Chapter 11 – Extreme Makeover: Harry Edition

…

For several long, tense moments, silence hung heavy in the air of that hospital room.

"… Wow," Tony finally broke it, his hand falling from his earpiece. "This idiot just doesn't quit, does he?"

"Why would he? So far, he's been kicking our asses," Harry remarked distractedly, still tapping his own earbud in a futile effort to try and clear up the signal, clinging to the desperate hope that this was just some horribly ill-timed prank by Jo, and that any moment, she'd finally cut back in with some snarky retort before he threatened to soak her motherboard in kerosene again.

Nothing but static answered him, though.

"Hey, we've kicked our own fair share of lackey butt too, I'll remind you," Tony pointed out pettily, visibly more agitated at the implied insult against his bad-assness than the threat against his home.

"Meanwhile, he's simply copied your suits, trashed Hollywood, taken my arm, and now attacked our home," Harry retorted, focusing inwards as he gathered his power, reluctantly accepting that maybe this wasn't a prank by Jo and that their luck truly was this awful. "You're right; we've clearly got him on the ropes!"

"No need to be snippy," Tony complained, sweeping the blankets off his torso and giving a weird-looking lurch with his body not unlike an inexplicably drunk seal flopping around on the ice.

"… Why won't my legs move?" Tony asked, frowning at the awkwardly twitching limbs.

"Well, you have been mostly dead all day," Natasha idly commented.

An astonished Harry lost his grip on his power as he stared at the last woman he would have ever expected to make that kind of reference.

"What on Earth do you think you're doing anyway?" Pepper demanded, stepping to the side of Tony's bed and glaring at him suspiciously.

"The Mandarin's people are attacking my home. Ergo, I have to kill them," Tony informed her, frowning at his barely responsive legs. "I mean, do you have any idea what those bastards will do to my insurance premium if they destroy my house?"

"If you even know what the name of your insurance company is, I will eat my shoe," Pepper dryly responded, effortlessly pushing the weakened Tony back into his bed with one hand.

"And Mr. Stark, I feel I should inform you that you are in absolutely no condition to be fighting anyone right now," Doctor Cho pointed out firmly.

"Why not? I got a new ticker and everything," Tony argued, glancing down at the bright green reactor sitting in his chest. "Ugly though it may be," he added disappointedly.

Harry chose not to dignify that comment with a response, focused as he was on regathering his power.

He did silently vow to put Nair in the man's shampoo, though.

"Even if your body is no longer being subjected to continued palladium poisoning from your reactor, that does not automatically repair all the damage that has already been done, Mr. Stark," the doctor explained, somewhat patiently.

"And besides, Boy Wonder here vaporized your suit when he brought you in," Natasha added casually.

Harry glared at the tattletale.

"You little brat! Destroying the one you stole wasn't enough? You had to destroy mine, too?" Tony demanded irately.

Harry groaned in exasperation. "Okay, we are wasting a lot of time here. So, would you like me to go stop these lunatics while we still have something of a house left, or do you want me to stay here and listen to you whine about what I had to do to save your life?"

Everyone stared in silence as Tony frowned thoughtfully.

"How could you just destroy my suit like that, you absolute monster?! That thing was a masterpiece! Do you have any idea how long it takes to design something like that? I mean, figuring out the helmet-hair issue alone took weeks of tinkering!"

Harry stared flatly at the billionaire-shaped toddler with a goatee. "Your sense of priorities is awe inspiring," he commented dryly. "Meanwhile, in adult land, I'm going to go stop a gang of armored psychos from stealing or destroying everything we own."

"Fine," Tony huffed, folding his arms like a pouty child. "Go save my stuff. If yours gets lost in the process, well, that's just a sacrifice you need to make."

"Whatever you say," Harry replied with an eye roll, building a mental image of his destination. "Would someone please spit in this idiot's jello while I'm gone?"

"Sure thing, Harry," Natasha answered just before he disappeared with a swirl of color.

Tony stared at the redhead.

"What? I was kidding," she tried to assure him.

Eyeing her distrustfully, Tony slowly slid his jello to the other side of his tray.

The Stark Mansion

With the sound of a whip-crack, Harry appeared in the wide, sweeping driveway of their elaborate Malibu mansion, his silver armored boots giving a loud metallic thump as he landed on the concrete.

However, this sound was completely drowned out by the riot of cascading explosions as a cadre of armored terrorists bombarded the mansion with missiles from their shoulder-mounted launchers.

To their chagrin, however, the house was fighting back.

… and rather effectively, at that.

All over the place, large hidden panels had slid back to reveal turrets and missile launchers rising from the roof, and the driveway, and even some of the walls, and every single one of them was unleashing its full fury on the attackers.

After all, Tony Stark may have left the weapons-development game some time ago, but that didn't exactly make the man a pacifist, and it certainly didn't mean his home would be defended by anything less than the absolute top-of-the-line weaponry designed by the Merchant of Death himself. Especially given his public role as superhero.

Of course, the part that the attackers likely found most unnerving wasn't the simple fact that the Stark Mansion was armed, but how polite it was as it attacked them.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Jarvis' smooth, cultured tones sounded out as a turret fired a missile that sent one of the attackers tumbling through the marble fountain. "Begging your pardon, sirs," he spoke again as another missile detonated against one of Tony's cars that an armored terrorist was using as cover, sending him flying and peppering him with shrapnel. "I sincerely hope you are prepared to pay for these damages," he complained as one of the terrorists destroyed one of the house's numerous turrets, even as the man's suit sprouted shallow bullet holes from yet another turret.

However, while the attackers had seemingly been stalled by the unexpected and remarkably comprehensive defense systems, those systems still paled in comparison to the incredible power of their armored suits, which, much like the suit they were based on, could shrug off most anything that conventional weaponry could dish out with little more than surface damage to show for it. And so the attackers persevered, ruthlessly destroying turret after turret despite the British VI's well-mannered efforts.

Which meant it was time for Harry to step in.

"Excuse me!" the armored teen called out loudly, spectral right arm radiating more brightly as he funneled his power into the glowing chunk of vibranium in his hand.

The sound of warfare stopped dead as both Jarvis and the would-be intruders finally registered the teleporter's presence.

"Hi, can I get a few boxes of Thin Mints, and a couple boxes of those horrible coconut things so I can force-feed them to Tony later?" Harry asked the extremely nonplussed armored solicitors. "Thanks. By the way, love the new uniforms. I always thought the Girl Scouts could use a more aggressive sales strategy."

Going by the weapons they suddenly pointed at him, they didn't seem to find his comments particularly amusing.

"Story of my life," the chronically unappreciated teen sighed sadly as a volley of missiles fired at him with a thunderous rattle.

The hospital

"I'm not going to have a home left at all by the time that kid's through with it, am I?" Tony complained, staring morosely at the ceiling with the shadowed eyes of a doomed man.

"Well, he has been very systematically destroying it piece by piece over the years," Pepper reflected thoughtfully. "But that was different. Now that things are more serious, I'm sure he'll be a lot more careful and on top of things. After all, he really is very mature for his age." Pepper's eyes fell pointedly on Tony. "More so than other members of this household, I'd wager," she added.

"Oh, please. I'm far more mature than that little knee-biter," Tony insisted, using his spoon to flick jello at his squawking doctor in petty retaliation for the woman telling him he couldn't go fight bad guys. "At least I can beat my enemies without challenging them to a rousing game of duck-duck-goose, or whatever that overgrown toddler is probably doing right now."

"I'm sure things aren't that bad," Natalie gently argued.

The Stark Mansion

"Give it back!" a somewhat childishly demanding voice cried out from a one-armed silver suit as it darted through the skies in pursuit of a flying red-armored terrorist. The terrorist in question was clutching a length of vibranium formerly in possession of said silver-armored boy. However, the latter was clearly not inclined towards sharing and was rather insistent on the metal's immediate return.

As the boy closed, though, the red-suited terrorist hurled the length of precious metal towards one of his companions, who promptly took off in another direction.

"Give it!" the increasingly aggravated teenager yelled, clumsily chasing after the new thief with only three repulsors to control his one-armed suit's flight.

… leaving him helpless to to stop the terrorist from chucking the vibranium back towards his ally the moment the boy got too close.

"Once again, it is simply thrilling to watch you work, young sir," Jarvis' cultured voice echoed out from the numerous speakers on the ground, voice practically dripping with polite sarcasm as his defense systems kept the surviving terrorists occupied, allowing the incredibly mature game of high-stakes Monkey in the Middle to continue overhead.

"Shut up, Jarvis!" the red-faced boy yelled back, dignity in tatters.

El hospital

A loud, melodramatic sigh filled the oppressively action-free hospital room.

"Still no answer from Jarvis or Harry," Tony confirmed, gently clacking his nails against the railing of his bed as he battled waves of boredom.

Natalie, Pepper, and Happy nodded silently.

A few moments later, Tony gave a louder, even more melodramatic sigh.

"… So … this is what this side of things is like for you, huh?" he finally asked Pepper. "Just sitting here in silence, wondering what the hell that idiot in a flying suit is doing?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Pepper answered candidly.

"… It sucks," Tony judged.

"Pretty much, yeah," Pepper agreed.

"… Well, that's about enough of that," Tony decided, flipping off his blanket and struggling mightily to climb out of bed.

"Mr. Stark, do we need to restrain you?" Dr. Cho asked tiredly, moving towards the bed with no great haste.

After all, Tony wasn't really making much headway.

"That kid is over there destroying my stuff, and I know it!" Tony proclaimed, grunting in effort. "I need to catch him!"

"And offer him some backup and make sure he doesn't die, of course," Natalie suggested.

"Yeah, yeah, all that jazz too," Tony blithely assured her, having almost managed to roll onto his side.

His outraged gasp as the doctor pushed him flat on the bed and undid all his progress seemed more suited to a computer crashing and destroying weeks' worth of work. "But doctor, my son needs my help … and … stuff!" he insisted, going straight for the heartstrings.

The stone-hearted woman seemed oddly unmoved.

Sighing loudly, Pepper rose to her feet. "Tony …"

Yet another sudden change in the TV's program brought her up short, once more drawing everyone's horrified eyes.

This time, however, the change didn't come with a Mandarin logo or weird speeches from a man in a robe. But even so …

"… We need to get home. Now," Tony stated, voice suddenly serious.

"Agreed," Pepper hastily replied, hurrying over to help him out of bed.

"I'll get the car. Happy, fetch a wheelchair," Natalie ordered as she rushed out of the room.

"On it!" Happy responded, only to pause. "Wait, I'm the driver. Shouldn't I get the-"

"Happy!" Tony and Pepper barked.

"On it!" Happy repeated, rushing out of the room.

La Casa del Stark

With a thunderous crash, a terrorist and an armored teenager burst through the ceiling of a newly refurbished living room to land in a clatter of crumbling drywall and week-old furniture.

Groaning, Harry flipped onto his back, feeling like little more than a giant bruise as a sharp, stinging ache resounded through his entire body from his less than elegant landing.

As he started leveraging himself back to his feet, though, he found that his opponent apparently wasn't as incapacitated by their landing as he was. With a furious shout, the man tackled him back to the ground and aimed his sparking but apparently still operational missile launcher directly at his face.

Eyes wide, Harry frantically grabbed at the missile launcher with his left hand, forcing it off target just as it fired.

Even inside his helmet, Harry's ears rang and head spun from the missile exploding so near his face, sending shrapnel pinging off his armor and mask. However, he still possessed enough sense to force his power into his phantom right arm, building up a blinding glow as he prepared to use it to neutralize the core of the man's armor … assuming his finicky power did what he wanted for once.

Unfortunately, the snarling terrorist didn't seem inclined to take that chance.

Wrenching at Harry's left arm, the man twisted and locked Harry's elbow, pinning Harry painfully on his right side, and keeping the man firmly out of reach of that glowing arm.

Panting, Harry watched out of the corner of his eye as the man's shoulder-mounted turret once again took aim at his face, now with Harry helpless to stop it.

"For our Teacher," the man spoke at last, grim satisfaction filling his voice as Harry struggled furiously in his grip, trying desperately to muster enough focus to teleport, or assume his obscurus form. But instead, all he could do was watch as the turret whined, preparing to fire.

But suddenly, without warning, the turret went completely dead.

"What …" the man muttered, frowning in confusion. However, his confusion evolved into shock and outright fear as his armor started seizing, forcing him to let go of the teen beneath him and driving the man to the floor, helpless and trapped inside his own suit, its limbs spasming.

"… the hell?" Harry finished for the terrorist, who seemed both heavily distracted and very inexplicably trapped.

"Oh, thank God," a female voice sounded in his ear. "I thought I was going to be too late."

"Jo?" Harry asked in surprise. "Did you do this?"

"I most certainly did," his VI answered proudly. "I don't know what they did to set up their little signal-jamming perimeter around the place, but they can't stop me from transmitting inside of it! So I hacked into this guy's suit and overrode its processes." With a frustrated groan, the armored terrorist found his suit forcing him jerkily to his knees, where he was left, helpless and immobile. "I thought you could use the help," she finished, somewhat smugly.

"Hey, I was about two seconds from tearing that guy apart," Harry defensively assured her, poking through the rubble to find his vibranium.

"Would that have been before or after he splattered your brains all over the living room?" she asked cheekily.

"Who knows? I like to keep things interesting," he answered sardonically, abandoning his search as the man's friends battered their way through the front door, apparently eager to join the party.

"You take one, I take the other?" Harry suggested.

"Thought you'd never ask!" Jo exclaimed delightedly, already charging in with her commandeered suit.

En-route from the hospital

"You know, I really think it'd be better if I was driving!" Happy yelped, bracing himself against the dashboard while staring wide-eyed at the honking cars and blurring signposts whipping past their speeding car.

"I second that!" Pepper cried, squeezing her eyes firmly shut and muttering a constant prayer as she swayed back and forth in the backseat.

"Still no answer!" Tony complained, lowering his hand from his earpiece. "And by the way, Ms. Rushman, while we're all very impressed by your suspicious number of talents, if you could refrain from flying my car …"

"No time!" Natalie barked as the car touched down with a squeal from the tires and the passengers.

Tony groaned, clutching his new arc reactor. "Just got a new ticker, and I'm already going to die and lose my house in the same day," he prophesied. "And I never even got to try shawarma!"

Natalie simply rolled her eyes and continued relentlessly breaking speed laws as she rushed towards the mansion.

Tony's as-yet not completely destroyed house

Jarvis gave a weary sigh as Harry caught the final terrorist in a flying tackle that smashed them both through several interior walls and the plate glass windows overlooking the ocean.

"Young sir, if you could at least try to keep the property damage to a minimum," Jarvis suggested mildly.

"Call it remodeling, Jarvis!" Harry suggested, grunting as the terrorist forcibly freed himself from his grip with wild blasts of his repulsors, sending them both into a graceless airborne tumble as waves crashed against the cliffside below them.

They both recovered at the same time, the terrorist halting his spin and pulling into a smooth hover just as Harry managed to gain his own balance, hovering far less smoothly on two boot jets and a single gauntlet repulsor.

For several moments, they stared at each other, armored suits whirring and whining as they prepared their weapons.

With a thunderous blast, they rocketed towards each other, repulsor blasts and missiles flying. Inside his helmet, Harry's brows were furrowed in intense focus, sweat dripping down his face as he dove and spun, narrowly missing the barrage of missiles as he raced closer to his opponent, even as the other avoided his own repulsor blasts.

But Harry's eyes were barely on his own attacks. They were on one thing in particular, every straining fiber of his being focused on his target as he found the staccato rhythm in his opponent's blasts, timing his moment with excruciating care.

Just as the terrorist's shoulder mounted turret flared with light, firing yet another missile, Harry stopped cold, ceasing his charge with boots and gauntlet as a compartment on his left forearm opened with a gentle whine.

His opponent's missile squealing as it faintly brushed the side of his mask, Harry fired.

"Taaank missillle!" Harry sang as the deceptively small missile raced towards his target, perfectly embedding itself with an almost innocent clang inside the barrel of the man's shoulder-mounted turret just as as it flared with light, preparing to fire another missile.

"Wooo! Did you see that shot?!" Harry cheered, closing the distance to the alarmed terrorist and flinging him over his shoulder, bombarding him with a massive, continuous repulsor blast to drive him towards the cliff as the duo of jammed missiles prepared to detonate. "Skywalker, eat your heart out! Ha!"

The terrorist's shout of pain and terror was swallowed up by the crackling thrum of the repulsor stream blasting him towards the cliff, burying him deep in the craggy stone directly between two of the heavy concrete supports bracing the cliffside mansion.

"Uh oh," a wide-eyed Harry muttered as he noted that fact.

With a fiery boom, the missiles detonated, shattering the cliff-face with resounding crack. Burning shockwaves nearly knocked the stunned teenager out of the air before he could regain his balance, staring in almost horrified awe as the concrete supports were completely pulverized, nothing more than ruined slabs of rubble left to fall into the ocean with mighty splashes alongside the veritable rockslide coming from the shattered cliff.

Harry winced with every splash.

After several moments, though, everything seemed like it might be alright. Two of the heavy concrete columns bracing the part of the mansion hanging out over the edge of the cliff were simply gone, but the others were still … mostly there. And sure, the massive spiderwebbing cracks running up and down their length were somewhat nerve-racking, but surely that was nothing! A little Flex Tape should patch that right up, shouldn't it?

Unfortunately, just as the gradually calming teenager let out a breath of relief, the near silence was broken with another thunderous crack as the rest of the supports gave way.

Harry watched with slumped shoulders as the luxurious Malibu mansion split in two, half of it crumbling into little more than a particularly lavish rockslide that tumbled down the cliff and into the sea below, swallowed up with resounding claps of stone against water and arcing geysers of spray.

For a long time, Harry simply hovered there, staring aghast at the very thoroughly ventilated remains of the home, the interiors of its rooms cracked open and exposed to the world like an opened-up doll-house.

Floating up beside him in her commandeered suit, Jo let out a long, low whistle at the devastation.

"So … you think Tony'll notice?" Harry asked his VI, trying to wrap his head around how dead he was.

"What, the fact that half his home is now missing? Yeah, there's a chance," she answered dryly, speaking loudly over the grunting swears of the terrorist held prisoner inside her suit.

Harry sighed. "Figures," he answered, floating closer to the remains of the mansion, where the somewhat confused Dum-E was currently overlooking the ocean from the sudden edge of the workshop floor.

"So, Dum-E, think you can have this fixed up by the time Tony gets back?" he asked the robotic assistant.

Given the complete lack of movement or sound from the robotic arm on wheels, he guessed that he had finally rendered Dum-E truly speechless.

"Yeah, thought not," Harry replied in disappointment, flying upwards and leaving the nearly catatonic Dum-E to his spontaneous new view.

"You know, sir," Jarvis decided to chime in, his sardonic tones coming through Harry's earpiece, "I must say that, while I certainly appreciate the assistance, this strikes me as a somewhat Pyrrhic victory, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, that's a bit excessive," Harry argued, floating over the crumbling remnants of the roof to land on the battle-scarred driveway, while Jo left to poke around inside the rubble. "I saved most of the place!" He turned to look at what all was left. "I mean, there's got to be at least a good …," he paused to estimate, "… sixty-, seventy-percent house left? So I don't know what you're all complaining about. I mean, in today's society, doing something seventy-percent right is outstanding. Hell, if our government was seventy-percent competent, we'd all be ecstatic!"

"Well, let's see if Mr. Stark shares your rather optimistic point of view, then," Jarvis cheekily suggested.

With a cold pit of dread in his stomach, Harry realized this wasn't an idle threat, as his ears caught the wild screeches of rubber on concrete as a car slid to a stop in what was left of the driveway behind him.

"And of course he's coming home right this second," Harry muttered to himself in doomed resignation. "Lovely."

Gritting his teeth, he turned to face the music.

Inside the car, he could see the horrified, somewhat green-tinged faces of Happy and Pepper as they stared through the windshield at the absolute wasteland that awaited them.

He gave them a little half-hearted wave.

As for Tony, though, he climbed out of the car clutching a cane, making his way over the broken concrete and mangled pieces of machinery with a feeble gait, clearly still suffering from the residual effects of his palladium poisoning.

As well as just a slight dash of car-sickness.

His eyes, however, were absolutely clear as they gazed at what remained of their home.

"Well … I see you had things covered here," Tony commented, idly watching as the majority of the roof finally buckled and collapsed with a grating crash.

Stepping over to the new edge of his driveway, Tony gently kicked a small piece of rubble to fall into the still bubbling surface of the ocean far below. "I do have a few questions about your sudden remodeling choices, though," Tony continued, staring out at the expanded view of the ocean granted by the new loss of house. "For instance … 'Why can't you let me have nice things?!'"

"Hey, I saved most of your house," Harry defended.

Tony simply kept staring at the remains still sinking beneath the waves.

"And the rest was the Mandarin's fault!" Harry continued. "His people did it! You're lucky I managed to stop them from destroying more than this!"

"Um …," Jarvis spoke up, "actually, sir–"

"Jarvis, I swear to God, I will hook you up to Limewire until you get internet herpes!" Harry yelled furiously, glaring threateningly at nothing.

"… the Mandarin's fault, right," Jarvis nervously agreed, swallowing his corrections. "A tragic accident that was in no way the fault of the young sir, here. Utterly unavoidable. Our blame should be placed solely at the feet of the Mandarin, sir."

"Damn straight," Harry confirmed with a fierce nod.

Tony simply groaned and grieved over the shattered remnants of his home.

At the sound of crunching rubble, though, they both turned to see a certain redheaded super-spy from Legal stepping towards them. "When you two are finished discussing home makeovers, we have a situation, in case you've forgotten."

"Situation?" Harry asked. "That doesn't sound good."

"It isn't," Tony explained, pulling out his smartphone and opening a recording of a recent broadcast. "We tried contacting you, but I'm guessing one of our little demolition-men has a signal jammer on them."

"Yeah, that's about what we figured," Harry mentioned, taking the proffered phone. "We just couldn't figure out why they bothered."

"Well, it's simple," Tony replied, reaching over and tapping the phone's screen to start the video. "We weren't they're real target; they just wanted to destroy my suits and keep us distracted so we wouldn't be able to interfere."

"Interfere with …," Harry prompted, only to fall silent as the video played out, revealing a rather different and disturbingly recognizable house trailing with smoke and rubble following a clearly effective hit-and-run attack by still more of the Mandarin's armored lackeys, seemingly carried out only moments after Harry had arrived to deal with their attack here, and been thoroughly cut off from any word of what was going on elsewhere.

Worse, though, was that simple destruction evidently wasn't their true goal over at their real objective, as the panicked-sounding newscasters made excruciatingly clear.

"… shit," Harry aptly summarized as he returned the phone.

"Shit indeed," Tony agreed, closing the emergency news report of the president's abduction from the White House.

Enemy spawnpoint

Thrusters roared as a cadre of armored terrorists flew in absolutely unwavering formation down a long, winding ink-black tunnel, its only light the harsh red brilliance of their reactors and fiercely glowing eyeslits.

At least, until their reached their destination.

They landed with a resounding clatter of heavy metal boots on concrete in a large, busy stone room blazing with the harsh yellow glow of construction lights, its vaulting ceiling braced with heavy, new-looking steel girders. However, the sound of their landing was thoroughly drowned out by the titanic clatter of heavy machinery echoing across the room's rounded walls as more and more of the corrupted metal suits worn by the new arrivals were crafted under the diligent hands of sweating fanatics.

Next to those deafening mechanical birthing cries, the droning rhythm of booted feet marching in formation sounded almost as faint as a whisper, and the feather-light tread of the Mandarin himself as silent as a terrible dream.

"So," the great Teacher drawled, thin lips twisting in a dire grin as he stepped towards one of the armored figures, "our guest of honor arrives at last."

With a grinding clatter of delicate mechanics, the suit's front slid open, allowing a panting, disheveled man in a once-crisp suit to fall to his knees.

"You honor me," the Mandarin claimed, nodding with a satisfied expression at the president kneeling at his feet. "You are wiser than I took you for to know your place so well."

The president glared through sweat-soaked gray hair as he struggled to his feet, wavering only slightly as he stood before his captor. "Whatever you hope to gain by kidnapping me, it won't work," he insisted, glaring into the Mandarin's beastly black eyes. "The United States government doesn't negotiate with terrorists."

The Mandarin's grin showed narrow white teeth. "Neither do I," he replied before turning and sweeping his gaze proudly across the constant flurry of activity that filled the vaulting room as his devotees worked tirelessly to craft his metal army. "Do you know why I brought you here?" he asked the president over his shoulder.

The president's response was stony silence.

"I wanted you to see it," the Mandarin proclaimed, eyes shining with excitement as his hand stretched out as if to caress the harsh stone walls. "I wanted you to see where it all started. Where I carved deep into the bedrock of your bloated kingdom, and uncovered a vaunted shrine to your own ego, buried deep and forgotten, even by you. I wanted you to see how I tore down your altar, the temple where you birthed your first god, and expanded on it, replaced it with my own, this one built in the image of your latest idol, but tamed to serve my will, and not yours." As the Mandarin's gaze drifted towards one of the walls, the president found his own gaze following it, staring in confusion at what looked the remains of a twisted green metal coffin, smashed to pieces and piled against a wall like forgotten trash.

The president's face paled as recognition flashed in his eyes.

"Yes," the Mandarin hissed, "I see you finally understand." His beastly black eyes pinned the president under their gaze. "For too long, America has been standing on the shoulders of hand-crafted gods, desperately trying to reach the heavens. Your worship of the pitifully frail Iron Man was not the first, but he will be the last, or I will bury you all under the broken pedestals you have been so desperately clinging to."

"What do you want?" the president demanded, cutting short the Mandarin's crazed, sonorous preaching.

"I want you to understand," the Mandarin growled, hands curling into claws. "I want you all to understand!" For a moment, it seemed as if the Mandarin would abandon all pretense and simply carve into the man with nails and teeth, but with a deep breath, his poise returned. "And that is why, tomorrow, you will die." The Mandarin gently clasped his hands together. "You are your kingdom's last and greatest idol. When they see your broken body lying at the feet of my mass-produced gods, while even your great protectors could do nothing to stop it … maybe then, they will all finally understand." The Mandarin's smile finally returned. "And then I will take my metal gods, and defend this great kingdom against all who would dare threaten it—something you, with all your endless,mortal soldiers,could have only ever dreamed of doing."

As the president stared deep into the Mandarin's black eyes, he saw only madness staring back at him. But as he gazed at the machines endlessly churning out more of those damned Iron Man suits, a mere handful of which could raid the most secure location in America and carry off its leader, he saw a power that could make that madman's dream a reality, no matter how insane.

Though fear and anger dominated his mind, they couldn't drown out the growing spark of envy.

The Mansion Formerly Known as Stark

"We are so very fired," Harry noted, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

"Wouldn't they have to actually be paying us in order to fire us?" Tony noted, poking forlornly through some of the rubble with his cane.

"Good point!" Harry responded, brightening visibly.

"If it isn't too much trouble, maybe we should be taking our current situation seriously," Natasha dryly requested.

"You're right. Harry, shape up! The president has been kidnapped, and it's time you started taking this seriously!" Tony ordered, mentally composing a eulogy for the ruined TV he spotted poking out of what looked like his former living room. "So chop chop! Tell us where he is, what he's planning, and how to stop him!"

"And how on earth am I supposed to know all of that?!" Harry demanded irately.

"By being serious, apparently. Ms. Rushman seems to think this will be the answer to all our problems, and it's high time you did something other than napping and wrecking my stuff," Tony blithely remarked.

Neither Harry nor Natasha were particularly impressed by his response.

Before they could express this through more than dirty looks, however, they were distracted by the sound of grinding stone coming from the wrecked mansion.

"That can't be a good sign," Happy observed, taking Pepper's shoulder and backing away from the shifting concrete.

"Enemy!" Natasha barked, drawing and aiming her pistol in a snap as the slightly battered form of an armored Mandarin soldier shoved through the last of the crumbled stone.

"Way to half-ass the job there, Harry," Tony accused as Harry darted towards the crimson figure.

"No, wait! She's on our side!" Harry shouted as he slid to a halt between Natasha and the armored soldier.

"… Okay, Harry, if you're about to tell me you have some kind of Montague-Capulet thing going on with one of the Mandarin's soldiers, I'm going to have to hit you with my cane," Tony commented after a moment of tense, awkward silence.

"It doesn't matter what you do, you'll never stop us from being together!" the armored figure cried, wrapping her arms around Harry possessively.

While Natasha seemed at a loss as to whether or not to shoot, and Tony seemed beyond words, Pepper's head quirked in confused recognition.

"Harry is that … Jo's voice?" she asked.

"Of course it is. Would anyone else pull such a dumb prank in the middle of an armed stand-off?" Harry asked with an exasperated eye roll.

The others present rather politely ignored the blatant hypocrisy in the young Stark's question.

"I managed to override the suit's processes and assume remote control during the fight," Jo explained, handing the chunk of vibranium she had just fished from the wreckage to a visibly grateful Harry.

"Does that mean you have a prisoner in there?" Natasha asked, face brightening in hope as she lowered her gun, while Tony stared at it curiously.

"Indeed," Jo said, blank red faceplate lifting to reveal the sweating, glaring face of one of the Mandarin's followers, helplessly trapped in a walking metal cell.

"… We can work with this," Natasha stated, staring coldly at the prisoner.

Harry shivered at her tone.

"Okay, if we could hold off on the torture for just a second, notary Natalie Rushman, may we take a moment to talk about your suspicious number of skills, your gun, and your apparent familiarity with interrogation techniques?" Tony asked.

"We may not," Natasha answered simply.

"Wait wait wait, we're not actually going to … torture … this guy, are we?" Pepper asked nervously.

"Call it 'aggressive interrogation' if that feels better," Natasha told her, not taking her eyes off the still silently glaring terrorist. "But we don't know where they've taken the president, we don't know what they plan to do with him, we don't know where their base is, we don't know where their leader's hiding … this man has answers we desperately need."

Harry tuned out the growing argument between Natasha and Pepper as he stared deep into the prisoner's unblinking eyes. Despite the subject of the ongoing debate, the man showed no sign of fear or even concern. Instead, his eyes seemed to shine with the fervent glare of fanatical belief, and a hint of what almost seemed like pride at the prospect of suffering torture to protect his 'Teacher'.

He won't talk, Harry noted with a grimace, remembering how one of his fellows had blown himself up rather than be captured. These people are too crazy to talk, no matter what we do to them.

His astral hand tightened despairingly on the warm length of vibranium. Natasha was right; this man had answers they desperately needed … and they had no way to get them from him. With all of Natasha's SHIELD know-how, Tony's tech, and even his own magic … they were powerless.

His eyes burned as he continued to meet the man's smirking gaze.

If only there was something, Harry wished, distantly noting the vibranium humming in his grip, some way to just take the answers we need. His head throbbed as he stared deep into the man's crazed eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the thoughts hidden behind them.

As the vibranium flared with light, he fell into them.

'My, the treasures one finds buried belowground.'

'I want that Stark's head! His and his father's both!'

"Harry, what's going on? Harr-"

'-e'll be sacrificed in the temple to Stark's vanit-'

'-ase one is well underwa-'

"-omething's happening! Get Harry away from hi-"

'-ook at them scramble! Some mighty protectors they ar-'

'-credible. The birthplace of the first real superhero, and no one els-'

"-ry! Snap out of it! Har-"

'-o more warnings, no more lessons. Tomorrow, this ends.'

'Ready for phase two?'

Breath exploded out of him as his head swam with sound and color, his body aching with pain as if he'd been buried deep under the ocean. His blinking eyes stared confusedly as his brain struggled to translate their input.

Sky, he finally realized, blinking slowly and deliberately. When did I fall down? He struggled to sit up, only to find his muscles trembling and weak, while his head felt about five times heavier than normal. And who ran me over with a truck?

As he tried rubbing his aching chest through his armor, he saw Tony shaking his hand painfully as he ejected a sizzling blue disk from the palm of a skeletal armbrace.

Pieces suddenly started connecting in Harry's mind.

"You shot me!" he accused, glaring at the one-off repulsor on Tony's arm.

"You were spazzing out!" Tony defended, blowing on the burns on his palm. "Just look at your nose, for crying out loud!"

Only then did Harry register the spreading metallic taste of blood on his lips, and realize it was coming from a heavy nosebleed.

By then, Pepper and Happy were at his side, the former handing him a handkerchief that he pressed to his bleeding nose while she and Happy helped him to his feet.

"What happened?" Natasha demanded, checking on the prisoner trapped in Jo's kneeling suit of armor.

Harry stared in shock at the sight of the man. His nose was bleeding profusely, staining his lower face, while his eyes twitched back and forth, seemingly staring at something unseen through bloodshot capillaries.

Harry swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry as his mind tried processing the torrential flood of sound and images he had just taken from the man. "I think … I just read his mind," he admitted hoarsely.

Silence greeted this pronouncement.

"Come again?" Tony finally asked.

Harry rubbed his forehead to try and relieve the throbbing pressure in his skull, to little success.

"What did you see? Did you learn where their base is?" Natasha asked, cutting straight to what truly mattered.

He nodded his head slowly, trying to sort through the mess of memories.

"I think … I do," he answered, wincing as the glaring sunlight filled his head with a stabbing pain.

"Well, as long as you're certain," Tony remarked dryly.

"We should get him inside," Pepper suggested, noting his painful aversion to light.

"Hang on. Jarvis, you finished with your structural diagnosis?" Tony asked aloud.

"I would recommend avoiding the coastal edge of the building, and I certainly wouldn't suggest prolonged habitation, but my scans indicate the building should be safe enough for temporary shelter," Jarvis answered.

"And the workshop?" Tony asked as Pepper began leading Harry through the rubble of the entrance.

"Largely intact, sir," Jarvis replied.

Tony smiled. "Perfect," he responded as he followed the others inside.

"Their base is in New York. Underground. They get in an out using hidden tunnels," Harry explained, wincing at the sound of stone grinding under their heels as they led him downstairs. "But the president … they're going to take him somewhere else … somewhere to kill him."

"Where?" Natasha asked as Pepper and Happy helped him to a bench in the mostly intact workshop.

"'The temple to Stark's vanity'," Harry quoted, lips lifting in a smile as he realized where that was. "They'll take him there tomorrow morning to broadcast his execution."

"Then we need to rescue him before they take him there. Where is he now?" Pepper asked, noting in confusion how little Tony was contributing … or even listening … to the conversation, seemingly too busy directing Jo in her commandeered suit to shift some rubble away from a door in the lab.

"We can't rescue him from their base," Harry told them, gaze distant. "There's too many suits, too many soldiers. And their base … I think it has a self-destruct fail-safe. They'd blow us all up before we could get him our … and most of New York City along with us. But when they move him, they'll split their forces. There'll be fewer soldiers guarding the president … and fewer guarding their base."

"Sounds like you have a plan in mind," Natasha observed with a small half-smile.

"Well … maybe twelve percent of a plan," Harry suggested.

His honesty did not seem to inspire much confidence, given their expressions. Tony remained the sole exception, busy as he was repairing the wiring to the door he was so intent on clearing, for some reason.

"We need to rescue the president," Harry continued, "but we also need to take down their base where they're manufacturing new suits … before they can nuke it to take us and New York with them."

"You want to attack both sites at once," Natasha interpreted. "Risky. We'd have to split our numbers as well, and SHIELD won't be able to offer much in the way of reinforcements. We just don't have a response team that can contend with Iron Man suits yet."

Pepper blinked in wordless confusion as the supposed notary's comment.

"Don't worry; I'll handle the reinforcements," Harry told her, eyes brightening as ideas started truly taking shape. "After all, for what I have in mind … let's just say that a little goes a long way."

"Aww, his first plan," Tony cooed, leaning on his cane. "Kids grow up so fast these days."

"Hey, if you don't like how I'm doing it, feel free to lend a hand," Harry told him.

Rather than fire back with a snarky comment, Tony simply chuckled. "Funny you should say that," he said, gesturing for Harry to follow him.

Standing on shaky legs, Harry followed Tony through the door he had cleared. "What's going on?" he asked Tony, studying the clean, brightly lit room he had never entered before, filled with machines he didn't recognize.

"If we're really going to take the fight to this bastard, you're going to need an upgrade," Tony told him, turning from a console to scan him from head to toe. "Desperately."

Before the offended teen could retort, however, the words died in his throat as Tony activated the holographic projector in front of him.

"… how?" Harry asked in a whisper as his wide eyes studied the projected schematic.

"While you were catching 'z's in that hospital, I had a lot of time to my thoughts." Tony explained. "It was a real chance to reflect on my past, and my future. My failures, and my triumphs." He grimaced. "It was awful. So I decided to dream this thing up instead."

"Tony … is this even possible?" Pepper asked, having followed them into the room only to mimic Harry's expressions as she stared at the holographic device.

"Why not?" Tony asked with a shrug. "We have some time to kill, since we won't be attacking until the president is moved in the morning, and the Iron Lad here actually managed to avoid trashing the one room we need, so it's either this or sit around talking about our feelings or something."

Tony shuddered violently.

Harry's grip tightened on the length of vibranium. "If you really think this will work …," he muttered.

"Hey, my devices have a better success rate than yours, pal," Tony told him defensively.

A smile spread across Harry's face. "In that case … let's freaking do this!"

Tony's grin matched Harry's perfectly.

"That's my boy."

Booted feet stepped gracefully over piles of broken stone, the shattered, uneven ground no hindrance to his progress, any more than the yellow police tape around the building had been, or the officers who had found themselves inexplicably convinced they had urgent business elsewhere upon his arrival.

The man's robes brushed against the charred remains of wooden chairs as he traced his fingers in the air, following the currents of power unseen by normal eyes. Those currents spread in a tangled mess through the room like the roots of a tree. However, one and all terminated at the same point, joining to form the heady echo of a once potent source, which even now left its imprint like a tear in the face of the world.

The fact that this point occurred in the middle of a heavy crater at what appeared to be point zero of the room's devastation seemed particularly apt.

The decidedly small, human-shaped burn mark set into the broken stone at the dead center of the source seemed rather less fitting.

But appearances could be deceiving, as a certain newscast had made clear, and even a young boy could hold a terrible power inside.

Once more eyeing the devastation surrounding him, the man gave a grimace. He may resent being sent out like a dutiful hound following his master's orders, but even he couldn't deny the threat posed by this creature, and the boy's potent magical power fueling it.

Just as he couldn't deny their own responsibility for dealing with this danger.

But now, they finally had a lead on how to find their surprisingly elusive quarry, thanks to the footage of the events that had unfolded here before the Armed Services Committee.

And so the robed man continued his hunt, studying the magical traces left behind by the boy known to the world as Harry Stark, as well as the deadly magical beast he contained.

Author's note: First off, I want to give a shout-out to everyone who has reviewed or messaged me about how they're enjoying this story and want to see it continue. I've been feeling really disheartened about this story for a long while, and I was honestly considering abandoning it entirely, but your comments really helped inspire me to keep going. Thank you :)

Also, I finally got my P-a-t-r-e-o-n page up and running properly (under my penname), so feel free to check it out :) I'll be posting early drafts of my fanfic chapters on there, and eventually some (very rough) chapter drafts of my original work that I'm writing as well. Any support would be very deeply appreciated.

Speaking of, I'd like to give another shout-out to my supporters Ken Harris and Woolleymammoth. Thank you so much!