It only took a few minutes for Harry to run back to his room and get dressed. As part of his manufacturing from the night before, he'd had JARVIS make an undergarment similar to the one that Tony wore under his armor when he had the time to change out of his street clothes. It was basically a form-fitting set of black footie pajamas. In addition to being a sweat-wicking synthetic, the outfit was also laced with tech for JARVIS to monitor the wearer's vitals. Harry's version of it had a secure pocket on his chest to hold his phone, where it could connect to the suit. It was tight-fitting enough that his armor slid over it without difficulty.
After one last, cursory sweep for SHIELD bugs, he set off toward Bleecker Street. He thought about turning off his phone for the trip, but figured that Tony had already figured out that the London sanctum was related to his school, and it wouldn't hurt for him to know there was another "alumni association" in Manhattan. He got his broom out and wrapped his cloak around it as best he could, shooting from the upper balcony of Stark Tower toward the New York sanctum.
Since he'd called ahead to Dean's mother, who was a guest at the sanctum, there was already a grumbling Lucian Aster on the sanctum's roof, cup of coffee in one hand and sling ring in the other. "I'm not a taxi service!" the dark-bearded near-master yelled, spinning open a portal to send Harry to LA. He was sure he'd hear some passive aggressive complaining from Kaecilius, too. And he'd be ready with his arguments about if they'd just give him a sling ring…
He hadn't actually been clear to Mrs. Thomas to pass along to Luc where he exactly needed to go, so he popped out in his backyard in Encino, the last place that the sorcerer had picked him up from in the city. Tempted to just stop for a moment and appreciate being home, he realized he had no idea how far behind Tony he was, or how far he had left to go. Wrapping his cloak back around him, he shot up and then said, "JARVIS. Do you have me on GPS? Where am I going?"
"Updating your position, Mister Potts," The AI's voice came through the earpiece he'd had built into his mask. "You've changed location quite dramatically."
It was going to take him some time to get used to wearing a high-tech balaclava all the time, but none of them wanted him to make the news as a not-quite-15-year-old involved in dangerous combat. He'd considered making the eyepieces reminiscent of his glasses, or putting a lightning-bolt design on the mask, but figured that people were already going to assume the smaller person in red and gold armor alongside Iron Man was Harry Potts, and didn't need to make that more obvious. So he'd gone with low-profile tinted lenses and a full mouth covering that contained a respirator to help with high-speed flying. The whole thing was in the same dark red as his armor, with a bit of gold piping for style.
"The address provided by Agent Coulson is a warehouse in the north of San Bernardino, approximately sixty-six miles due east of your current position," the synthetic voice recounted a few moments later.
"Ugh. I guess if we get in a fight over there, nobody will even notice," Harry mused, with an Encino native's cultivated bias against the eastern side of the LA metroplex. He urged his Firebolt in that direction. "How far out is Tony?"
"He should arrive at the location in approximately forty-five minutes."
"Okay, so I don't need to go there as fast as I could," Harry did some math in his head. "I need to be going at a little under ninety miles per hour to meet him there at the same time, right? Let me know when I get up to that speed." Then he leaned forward and put some of his magic into the broom, really enjoying the thrill of blasting across LA at faster-than-interstate speeds.
"Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Eighty-Eight. This speed should be sufficient if you maintain it," JARVIS informed him. Harry was probably just imagining that the unflappable AI sounded slightly impressed. He could go way faster on the broom, but he might be a little worn out when he got there and his cloak was already having trouble wrapping him and the broom at nearly 100 miles per hour.
He was in the air for forty minutes before he heard from anyone else.
"I think you were right about the trap," Tony's voice informed him, while he was flying somewhere over the Cucamonga Wilderness—mountains to his left, and tract housing to his right. "Show him the video feed," he ordered JARVIS.
The lenses on Harry's mask were small shards of the same material that Tony used for his own heads-up display and his fancy glass-only Starkphone. Sadly, the technology used expensive-enough materials that even economies of scale couldn't currently make it viable for general consumers, and Tony wasn't interested in wasting time making fancy screens for other billionaires. So Harry was now one of the few people on the planet with his own HUD, and was trying not to think about the thousands-of-dollars-worth of tech in his mask alone.
It was very useful, however, in allowing JARVIS to pop up an augmented-reality TV screen in the corner of Harry's vision, letting him watch without obscuring his view of where he was going. What it showed was a live feed from a 24-hour news network, filming what had to be the warehouse they were flying toward, showing the same overcast early-morning California sky. The audio was piped through his earpieces, "...coming over to speak with us now. The Captain America."
That didn't sound good. Harry had been as surprised as anyone reading the Avengers files that Steve Rogers—the country's first known superhero—had somehow survived in suspended animation since his supposed death at the end of the second World War. He wondered how Fury had convinced the press it wasn't just someone in a similar suit.
Wearing the full red-white-and-blue costume, the man in question walked deliberately up to the reporters, and began speaking with authority, "We're here today to inform you that you've been lied to. I'm sad to reveal that the son of Howard Stark, my friend, has not been as committed to peace as he's led you to believe. I'm here to help seize a stockpile of extremely dangerous weapons that Tony Stark has been illegally producing. We don't yet know what they're for, but we believe that they're based on the same technology that was used by Hydra in the war. And, I understand, they were specifically banned in the Geneva Conventions… a little after my time."
"I guess they put that whammy on the Captain," Tony grumbled. "Can I sue an American icon for slander?"
"JARVIS, can you zoom in on his eyes?" Harry asked. As his inset news feed enhanced Rogers' face, Harry hummed in uncertainty. "It's hard with people that already have blue eyes. I can't be sure. They might have just lied to him. But we should knock him out to be sure."
"Got it. Cycling forward the night-night missiles," Tony confirmed. He'd been pretty pleased about successfully producing—on short notice—a load of munitions that should explode in a small cloud of knockout gas. And that wasn't even counting the rubber bullets he'd also loaded, for if he just needed to risk giving someone a concussion by shooting them in the head.
"There's Loki, over in the background," Harry explained, having spotted the Aesir prince with a team of SHIELD agents attempting to breach the front of the warehouse. The God of Mischief had changed his outfit to a SHIELD windbreaker and suit (at least via illusion), but he was taller than the agents around him and his long, dark hair wasn't exactly government-regulation grooming.
While they'd been talking, Rogers had been answering the reporters' questions, mostly about how he'd come to be there. He was charming, personable, and trustworthy; if Loki's play was to discredit the other people on the Avengers Initiative list, they probably couldn't have found a better spokesman to hold a press conference. Harry paid attention again as he explained, "Now, I need to go over there, because we think there are mercenaries inside that might come out shooting. Please, stay back for your own safety."
Harry was just coming in over the location, JARVIS having helpfully placed an AR waypoint on it as he got close. He was flying over the hills next to a large, dirt-track raceway and a huge washed-out flood plain that probably hadn't seen an actual flood in a long time. The warehouse in question was large, but much smaller than the massive distribution hubs that surrounded it in the scrub landscape. Harry didn't feel great about all the semi trucks coming and going on the surface streets, or the large tanks of what was probably trucking fuel in the lot right next door, dangerously close to the news crew whose van he could see as he got close. At least the warehouse seemed pretty isolated from its neighbors by the wide industrial streets.
"I'll go in quietly and help if you need it?" Harry checked.
Showing that he was worried enough by the possible capabilities of a demigod and a super soldier to not refuse the backup, Tony ordered, "If Pepper asks, I suggested that. Be careful." Even if JARVIS hadn't helpfully noted his location on Harry's HUD, the noise of the rapidly-decelerating Iron Man armor would have allowed him to track the red-and-gold figure streaking out of the sky to the east.
Harry slowed as well, letting the cloak wrap around his broom completely so he could land unnoticed. As much as he wanted the air superiority if this came to a fight, he was a lot more confident in what kinds of things he could do on the ground. Without being able to use his wand, his magic-summoning gestures were a lot easier if he could put his whole body into them. He hid behind the western corner of the warehouse while he stowed his broom in its magical pocket, then slipped around the building, fully invisible in what looked like it was going to be an overcast and slightly-chilly morning.
"He's earlier than expected," Harry overheard Loki ordering the agents at the front of the warehouse, which faced east over a parking lot. "Go in now while we hold him here." As he turned the corner, he saw the agents smashing into the warehouse as Loki turned to the incoming Iron Man. Inside, there were immediately shouts and gunfire.
Loki didn't have the scepter on him. Was he concealing it? Why wouldn't he have the scepter if he was planning on a fight?
"I'm going in after the agents," Harry whispered over the comms, slipping into the building.
Meanwhile, Iron Man had landed in the parking lot, some distance away from Captain America and Loki, but in view of the news crews. "Excuse me," he announced, his voice amplified by the suit, "but I'm being slandered and I'd like to rebut. Wait, is it libel if it's in the news, or is that literally only for print?"
"Tony Stark!" the star-spangled man yelled. "Tell your employees to stand down, step out of the armor, and come in for questioning!"
"See, that's the problem, they're not my employees. This is the first I've heard of this place," Tony answered honestly, still grandstanding a bit. "Also, who's taking me in for questioning exactly? The US Army from the 1940s?"
Meanwhile, inside, rather than the firefight Harry was expecting, he saw the invading agents basically firing into the air and yelling cliches. There were already guys inside wearing black fatigues casually finishing their inspection of oversized sci-fi guns they were wielding. Harry recognized some of them from the truck that Coulson had sent away. They hadn't all had blue eyes then.
He slipped back out the door and whispered, "It's a full trap. They already whammied all the warehouse guys. They probably already did before they called us!"
Tony was trying to listen to that and Captain America explaining, "I'm working under the authority of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division." He was moving closer to Tony as he spoke, but warily.
"You're really not," Iron Man announced. "Your leadership has been compromised." He stuck his armored hand out to point at Loki, saying, "And that man is a space invader."
"He's not cooperating, take him, Captain," Loki announced, the British-sounding Asgardian accent really proving he was not an American government agent.
Harry came out of the front of the building and thought he saw a moment of hesitation from Rogers, who nonetheless flung his shield at Tony while rushing forward. It clanged off of the Iron Man armor with no obvious change other than a slight shift in position, then bounced off a tree at the eastern side of the parking lot and back into the Captain's hand. Harry resolved to never play pool against the guy, with that level of skill at practical geometry.
As Tony was trying to figure out the right response to someone who threw a giant frisbee at him, Harry noticed Loki's form flicker and disappear, reappearing right behind Tony with some kind of oversized hockey puck that he slammed like a shaped charge on the back of the armor. There was a high-pitched whine and, even a dozen yards away, Harry's HUD briefly flickered as the small EMP device went off. Within a second, Captain America was slamming into Tony, trying to knock down the presumably-disabled armor while Loki backed away.
Rogers was clearly not expecting to barely stagger Iron Man with the collision, and then get backhanded past the trees and into the chain link fence between the parking lot and the street. "Please. All my tech is shielded," Tony announced, still amplified. He was starting to sound angry, though. Harry assumed he'd at least had the same worrying flicker in his systems, despite the shielding. "Night night, Captain," he said, uncovering the missile pack on his shoulder and launching a small salvo of micro-missiles that started homing in on both Rogers and Loki.
Bouncing back surprisingly quickly, the Captain managed to swat the missiles away with his shield, causing them to explode into puffs of knockout gas too far from his face to matter. The ones that exploded in Loki's face didn't seem to do anything but make the illusion he'd left flicker. The demigod had clearly already turned invisible and moved somewhere else.
Harry saw Rogers rushing back in to try to fight Iron Man in melee, but couldn't pay much attention as the mind-controlled agents inside were starting to move out of the building, toting their oversized weapons. The man in the front had some huge black ray gun, straight out of a sci-fi video game. The barrel of the man-portable cannon was glowing orange, and Harry didn't feel great about that.
"They're bringing out the ray guns," Harry warned Tony, as he fell back to the south border of the parking lot.
He assumed they were going to shoot at Iron Man, but was surprised when the guy in the lead started aiming toward the reporters. Oh, right, this was all to try to make people think the Avengers Initiative list weren't heroes.
"Look out!" Harry yelled at the news crew, finally becoming visible to get their attention. The reporters on the southeast corner of the lot were so focused on the brawl between Iron Man and Captain America that they'd barely started to notice new people entering the fight.
He'd drifted to the edge of the parking lot to try to keep an eye on where Loki might pop up next, and didn't have a good angle to try to whip the gun off target. At best, he'd drag a stray shot into the gas vessels in the lot behind him, to the south of the building. If he didn't want a reporter to get incinerated by some kind of energy cannon, he'd have to do the dumb thing.
As the weapon hummed while it cycled up to discharge, he flung up a magical shield. Like fighting a dragon, he assumed that an energy weapon meant multiple layers would work better.
The beam from the cannon, indeed, hit like a packet of condensed dragonfire. Or like the BFG from Doom. With an audible whine, the ball of condensed plasma hit Harry's shield, flames of ignited air spreading around it. What Harry wasn't expecting was the orange energy of the cannon to react to his own energy in a way that pure fire wouldn't: both constructs canceled each other out into an explosion of pure force.
Harry was flung across the lot and dented the side of the news van as he crashed into it, barely missing the cameraman. Fortunately, his armor took a lot of the impact, but it certainly hurt. "Ow," he managed, sliding to the ground.
"Who are you!?" the reporter asked, wild-eyed at realizing they'd gotten way too close to a firefight. "Are they shooting at us?"
"Yes, get down!" Harry ordered, getting back to his feet. "Iron Man, watch out for the big gun!" he shouted as, indeed, the agent had apparently been discomfited by Harry's presence and started to turn toward Tony. "I'm with Iron Man," he hastily told the news crew. "The guy with the long hair is an alien who's mind controlling the agents and probably Captain America. I need to get back in there." With a bunch of energy cannons entering the fight, Tony was outgunned.
A lot of things were suddenly happening at once.
Iron Man had been having a surprisingly hard time in his fight with Captain America. Rogers had clearly studied him, and was doing a good job of staying close and throwing Tony off balance with hand-to-hand attacks. For all that Tony had started studying martial arts and boxing, this was the first time that anyone had actually been stupid enough to go toe-to-toe with him in the armor. And he wasn't prepared for the speed at which the super soldier could move. Plus, he wasn't willing to just unload on the poor guy. The fight had only been going for a few seconds, anyway, so he was still working out his strategy.
Loki could be anywhere on the battlefield, but almost certainly wasn't where it looked like he was, standing nonchalantly a few yards behind Tony to the northwest. Harry didn't like fighting someone else who could turn invisible.
Harry had started sprinting in the general direction of the brawl, not really planning on joining in but hoping to get in a place where he could actually energy whip without just pointing the guns at reporters or gas tanks.
As Tony realized that he could just get out of melee range by flying, the lead guy with the black cannon took that as a skeet being launched, and managed to nail the armor with a glancing hit. The fiery explosion of plasma flung Tony several yards further up into the air and away. He struggled to regain control of his flight as his legs were almost knocked out from under him. "Suit integrity at 87%," JARVIS included Harry on the damage report.
Rogers had to hide under his shield to protect himself from the explosion, and the last few seconds of situational awareness seemed to catch up to him as he realized that the gunner had shot at reporters that had barely been saved by a new combatant, and then had shot at Tony. "Whose side are they on?" he shouted at Loki.
"Stay focused on Stark," Loki ordered. "I'll go after the others!" The probably-illusory Loki began to hustle south, in the direction of the agents, but Harry, now very close to the super soldier, thought he saw a tell-tale ripple in the air right behind him.
"Captain, behind you!" he yelled, manifesting his energy whip and actually managing to snare Loki's arm as it came into visibility, oversized dagger plunging toward Rogers' back. Perhaps the super-soldier had outlived his usefulness.
To give Captain America credit, that's all the help he needed, already spinning to interpose his shield and slam the attack away. Which was good, because the Aesir prince was so strong all Harry had been able to do was slow his downward strike. Rogers then tumbled backward to avoid Loki's left hand, which was bringing the other dagger up toward his stomach.
Loki negligently twisted his right-hand dagger around under Harry's energy whip and managed to cut through it, causing the construct to unravel into motes of light. They were magical daggers, then, Harry figured. He still didn't know why Loki wasn't fighting with the scepter.
As Tony finished righting himself in the air after the energy cannon hit, Rogers rolled backwards to a fighting crouch, and Harry turned to reduce his profile against a counterattack from the demigod. Loki simply backed off of the scrum with a smug smile. "You really should have stayed focused on Stark," he said, with an affected, dagger-brandishing shrug. "We might have kept you around longer, Captain."
"I knew something was off," Rogers insisted.
"You're not mind controlled?" Harry asked, slightly incredulous.
"Just used to taking orders?" Tony figured, dismissive of the Captain's military service.
There were now half a dozen agents armed with a variety of energy weapons spreading out along the front of the warehouse, flanking the group to the west while Loki distracted them from the other side of the lot. Annoyingly, the warehouse had a "porch" area supported by brick columns that gave the men some cover. But they were holding off on attacking, for some reason, rather than spraying the assembly with plasma.
Almost as if making sure the retreating news crew had taken up a new position and focused on him, Loki took a few slow steps back as the illusion of his SHIELD outfit disappeared and his bridandine was augmented with new golden armor plates and an ostentatiously-horned helmet. "Defenders of Midgard," he announced, pompously, "I bring you glad tidings!"
"You already did that speech," Harry yelled back at him.
His moment stepped on, Loki scowled at Harry and conjured a dozen illusory duplicates of himself around the parking lot, all of them falling into fighting stance. "Show them what is coming!" he ordered the mind-controlled agents.
And then the lightshow started. Iron Man furiously maneuvered in the air to not take another hit. Captain America turtled behind his shield and was still flung across the parking lot by a blast. A tree caught fire behind Harry as he sprinted between it and the fenceline to try to get closer to Loki and away from the shooters. Tony's micro missiles tried to target various enemies on the battlefield. One of the gas tanks in the lot next door managed to explode even though nobody should have been firing toward it.
It was also raining, which, despite being overcast, was surprising for a chilly May morning in east LA.
Harry manifested a sword and swung it toward the Loki he thought wasn't illusory, and it turned out that he had chosen correctly. The God of Mischief got a dagger up to interpose, swinging the other one at Harry as he dodged backward. Oh, right, Harry hadn't really considered what would happen if he caught the demigod. Furiously giving ground, Harry tried to keep situational awareness of the rest of the fight while he conjured an off-hand stick to help with the dual-weapon battle. He had been practicing knife fighting for years, but never against anyone with superstrength and nearly a foot of height on him.
At least he'd managed to distract Loki enough that the illusory duplicates were starting to fade or just mindlessly pantomime the fight that the actual Loki was engaging in. And the shooters probably wouldn't try to fire at a melee with their leader?
"I had hoped you'd stay out of this, Harry," the prince told him, between dagger flourishes.
"Stayed home and let your friends martyr me?" Harry asked, hoping he had enough parking lot behind him to the south to keep evading backward. He absently wondered if even a few exchanges with Ying Nan had taught him a little more about evasive fighting. But his footing was getting uncertain in the suddenly-driving rain. Was that thunder? Surely JARVIS would have mentioned if there was expected to be a thunderstorm? Or he'd have seen the darker clouds while he was flying in?
"They aren't my friends, simply allies of convenience," Loki explained, haughtily. "And that was… unfortunate."
"You aren't holding that stupid stick," Harry argued, spotting the flaming wreck of the tree to his right as he fell back across the parking lot. "You can snap out of it! It's controlling you as much as those agents!"
"It's not!" the prince roared in negation, though Harry thought he almost saw a flicker of doubt through the sheets of rain between them. "I will rule this world!"
"You'll be their puppet!" Harry insisted. To his left, northwest, Iron Man and Captain America seemed to have begun to coordinate to try to get to the agents, but the sheets of water and cover in their way was making it difficult. Huge gouts of steam were left behind as the energy weapon blasts lanced through the raindrops.
Whatever Loki's next argument was, it was cut off by the crack of thunder as a lightning bolt landed directly in the middle of the parking lot, in between everyone. Somehow, it wasn't quite as deafening as Harry would have expected from a strike a few yards away, or maybe it was just his high-tech ear pieces managing to compensate. He at least wasn't electrocuted in the inch of rainwater he was standing in.
As his vision adjusted back after the sudden blinding flash, there was also a giant blond man standing where the lightning bolt had hit… so that was a little concerning.