Metal and Magic (Ch. 18)

( Every character in this story is a legal adult over the age of 18 )

Metal and Magic

Chapter 18

Harry woke to the wonderful smell of Maria’s shampoo while the crook of her leg was draped over his thigh. She had stolen his pillow in the night, leaving her with three and him with none. Harry squinted at the clock and saw it was just past eight. Sunlight crept through the curtains, making him squint. Maria mumbled in her sleep and shoved her face deeper into the pillow, leaving a lipstick smudge on the material. Her hair was a mess, but it still looked incredibly sexy in his opinion. He tried to move his arm, but she had it locked between both knees, and she was holding it with the full force of her body.

His phone was missing. It was probably dead somewhere. He always forgot to charge it, but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift. There were no meetings or work to be done at the bottling plant. He had cleared the schedule for the next two days. Harry felt he deserved it after working so hard for the last couple of weeks.

He was just dozing off again when suddenly, the door slammed open. Harry jerked awake, causing Maria’s head to lightly bounce on his chest. Tony stalked into the room, already dressed. “Get up,” Tony said. “We have an emergency.”

Maria woke and yelped when she saw Tony in the room. She yanked the blanket up to her neck, her face red. “What the fuck, Tony?”

“Sorry, Maria, but there’s no time for an early morning how-do-you-do today .” Tony made a show of looking away. “Harry, on your feet. There’s a situation.”

Harry struggled out from under Maria. He got tangled up in the sheet and fell sideways, landing face-first on the rug. “Give me a minute,” he groaned. Harry was really regretting those eight beers he drank before bed. 

“Hurry up,” Tony said. “Every second counts.”

Maria clung to the sheet, glaring at Tony like she wanted to murder him with her eyes. Harry staggered to his feet, and the sheet fell away. Tony tossed him a pair of sweatpants from the dresser. Harry caught them one-handed, pulled them on, and followed Tony out into the hallway.

“You’re fully awake at this hour? I know it must be important,” Harry said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“There was a Category Eight earthquake in Chile this morning. Jarvis woke me up,” Tony said. “Let’s go.”

The TV in the living room showed the full extent of the disaster. The screen showed a helicopter shot of half a city buried in smoke and fire. News crawls at the bottom of the screen were displayed in Spanish and English. It occurred in the Biobío region of Chile. There were hundreds dead, thousands injured, and many more missing. 

Harry’s head cleared in an instant. “Shit,” he said. “That’s insane."

“That’s the city of Concepcion,” Tony said. “Half the city’s on fire. Search and rescue is getting nowhere. The Chilean army’s been mobilized, but they can only do so much. They’re begging for international help.”

Harry sat on the edge of the couch and watched the horror unfold. “When did this happen?”

Tony glanced at his phone. “Less than an hour ago. Jarvis picked up the newsfeeds. I’ve already prepped the suits. Come on. You need to eat?”

Harry shook his head. “I’ll survive.” With a wave of his hand, Harry conjured some shoes and a shirt and quickly put them on. 

Tony and Harry jogged down into the workshop where two suits of armor waited on the racks. Tony’s red-and-gold suit gleamed in the overhead lights. Harry’s black-and-chrome suit was beside Tony’s. Harry made a mental note to polish his suit. It wasn’t as shiny as Tony’s.

Tony pulled off his shades and tossed them onto the table. He stepped into the frame, arms held wide. The robot arms spun, snapping plates onto his chest, shoulders, and legs. The faceplate clicked into position, and his voice came out tinny and filtered. “Jarvis, get us a flight plan,” Tony said.

Harry cracked his neck and stepped into his own suit. The metal was cold at first, but it warmed as it sealed around his skin. He flexed both hands, feeling the microhydraulics move with him. The helmet closed, and the HUD flickered to life with green lines and numbers everywhere.

“Waypoints set, sir,” Jarvis said. “You will reach Concepcion in three hours at maximum velocity.”

Tony’s boots fired, lifting him straight up. Harry followed, the thrusters screaming in his ears. They shot out of the tunnel like bullets. Harry banked left, then corrected, wobbling in the morning wind. For a moment, he saw the ocean, the boats, and the grid of streets before it all blurred as they climbed higher.

Tony angled south, already a streak of red and gold in the morning sun. Harry followed as the California coastline flashed past beneath him. The HUD counted down the miles and the estimated time of arrival.

After fifteen minutes, they were over Baja. Harry risked a glance backward just to make sure there was nothing on their tail. The sky was empty. The ground was so far down that he couldn’t make out any of the smaller details. There was nothing but the sound of the suit, the wind, and the steady thump of his own heartbeat.

Harry locked onto Tony’s signal and followed, flying south as fast as possible.

Metal and Magic

Concepcion stank of burning plastic, and Harry could smell it creeping through his air filter. As he dropped through the clouds, he saw the ruined city spread out below him. Roads were split apart, cars were overturned, some of the buildings had collapsed, and others looked to be on the verge of collapse. A chemical plant was fully engulfed in fire as a tower of orange flame licked the smoke-filled sky. 

Tony’s voice was in his ear. “Damn. It’s worse than I thought. You see the fire on your left?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. His helmet’s filters blocked the worst of the smoke, and he imagined what it was like for everyone on the ground. “I’ll hit it first.”

Harry touched down in the middle of Avenida San Martin. The pavement was riddled with cracks and lifted slabs of asphalt. It was littered with broken glass and chunks of concrete. He could hear sirens in the distance, but not many. Harry knew that Chile wasn’t exactly a wealthy country and that they probably weren’t capable of properly dealing with this catastrophe. People staggered in the street, covered in dust and blood. Some screamed at the sight of him. Others just pointed and whispered.

The chemical plant was a hundred meters ahead. Fire blazed out of every seam and window. The suit’s diagnostics spat out a dozen warnings about heat stress, chemical toxins, and oxygen depletion. Harry checked the other buildings. Some were already piles of cinderblock, but there were two apartments next to the plant still standing. He could see faces in the windows, lit up by the flicker of fire. Harry ran, the suit eating up the distance in long, bounding strides.

He skidded to a stop in front of the main fire. Water hoses lashed at the flames, but it was like trying to piss on a volcano. Harry ignited his thrusters and slowly lifted into the air. Once at a decent height, Harry held out his hand, and the Elder Wand appeared in his palm. Harry pointed his wand at the sky and began slowly looping his arm in a circular pattern. The effect was immediate. The sky right above the burning chemical plant went from a smoky gray to a stormy black. Thunder cracked loudly, and the clouds ripped open. Torrents of rain began falling on the blazing plant. Steam rose high into the air as fat drops of rain sizzled on the red-hot metal. 

The fire fought back valiantly. The chemical plant was loaded with drums and tanks, and every time one exploded, it lit up the sky and sent a shockwave through his body. The suit compensated, but the spell still ate at his focus. Harry gritted his teeth and kept the water coming. The flames hissed, pulled back, then flared again.

“How are you doing, Tony?” he asked.

Tony replied, “I’m evacuating the hospital a few blocks over. There’s a school collapse after that.”

“Alright,” Harry said, and doubled the pressure on his spell. The rain came down like a waterfall, completely drenching everything in its path. It took an awful lot of power to keep the spell going, and Harry could feel the sweat rolling down his back. He kept going. The suit’s coolant system tried to regulate his increase in body temperature, but Harry was sweating buckets inside the helmet.

Finally, the fire lost the battle. Harry drowned the main flames, then turned to the two apartment buildings. The bottom floors were on fire, and smoke rolled up the stairwells and out the open windows. Harry aimed at the foundations, and with a wave of his wand, the stream of water fought against gravity and came down at an angle. It extinguished the entire first floor in a blast. A cloud of steam blew out every open window. He ran up the front steps. The door was severely warped by the heat. He yanked it open and went upstairs, drenching everything in water as he went. A few floors up, he found people huddled on the floor against the far wall, coughing and crying.

“Go,” he shouted, amplifying his voice with the suit. “Get out now. Run that way. Move!” Jarvis translated all of it. 

Some of them stared at him in shock. Some bolted past him, carrying their children or dragging their elderly parents. He counted two dozen before the last straggler limped out, then he scanned the building.

He said, “Homenum Revelio,” and felt the spell spread out. There was a faint glow in an apartment near the back of the fourth floor. Harry sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The building groaned as he moved. Walls shifted, and the ceiling bulged with each footstep. He reached the door, kicked it down, and found a woman in a wheelchair, trapped by fallen beams.

Harry took a breath, then focused. He pointed his wand at the debris and watched the wood and drywall vanish in an instant. The wheelchair rolled free. Harry scooped her up in one arm and ran back down the stairs as the building shuddered and dropped an inch beneath his feet. He cleared the door with a running leap, landed on the cracked sidewalk, and set the woman down on the curb. She gaped at him, eyes wide, then started to cry. Harry wanted to comfort her, but he just didn’t have the time. He gave her a pat on the shoulder, then turned back to the street.

People stared at him while some crossed themselves in the Catholic style. Harry didn’t have time to process the attention. He moved to the next building, which was a small shop. The entire roof had caved in, and the outer walls were partially crumbled. The fire brigade was already there, hacking at the debris with axes and shovels. Harry approached, raised his hand, and cast Homenum Revelio again.

The blue glow told him there were three people trapped under the rubble, still alive but fading. Harry pointed to the spot for the firefighters, then aimed his wand, and the broken cinderblocks disappeared, one layer at a time. Dust filled the air. He vanished another layer, then another, working slower this time to avoid dropping the full weight of the building onto the survivors. Each spell took more from him, but he kept going.

Finally, Harry used his magic to levitate the last portion of the collapsed roof. He looked down and saw a teenage boy, a little girl, and an old man. The old man was unconscious, bleeding from the head. The boy screamed at the sight of Harry, but the girl just stared, blank and silent.

Harry held the debris up while the firemen reached in and grabbed the boy and girl first. They carried them to the paramedics, then went back for the old man. The firemen lifted the body out, and the paramedics started working on him at once.

Someone in the crowd started chanting something, but Harry ignored them. He moved to the next building and kept working. The sun was climbing higher, but the thick smoke kept the city in dusk. By the time Harry finished the block, his helmet was beaded with sweat inside, and the suit’s warning lights were flashing red for dehydration. He pulled off the helmet, sucked in a deep breath, and leaned against a car.

A little boy in a bootleg Iron Man t-shirt walked up and handed him a bottle of Coke. Harry smiled at the boy, took the bottle, and drank half of it in one gulp.

He heard Tony’s voice in his ear again. “You alive, kid?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I’m still kicking.

“There are people trapped in a high-rise, and the building’s falling apart. You got enough left in you to help?”

Harry glanced at the crowd. They watched him, waiting. “Yes,” he said. He stood, put the helmet back on, and fired his thrusters.

Metal and Magic

Harry landed in front of the building and demolished the already cracked sidewalk. The building was a thin, six-story box that probably should have been condemned ten years ago. The front half had collapsed inward, forming a wedge of glass, steel, and concrete. Screams came from the upper floors, and fire licked at the top windows.

He heard the roar of Tony’s suit before he saw it. A red blur streaked overhead, landed on the roof, and began peeling back sections of the shattered wall.

“Up here!” Tony shouted over the comms. “Most of them are trapped in the fourth and fifth. Can you get them out from the inside?”

“I’m on it,” Harry replied. The entry was jammed with fallen beams. He vanished as much as he could, then squeezed through the gap.

Smoke curled up the stairwell in a thick, noxious blanket. Harry’s helmet filtered the worst of it, but his eyes burned anyway. On the first landing, a woman was trapped under a slab of drywall, screaming. Harry rolled it off with a flick of his arm, hauled her to her feet, and pointed her to the exit. He checked the hallway and found no one else on this floor.

He took the stairs upward, blasting apart any debris that was blocking his way. The stairwell creaked and shifted with every footstep. He could hear the building’s frame buckling along with the deep groan of twisted rebar and cracking concrete.

On the fourth floor, Tony had ripped a hole big enough to climb through. It appeared this floor was a daycare for the office workers’ children. Kids were pressed against the far wall. Some were crying, and some were silent and shell-shocked.

“Harry,” Tony said, “Let’s get them out through here,” he told him, pointing at the hole in the wall. “The fire escape collapsed, and the ladders are toast.”

Harry nodded, then turned to the mass of children. “Follow me,” he said, amplifying his voice so it filled the corridor. “Stay together and stay close.”

He led the children to the far side of the room. The windows were mostly blown out, and ash drifted in like snow. When he reached the end, Harry turned and saw Tony scoop up a pair of smaller kids, one under each arm. He fired his thrusters and gently carried them out of the hole and down to the ground below. 

“Alright now, everyone get together,” he said, and Jarvis translated. The kids huddled together, and Harry levitated the whole group with his magic. There were scared squeals, gasps, and yelps as Harry levitated them out of the hole. He was as careful as possible as he lowered them down to the others. Harry could hear the crunch of cinderblocks and the ping of snapping steel as he went back in.

The last group was a clutch of office workers. Half of them were covered in cuts or burns. Harry glanced back. The hallway was gone, replaced by a wall of flame. He shoved them forward, then followed. When they reached an empty stretch of wall, Harry held out his wand and blasted it apart. He lowered them down just as he had done with the children. 

“I didn’t see anyone else,” Harry said as sweat dripped down his face.

A fireman pointed at the building. “There’s a woman still up there!” They all looked up, and sure enough, a woman was hanging halfway out a broken window, frantically waving for help. 

Tony didn’t hesitate. He sprinted back, used the suit’s thrusters to boost up the exterior, and smashed through the nearest window. Inside, the heat was so intense his visor fogged instantly. He scanned the room and saw the woman hunched over, coughing her lungs out. Tony crossed the room in three steps, slung her over his shoulder, and blew a hole in the wall with a repulsor blast. The floor gave way beneath him, but he jumped and ignited his thrusters. Debris rained down behind him as he landed outside, nearly bowling over a line of paramedics.

He laid the woman on the ground, and one of the medics checked her pulse and flashed a thumbs-up.

Harry took off the helmet and sucked in air, even though the smoke was so thick it made him cough. He barely noticed Tony come up next to him.

“You good?” Tony asked.

“Yeah, though it’s probably not a good idea to do superheroing with a hangover. I can’t believe I forgot to drink one of the hangover cures before leaving!”

Tony chuckled and clapped him on the back. “Let’s go. There’s an apartment block on the other side of town, leaning at forty-five degrees and ready to drop. Word is, there are still people inside.” Harry snapped the helmet back in place, fired the jets, and took off after Tony.

The apartment block was impossible to miss. It was ten stories tall, gray and ugly, and canted over like a snapped pencil. The lower floors were a jumble of exposed rebar and clouds of concrete dust. People crowded the streets below, waving, yelling, and pointing. Harry circled the building and saw faces at the windows, panicked and desperate.

Tony hovered beside him, using the suit’s speakers to address the crowd. “Everyone, clear the block! This thing’s going to fall!”

A cop ran up and shouted something in Spanish. Jarvis translated for Tony. “They’re saying the bottom two floors are gone. The stairwells have been crushed, too. The only way in is through the windows.”

Harry used Homenum Revelio and counted at least twenty life signatures spread out between the third and tenth floors. “There’s a bunch of people in there,” he said. “Mostly on the third, fifth, and seventh floors.”

Tony swore. “We’ll take it one at a time.”

They dropped to the third floor. Harry found the window with the most signatures, pointed at it, and vanished the entire glass panel with a wave. Tony reached in, grabbed the first two people by the arms, and yanked them out. Harry levitated the next three, floating them through the open window and down to the street, setting them gently on the asphalt.

They moved to the next window. By then, he had used up so much energy doing magic that his spells were feeling a bit sluggish. He really wished he hadn’t stayed awake all night drinking and having sex with Maria. Each time he vanished a window or levitated a person, it got a little harder, but he kept going. After the third floor was clear, they moved to the fifth.

The whole building was creaking now. Harry could feel the structure shifting beneath his boots. He tried not to think about the possibility of a total collapse. Instead, he focused on the next group of survivors … two elderly women and a kid. He got them out the window, then turned to see a man crawling along the hallway, one leg bent at a horrible angle.

Harry dropped in, hoisted the man in both arms, and carried him to the window. He saw Tony outside, hovering just outside the window. Tony grabbed the man, then blasted down to street level and set him down with the rest.

“The building’s not gonna last much longer,” Tony said when he rejoined him.

Harry nodded, and they both shot up to the seventh floor. It was chaos up here. The corridor was tilting at a steep angle. Debris and furniture slid to the far wall. Harry found six people huddled at the end of the hall, too scared to move.

“We’re here to help,” Harry said, letting Jarvis translate for him. “Stay calm.”

One of them started sobbing. The others didn’t move. The building groaned, louder this time. Harry saw the world tilt outside the window. They were running out of time. Tony smashed through the exterior wall, making a hole big enough for all of them. “Let’s go!” he said, voice booming through the speakers.

Harry levitated two people at once and floated them out the opening. Tony grabbed them and flew them down. Harry repeated the process for the next two pairs. He was about to leave when he felt another signature in a side room. He flew slowly, ducked under a fallen beam, and found a young woman leaning against the tilting wall, clutching her phone.

“It’s okay,” Harry said. “I’m getting you out.”

She stared at him in terror. The building dropped another two degrees, and Harry lost his footing. He caught himself, reached for the woman, and pulled her to her feet. He flew her to the window just as Tony reappeared, hovering outside. “Last one?”

Harry nodded, and Tony reached out. Harry handed the woman over, then jumped, firing his own jets. The moment they cleared the ledge, the entire floor collapsed. The building tipped in slow motion, and the top three floors sheared sideways, falling into the street. A tidal wave of dust and debris chased them, blinding them as they escaped. Harry couldn’t see a thing. He followed Jarvis’s trajectory and hoped for the best.

He landed hard, half a block away. The dust cloud swallowed them. Since he couldn’t see a damn thing, Harry decided to just sit there and take a breather. When the air cleared, Harry saw Tony walking up to him, his suit battered but intact. Tony gave a whoop and raised both fists in triumph. “I sure hope the news crew got that one on tape. The chicks will love it!”

Harry couldn’t help but chuckle. “That is why we do this,” Harry joked. Tony waded through the dust, grabbed Harry by the shoulder, and pulled him up. “Nice work. That was a hell of a save.”

Harry looked back. The building was gone. It was just a heap of rubble and rebar, but the street was full of very dusty people crying, laughing, and hugging. They were alive, and that was good enough for Harry. He took off his helmet and let the dust settle on his skin. He’d done his job.

He glanced at Tony, who took his helmet off and grinned. Harry shook his head, then laughed. There was still more to do, but for a moment, Harry let himself just stand there and bask in the sense of a job well done.