone will get lucky. He's carrying around a suit of it in a briefcase because he's afraid someone will shoot him when he doesn't have it on."
"I left home to get away from people desperate to die in battle," Pepper nervously wiped away a small tear, unwilling to cry in public. She'd lost her entire family the same way, except for Harry, and he was trying his best every year to get murdered in a school.
Harry put a hand on her arm and asked, "Have you told him that?"
Before she could answer, the gasps of the crowd called their attention back to the TV, where a man had walked onto the track, an orange jumpsuit falling away as he powered up some kind of rig with glowing whips. For a moment, Harry thought it was a sorcerer exposing magic on live television, before he realized it was a tech apparatus. And then the man slashed through the front of a race car speeding past him as if it was made of butter, causing it to flip and begin exploding across the cordoned-off road.
"We have to get to Happy," Pepper confirmed, suddenly all business. She clearly thought about telling Harry to stay behind, but realized it wouldn't work. She also thought about sending Harry ahead without her, since he'd be faster, but also wasn't willing to sit back in safety while both of her boys were in danger.
Maybe Virginia Potter hadn't left Vanir culture as far behind as she thought.
Within a minute, they were hurriedly explaining to Happy what had happened and racing with him to the car. Pepper was highly motivated and making shockingly good time despite her heels and nice dress. Harry half-wondered what had happened to Natalie, but didn't have much time to think about it as Happy blasted the Rolls through the temporary barricades and started weaving upstream against the race cars, trying to get to where the madman with the whips was almost certainly attacking Tony.
"Give Harry the case!" Pepper shouted from the backseat. "Where's the key?"
"It's in my pocket," Happy answered, trying to drive one-handed as he held the briefcase out to Harry, riding shotgun.
"I can pick it!" Harry insisted. "Car!" As Happy narrowly swerved around the shocked oncoming racer, Harry used the distraction to not even bother faking it with the paperclip as he had earlier. It turned out that simple catch locks were extremely easy to open with just a small exertion of magic to unlatch them. Happy never noticed the slight orange light under Harry's finger as he near-instantly opened the cuff around the briefcase handle.
In moments, they rounded a corner and saw Tony in his blue racing suit being menaced by the man with the whips, burning wreckage of his and multiple other cars strewn across the road and shocked fans shouting from the other side of the barrier. Happy didn't even hesitate, just executed a perfect slide to crush the whip-wielding maniac between the barricade and the grill of the car.
"Are you okay?" Tony asked, having leaped up onto the barrier just above his assailant. Everyone in the car nodded, and he snarked, leaping back down to the driver's side of the car, "Were you heading from me or him? Because I can't tell!"
"I was trying to scare him," Happy answered lamely as Tony walked up next to his window.
"Are you out of your mind?" Pepper screamed through her own open window. "Get in the car right now!"
"Better security," Tony talked over her. "I was attacked. We need better security."
"How is he not pulp?" Harry wondered while staring from across the hood at the seemingly-unconscious man shoved under nearly three tons of luxury British engineering. He considered the technological harness around the bare, tattooed chest across the hood.
"Get in the car," Happy also yelled at Tony.
For his part, Tony was still complaining, walking all the way around the back of the car to get in on the other side, "You're CEO. Better security measures. God, it's embarrassing." He opened the back door of the car behind Harry as the boy noticed the attacker snapping back awake, seemingly still alive. "First vacation in two years," Tony muttered just before an electrical whip chopped the car's door in half in front of him.
Harry rolled his eyes as Happy and Pepper started screaming, trying to back the car away from the man whose car-cleaving whips were once again shedding sparks. Why were they screaming? "Tony. Catch!" Harry ordered, awkwardly shoving the heavy briefcase out of his own open window to land on the road in front of Tony.
Meanwhile, Happy was busily accelerating again, trying to crush the man with two yards of clearance when smashing him at thirty miles per hour hadn't killed him. "I got him!" Happy insisted, throwing the car back into reverse for another run.
"He's got some kind of armor!" Harry disagreed. "Stop hitting him!" Harry figured Tony must have worked out high-tech inertial dampening for his suit, and this guy might have the same kind of thing in the harness protecting his chest.
"Stop banging the car!" Pepper agreed, and with both her and Harry slapping his hand before he could put it back in drive to keep them at range, only the car's engine was chopped in half rather than the entire car when the energy whip came down.
Meanwhile, Harry glanced over and saw that Tony's suit was almost done forming itself around him. But it was one set of light armor rated for small arms fire against plasma that could clearly cut a Rolls engine in half without stopping. Tony might need some help. Harry glanced at the wreckage and told the adults in the car, "I have a stupid plan." Before either could object, he shoved himself over Happy and rolled out of the driver's side window.
This nearly got him flattened moments later as Tony, in full armor and not noticing him, kicked the car sideways several yards to clear a space for his fight. Harry was able to dodge roll forward toward the flaming debris of one of the race cars. He managed to not catch fire, but his fancy new summer suit was about as ruined as the Rolls.
He figured Tony spotted him as he was clearing the car, and that may have caused a long enough delay for the bad guy to use his whips to deflect Tony's repulsor blasts wide. They came close enough to Harry that he had to duck behind the wreck, and he was questioning his life choices. Above, hundreds of people were crushed all the way up to the fencing against the barricade as if this was the luckiest day of their lives, getting to see a deadly fight from five yards away. The lack of self-preservation was mind-boggling (thought the kid who'd leaped unarmed into a power armor fight).
By the time Harry popped up with a piece of metal that had fallen off a wreck, Tony was wrapped in the whips, and that couldn't be great for either him or the suit. Somehow, the assailant was strong enough to then fling Tony and his armor back and forth across the road. Harry was sure the whips were going to let go, but they stayed latched on (possibly melting into the Mark V armor). He was honestly impressed that the armor held up so well.
Tony was on the ground. Pepper was screaming at Harry from behind as she saw him creeping out of the wreckage. But Harry grinned, spotting exactly what he'd hoped: the back of the man's harness was made of complicated, exposed mechanisms.
And with a leaping run, the fragment of automotive frame punctured right into the contraption, causing it to make an agonized clicking noise as the power on the whips notably dimmed.
Realizing there was another threat, the man that Harry was just going to think of as Whiplash tried to rear back and take a swipe at him, but both of his whips (and the arms attached) were stuck around Tony, who had stood and was planting himself, wrapping the electric tendrils around his body to draw the attacker in. Maybe Tony would have been able to do that anyway without melting, but Harry gave himself credit for screwing up the harness' power as he quickly retreated.
This would have been so much easier if he'd been able to use magic. Or if he had his own suit of power armor.
By the time Harry was back to the driver's side of the Rolls to at least use the sadly-nonfunctional car as cover, Tony had walked up the whips to Whiplash, pummeled him in the face, tossed him to the ground, and reached over to rip the power source out of the harness.
Harry could easily tell that the power source, once free, was the exact same kind of shape as Tony's arc reactor, which nobody else in the world was supposed to be able to make.
As police finally rushed up to apprehend the man and check on the wounded, Harry watched Tony scan the device with the helmet's optics and then angrily crush it. Being heaved off of the ground by the cops, Whiplash laughed like a madman, spit blood at Tony, and shouted in a heavy Russian accent, "You lose. You lose Stark."
Harry wasn't convinced he was wrong.