Xcalibur Xc

[Ironman] Ch: 115 [A deal with Ghost]

[Morning]

The base buzzed like a hornet nest in motion.

Suits powered up. Drones zipped through corridors. Security bots were on full patrol. Tony hadn't slept more than three hours, but he was sharper than ever.

The Widows, each one personally scanned and cleared, stood in formation in the combat hall. Their suits shimmered in idle mode, white with deep crimson linings. Tony walked alongside the row, stopping every few meters to inspect them. 

Each suit now carried the Skrull detector and disruptors.

Tony tapped on one Widow’s forearm display.

“Disruptor field?” he asked.

“Charged. Linked to my neural signature,” she said.

“Good.”

He stepped back and scanned them all.

"Next time you girls face any Skrulls or any aliens, trying to harm you or anyone in any way, send me an emergency signal and then kill them. No mercy. They are a threat to humanity, replacing us and increasing their numbers. There's no way in hell we are gonna let that happen. That's the purpose of the Shadow Legion. Destroy them mercilessly."

The Widows nodded in unison.

"Disperse and keep an eye open."

...

[HORIZON ISLAND – TACTICAL FEED ROOM]

A small screen was projected on Tony’s arm as he walked. The hologram displayed Melina, standing in the command tower of Horizon Island. Behind her, surveillance feeds from every section of the secure island rotated.

“We’ve completed scans. No signs of infiltration,” Melina said. “We double-checked every personnel, every storage room. If there were Skrulls here, they’re gone now, or we never had them.”

“Don’t relax yet,” Tony replied. “Upgrade your suits. You and Natasha both. Full disruptor integration, full shield calibration, new sealants, and double the mecha guards. I want a flight lockdown. Nothing in, nothing out. You and Nat stay there and monitor things.”

“Understood,” she said. “You’re expecting retaliation.”

Tony didn’t even blink. “We just took down their spies and an entire group. They will now either hide or attack. But it doesn't matter. Be careful.”

He cut the call.

...

[CRYO CONTAINMENT]

The air turned colder as Tony descended. He was carrying a bag of new clothes. Earlier that morning, before starting the upgrades, he did a quick search on Ghost and his past life. Tony found Ghost's family.

He passed through five security checkpoints, each layered with biometric locks, electromagnetic seals, and retina scans. The lights flickered in the sterile blue-white tone that this level used exclusively.

At the heart of the chamber stood a single cryo pod.

Inside: Ghost.

Tony stood in front of the pod and folded his arms.

“Elena,” he said.

A faint chime.

“Yes, boss?”

“Wake him.”

"Affirmative."

The cryo pod hissed and cracked open. Vapor spilled across the floor like steam off dry ice, and the cold breath of the chamber thickened the air. Inside, Ghost stirred.

His body was pale, lean, and completely human again, with no phasing distortions or metallic shimmer in his veins. He coughed once, sharp and dry.

Then shivered violently.

A pulse of gentle heat filled the pod, kicking in automatically. Within seconds, his shivering slowed as his core stabilized. He sat up, blinking against the harsh lights.

Tony tossed the bag of clothes beside him.

“Suit up. You’ve got five minutes to feel sorry for yourself.”

Ghost looked down at his own body, the visible scars, the healed skin. He touched his chest as if he couldn't quite believe he was still alive.

He looked up slowly.

“You’re not the one who made the deal,” he said, his voice rough. “I told the blonde everything. Gave her your grandfather’s location. The cloning tech details. Names. Coordinates. And she promised I'd walk.”

Tony didn't blink. “Yeah. She did. But we have certain rules when it comes to high-level individuals like you.”

Ghost scoffed, slipping into the undershirt. “High level? Ha! I'm just a regular human now.”

Tony stepped closer. 

“You know too much. You’ve seen more than most. And the things you told us? Those aren’t secrets you get to walk away from.”

Ghost narrowed his eyes. “So, what’s this, then? You going to erase my mind? Kill me quietly? Use me as another tool in your war?”

Tony shook his head. “No. I’m offering you something better.”

Ghost stilled. His arms were halfway through the jacket.

“I want you to work for me,” Tony said. “No, not just work. I want you to join something I’m building.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about world security,” Tony replied. “The world’s changing. Fast. We’ve got shape-shifting aliens running ops in our backyard, mutants making alliances with psychotic cyborgs. Yup, Gramps escaped. Then there are those traces of other superhumans rising slowly."

Ghost stood, fully clothed now, still barefoot and weary.

“And you think I belong in that world?”

Tony took a step back, giving him space. “I think you’ve already been in it. You just weren’t on the right side. You were desperate to heal yourself, and your mind was broken.”

Ghost exhaled through his nose, half amused, half bitter. “So what? I help you fight aliens? Hunt down more monsters like me?”

"You become more than who you were," Tony said. "You join the team I'm assembling. Let's call it the Ultimates, or maybe something cooler once I've had more coffee, and you can earn back everything you've lost. I don't care about your past; what matters is that you understand the consequences of losing this war."

Ghost was silent for a long time. The quiet in the chamber was thick. The hum of the cryo unit buzzed in the background.

Finally, he looked at Tony.

“And if I say no?”

Tony stopped and looked straight into his eyes, "You won't. That phasing tech you created was to help others in need, but your boss exploited you and your tech, even tried to kill your girlfriend. Now, you can walk away from her, and I'm pretty sure you'll go to her. But how would you face her and your daughter? What would you tell them? She never married anyone... Still waiting for you." 

He raised his right arm and pulled up a live feed of Ghost's family. His girlfriend and his daughter, who has grown up. He never got to see her grow up. 

"Your daughter goes to college now," Tony said as he pushed the holographic screen toward Ghost.

Ghost stood frozen, staring at the projection. His breath caught in his throat.

On the screen, his daughter laughed in the backseat of a car, talking to her mother, the woman Ghost had left behind when everything fell apart. Her smile was the same. The lopsided grin. The dimples. Her eyes.

His fingers reached for the screen.

They passed right through it.

He didn’t say anything. His hand hovered in the air, then slowly curled into a fist. His shoulders trembled once. Just once.

Tony let him sit in it.

After a long silence, Ghost finally spoke.

“Twenty years,” he whispered. “I missed twenty years. First words. First steps. School. Every single birthday.”

His voice cracked.

“They think I’m dead.”

Tony stepped forward, quieter now.

“They do,” he said. “But you’re not. And it’s not too late.”

Ghost looked up, eyes rimmed red but dry.

“I can fix it,” Tony said quietly. “Not the past. But the story.”

Ghost didn’t speak. His hands were still clenched, his eyes locked on the frozen image of his daughter laughing.

Tony continued, calm and matter-of-fact. “We say you were part of a deep quantum experiment. Something hush-hush. Pulled out of phase for two decades. Time didn’t pass the same way for you. You survived. We recovered you.”

Ghost looked at him. “You think they’ll believe that?”

Tony smirked. “Coming from me? Please. I’ll throw some jargon around. Quantum tether. Chrono-echo instability. Toss in a few faked debrief files, signatures. Hell, I’ll even include a NASA stamp.”

Ghost swallowed. The emotion was thick in his throat.

“And just like that... I get to go back?”

“You go back today if you want,” Tony said. “You walk through that front gate and hug them. You let them cry. You tell your daughter you’re sorry. You explain the whole mess as something you couldn’t control.”

Ghost said nothing.

Tony continued.

“One day, I’m going to call. Could be tomorrow. Could be a year. Doesn’t matter. When that call comes, all I ask is one thing.”

Ghost looked at him.

“You say yes.”

Silence again.

Tony turned off the projection. 

“You get your life back,” Tony said. “And when the time comes, your daughter gets to see you become a hero.”

Ghost blinked.

“A hero?”

Tony smiled. “Yeah. A real one.”

Ghost stood there a few seconds longer, then finally exhaled.

“I’ll take the story,” he said. “But I’m not doing this for me.”

Tony nodded once. “Good. Then we’re on the same page.”

He turned and started walking away, but paused at the door.

“There’s a car waiting up top and someone to make the cover story more believable for you.”

He looked back at Ghost.

“When you're ready, go home. Enjoy normal life for a bit.”

Then he walked out, leaving Ghost standing in the cryo chamber, staring at the space where his family had just smiled at him in light.

...

[In the elevator]

Tony looked at his right arm. The nanite controls are activated. He entered a command and activated the nanites in Ghost's clothes. Without him knowing, these new-gen nanites entered his body. 

'Trust is something you gotta earn, Mr. Jake Preston.'

He then called Jane, one of the high-level Widows, to take care of Ghost's mess.

...

[MED LAB SECTOR]

The elevator doors slid open and Tony stepped into the main corridor, the weight of half a dozen global defense systems still running calculations in the back of his mind. He barely had time to take a breath before Sue Storm came around the corner at full speed.

Her face was tight with worry.

"Tony!"

He stopped.

Sue reached him in two quick strides and looked around, making sure no one was nearby. She lowered her voice.

"It’s Ben," she whispered. "His skin... It’s falling off. Like chunks, and not just flaking, and he's glowing purple. He’s panicking. Thinks he’s dying. I tried to scan him, but whatever’s happening is way beyond what I can read. It's not degeneration... It’s like his whole body is rebuilding itself and breaking down at the same time."

[Ironman] Ch: 114 [Project: KSF]

AN: Didn't get time to edit it. So, it might be little rough. Let me know if you find any mistakes.

---

The Skrulls just stood in silence, staring at him.

Tony didn't waste any more time talking to them. He decided to use the power of the Mind Stone. A soft hum built in his skull as he reached inward, past muscle and bone, into the light buried in his forehead. The Mind Stone pulsed once. Then again. He opened his eyes.

They glowed gold.

He raised a hand and focused.

The first Skrull trembled. His breathing hitched. His limbs twitched against the restraints. Then his head jerked back. A flash of light cracked behind his eyes. Then nothing.

His skull split open. Blood and green matter hit the inside of the pod. He slumped forward, smoke rising from the seam.

Tony didn’t flinch and thought, 'Tsk. Too much energy. Gotta control it.'

He stepped to the next.

Another flicker. Another scream that never left the throat. Another body gone.

Then another.

And another.

Seven pods. Seven corpses. Each time, Tony attempted to reduce the power and fine-tune the influence, but the feedback was always chaotic and violent. When he reached the eighth pod, the energy around his eyes softened. His hand hovered just inches from the glass. He calmed his breathing, slowed his heart, and focused the stream.

The Skrull inside was female, and her form hadn’t flickered even once. The energy coursed into her mind. She twitched and convulsed before finally going still. 

Tony focused the energy, narrowing its flow as he slid it through her memories, extracting pieces like threads from tangled wire. He whispered softly, his lips moving without sound, exerting his will.

Her head jerked once, then again, and her eyes locked with his. 

She revealed everything.

After Tony started the global energy war and revealed his creations, the Skrulls marked him as their potential enemy who must be destroyed and replaced at any cost for their invasion to be successful.

To kill him, they needed to get close. So, they began to replace the Widows and took their places when they went out on errands or just to have some fun time. But it wasn't easy because they were always wearing their suits. So, they deployed the Super Skrulls, who used mind control on them and made them willingly do everything they wanted.

That's how the Skrulls got their nanite bracelets. After that, infiltrating the Starfire base was too easy. But before they could get to him, he went into space. So, they tried to kill him in space, but Tony annihilated their entire fleet in a few minutes.

Tony knew about the abilities of the Super Skrulls, so he didn't waste time asking about them.

Next, she revealed the Widow's location. They were kept in a warehouse in NY. North Avenue 232. 

Other than that, Tony discovered some other important information, like how the Skrulls have replaced the President, NASA scientists, important government figures, and some Shield Agents. Although there are some Skrulls who work for Fury, even they have no idea that the other faction has infiltrated their ranks.

And right now, things aren't looking that good. Too many Skrulls are running around, hiding among the humans in key positions. All it needs is a little spark to start a global war, which may go nuclear.

Tony tried to find out more about their leader, and it turned out to be Veranke. She is the central figure behind the Skrull's infiltration and invasion of Earth. Her actions stem from Skrull religious texts that designate Earth as their rightful property. Then there was Gravik, who was leading his own team separate from Veranke.

Tony knew most of the information, so he simply memorized the important info.

As for the Horizon base. They never knew about that place.

Tony sighed in relief after knowing that.

...

[A few hrs later]

The wind whipped through the narrow alleys of North Avenue 232 as Tony landed hard, the impact cracking the pavement beneath his boots. The Model 50 suit clung to his body like liquid metal.

Two Widows flanked him, moving like ghosts through the shadows.

Tony raised his hand and snapped once.

A pulse shot out, and all the lights inside the warehouse shorted. The building went dark.

The moment the door opened, it turned into war.

Green flashes streaked through the interior as Skrulls scrambled, caught mid-shift. Some were disguised as workers. Others had assumed the form of civilians. One leapt toward Tony with a scream, claws extended. He didn’t make it three feet. Tony turned him to ash with a beam straight through the skull.

The Widows moved fast, disabling and stunning. One of them slid under a low-hanging pipe, fired a shock dart into a Skrull’s neck, and caught another with a spinning blade to the shoulder. The second Widow launched upward and blew through the ceiling, clearing the catwalk in seconds.

Tony stormed forward, eyes scanning. His HUD painted targets in red.

Three Skrulls stood guard over a chamber near the back. They didn’t have time to react. Tony flicked his fingers. Three micro-bots flew out and pierced their skulls mid-sentence. They collapsed like puppets with cut strings.

He reached the door.

The nanites formed a drill and sliced the lock apart in seconds. The reinforced door hissed open.

Inside were the containment pods holding the replaced Widows. They were all alive. 

While he pulled them up one by one, the other Widows were slaughtering the Skrulls. 

It was over within 10 minutes. 

They captured a few Skrulls for interrogation and killed the rest, and then disappeared, leaving behind a gory warehouse for the other Skrulls to find. 

...

[Back at the Base]

While the rescued girls were resting, and the base was still on high alert, Tony sat in his private room. He locked the door. Too many things are happening at the same time. He has certain plans, but now, it's a mess. 

He was careless. Too careless. The enemy replaced his people and entered his home. But Tony Stark learns from his mistakes. 

"I'll show you motherfucking alien bastards what true terror looks like."

He activated the holographic computer and started his counterattack plan.

A few minutes later...

Tony leaned back in the chair, eyes fixed on the projection in front of him. A slow spiral of red and blue schematics hovered above his desk. His fingers drummed against the metal armrest, calculating.

Hermes broke the silence. “Your vitals are elevated. Recommendation: rest.”

Tony snorted. “Rest is for people not being replaced by green-skinned freaks.”

He flicked his fingers. The schematics expanded, separating into different modules: cloaking field generators, directed energy arrays, orbital thrusters, sensor clusters tuned to Skrull biology. His mind moved faster than the system could keep up.

"We are gonna kill them all at once," He mumbled to himself.

Hermes replied, “Parameters?”

“Let's build a net around Earth. Low orbit. Mobile. Undetectable by current global systems. Use adaptive cloaking. Can't risk Fury or the UN spotting them too early.”

Tony zoomed in on one segment. A long, spear-like arm extended from a rotating core.

“Weapon pods here and here. We'll equip them with giant disruptors. As soon as they are out in their real form, we'll fry their nervous system through concentrated radiation. Sounds pretty impossible, but..."

He tapped his forehead.

"Not for me."

He began to work on it, and it was too fast. He was drawing knowledge from the Mind Stone without any drawback and was surprised to see the vast ocean of information that he was able to process easily.

“I want it remote-controlled through my neural interface only," He said while setting up the failsafe measures. 

Hermes pulsed blue. “Authorization: secured.”

Another hour passed, and he was done.

"Dang! I'm a freaking genius. And thank you, Mind Stone, for the quick solution."

Tony stood and started pacing.

“We need a name for this project. Something fancy. Call it Project KSF. Kill Skrull Fuckers. Yup! Let's go with that. Alright, Hermes. Start Horizon lab. I want you to create 1000 units as fast as possible and deploy them according to the marked point. Use the stored adamantium if necessary. Shift the Transformer Mecha creation to Elena."

"Will do, Boss," Hermes replied. "Timer: 24hrs. 20 minutes."

Tony checked his watch. 4:30 AM.

He sighed and threw himself onto the bed, letting out a long breath. 

Everything hurt, but not physically. It was the kind of ache that came from overworking, messing up, carelessness, and realization. They'd wormed their way in. Replaced his people. Set up shop under his nose. That couldn’t happen again.

'I'm gonna expose them before the world and then kill them.'

The world would cheer. People would finally understand the threat. When the dust settled, there wouldn’t be questions, just gratitude. Some might fear and raise questions, but the majority will be on his side. He could end this war before it ever truly began. With the right moves, with Project KSF, the path was wide open.

'Time to build the future. The Ultimates.'

He turned his head toward the holo-projector on the nightstand. With a flick of his fingers, the blueprints rose again in silence. Cloaked orbital weapons. Adaptive targeting. Distributed AI coordination. Fully automated. The weapons will kill all the exposed Skrulls at the same time.

There was no satellite network yet. No station. Not a single Stark-made object up there. That was about to change.

"Well, wake me up in 4 hours. Early if it's an emergency."

He closed his eyes.

"Have a rest, boss. I'll wake you up in time," Hermes replied.

[Shazam] Ch: 13 [Downtown Smackdown]

Superman's body twitched as he climbed out of the fresh crater, smoke curling from his cape. His boots dragged through broken concrete as he stood upright, fists clenched, face tense. He barely had a second to breathe.

Then the scream hit.

A shrieking wall of sound roared across the plaza, shattering every window within three blocks. Superman's eyes squeezed shut. His knees buckled. His hands went to his ears, but it didn’t help. The sonic assault came from above.

Silver Banshee, floating in midair like a banshee goddess of death, unleashed another hellwave straight at him. Her white hair lashed around her head like snakes in a storm. Her eyes glowed with cursed energy. Her mouth stayed wide open as the scream only intensified.

Superman tried to rise again, muscles straining. His body trembled from the resonance in the air, his eardrums bleeding slightly. Then came the next blow.

A crackling zap lit up the sky.

Livewire dropped in like a lightning bolt, arms raised. Her body pulsed with pure electricity, skin glowing blue with raw current. “Ohhh, look what we have here,” she laughed, voice sharp as static. “The Big Blue Battery’s lookin’ a little drained.”

Superman barely turned in time.

Livewire launched a concentrated lightning beam straight into his chest. The impact lit up the entire street like a nuclear flash. Superman flew backward, smashed into a delivery truck, and dropped to one knee, smoke rising from his chest. His suit sizzled. 

Metallo landed with a THOOM, cracking the pavement. His green Kryptonite core pulsed rhythmically in the center of his chest. He took slow, heavy steps toward Superman. 

"You always get back up," Metallo growled, his mechanical jaw clicking with each word. "But this time, there's nowhere to run. No League. No Bat. Just you... and us."

He raised one glowing arm and fired a Kryptonite energy blast.

It slammed into Superman’s side, sending him skidding across the asphalt, carving a trench through the road. He gasped as his body bounced, then came to a stop against a pile of rubble. Green veins spread briefly across his skin before fading.

"Arggg!"

Superman grunted, eyes burning red for a moment. He fired heat vision toward Banshee.

She shrieked again. The sonic burst collided with the laser in midair and shattered it like glass. The backlash knocked Superman’s head sideways.

Livewire surged forward, leaping into the air and slamming both fists into his chest. Electricity coursed through him again. Superman arched his back, teeth gritted against the pain.

[TWO BLOCKS AWAY – BEHIND A CORNER]

Harley and John ducked behind an old taco joint, watching the chaos from behind a broken billboard that read “Try Our New Spicy Quesarito!” now partially on fire.

Harley peeked out from behind the building, eyes wide.

"Whoa. Okay. That’s... that’s a whole villain buffet menu, right there," she whispered. "We got Screaming Dead Elsa, the Sparkle Bitch, and Robo-Kryptonite over there doing the 'Terminator walks into a nightclub' routine."

John didn’t say anything. He was already calculating angles, scanning the scene.

Harley kept whisper-commentating.

“Supes looks like he just walked outta an oven and fell down the stairs. That scream girl? Banshee? I had brunch with her once. She cried when the waffles were cold.”

She turned to John. “I’m just saying... this is not looking good for ol’ Clarkie.”

"You know his real name?" John asked.

"Yep! Mr. J found out last month," Harley replied.

Back in the street, Superman forced himself upright. Blood leaked from one ear. Multiple scratch and burn marks on his face. His chest was burned and cracked. But his eyes still glowed faintly red.

"You're not winning this," he growled.

Metallo lunged. Superman sidestepped at the last second and uppercutted him in the jaw. The metal head twisted with a sickening clang. Superman followed with a heat vision to Livewire, forcing her to retreat mid-air. But she easily countered it with her electricity.

Boom! The clash of their power caused a mini explosion in the mid air.

Superman was weak, so it was pretty much easy for her to counter it.

But it cost him.

Banshee dropped like a missile, landed behind him, and drove her elbow into his spine.

Superman roared in pain and collapsed again.

Metallo grabbed his cape and flung him through a building. Brick and steel exploded outward as Superman’s body flew through walls and debris.

Livewire hovered above the rubble, cackling.

"Hey Metallo, you think if we break all his bones, we get a bonus?"

"Focus," Metallo replied, stomping after Superman through the debris. His core pulsed with growing light.

Superman pushed himself up inside the wrecked building. Glass in his arm. Smoke in his lungs. Every inch of his body screamed in protest. But he stood anyway. 

Well, he staggered forward, his knees barely holding. Metallo was almost on him, the green glow from his chest flooding the rubble-filled room. Livewire hovered outside, electricity crackling in her palms. Silver Banshee floated overhead, building her next scream.

Then, a gust of wind howled through the city.

A swirling cyclone ripped through the avenue, twisting debris and trash into a spiraling tunnel of force. Livewire’s sparks flickered as the wind disrupted her charge.

"What the..." she shouted, caught mid-hover.

From the heart of the storm, a figure descended.

Red streaked hair. Green suit. Arms spread like a conductor in a symphony of destruction.

Maxine Hunkel. Cyclone.

"Sorry, I'm late," she called out. "Traffic blew."

With a wave of her arm, she launched the tornado at Livewire.

The wind caught her mid-flight, slamming her sideways into a parked bus. The vehicle flipped from the force, sending Livewire tumbling across the street, sparking wildly.

“You little weather witch!” Livewire screamed, barely catching herself mid-air.

"That's Doctor Weather Witch to you," Cyclone quipped, already summoning another blast.

Meanwhile, the building behind Metallo exploded.

Wonder Woman burst through the back wall in a blur of red, blue, and silver. She lunged forward with her shield, slamming it into Metallo’s back.

The metal man crashed forward, his legs dragging sparks along the pavement as he tried to catch himself.

Superman looked up, dazed. His eyes locked with hers.

"Diana."

"Get clear," she said without hesitation. "You’re hurt. We’ll handle this."

"Be careful," He mumbled with great difficulty.

She didn’t wait. She was already moving.

Metallo twisted around, his chest cannon charging.

Wonder Woman leapt over the beam and brought her sword down on his shoulder. Sparks flew. The blade didn’t cut through, but it left a gouge deep in his plating. Metallo roared, swinging at her with a crushing fist.

She ducked, pivoted, and slammed her shield into his jaw. Metal bent. Wires sparked.

Behind her, a scream rose.

Silver Banshee descended, hair whipping, eyes glowing.

Wonder Woman turned just as the sonic wave hit her. The shield came up in time. The scream smashed against it, shattering everything for blocks. The building crumbled. Cars exploded. 

Diana gritted her teeth, holding firm.

"You think I haven't fought banshees before?" she growled.

She hurled her shield like a discus. It flew straight into Banshee’s chest, knocking her backward through a crumbling wall and into the side of a burning truck.

Diana caught the shield on the rebound, turned, and met Metallo’s charge.

He fired his chest beam.

She rushed forward with her enhanced speed and punched him hard enough to send him sprawling across the pavement.

At the same time, Cyclone clashed mid-air with Livewire. The sky above them flashed blue and green, streaks of lightning tangled with ribbons of wind.

"You're gonna short out your own brain!" Cyclone shouted as she twisted a cyclone around Livewire’s legs.

"I am electricity, idiot!" Livewire screamed, lashing out with a bolt that ripped a hole in a nearby billboard.

"You’re unstable electricity!" Maxine snapped back, spinning faster.

The whirlwind pulled Livewire upward, spinning her like a ragdoll before launching her into a water tower. The entire top half of the structure burst open. Water poured over Livewire, dousing her completely.

She dropped like a stone, smoke rising from her clothes. Sparks flickered and died.

On the ground, Superman leaned against a cracked metal pole that somehow survived despite all the destruction, trying to catch his breath.

Wonder Woman stood tall, shield raised again as Metallo and Banshee regrouped.

"You can not win," she said, voice cold. "Stop this meaningless destruction and surrender peacefully."

Banshee hissed. Metallo’s core pulsed brighter.

Behind the chaos, Cyclone floated gently to the ground beside Superman, offering him a steadying hand.

"How bad?" she asked softly.

"Bad," he admitted. "A couple of broken bones. Ruptured left eardrum and cracked arm."

Sparks were shooting from the gash in Metallo's shoulder. His mechanical arm twitched violently, servo-motors whining. His jaw hung slightly off-center, clicking as he tried to reset it.

"You think... this is over?" he growled, voice distorted and glitching. One of his eyes flickered red. His core pulsed erratically now, surging with unstable Kryptonite energy. A few sparks shot from his back vents, and the sound of strained hydraulics groaned with every movement.

He took one slow step forward, dragging a foot through broken asphalt.

"This... was just the pre-show," Metallo said, spitting static. "The fun has only just begun."

Behind him, the ground shook.

Once.

Twice.

Then came a deafening boom as a massive hand slammed down onto the street behind Banshee.

A second hand followed.

Then, rising like a building being born from the Earth, came Giganta.

She was fifty feet tall, wearing torn combat leggings and a tank top barely clinging to her giant boobs. Her muscles bulged with every step, tattoos stretched across her biceps. Her boots cracked the pavement as she stepped over a wrecked bus.

She cracked her neck and looked down at the battlefield like it was a game board.

"Aw. You didn’t wait for me?" she said with a half-smile. Her voice rumbled like distant thunder.

Wonder Woman turned, eyes narrowing.

"Of course," Diana muttered.

Giganta grinned. "I've been itchin' for a good throwdown. And it looks like you’re just my size."

She stepped forward, raising a fist the size of a car.

...

Behind a half-collapsed building two blocks away, Harley peeked again, now with a crumbled Slushie cup she’d somehow scavenged from a broken vending machine, straw still in her mouth. John crouched beside her, silent and unmoved, eyes tracking every threat.

Harley looked from Giganta to Superman slumped against a pole, then to Metallo twitching like a broken vacuum cleaner, then back up at Cyclone spinning a wind tunnel to keep the collapsing buildings from taking out more civilians.

She slowly backed away from the edge.

“So... this is a superhero war,” she said flatly.

John didn’t answer. He was already watching Giganta size up Wonder Woman like a kid scoping out a piñata.

Harley pointed with the straw.

“Y’see that? That’s a fifty-foot walking trauma response who just turned downtown into a Godzilla sequel. Banshee’s screaming like her Spotify playlist failed. Robo-Sparky over there is two sparks away from meltdown. And Sparkles just fried herself in a water tower like overcooked shrimp.”

She turned to John with wide eyes.

“Babe. We need to go.”

Still no answer.

“I’m serious. I’ve seen some insane things. I've seen Mr. J once getting shot in the knee by a midget dressed as Cupid. I’ve danced with a bazooka at a Christmas rave. But this?” She pointed again. “This is above my pay grade. I don’t even have health insurance.”

She grabbed his arm, shaking it. “We need to exit. Evacuate. Vanish. Call it what you want, but unless I’m turning into She-Harley and slapping skyscrapers for fun, I don’t belong here.”

John exhaled once through his nose. “You're not wrong.”

“You think?” she barked. “You think I wanna get body-slammed by a size-22 boot while she's yelling about estrogen and rage therapy?!”

She gestured wildly at the chaos. "This is what I get for eating everything. I should’ve known. We went out for eggs and now the sky is on fire!"

---

AN: I might release 1 more chapter today if I get time after writing Ironman's next ch.

[Shazam] Ch: 12 [One problem after another]

AN: Writing this one after a long time. Too much work at the office. Anyway, I think this ch is slightly dull, maybe. I'll add a big fight scene in the next chapter.

---

Superman landed with barely a sound, the concrete beneath his boots cracking slightly from the force. John didn't turn around. He stayed near the bike, eyes fixed on the bomb.

"Sir," Superman said, his voice calm and respectful. "I need you to step back slowly."

John didn't move. His fingers hovered near the edge of the bag, careful not to touch anything.

"It's rigged," John said without looking up. "Not just a regular bomb."

Superman used his X-ray vision to look through John's body. He could already feel it; the green glow was unmistakable.

"Kryptonite," John added. "And something else. I don't know what, but it's probably airborne. Toxin. Virus. Chemical agent, maybe. There's a vial right above the core."

Superman's brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed, focusing in on the small camera embedded near the timer. 'How does he know? I'll ask him later. Need to focus on the bomb.'

"There's a trigger," John said. "Tiny camera, facing up. The moment it recognizes your face, or maybe even just picks up your heat signature, it'll go off. Could be coded to your energy pattern. Whoever made this knew exactly how you work."

Superman stayed where he was, fists clenched at his sides.

"If so, then the other explosives..." He mumbled to himself.

"There are other bombs?" John asked. "If so, you heroes gotta be careful because you or the other heroes could be the trigger of those bombs, and that's not a good thing. So, what now? Got a plan?"

Superman pressed two fingers to his earpiece, his eyes still locked on the bomb.

"Batman. It's confirmed. Kryptonite core, some form of nerve agent suspended in liquid, rigged with a sensor. It's camera-based, possibly also scanning for my biometric signature."

Batman's voice came in through the comm, sharp and steady. "Do not get any closer. It's a Kryptonian-trigger bomb. I suspected this after Waller mentioned the stolen technology. The device is equipped with a DNA scanner. Facial recognition is just a decoy. The moment your molecular structure is picked up within range, it detonates."

Superman took a slow step back.

"We have barely 3 minutes left. I'll just grab and throw it out of the Earth's atmosphere."

"No. We can't risk it. For all we know, that bag itself could be the trap. The moment you grab, it's all over. Put the guy before you on the comm," Batman said calmly. He has locked onto Superman's location and has the live feed before him.

Superman tapped the earpiece, then looked at John.

"He wants to talk to you. You're the only one who can get close."

John looked up, eyebrow raised. "Seriously?"

Superman nodded and threw the comms over to him. "It's either you or no one. If I even sneeze near it, we lose a few blocks."

John caught the comm device and placed it in his ear. "Go."

Batman's voice came through clear, firm, and focused.

"This is Batman. I need you to focus and listen to my instructions, or else that entire block will blow up. You're dealing with a hybrid detonation system. Kryptonite-based energy core, liquid dispersal toxin, and a pressure-sensitive circuit. Probably VX or a fear-toxin derivative. Do not touch the vial. If it cracks, the gas will spread in seconds."

John nodded once. "Got it."

"Reach under the camera lens. There's a black pinhole beneath it. Stick a small flat object inside, gently, and tilt it left. It'll shut down the scanner."

John pulled a knife from his boot. "I've got a flat tip."

"Careful," Batman warned. "Too much pressure and you'll snap the lens. You'll need to apply steady force until you hear a soft click."

John moved the knife under the lens carefully.

The blade touched the pinhole. He tilted it left.

Click.

The camera light blinked off.

"It's down."

"Now move to the bottom panel. Slide it open. There's a circuit cluster with three vertical wires. Blue, white, and green."

"Got it."

"Cut the white wire first. That shuts off the signal relay."

John did it quickly.

"Next?"

"Green. That one disables the toxin dispersal."

"Done."

"Last one's blue. Count till 5 and cut on my signal."

John counted under his breath.

One… two… three… four… five.

"Now."

John cut the blue wire. The device made a soft beep. Then silence. He leaned back, heart still steady, hand resting on his knee.

"It's dead."

Superman finally took a step forward.

John stood, handed back the comm.

Batman's voice came through again. "Well done."

Superman looked at John, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. "You've done this before."

"No," John said with his usual deadpan expression.

Superman stared at the bomb for a moment and tapped his comms. "This changes things. If Joker built these to react to me, then I can't be anywhere near the others."

Batman's voice came through, calm and composed as always. "You sit this one out. Flash has already defused five. He also captured Harley Quinn. She's in the Batcave now."

Superman's eyes flicked toward the sky for a brief second. "Harley…?"

John's expression shifted the moment he heard the name. Just slightly. His jaw tensed. He took a step forward and raised a hand toward Superman. "Give me the comm."

Superman looked at him, uncertain.

"Please," John said, voice low but firm. "I need to tell Batman something. Privately."

Superman hesitated only a second, then handed him the device.

John placed it in his ear again. "It might be late, but I never thanked you for that night. Do you remember me?"

Silence on the line for a moment.

Then Batman replied. "The Lazarus Pit. The girl with the bullet in her skull. Yeah. I remember."

John closed his eyes briefly. "Then you know I'm not bluffing."

There was a pause. Batman didn't respond immediately. The weight of what was coming hung in the air.

John opened his eyes again, voice calm but steady.

"Don't hurt her. Don't lock her in some freezing cell. Don't play your interrogation games. No mental pressure. No cold silences or trauma triggers. You sit her down. You give her water and wait for me to come."

"She's dangerous," Batman said.

"She's not Joker," John replied. "You know that. I can save her."

Another pause.

"She's unstable and unpredictable. And thousands of lives are riding on this information."

"You think I care? Remember Khandaq? People died every single day while you heroes and everyone here moved on with your lives. And now, you hypocrites want to save lives, huh? Funny. Anyway, if she gets even a scratch on her," John said, his tone still polite but now terrifyingly calm, "I'll kill you and everyone close to you. And I may not be able to face all the heroes, but I sure will go on a rampage and kill a few. Imagine the destruction."

He didn't raise his voice. Didn't yell. He didn't need to.

"So, think before you act."

Batman finally spoke.

"Superman is right before you."

"He can try," John replied. There was a brief pause. "Harley is important to me. She made my life a bit brighter... Fun. You want to stop the bombs, let me talk to her. I'll give the locations and you leave us alone."

Silence stretched on the line again.

Then Batman responded.

"You've got one shot."

A sudden rush of air whipped through the street as a red blur appeared, sending a swirl of dust and loose papers flying. The figure stopped with a dramatic skid just a few feet from John and Superman.

Flash stood there with a grin on his face and Harley Quinn tucked under one arm like a wayward duffel bag. Her pigtails were wind-tangled, her oversized jacket flapping like a flag, and her face lit up the moment she spotted John.

“Jooohn!” she shouted, wiggling out of Flash’s grip and stumbling forward with a little spin. “Ooooh, that was like riding a blender full of coffee and ice cream. I’m dizzy, everything smells so funky, and I’m pretty sure I saw my soul do a backflip.”

John caught her by the shoulders before she collapsed.

“Are you alright?”

Harley blinked up at him, then grinned.

“Bats has the worst-smelling dungeon in the country. Damp walls, moldy tech, and not a single air freshener. What kinda stupid doesn’t have a lavender diffuser?”

Flash crossed his arms, still catching his breath despite the speed. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, Speedy McZoom,” Harley said, waving him off. “Now scram, adults are talking.”

John ignored the exchange.

“Harley,” he said firmly, eyes locked on hers. “I need something. It’s important.”

She raised an eyebrow, then straightened up a little. “Whoa. Serious voice. Okay, shoot.”

“The bombs. The ones Joker planted around the city. Do you know where they are?”

Harley blinked. Then slapped her forehead so hard she staggered back.

“Oh, crap! Crap on a cracker! I totally forgot!”

Flash sighed and rubbed his face.

John didn’t flinch. “Harley.”

She looked sheepish, rubbing her temples with both hands.

“I’m such a moron. I meant to tell you. I even had a list written in lipstick and everything. Then I got distracted by, you know, shooting, explosions, rain, and you being weirdly hot in sweatpants.”

John took a breath. “Do you remember where they are?”

Harley perked up like someone had turned on a switch.

“Yup. Most of ‘em, anyway. Joker used a pattern. Old haunts, personal jokes, places he thought were ‘symbolic.’ I already burned down the warehouse and took what I could from his stash. But I saw the map. I remember the targets.”

She stepped back and started counting on her fingers.

“Okay. One was the pizza shop. You found that one. Go you. Then the hospital near 12th and Beck. A library uptown—big fancy one. An old amusement park on the edge of the city, the one with the broken carousel. A police memorial statue. A courthouse. The news station, the subway hub, and the toy factory.”

She paused, trying to remember.

“Oh! Oh! And a petting zoo. Don’t ask me why. Joker hates goats. I think it’s the eyes.”

Flash pulled out his comm and relayed the list at super speed.

John watched Harley carefully.

“That all of them?”

Harley squinted. “I think so. But knowing that sick bastard, he probably hid a few. You got people scanning, right?”

Superman nodded.

“Good,” Harley said. “Because if I’m wrong, and a school explodes because I forgot, I’ll never forgive myself.”

John placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You did good.”

Harley beamed, then immediately leaned her head against his chest.

"Don't let them take me away again," She mumbled.

"No worries, they won't," John whispered to her while hugging her. He then looked up at Superman. "You got what you want. So, hurry up and never interfere with us again."

Batman spoke in Flash and Superman's comms. "Harley's telling the truth. Flash, run."

"What about these two? You are just going to let them go?" Flash asked,

"Yes. Now, get to it."

Flash ran away with a streak of lightning, and Superman flew up into the sky with a sigh. 

John looked at Harley, "Let's hit the supermarket before going home."

However, as they turned around...

Booom!

John sighed, "Not again." 

They turned back and saw Superman lying in the crater. In the sky was a silver cyborg with a green glowing chest.

"Ooh! Metallo," Harley said, looking up. 

"You know that thing?" He asked,

"Yup! He always tries to kill Supes and fails... And we should run," Harley said as she was already dragging John by his hand. "Let's go, let's go, let's go."

[Ironman] Ch: 113 [Containment & Revelation]

[Late Night] [Tony’s Lab]

Tony stood in the center, wearing a plain black shirt, hands deep in the console as holographic scans rotated in front of him. He didn’t look tired, even though he hadn’t slept much since the return. His mind was sharper than ever.

Elena stood nearby, fully projected in her humanoid form. Her physical body was keeping an eye on the three. Her white-blue glow flickered gently as she processed the data in real time. Hermes operated in the background, syncing energy readings and biological models between the lab and the med bay.

A full scan of a Skrull hovered in the air. Bones, nerves, and organ layout. Green musculature. Shape-shift control nodes. Each scan rotated slowly, surrounded by red rings of warning data.

Tony spoke without looking up.

“We have tissue samples. Blood, bone, skin. Everything we need. Start with their base genome and cross-reference it with the data we pulled from the cruiser’s nervous system.”

“Cross-linking now,” Elena replied.

The DNA strands appeared next, side by side. Human on one side. Skrull on the other. At first glance, they looked similar. But deeper in, the code changed. Certain protein folds twisted in a way that human DNA didn’t. That was the flaw. The weak point.

“There,” Tony said, pointing. “Right there. The poly-shifter sequences. These are what give them their ability to change form. But it’s unstable under certain radiation types. Find that frequency.”

Hermes responded, “Scanning across full wave spectrum. Ultraviolet showed a minor reaction. Gamma and X-rays caused recoil. Cross-linking biological rejection markers now.”

Tony narrowed his eyes. “Run a sim. What happens if we flood the environment with that frequency but on a safe scale?”

A screen lit up with a simulation. A Skrull in human form entered the field. Within seconds, the illusion flickered. The skin shifted. The muscles buckled. The shape-change failed. It snapped back into its original form, gasping.

Elena stepped forward. “It works. Even a small pulse is enough to disrupt their disguise.”

Tony turned and moved to a nanite forge console. A slab rose up. He pressed both palms against it. His armor formed instantly along his arms, fingers glowing. He began coding a design with hand motions, sculpting the tool in mid-air.

“Let’s build it small. Something wearable like a watch or ring... Yeah, let's go with a ring.”

Hermes pulled up possible configurations. Tony picked a ring.

The screen showed the prototype. A small band with an internal frequency generator, nano-sensor array, and a localized scan field. It could scan any person within five feet and detect shapeshifters in real time.

Tony nodded. “Perfect. Give it a silent alarm. We don’t want them knowing we’re onto them.”

The forge activated. Nanites formed the ring in a matter of seconds. It hovered for a moment, then dropped into Tony’s hand. He held it up to the light, studying it.

“One problem solved,” he said quietly. "Now, to add the disrupter charges. Let's infuse every single nanite with 1 charge."

Tony placed the ring into a small chamber on the side of the forge. He tapped a few commands on the screen, then paused, thinking.

“Elena, pull up the nanite code architecture. I want to rewrite their storage protocols.”

Lines of code filled the air. Long strands of nanite instructions glowed around him. He scanned them quickly, eyes darting back and forth.

“We’re going to fuse each nanite with a dormant charge. Something small, but enough to deliver a short burst of that disruption frequency.”

Elena tilted her head. “Are we going with auto-release or manual trigger?”

“Manual,” Tony said. “If it fires by accident, we risk a panicked situation. Let the user choose when to fire the pulse.”

He tapped another few commands, modifying the nanite script. The forge’s interface updated in real time. A visual model of the nanites appeared, each one with a glowing blue core inside it.

Hermes added, “Each charge will last one activation. The ring carries thousands. Once used, the nanites will dissolve and rebuild with fresh energy from ambient sources. Shall we use Model 50 Codex?”

“Good,” Tony said. “We’ll make them self-sustaining.”

“Understood.”

The forge glowed brighter as it worked. The ring inside pulsed with light, then dimmed. The machine let out a soft beep.

Tony stepped forward and removed the ring. It felt light, almost weightless. The metal was smooth, warm to the touch.

He slipped it onto his index finger.

A faint blue light flickered once around the edge of the band, then faded.

A small screen popped up beside him. Readings flowed in.

Power: Stable
Charge count: 12,432
Recharge rate: 2/sec (ambient draw)
Target scan range: 5.2 ft
Disruptor ready: Standby

Tony grinned.

He raised his hand and activated the scan mode with a small twist of the ring. A soft hum vibrated in the air, almost too low to hear. Blue light shimmered around his hand for a split second.

“Scan complete,” Hermes said. “No shapeshifters detected.”

Tony lowered his hand.

“Run mass production protocols,” he said. “I want my family and friends to have one each.”

“Processing batch orders now,” Elena confirmed. “Do you want to embed tracer signatures in the rings as well?”

Tony thought about it. “Yes. Make each one traceable, but only by me.”

He turned and leaned back against the forge table, arms crossed.

“No more surprises. No more Skrulls hiding in plain sight. Not in my house.”

...

[Time: 3:30 PM]

The base was quiet. Most of the crew had finally passed out after two chaotic days. Johnny was snoring on the couch. Ben was out cold in the reinforced room. Sue had fallen asleep with a tablet still glowing beside her. Natasha and Yelena were sleeping too.

Only the guards were awake.

Tony stood in the central hub, surrounded by floating screens. His eyes were locked on the schematic of the entire base. Every hallway, room, entrance, and exit was mapped in real time.

“Elena, are the maintenance bots ready?” he asked quietly.

“They’re standing by,” she replied. “Do you want a silent deployment?”

“Yes,” Tony said. “Keep it discreet. Start with the living quarters. Then move to the labs. Follow up with hangars and security posts.”

“Confirmed.”

Tiny circular hatches opened across the base, releasing dozens of spider-like maintenance bots. Each one was armed with a micro-detector rig and a nanite disruptor pod. They were cloaked and moved without sound, crawling along walls, ceilings, and floors, using ventilation shafts and hidden service tunnels.

As they reached each room, they deployed small detectors onto the walls and ceilings. Each one pulsed once with a faint blue light, then vanished into the structure. 

Tony watched it all from the hub.

The data streamed in. Room by room. Signal by signal.

Hermes fed him the results as they rolled in.

“Living quarters: clear. Med bay: clear. Training deck: clear. Engineering bay: no anomalies. Hangar one: normal.”

Tony nodded, not looking away.

“Security wing?”

The bots entered through the ducts. Two units slid into the weapons locker, another three into the guard rest zone.

Hermes paused.

“Minor fluctuation detected.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed.

“Show me.”

A screen popped up. One of the bots had stopped in a dark hallway near the west wing guard lounge. It scanned twice. Then again.

Hermes ran the data. “Signal inconsistency in carbon signature. Slight molecular shift. Localized heat bleed. No active disguise disruption yet, but…”

Tony cut in. “Deploy a soft disruptor burst. Low power. See what shakes loose.”

One of the bots flashed silently. A small wave of invisible energy rippled through the room.

Nothing happened at first.

Then a shimmer.

A slight flicker in the far corner of the room.

A Widow standing near the door twitched.

The skin on her face rippled. For less than a second, green muscle flashed beneath.

Tony’s hand tightened into a fist.

“Gotcha,” he muttered.

The drones surrounded the Skrull, trapping him inside a plasma barrier. Tony quickly connected to the drones and warned her, "You move a single muscle and I'll skin you alive."

"Elena, activate all the disruptors now and use Code A. Complete lockdown. No one gets in or out without my permission. Wake everyone up. It's time to clean the house," Tony said as he cracked his knuckles. 

Red lights flared along every hallway, followed by the emergency alarm. In the living quarters, the lights snapped on. In the med bay, screens flickered. Across the base, metal shutters slammed down over doors and windows.

LOCKDOWN ENGAGED

Tony quickly scanned Yelena and Natasha, but luckily, they weren't Skrulls. So he quickly informed them to be ready for some action.

Then Tony’s voice came over the speakers, calm but cold.

“Attention, everyone. Do not move. Stay exactly where you are. This is not a drill. I repeat... this is not a drill.”

The alarm continued, a low blare repeating every five seconds.

Tony's voice returned.

“Skrull infiltrators have been confirmed inside this base. In short, they are shapeshifters. They can take any form. If you move from your location without direct clearance, you will be treated as hostile. Status does not matter. Stay still. You will be scanned. Anyone attempting to flee, hide, or shift forms will be shot on sight.”

The message ended.

Silence fell.

But only for a moment.

In the main security corridor, Widow teams stood frozen. One of them, standing near the wall, twitched slightly. A faint shimmer rippled across her skin. Her breathing changed. The Widow next to her noticed and narrowed her eyes.

A small disk on the ceiling blinked. A soft pulse fired from it.

The shimmer hit harder this time.

Her body stuttered, glitched. For a half-second, her face flickered into green skin. Her eyes turned black. Then she snapped back into her Widow disguise.

Too late.

From the ceiling, two nanite drones dropped. They sprayed a burst of blue energy. The woman screamed as her disguise broke completely. She fell to the floor, now fully Skrull, writhing as more drones pinned her with energy nets.

Another Widow nearby reached for a weapon, but froze when a red dot landed on her forehead.

“Don’t,” came Yelena’s voice from the shadows. “I dare you.”

She stepped into view, her suit fully active. Her left hand, sonic cannon, aimed steadily, right hand ready to deploy a plasma blade.

The fake Widow slowly raised her hands, and a drone hit her with a scan. The flicker came again.

She was a Skrull too.

Captured.

[Second Level]

Elena stood near the door.

“Hold still. Verification in progress.”

The blue light passed over Sue, Johnny, and Ben. All readings green. No anomalies.

Sue looked up at the speaker.

“We’re clear.”

Elena nodded once.

“Confirmed. You three remain where you are. Do not open the door.”

[West Wing] [Guest quarters] [NASA scientists were living there]

Four scientists stood frozen. One of them was sweating heavily, fingers twitching.

Tony’s voice came again through the ceiling.

“Section 7B. Three confirmed humans. One not.”

One of the drones in the room fired a disruptor pulse.

The fourth scientist collapsed. His disguise cracked and fell away. Green skin. Black eyes. A low growl escaped his throat as his true form emerged. He lunged forward, but before he got more than a step...

Zzt!

High-voltage electric shock, enough to knock out an elephant.

The Skrull hit the floor, unconscious.

...

[1 hour later]

Sixteen Skrulls captured. Tony also put Horizon Base on lockdown and ordered Natasha and Melina to go there asap and use the disruptors and scanners to check if there are any Skrulls there.

Now...

Tony stood before the containment cell. He was angry as hell. But more importantly...

"I'll give you all one single chance. Where are my girls? What have you done with them? How did you fuckers infiltrate? When did you fuckers infiltrate? If my girls are alive, where are they?"

[Ironman] Ch: 112 [Fire and Force Field]

The wind tore across the open terrain. Dust swirled behind two fast-moving shadows that streaked over the sun-baked ground.

Yelena was ahead by half a bike length, crouched low over the handlebars. Her matte-black machine hummed like a beast on a leash, suspension eating every bump in the uneven terrain like it wasn’t even there. The heat didn’t faze her. Neither did the roaring engine just behind her.

Johnny Storm was close. Too close. The engine roared as he gunned it harder.

He gritted his teeth behind the helmet. Sand sprayed past his visor. The sun beat down on his back. Yelena wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. “I am not losing to a blonde in eyeliner.”

She glanced back, her braid snapping in the wind like a flag of victory.

Johnny growled and twisted the throttle to max. The engine howled. The bike surged forward, cutting into Yelena’s lead. The speedometer flickered red. He passed ninety... then one hundred... then more.

Yelena’s smirk vanished. She leaned in. Her bike’s reactor kicked up a level, sending out a visible heat shimmer as she pulled ahead again.

They hit the halfway point and spun around a dry riverbed, just outside the town. A sharp drift. Dust clouded the air as both riders skidded and powered into the turn.

Heading back now. Horizon Base was just visible in the distance.

Yelena widened her lead.

Johnny slammed his hand down on the console. “Oh, come on!”

His vision blurred slightly. The heat wasn’t just from the bike. His arms were burning. Tiny flickers danced along his sleeves. Gold-orange licks of fire crawled over his shoulders, trailing from his skin like smoke from a fuse.

“What the hell...” he started, but his voice broke off.

The flames spread fast.

It started at his fingertips, then crawled up his arms, along his chest, and down his legs. His whole body glowed. The air around him shimmered. His visor darkened automatically, trying to compensate for the light.

The fire didn’t hurt.

But the bike couldn’t handle it.

The engine coughed. The wheels buckled. A sudden hiss burst from the energy coils and the metal beneath him warped, the temperature spike frying the stabilizers.

“Uh-oh—”

The bike snapped sideways at two hundred kilometers per hour.

It exploded in sparks and shattered plating as it slammed into a low ridge. Johnny was thrown through the air, a comet in human form. He hit the sand, bounced once, rolled, then skidded to a smoking halt.

A deep trench carved itself in the dirt behind him.

Silence.

Then...

A gasp.

Johnny stirred.

His eyes opened slowly, blinking against the intense light still glowing off his skin.

He wasn’t dead.

In fact, he wasn’t even scratched.

The fire just disappeared as if someone turned off the switch. But more importantly, he was now naked, and the bike was in flaming scraps.

"Ah! Crap! She's gonna kill me."

...

[Back to the base] [Med bay]

Tony reviewed the latest scan on a floating screen. Holographic layers of Johnny's body rotated slowly, data streams glowing across his skeletal structure and vascular system.

Johnny sat on the edge of the exam table, wrapped in a thermal blanket, legs swinging like a bored teenager waiting for bad news. He had a slight smirk on his face. 

Tony tapped a few commands, watching the cosmic energy levels fluctuate.

"Well," Tony said, "your vitals are fine. No burns or any type of internal injuries. Heart rate’s a little high, but I’m chalking that up to ego and adrenaline."

"Don’t forget raw talent," Johnny said with a grin.

"Good luck explaining that to Melina," He turned the display to show Johnny.

"Moving on to you. So, here's the deal. The cells of a normal human body convert energy from foodstuffs into a form of energy usable by the body, adenosine triphosphate. The cosmic ray bombardment triggered a specific genetic code rearrangement that caused your ATP production sites to generate a new form of energy-containing molecule dubbed adenine ribo-heptaphosphine. This complex molecule is a much more efficient fuel source and not only provides ordinary bodily energy but also contains large stores of latent chemical-bonding energies."

"Wow! Wow! Stop with that long explanation. Give me the short version," Johnny said, raising his hands.

"In short, you can turn into a living plasma and control fire," Tony said, closing the console. "It’s unstable now, but the rhythm’s syncing. Given a few days, your body will learn to regulate the output. You’ll stop melting your pants every time you get excited."

Johnny raised an eyebrow.

"That a medical term?"

"Only when you’re the patient."

Tony stepped back and crossed his arms.

"Question is... can you do it again?"

Johnny shrugged and lifted his hand. He flicked his fingers like he was snapping a lighter.

A flame burst to life above his index finger. It hovered there, dancing just above his skin, flickering like a living ember. Warm light reflected in his eyes.

Ben grumbled from the corner. He was hunched over in a reinforced seat, arms crossed, legs like two massive tree trunks. His voice rumbled like gravel in a cement mixer.

"Lucky bastard."

"You jealous, Big Red?" Johnny asked, still watching the flame.

Ben didn't respond. Just scowled.

Sue stood near the table, arms crossed, eyes locked on her brother. There was tension in her shoulders. Like, she knows him better than anyone, and she probably knows what he was planning to do with that power.

"Don’t play with it, Johnny. You barely know what it is."

Johnny turned to her, still smiling. He closed his hand slowly, and the flame winked out. Then he flicked his fingers again, and another wisp of flame appeared over his fingers. He was grinning like a kid who just discovered the taste of an ice cream.

"Relax. I’m not gonna go nuclear. Not unless someone brings up karaoke night again."

Sue didn’t smile. Her eyes stayed serious.

"Promise me you won’t be reckless with it."

"I promise," Johnny said. Then added, "Mostly."

She shot him a look.

Tony stepped in between them before the sibling deathmatch could restart.

"Look," he said. "The point is, we’re two for four now. Ben’s rock solid. Johnny’s running a personal bonfire. That storm rearranged our genetic codes. I don’t know what the final form looks like yet, but I know this..."

He turned to the screen.

"We’re not normal anymore. And we never will be. But thanks to Johnny's power, I can create the cure for Ben even faster."

Silence hung in the air for a moment.

Then Johnny leaned back and grinned.

"So… does this mean I get a cool name now?"

"No," Ben said immediately.

"Flame King? Torch Lord? Burn Master?"

Sue groaned.

"You’re going to be impossible to deal with now, aren’t you?"

"Already was," Ben said.

Tony sighed and rubbed his eyes.

"I swear, if you name yourself anything with the word 'fire' in it, I’m revoking your dessert privileges."

Johnny grinned wider.

"You just lit the fuse, Stark."

Tony pointed toward the hall.

"Out. All of you. I need to recalibrate the scanners before someone else decides to spontaneously combust."

Johnny hopped off the table, still shirtless, still glowing faintly under the skin.

"Best. Checkup. Ever."

Ben followed him out with a muttered, "Showoff."

Sue lingered a moment, glancing at Tony.

"Keep an eye on them, please, Sue," He said with a sigh.

"Yeah, I'll keep an eye on them."

She nodded, then turned and followed the others.

Tony stayed in the med bay, eyes on the screen, watching Johnny’s residual flame signature slowly fade. He tapped one last command and archived the scan.

Then he whispered to himself.

"Two down. Two to go."

...

[Evening] [Living room]

Tony stepped into the living room with a cup of coffee. He took one sip, rounded the corner, and stopped.

Johnny was on the couch with an ice pack pressed to his eye. A large purple bruise was already blooming across his cheekbone.

Tony raised an eyebrow.

"Let me guess. Melina?"

Johnny didn’t move the ice pack. He just grunted.

"She said I disrespected the bike's soul. I said the bike was already dead. Then I winked. And now I look like this."

Tony took another sip.

"Fair."

Ben was in the reinforced corner seat again, watching something on the TV. Sue sat at the table, a tablet in hand, scrolling through the latest system sync reports. She glanced up when Tony entered.

"Something wrong?"

Tony walked over, sat in the chair across from her, and set his cup down.

"No. Actually… maybe something very right."

Johnny peeked out from behind the ice pack. "Please don’t say we’re flying back into the sun."

"No sun," Tony said. "But I’ve been thinking about what triggered your transformation."

Ben turned the volume down on the TV.

"You mean him turning into a fireworks factory?"

Tony pointed at Johnny.

"He awakened during the race. When he pushed his limits. Stress, adrenaline, danger. His body responded to a survival-level threat. What about you, Ben? Anything you remember?"

Ben quickly pointed his finger at Tony, "I had a bad nightmare last night."

"Yeah, nightmare works too," Tony said as he put the cup down on the table.

Sue narrowed her eyes and stood up, "If we can recreate such situations, then..."

Before she could finish speaking, Tony took out a handgun out of nowhere. Sue's eyes widened. He shot her. Sue, caught by surprise, raised her arms. A faint blue shield appeared, but instead of a bullet, a little jet of water came out, striking the shield.

Everyone was stunned and silent...

Then...

"Mr. Stark," Sue said, her left eye twitching. 

"Miss. Storm," Tony was already backing down.

"I just had a mini heart attack."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Oh, no. Don't worry. I'm gonna hit you now. Just a tiny bit. Please accept it," She narrowed her eyes and launched forward. 

Tony ran.

"No, thank you. I'm good."

[Ironman] Ch: 111 [The evolution has begun]

[Morning – Quarantine Level, Starfire Base]

Ben woke up with a loud groan, one hand rubbing his face, the other pressing against something oddly hard and uneven.

He blinked.

Everyone was staring at him.

Tony, Sue, and Johnny were standing nearby. All with the same weird look: part surprise, part disbelief.

Johnny had a soda in hand and was clearly trying not to laugh. His cheeks were puffed, mouth twitching.

"What?" Ben grumbled, his voice deeper than usual. Rougher.

No one answered.

Ben pushed himself up, and that's when he noticed it.

The couch beneath him, correction, what used to be a couch, was now a shattered pile of splinters, bent metal, and torn fabric. It looked like it had gone ten rounds with a wrecking ball. The floor underneath groaned slightly as he stood.

And then he noticed the chance, saw his hands.

"...What the hell?"

They were huge. His fingers were thicker than soda cans. His skin was no longer skin. It looked like stone. Not just rough or cracked, but solid, as if sculpted from burnt-orange granite, with thick ridges and seam lines across his knuckles and forearms.

He looked down at his body. His shirt was torn apart, and his skin was stone with cracked lines all over. He ran his fingers over his chest.

Panic kicked in.

His breath came faster. He looked down at his arms, chest, legs... all of it was transformed. Massive, solid, and strangely symmetrical. His entire body had changed overnight, and he hadn't even felt it.

"What the hell is this?!" he shouted, stumbling back into the wall, which cracked from the impact.

Sue stepped forward instinctively, but Tony raised a hand, keeping everyone back.

"Ben," Tony said, calm and direct. "Look at me."

Ben turned, chest heaving. His new form towered over the others, but his eyes were wide with fear.

"Whatever's happening, it's part of the change. That's why we are here, aren't we?" Tony said. "Just stay still. Let me scan you. No one's hurt. You're okay. You're going to be okay. I promise."

Ben swallowed hard and nodded, barely.

"Alright, just take a seat on the floor and let me arrange the scanner," Tony said calmly.

"Alright. I trust you, Stark," Ben just sat on the floor, his eyes never leaving his arms.

Behind him, Johnny finally lost it and burst out laughing. "Oh man... You look like a walking brick pizza oven!"

Sue elbowed him. Hard.

"Ow! What? He does!"

Tony wheeled over the portable bio-array scanner, a nanite-forged medical rig that unfolded in front of Ben with soft hydraulic hisses. He tapped a few commands on his wrist, and the scanner activated with a gentle pulse of blue light that washed over Ben from head to toe.

The room fell into complete silence.

Tony’s eyes narrowed as layer after layer of internal data scrolled across his HUD. Molecular structure, organ maps, cellular patterns… all rendered in rotating 3D. Johnny leaned in over his shoulder, but Sue pulled him back with a glance.

Sue narrowed her eyes after seeing the scan results.

COSMIC SIGNATURE: ACTIVE
MOLECULAR STRUCTURE: ALTERED
SKELETAL STRUCTURE: CRYSTALLIZED COMPRESSION MASS
INTERNAL & EXTERNAL ORGANS: STABLE – COMPOSITION: UNKNOWN MINERAL BIOFORM
NEURAL LINK: UNINTERRUPTED
VITAL SIGNS: GREEN

Both of them looked back at Ben with a curious glance.

Ben noticed their glance and quickly asked, "How bad is it? Just so you know, I used to smoke in my college days."

Tony stayed quiet for a moment, staring back at the data.

Finally, he looked up at Ben again.

“Alright. Here’s the truth,” he said, his voice level. “Your physiology has been fundamentally rewritten. Every cell in your body now operates like a living mineral structure. Your entire biology is reinforced with a crystalline matrix I’ve never seen before."

Ben frowned. “So I’m a rock monster.”

Tony exhaled, standing straight. “You’re not a monster. You are a living proof of cosmic evolution. A superhuman."

Ben looked down at his hands again, turning them slowly, the stone creaking faintly as his fingers flexed.

“Is it permanent?” he asked quietly. “Am I stuck like this?”

Sue leaned forward. “Ben...”

“I need to know,” Ben said, cutting her off. Is it permanent? Is this gonna kill me in a week, or what?”

Tony stepped closer, meeting his eyes.

“No,” he said simply. “You’re not dying. It's the opposite." He did some quick calculations and rescanned Ben. "In simple words. Super strength, stamina, endurance, and your body doesn’t rely on oxygen the same way anymore. Hell, you could probably survive the space vacuum without anything.”

Ben blinked.

“Seriously?”

"Yup!" Tony nodded. 

Silence settled over the room again.

Ben looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers. They moved just fine, but he still looked like he didn’t trust them.

“Still feel like me,” he said quietly. “Just… heavier.”

Johnny chimed in, grinning. “Heavier? Dude, you dented the floor just standing up.”

Ben gave him a slow look. “You wanna be next, pretty boy?”

Johnny snorted. “Yup, that’s definitely still you.”

Tony gave Ben a slight smile. “Look. This might not be what you expected, but it’s not the end of anything. It's a start. And I have a solution.”

Ben raised a brow. “Solution?”

"Yeah. If I can somehow control that cosmic energy in your body, then you should be able to transform back and forth between your human and rock form," Tony said with an amusing smile as he was already formulating a solution in his head. 

“Alright,” Ben said. “I trust you, Tony.”

Tony gave him a quiet nod. “Just leave it to me.”

Johnny finally spoke again, this time with a little less joking in his voice. “Dude... you know you just survived a direct hit from a cosmic storm and woke up stronger than ever, right? Like... you’re literally built different now.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but my couch didn’t make it.”

“So… what about us?” she asked, eyes flicking to Ben’s new form. “Do you think we’ll change too?”

Tony was still looking at the scan data when he answered.

“Probably.”

He looked up.

“That storm didn’t just rewrite Ben. It passed through all of us. We don’t know how or when it’ll show up. Could be slow. Could hit all at once. But whatever’s happening… It’s not done.”

Johnny lowered his soda can. “Okay, now I’m listening.”

Sue crossed her arms, her voice tight. “And the people here? Contamination risk?”

Tony shook his head. “Already checked. No radiation leaks, no airborne particles. The energy is embedded at a cellular level. We’re not contagious.”

They let that sink in.

Ben sat quietly, arms resting on his knees. He wasn’t panicking anymore. Just thinking.

Tony continued, “But we’re still pulling out. This level’s no longer enough.”

Johnny looked up. “Wait, pulling out where?”

Tony’s expression shifted into something sharper, more focused.

“Horizon Island.”

Sue raised an eyebrow. “Horizon Island?”

Tony nodded. “Yup! That's my home and island. Sealed, secure, off-grid, and equipped for high-level field testing. We’ve got full containment protocols, training environments, diagnostics, deep lab access... everything we need.”

Johnny leaned back on the wall. “So we’re moving into the cool house?”

“Exactly,” Tony said. “Until we understand what’s happening, we keep this tight. No leaks. No outsiders. Sooner or later, the rest of us will awaken powers. So, we'll train, adapt, and find a way to use these powers to do some good. Of course, if anyone wants to back out, they are free to do so. There'll be a cure ready soon. Well, we'll move in 2 days.”

...

The quarantine had ended.

Well, mostly.

Tony, Sue, and Johnny stepped out into the base’s main corridor, dressed in clean, casual gear. The nanite armor was deactivated, stored for now in their bracelets. 

But Ben?

Ben stayed behind.

The quarantine chamber had been repurposed. Reinforced. Stocked with high-density protein meals, gravity-tested furniture, steel-framed recliners, and concrete-reinforced bathroom flooring.

It looked more like a tactical bunker than a break room.

Tony had outfitted the place personally.

'He needs time,' Tony thought. 'And a place that won’t collapse under him every time he breathes.'

Johnny had tried to bring him a stack of comics and snacks, but the moment he started messing with Ben, his access was revoked.

Now it was just Ben, his new body, and a slowly building peace.

...

[Around noon]

Tony walked into the base’s high tower chamber, where floor-to-ceiling glass panels overlooked the desert horizon. Natasha was already there, arms folded, standing beside a floating HUD that displayed real-time surveillance data.

She turned as he entered.

“You look like hell,” she said. “In a good way.”

Tony gave a faint smile. “Takes one to know. Any drama while I was kissing solar flares?”

Natasha’s jaw tightened. “We need to talk.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “That’s never a good opener.”

Natasha didn’t waste time. She brought up a live feed of the containment vault beneath Starfire Base. Inside, suspended in cryo-lock, was a naked man.

“That’s Ghost,” Natasha said. “He tried to infiltrate the base while you were gone.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “He tried to steal the arc reactor.”

“Exactly. Fool walked straight into the trap. Yelena led the takedown. Contained him in an adaptive nanite cell. He was… decaying. Literally rotting from the inside out. Phasing tech screwed up his DNA. Well, as you can see, Yelena fixed him. But he was too dangerous to let go, since he knows too much.”

“Did he speak?” Tony asked.

“After interrogation,” she said. “He cracked. Told us who sent him.”

The air between them shifted.

Tony’s voice was flat. “Who?”

Natasha looked him dead in the eye.

“Howard Stark. Senior.”

Tony didn’t react at first.

Then he blinked. Once.

“That’s not possible. He died years ago, like 50 or more.”

“No,” Natasha said. “He faked it. Hid underground. Built an exo-shell prototype and used himself as the baseline for some experiment called Project Tomorrow. He survived the explosion and kept upgrading himself. Barely alive. Half machine. Obsessed with beating death.”

Tony didn’t speak.

He just turned away, hands at his sides. He looked outside.

Natasha continued, slower now. “Ghost said he needed your arc reactor to power a full resurrection. His old tech was failing. So, we attacked his base. But we didn’t get to kill him.”

Tony turned his head. “Why not?”

“Because Magneto showed up.”

Tony’s stare sharpened.

Natasha brought up the next clip, footage of a metal storm exploding outward from an Arctic crater, followed by Magneto himself, hovering above the wreckage, flanked by Blink, Azazel, and Pyro.

“They took Stark Sr.,” she said. “Right before we could finish him.”

Tony took a breath, then walked forward slowly.

"Good call. Is the bug still working?" He asked.

"Ha! You knew we bugged him?" She asked.

"Duh! With the armor you two have, killing them on the spot would've been easy. But you let them go because you wanted to find their base, and the other with him to take them down together. Just like fish in a barrel," Tony turned back with his signature smirk. "Am I right?"

"Cocky as usual," Natasha said.

'First Skrulls,' he thought. 'Now zombie grandpa and Magneto’s band? Well, things are finally getting interesting.'

He took a deep breath, calmed his thoughts. 

'Let's go one step at a time. First, find out my evolved power, train, find those bastards and fuck them up. Humm... I guess, I need to create an official superhero team, huh?' 

"Oh, by the way," Natasha said, opening the public news. "Social media is a mess. Are you going to make a public appearance and you know... Give a speech, maybe? And those NASA scientists are breathing down out neck for data, always bringing in the President as if they did all the work and we were just sucking our thumbs."

"Yeah, tomorrow evening. Call Dad, let him know. We are going to New York," Tony said.

...

[Starfire Base – Garage, Same time]

The garage echoed with the rhythmic clank of tools and the low thrum of an energy calibrator. Yelena was crouched beside her bike, sleeves rolled, fingers stained with nanite gel as she adjusted the energy intake on the fusion core. Her bike was a lean, matte-black beast—part street predator, part military tech. The kind of machine that growled even when idle.

Johnny Storm walked in, sipping the last of a smoothie he’d found in the base cafeteria fridge, because of course he did.

He spotted her instantly.

“Well, if it isn’t the blonde,” he said with a grin, tossing the empty cup into a bin. “Didn’t think you were the grease-under-the-fingernails type.”

Yelena didn’t look up.

“And here I thought you’d still be passed out from button-mashing in the gaming room.”

Johnny stepped closer, eyeing her bike. “Nice ride. You built it yourself, or Tony gift-wrap that for you with a ‘Don’t scratch the paint’ note?”

Yelena clicked a panel shut and stood, wiping her hands on a rag. “I built it. Unlike you, who probably can’t even change a tire without asking Ben for help.”

Johnny smirked. “Please. I built my first bike when I was fifteen. Outran a cop on it, too.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Downhill?”

He laughed. “You’re fast with the mouth. But I bet that pile of metal wouldn’t last three miles in the desert.”

Yelena raised an eyebrow. “You want to test that?”

Johnny tilted his head, the challenge gleaming in his eyes. “Desert sprint. No rules, no limits. First one to reach the town and then come back to the base... wins.”

Yelena crossed her arms. “And the loser?”

He shrugged. “Posts a public video on their personal feed declaring, and I quote, ‘I am the supreme loser, and the better rider spanked me into the dust.’ Unedited. One-take.”

She grinned, slow and dangerous. “Deal.”

He grinned back. “Try not to cry when you’re eating my dust.”

Yelena walked past him, casually tossing the rag over her shoulder. “Dust doesn’t scare me. Only thing I’m worried about… is how much crow you can swallow.”

Johnny clapped his hands together. “This is going to be fun.”

Outside, the desert waited. Endless sun. Open terrain. And no one to stop them.

Inside the base, Tony’s voice echoed faintly over the intercom.

“Any unauthorized use of Stark vehicles for racing will result in mockery and memes. You have been warned.”

Johnny grinned wider. He got Melina's bike after nearly going to his knees and begging her to let him borrow it. Johnny begged. That was new. No one saw, so it's all good. 

“I’ll risk it.”

[From the upper level]

Tony stood on the balcony, looking down. 'I wonder if you are gonna awaken your power now, or I have to arrange ice skating...' 

---

[Ironman] Ch: 110 [Back to Earth]

[Above Earth – Starfire Ship]

The Starfire blinked and stopped outside Earth. The FTL stopped, and the ship began to move again. The hull glowed faintly as it passed through the upper atmosphere, heat shielding in full effect. 

Inside the ship, the crew stood ready. All of them wore sealed suits for containment.

Tony stood at the front of the bridge.

"Elena, bring us down to Starfire Base. Platform two."

"Course locked," Elena said. "ETA: two minutes."

Behind him, Sue, Johnny, and Ben stood silent. 

Tony opened a channel to the base.

"Nat, we're coming in hot. I need the second floor sealed. Full containment protocols. Nobody enters without my say-so."

Natasha's voice came through fast.

"Already on it. The quarantine chamber is active. Airlocks primed. No one goes near it."

"Good. Keep it that way."

Outside, the desert came into view. 

Soon, the ship landed without any problem. The nanites were humming and shifting on the surface, creating a faint energy field around it to prevent intruders. 

[Inside Starfire Base – Landing Bay]

Tech crews were waiting behind the glass wall. So were scientists from NASA and several other observers. Among them stood Howard Stark. Behind him, NASA’s lead astrophysicist and two data analysts whispered as the ship powered down.

The ramp lowered.

No one moved.

Then Tony’s voice came over the speakers.

“No contact. We’ve been exposed to cosmic radiation. Unknown effects. We’re going into lockdown. And I know, many of you want data more than anything. I'll release it when I'm ready.”

The crew walked down the ramp slowly. The scientists looked at them as the team passed through a sterilization field and moved to the secured elevator.

Inside, Tony tapped his wrist.

“Nat, doors?”

“Open,” she replied.

The elevator dropped fast, then stopped at the second level. The doors opened into a large white room. It was clean and sterile. Every surface coated in decontamination panels. The door sealed behind them with a heavy thud. It was the first room on the floor.

The floor has all the required equipment and enough food supply to last a month. Plus, rooms and other necessary forms of entertainment.

Well, they were inside quarantine now.

Tony deactivated his suit. He looked tired, but alert.

“We stay here until we know what we’re dealing with,” he said. “No exceptions.”

Ben sat on the couch with a heavy sigh after deactivating his nanite suit, his shoulders stiff. “Even if it takes weeks?”

“As long as it takes,” Tony answered.

Sue deactivated her armor and walked straight to the bathroom. "Well, I'm going to take a nice cold bath."

Johnny went straight to the fridge and took out a soda can, popped it open, and took a swig. "Haaa. That hits the spot. Well, as long as you got food and drink..." His eyes fell on the gaming room. "...and that. I'm good." He pointed his finger toward the room.

[Above – Control Room]

Natasha assigned enough Widows and robots around the ship to prevent the intruders. Melina was leading the guards, so not even a mosquito would get past them. 

Howard watched quietly. As she finished giving the last order, he walked up to her.

“You worried?” he asked.

Natasha didn’t answer right away.

“Yes. Was actually. Now that he's back. I can finally let go of that stuffy feeling,” she finally said. "But you were more worried than anyone. Even with your new enhanced body, your blood pressure was high."

"Yeah, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park. But... Phew!" Howard took a deep breath. "God, I'm glad they are back without any accident or anything like that."

Behind them, NASA officials started talking fast, asking for updates, access, and data. One of them stepped forward.

“We need to begin analysis. The world saw them land. The public knows the mission was a success. The President is requesting a full debrief.”

Howard turned to face them.

“Tony will give you what he can. When it’s safe. Until then, no one steps foot on that level.”

“But this is a historic moment,” one scientist said. “We have a right to know what happened.”

Howard’s voice was calm.

“Kid. Lower that tone and attitude. We've allowed you and your team here with zero contribution to this mission; that's all the right you get and have. So, be patient or the door's that way.”

...

[Back to Tony] 

Later that night.

Tony sat at a small table, a hot cup of tea in his hands, in his room.

He tapped the screen on the wall.

A moment passed.

Then Maria Stark’s face appeared, blurry for a second, before the signal cleared. She looked tired but relieved the second she saw him.

“Tony,” she said softly.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, smiling a little. “Still awake?”

Maria nodded. “Of course. I couldn’t sleep until I saw you.”

On the other screen, Howard stepped into frame. He looked like he’d aged five years in the few days Tony had been gone. His expression was tense at first… then he exhaled and gave Tony a look only a father could give.

“You alright?” Howard asked.

Tony gave a small nod. “Yeah. We’re all back in one piece.”

Maria’s voice was gentle. “We were so worried. The news caught on quickly. Everyone’s talking about the ship. The landing. And then you just vanished into your base.”

Tony chuckled. “Yeah. Typical Stark fashion. Big entrance, dramatic silence.”

Howard leaned forward. “Did something happen out there?”

Tony hesitated for a second, then nodded.

“Let's just say we got caught in a cosmic storm and found some answers out there. I'll explain later. But we are alright. Just need to stay in lockdown for safety. You know how it is."

Maria nodded slowly. “Alright. You take the time you need. Just… don’t keep us in the dark too long.”

“I won’t,” Tony said. “I’ll check in once we have more answers.”

Howard looked like he wanted to say more, but he just nodded and stepped back. Maria smiled gently before the screen faded to black.

Tony sat there for a moment, holding his cup, staring at the wall. His thoughts were racing, but he kept his face calm. He took a sip, leaned back in his chair, and let the silence settle. Then, he decided to take a walk and maybe talk to Sue.

Down the hall, Johnny was already deep into a racing game, yelling at the screen. Ben had passed out on the couch with a half-eaten protein bar in his hand. Sue was in her room, reading through the ship logs on a tablet. The door was slightly open.

Tony knocked gently on the door. It creaked open a little more.

Sue looked up from the tablet, her hair still damp from the bath. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing a plain black tee and sweats, the glow from the screen lighting up her face. She looked tired, but focused.

“Hey,” Tony said, leaning on the doorframe.

“Hey,” she replied, setting the tablet aside. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

He shook his head. “Tried. Brain’s still doing laps around the sun.”

Sue gave him a small smile. “Figures. What’s on your mind?”

Tony stepped in and sat in the chair by her desk. “Was going to ask you the same thing. You’re still going through the logs?”

“Just making sure everything matches what Elena recorded. I keep thinking I missed something.” She rubbed her forehead. “I mean, you said it before, but still... I just need to find out more. Like, it still doesn’t make sense. That storm should’ve killed us.”

“It didn’t,” Tony said. “Somehow, we adapted. Or maybe it changed to meet us halfway. Still working on that part.”

Sue nodded slowly, then looked up at him. “Do you think this is permanent? This heightened energy level and this weirdly strong feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said honestly. “But it feels stable. Doesn’t feel like a power-up with a time limit. More like… a reset. Like our bodies are running on something new. Think of it as evolution.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “That’s what scares me.”

Tony leaned forward a bit, resting his arms on his knees. “Sue… I know you’re trying to keep everyone safe. Keep yourself grounded. But you don’t have to carry all of it alone. Not tonight.”

Sue looked at him for a long moment. Her shoulders dropped slightly, and she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I just... I don’t know how to switch it off sometimes.”

“Same,” Tony said with a tired grin. “But we made it back. Everyone’s alive. And we have time to figure out what comes next.”

He stood and nodded toward the bed. “Get some sleep. You earned it. We all did. Maybe not Johnny. He’s in there yelling at a game like we didn’t almost get cooked alive.”

Sue chuckled softly. “That sounds about right.”

Tony headed for the door, then paused. “If anything feels off... I mean, anything... You call me, alright?”

“I will,” she said. “And Tony?”

He turned.

“Thanks. For not doing this alone and trusting me.”

He gave her a soft look. “Anytime.”

Then he stepped out and let the door close behind him.

---

Next Chapter: Transformation & Power up

[Ironman] Ch: 109 [Magneto's plan]

Yelena unleashed the Uni-Beam. A brilliant column of energy tore through the air, aimed straight at Magneto. Blink reacted instantly, her eyes flashing as she whipped her arm and opened a swirling portal in front of him. The beam vanished into the pink vortex and reappeared behind Natasha.

It struck her center mass.

The ice cracked under the blast, and smoke billowed in every direction.

But when the light cleared, Natasha was still standing.

Her armor, pulsing red, had absorbed the full hit. Steam hissed off her shoulders as the energy diffused into internal capacitors.

Natasha raised both arms, locked onto Blink, and fired twin repulsor beams.

Blink spun mid-air, hands flaring. Two more portals snapped open, catching the blasts and tossing them harmlessly into the frozen sky. The beams disappeared into the distance, slicing through the northern clouds.

Magneto narrowed his eyes. His hand lifted. Metal shards around them began to tremble. He clenched his fist.

Nothing happened.

He raised his other hand, veins straining as he tried to seize control of the Widow armor. The nanites rippled across Yelena’s body, but they didn’t bend. Natasha’s armor remained still, unmoved.

His fingers twitched. His power surged.

Still nothing.

Yelena smirked.

“Oh! How cute.”

Magneto’s expression darkened. For the first time, doubt flickered across his face.

Behind him, Blink looked to the others.

“Time to go.”

She opened a portal beside her and gestured.

Azazel vanished in a puff of red smoke, reappearing inside Blink's portal with Stark Sr. over his shoulder. The old cyborg was barely conscious, wires dangling, eyes dim. Blink held the portal open, her focus razor-sharp, sweat beading at her temple from the strain.

Pyro stepped toward it next, flames dancing between his fingers. Blink followed after him, holding the portal.

Then came another attack.

Hundreds of Alpha-class drones burst out of Natasha and Yelena's armor like a swarm of hornets. They locked on instantly, red beams charging at their cores. Their suits flared, arms raised, guiding the assault with synchronized precision.

The drones unleashed hell: converging lasers, high-frequency pulses, and kinetic burst rounds, all focused on the mutants still standing on that floating metal platform.

Magneto turned his head, just slightly. For a moment, it looked like his eyes glowed with a silver hue.

The attacks hit a wall.

A shimmering force field snapped into place around him and the others, pulsing with violet energy. Every beam, every pulse, every impact hit the barrier and slid off, redirected harmlessly into the sky.

Nothing got through.

Magneto hovered just above the frozen crater, his cape billowing in the icy wind. He looked down at Yelena and Natasha, then let out a quiet breath. His voice cut through the storm, calm and deliberate.

“We’ll meet again. And next time… it won’t be this easy.”

He turned away.

Yelena watched the portal flicker behind him, eyes narrowed.

“That bastard can even use force fields,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Fuck.”

The last mutant stepped into the portal, and the vortex collapsed behind them, leaving nothing but snow, steam, and the low hum of dying energy.

Silence.

Natasha exhaled, watching the sky. “He’s building something.”

“Yeah,” Yelena replied, her grin slowly returning. “And we just stepped into his trailer.”

Natasha tapped her wrist.

“Hermes. Begin perimeter scan. If that oldie left anything behind, I want it found.”

...

[UNKNOWN ISLAND] [MAGNETO’S BASE]

The Brotherhood's base was built deep into the rock of a remote island, surrounded by impenetrable storms and electromagnetic distortion fields that masked it from all satellite tracking. Every hallway pulsed with soft white-blue light, powered by a power source Forge had built.

Azazel reappeared in a flash of red smoke, cradling the broken frame of Howard Stark Sr. His boots hit the ground with a thud, and the old man groaned. Wires dragged across the floor, still sparking, leaking weak signals. His chest unit flickered like a dying ember.

Forge stood waiting at the far end of the chamber, sleeves rolled, visor gleaming with lines of data. His arms were already coated in modular tech tools.

Azazel dropped Stark Sr. onto the operating table.

“He’s yours.”

Forge stepped forward, scanning instantly. His voice was calm.

“He’s cooked. Fusion cell’s collapsing. Systemic decay in every organic component. Nerve web’s barely hanging together.”

He turned to the massive pod beside him, an incubation chamber pre-fitted with an advanced neuro-sync rig.

“I can stabilize him. Replace the fuel core with something cleaner. Give him a month of uptime before we need to re-sync.”

He paused, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, he better be worth it."

Behind them, the chamber doors slid open with a hiss.

Magneto entered without a word, cape trailing behind him. Pyro followed close, flipping the lighter as usual.

Pyro glanced at the old man, then turned to Magneto.

“We really saving this relic? This guy looks like he belongs in a scrap heap. What’s the play here?”

Forge didn’t look up. “The play is survival. And options.”

Pyro raised a brow.

“So that’s it? You let those two walk. You save Frankenstein’s great-granddad. And now we’re supposed to just wait around while you hope this guy does... what? Help us upgrade our helmets? We have Forge here. You are telling me there's something about technology even he doesn't know?”

Magneto stepped forward until he stood before the operating table. He looked at Stark. Sr. with a faint, amusing smile.

Stark. Sr.'s remaining eye fluttered open. He tried to speak, but his vocal processor had shorted out. All that came was a strained, mechanical wheeze.

“He is a bridge,” Magneto said. “Between what the world fears and what it doesn’t understand.”

Pyro scoffed. “You mean between mutants and machines?”

“No,” Magneto replied. “Between evolution and its next step. Stark Sr. understands artificial transference. Neural mapping. Body replication. We have strength, power, gifts... but we also have limits. Shortened lifespans. Rare compatibility. Vulnerability to weapons we still can’t counter. He can change that.”

"Yup! He can create clones, and my tech can extract mutations and memories. If someone dies, we can simply transfer their memories and mutation to another body. Think of it as eternal life," Forge said while prepping up the dying oldie.

“And those two?” he finally asked. “You let them walk away. You could’ve ended them.”

Magneto turned, locking eyes with him.

“Killing them would’ve started a war. And wars... burn cities. But they also burn the people we’re trying to protect.”

He stepped closer, his voice steady, low.

“You saw their armor. They were dangerous. We don’t know who backs them, who they report to, or how deep their network runs. And I won’t risk a Brotherhood uprising being wiped out in retaliation.”

He gestured to Stark Sr.’s broken body.

“But now, we have something they don’t. A mind that’s beaten time itself. And soon, we’ll have a way to rewrite what it means to be mutant.”

Forge looked up, eyeing Magneto through the flicker of a lens.

“I can keep him alive. But if he wants to work, he’ll need a new interface. And full neural stabilization. I need more materials.”

Magneto nodded once.

“You'll have your materials.”

They walked out, leaving Forge alone.

Forge activated the stabilization sequence. The lights around Stark Sr. flared blue. His body rose into the rig, cables locking in, ports connecting.

...

[EN ROUTE TO STARFIRE BASE] [Stealth Jet]

Inside, Yelena reclined in her seat, her armor peeled halfway back into casual mode, nanites forming a tight combat suit over her torso but leaving her arms and shoulders bare. 

She let out a large yawn.

Natasha stood by the cockpit, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the holo-feed projected from the nanite transmitter still broadcasting from deep inside Howard Stark Sr.’s body.

The signal was crystal clear.

They had heard everything, from Forge’s “clone-and-transfer” theory to Magneto’s speech about rewriting evolution. All of it.

The Brotherhood’s base. Their plan. Their assets.

And their intent.

Yelena reached for a protein bar and bit into it without breaking her grin. “So let me get this straight. Mutant cloning. Mutation memory transfer. Eternal life. Using your boyfriend’s zombie grandpa as the USB drive.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said coolly. “That about sums it up.”

Yelena chewed for a moment, then leaned back. “God, I love this job.”

Natasha tapped her wrist.

The projection zoomed in on Stark Sr.’s suspended body. Biometric data streamed beside his image. Forge’s tools were rebuilding him. Mapping his neural structure. Bolting on fresh systems.

"We have less than one month to prepare. Well, Tony will be back by then. For now, let's keep an eye on them."

----

[Ironman] Ch: 108 [Eat Shit... Metal Man]

Natasha stepped forward and aimed her arm at the ground. The gauntlet shifted, building a charge, the nanites around her wrist glowing a deep crimson.

“Let's see what's down there,” she said.

The pulse fired with a thundercrack. A focused beam of plasma drilled downward, vaporizing steel, ice, and concrete like paper. A column of steam and dust erupted as the beam carved a direct tunnel straight into the lower depths of the facility.

When the light died, a perfect circular hole remained, its walls glowing orange with residual heat.

Yelena peered down into the hole. Her visor adjusted for the light contrast, mapping the depth. “Straight drop, seventy meters. No defenses triggered,” she said.

“That’s what bothers me,” Natasha replied.

She activated her left wrist, and five drones shot out. They spiraled down into the shaft in stealth mode, scanning every inch as they descended. She didn’t move. Her gaze stayed locked on the dark hole, expression unreadable behind her visor.

“Something’s off,” she muttered.

Yelena turned to her. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“If this guy’s really Tony’s grandfather,” Natasha said, “he’s a genius. Which means this is all too easy.”

Yelena nodded. “Agreed. I was expecting more resistance.”

“Exactly.”

Their suits were among the most advanced on Earth. Each had adaptive shielding, real-time combat AI, regenerative armor, and deep field sensory mapping. But even the best tech in the world couldn’t guarantee survival if they walked into a mind like Tony’s gone cold, obsessive, and unhinged.

They stepped back from the hole.

Yelena raised her wrist and expanded the drone feed on a holographic display. The live video split into five perspectives. Each drone glided smoothly through the vertical tunnel, scanning as they moved. No tripwires. No defense grids. No interference.

That alone was alarming.

“Either this place is dead,” Yelena said, “or someone wants us to think that.”

Natasha scanned the room again, eyes sweeping over the walls, floor, and ceiling. The bots they destroyed had been fast, coordinated, and dangerous, but too weak.

She shook her head.

“No way this is his best. Not if he’s half the genius Tony is.”

Yelena moved to the far corner of the chamber and tapped the wall. The nanites around her fingers pulsed, searching for embedded tech. Nothing. Not even basic shielding.

A split-second flicker.

Then their HUDs lit up red.

[WARNING]
[ENERGY SPIKE DETECTED — NON-STANDARD FUSION CORE]
[ESTIMATED DETONATION: 5 SECONDS]

Both women reacted instantly. They flew up, smashing through the ceiling and bursting into the open sky, snow whipping past them as the air howled in the Arctic dark.

Behind them, the ground cracked.

A massive pulse of blue-white energy surged upward through the tunnel like a volcanic eruption. The explosion tore through the ice and metal with blinding force. A column of fire and light roared into the sky, stretching hundreds of meters, followed by a deep, concussive blast that flattened everything in a mile-wide radius.

The shockwave hit them mid-air, but they stayed locked in formation, stabilizing even as chunks of ice and metal shot past them like shrapnel.

They climbed higher, watching from above as the entire shelf imploded in on itself.

Nothing was left.

Only a crater where the underground base had once been, now glowing faintly beneath drifting ash and snow.

Natasha’s voice finally crackled through the comms.

“Trap.”

Their HUD screamed a warning again.

[INCOMING OBJECT - HIGH VELOCITY]

A giant fist punched up through the smoke and snow, aiming straight for Yelena. But her suit was faster. She twisted mid-air, letting her armor’s gravity field pull her down and to the side. The robotic fist missed by inches.

She spun around and raised both arms. Her gauntlets shifted, forming twin missile pods.

“Wrong girl to swing at.”

She fired.

A swarm of micro-missiles flew toward the crater. They hit with a series of controlled detonations, lighting up the snow like daylight.

From the crater, a shape rose.

Huge. Towering.

A giant robot stood in the smoke. Over twenty feet tall. Its armor was black and silver, glowing with red lines. Energy shield. Heavy plating. It looked like a giant mecha. But not as good as the ones Tony made. It looked like a cheap knockoff. 

Inside the chest of the machine, sealed in a cockpit of clear armor, sat Howard Stark Sr. His body was wrapped in a web of wires and cybernetic implants. His face was pale, stretched thin over bone. Tubes were fed into his neck and chest. His eyes glowed red. One big and one small.

He grinned. 

“Yelena Belova. Natasha Romanoff. I’ve heard much about you both.”

Natasha landed beside Yelena.

Yelena's gauntlets shifting into pulse cannons. Two turrets popped up from her shoulders. Her white suit transformed into pitch black with red linings. She was in attack mode. While Natasha's suit began to shift form, bulking up like a Hulk Buster. She will tank the attack and provide cover fire. 

"You look worse for a dead old fart," Yelena shouted.

The robot raised both arms. Cannons unfolded from his shoulders. His voice came through speakers with a metallic echo.

“You don’t understand what I’ve built,” he said. “This machine is evolution. This is the future.”

Yelena smirked. “Looks like a trash can with limbs.”

Natasha planted her feet wide. Her suit finished shifting, thick armor plates clicking into place. The Buster mode was ready.

“Let’s end this.”

Howard’s mech moved first. Fast. Too fast for something that big. He rushed forward and swung a massive fist at Natasha.

She caught it with both arms.

Metal slammed into reinforced nanite plating. The shockwave cracked the ice beneath her, but she held steady. Her boots locked down, repulsors flaring.

Yelena launched into the air.

Missiles fired from her back. Dozens. They curved through the air and slammed into the mech’s side. Explosions lit the sky. Smoke burst out.

Howard spun and fired his shoulder cannons. Plasma bolts streaked through the air.

Yelena twisted mid-flight. Her armor absorbed the hits. The energy shields flared, but held. She dropped low, then fired twin pulse blasts into the mech’s knees.

Direct hit.

The mech staggered.

Natasha took her chance.

She charged forward and slammed her full weight into the mech’s chest. Her fists, now the size of car tires, struck with bone-breaking power. The shield shattered. Metal dented. Circuits sparked. The cockpit window cracked.

Inside, Howard snarled.

“You think I didn’t plan for this?”

The mech’s chest opened. A wave of drones poured out, small and fast, glowing red with heat blades.

Yelena spun around. Her shoulder turrets rotated and started blasting the drones out of the air. Sonic bursts shattered metal. Plasma darts ripped through wings.

"Hahahaha! This is so freakin' fun," She was laughing and enjoying the situation. After months of boring training and testing in a controlled area, she was finally having a real fight. And she was excited.

More drones kept coming.

Natasha pulled out two energy blades from her back. She cut through the drones like a storm. Each swing left melted scraps flying. Sparks danced in the air.

The mech grabbed her from behind.

Its massive arms locked around her. It started to squeeze.

Her HUD blinked with damage alerts.

“Nat!” Yelena shouted. "You are getting sloppy."

“I’ve got this!” Natasha yelled back.

She braced, then fired a full shockwave.

The explosion blew the mech’s arms apart. Natasha turned around and threw a hard punch at the cockpit again. The robot flew back from the impact.

Yelena flew in fast. Her hands reformed into a massive rail cannon.

She aimed at the cracked cockpit.

“Say hi to Hell.”

She fired.

The shot tore through the air and hit dead center. The cockpit exploded into flames and glass.

The mech stumbled backward, sparks pouring from its chest.

Inside, Howard screamed. His body jerked as wires ripped free. The mech’s systems went haywire.

Yelena landed in front of the burning giant.

“Any last words, Grandpa Stark? Or, not. Fuck you! I don't care.” 

She shot another charged shot at Stark Sr.

However, a tiny pink portal opened before him, and the shot disappeared. Then the fire disappeared. 

Bamf! 

A red-skinned man appeared before Stark Sr.  

Yelena open fired, but the red man grabbed Stark Sr. and disappeared with another 'bamf' sound.

"What the fuck?!" 

Natasha looked up into the night sky and saw a man in a red and purple suit and a helmet, flying in the air. Behind him were three other people. A young guy who was playing with a lighter, a girl with pinkish skin, and the red-skinned man with Howard Stark Sr. on his shoulder. They were standing on a thin metal platform.

The storm has stopped.

The man in purple raised his right hand. 

The shattered metal around them began to groan. Pieces of the destroyed mech, broken drones, and fragments of the facility lifted into the air like leaves in a storm. 

He turned his fist slowly.

The floating metal began to twist.

Long shards stretched out, sharp. Thousands of them.

They formed a spinning halo over Natasha and Yelena.

Yelena’s voice crackled in Natasha’s comms.

"Metal control?! Ain't that the Eric guy?"

[How did they know about Magneto? > Tony told them. Magneto right now hasn't done anything drastic. This is his first step after leaving the school. As for what deal they made, we'll see that later.]

"Yes," Natasha said, stepping forward. Her armor was shifting back to combat mode. "Looks like that old fart made a deal with Magneto."

"Great," Yelena muttered as she cracked her neck and activated the Overdrive Mode. The nanites shifted, increasing the combat capabilities to max. "Because one old cyborg and a robot swarm weren’t enough."

"Let's go with Plan D," Natasha said.

The man in purple floated lower, his voice calm and deep.

"Leave."

Yelena disappeared from Magneto's vision. She was right there before him a second ago. A shadow appeared behind the red-skinned guy, followed by a hard kick. Yelena grabbed Stark Sr. and injected him with untraceable nanites almost instantly. 

Considering their mutation of teleportation and portal, they will definitely escape. And searching for them would be difficult and... extra work. So, even though she could have killed that old fart, she decided not to. He was more valuable alive than dead. Now, if they take him to their base, the nanites will send a signal.

Magneto's base will be exposed.

"Should we use the mutant killing mode?" Yelena asked Nat over secure comms.

"Don't. Stick to the plan. This way, we'll be able to take them down together," Natasha replied.

Bamf! Yelena pretended to slow down just a bit for the red guy to take Stark Sr. back.

She then shot back and unleashed the Uni-Beam.

"Eat shit... Metal man."

[Ironman] Ch: 107 [Time to Hunt]

[Flashback] [A few months back]

Tony lounged back in a sun chair, black tank top, bare feet on the table, a plate of cold dumplings next to him. Across from him, Yelena sat cross-legged with a protein bar in one hand and a combat drone diagnostic pad in the other. She was half-listening, half-scrolling through widow squad assessments.

Tony was mid-rant, waving chopsticks as he talked.

“I’m just saying,” he said between bites, “if I wanted to be a god, it’d be easy. I’ve got the tools, the brains, and now the Symbiote and a cosmic box.”

Yelena rolled her eyes. “God complex again? That’s what... day three in a row?”

Tony pointed the chopsticks at her. “It's not a complex if it's true. And you can’t deny the numbers. Global emissions dropped by forty-two percent. AMS scans have saved thousands of lives since launch. Cops are doing much better. Crime rates decreased. Well, I call it progress, although we are far from our main goal."

Yelena said, biting into her protein bar. “We all know that. You’re saving the world. But tell me, Mr. Progress... ever thought about making people? That'd be good for your God complex.”

Tony blinked.

“Like... people people?”

“Clones,” Yelena said casually, scrolling through a report. “Bodies. Copies. You know what I mean.”

Tony chuckled, then paused. That quiet, dangerous pause he did when the gears turned too fast behind his eyes.

“Funny you mention that,” he said slowly, looking out at the ocean. “I did design a prototype. Long time ago. Just to see if I could.”

Yelena looked up. “You never told me that.”

“I never told anyone that,” he replied. “I built it back when I was still running simulations on cellular self-repair. The original goal was to create rapid-healing tissue for amputees. But the math didn’t stop there. You start layering synthetic chromosomes, pairing them with stabilized telomeric sequences, you realize... hell, a clone body isn't that hard. It's the consciousness transfer that’s the issue. But that can be solved with the neural implant.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So... you made a body?”

Tony nodded, slowly. “Just one. Grown in a chamber. Took three months. No brain activity. Just a blank canvas. Pure, lab-grown human tissue. Burned it when I realized I didn’t want to go down that road.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer right away. Picked up a dumpling, stared at it like it might say something profound.

“Because if you build a body and figure out how to put a mind into it... you start wondering whose body you’d bring back. And whose soul you’d violate doing it. That kind of tech doesn’t belong to anyone. Not even me.”

Yelena let that settle between them.

“But you saved the blueprint,” she said, already knowing the answer.

Tony gave her a dry smile and tapped the side of his head. ”All in here."

A long beat passed. She looked back at her datapad, then paused.

"You think anyone else figured it out?"

He nodded.

"Hard. But not impossible."

[Present Time]

The silence thickened after Ghost's last words. 

Yelena’s eyes never left him.

“Cloning technology,” she repeated. “You said he promised you a new body. That implies he’s cracked it. Did he?”

Ghost gave a small, tired shake of his head.

“No. Not fully. It’s still in the theoretical phase,” he rasped. “He has the framework. He understands the core bio-sculpting process. He’s reconstructed some of the cellular engineering. But... the body is still missing a few pieces.”

Yelena narrowed her eyes. “Conscious transfer... Ah! Neural link? And even if he finds a way to do that, the amount of energy needed to pull off something like that would be astronomical. No wonder, he needed the Arc Reactor."

Ghost raised his head. “If you’re going after him... kill him fast. He’s not... human anymore.”

Yelena stepped forward, calm and cold.

“You gave me what I needed,” she said quietly. “Now sleep.”

With a flick of her wrist, a needle launched from her glove and buried itself in Ghost’s neck with a soft hiss. His body jerked once, then slumped forward, unconscious.

“Lock him down,” Yelena ordered. “Level-7 cryo containment.”

A pair of bots glided forward to follow the order.

She turned on her heel and marched out.

...

[ARCTIC DROP ZONE – NIGHT]

Dark skies and snowstorm... The visibility was nearly zero.

A stealth aircraft with no visible markings flew through the storm. Its wings shimmered with a faint light, distorting radar and light signatures. StarkTech stealth tech at full burn.

Inside, the cabin was quiet.

Yelena checked her suit one last time. The white nanite armor clung to her like a second skin, pulsing faintly with adaptive heat fields. Her HUD scrolled mission data across her visor.

Next to her, Natasha flexed her fingers, the nanites shifting to match. Her suit was more or less identical. The reinforced plates across her shoulders and ribs flared with faint red lines. 

"Final approach," came Hermes' voice over the comms. "Landing vector confirmed. No external defenses detected, but jamming is in place. Expect internal resistance."

Yelena grinned under her visor. "Wouldn't be a party otherwise."

The side hatch hissed open. Snow whipped in. The ramp extended with a slow hydraulic grind. Below, the Arctic wasteland stretched to the horizon. No light. No sound. Just ice and wind.

Yelena turned to Natasha.

"You ready for this?"

Natasha’s voice came through.

"Always."

Yelena cracked her knuckles.

"Time to hunt."

They stepped off the ramp.

The nanite suits activated drop mode mid-air. Gravity fields adjusted. Fifty meters from the ground, the suits flared with pulse-stabilizers and slowed their descent to a controlled hover. They touched down on the ice like ghosts.

Yelena tapped her wrist console. A holographic projection appeared, mapping their position and the sub-zero terrain.

"Two clicks east. Beneath the shelf. The entrance is locked under sixty meters of reinforced ice."

Natasha activated her scanning mode. Thermal pulses pinged beneath them, and the feedback came quick: an underground facility, dormant on the surface but active below. Heat signatures. Energy readings.

"No guards," she said.

"Which means it's a trap," Yelena replied.

They moved.

The suits adjusted to the terrain, nanites shifting to provide traction on the ice. They flew toward the coordinates.

Soon they reached their destination...

A jagged shelf of ice jutted from the earth. Cracks lined its surface like old scars. At the base was a barely visible fissure, a fracture cut clean into the rock. Yelena crouched, placed a small orb into the gap, and stepped back.

"Cracking it."

The orb pulsed with blue light and melted everything around it in total silence. The fissure widened. 

"Would you look at that?" Yelena said in amusement. "Energy field. How cute?"

She aimed her fist and shot a plasma bolt.

Craccckkle!!

The energy field shattered like glass under the plasma bolt, rippling with electric veins before collapsing in on itself.

Yelena stepped forward first, smoke curling off her gauntlet.

"Subtle entrance, as always," Natasha muttered.

Beneath the ice, a staircase spiraled down into darkness. Cold air hissed upward. Their suits lit automatically, casting soft beams of white along the walls. The metal below was old... brushed steel and titanium alloy, lined with conduits that pulsed red.

They descended quickly.

As soon as they reached the floor. The dark chamber lit up. Panels along the walls snapped open.

From both sides, plasma turrets rose and locked on.

“Contact,” Yelena called.

Turrets opened fire instantly, rapid streams of blue plasma cutting through the air.

The plasma blasts hit instantly.

Searing streaks of blue energy slammed into Yelena and Natasha, but neither flinched. Their armor shimmered as the shields absorbed every hit with a dull thump, each blast dispersing across the faint blue barrier coating their suits.

Yelena cracked her neck.

“Cute toys.”

She raised both arms. Twin lines of light surged from her wrists. The nanites reshaped into twin pulse cannons, crackling with stored charge.

She fired.

Two plasma turrets exploded into molten metal, their bases sheared clean off by the impact. Sparks sprayed across the chamber. Natasha was already moving. Her gauntlets shifted mid-step into plasma blades.

Three robots sprinted from the side panels. Humanoid, gleaming with brushed black alloy. They opened fire in perfect formation.

Natasha didn’t blink.

She sprinted into them. A low slide beneath their aim, her blades cutting through steel legs like soft tofu. One bot crumpled. She vaulted up mid-spin, slashing another across the chest. Its torso fell in two directions.

The third lunged. Natasha caught it by the throat.

“You first.”

Her gauntlet flared as nanites surged outward, snaking into the robot’s armor. In seconds, it seized up, limbs locking, servos screaming.

Natasha shoved it backward.

Yelena caught it midair with a plasma punch that shattered its torso into shrapnel.

More came.

Ten. Twenty. Their glowing optics lit up the dark as they poured from the walls like insects. They were fast. Coordinated. Armed with pulse blades and plasma rifles.

Didn’t matter.

"This oldie created too many toys over the years. Well, more fun for us."

Yelena's suit shifted, an arc of drones detached from her back and streaked into the air. They swirled above her like a halo, scanning targets. Then they fired. High-frequency sonic bursts cracked the air, followed by micromissiles.

The robots didn’t even get close. Limbs flew. Chassis exploded. One tried to leap for her head, but she grabbed it midair and slammed it headfirst into the floor. Its skull caved in.

Across the room, Natasha moved. Her blades spun into chained whips. She wrapped one around a bot’s neck, pulled hard, and ripped it free in a flash of sparks.

Another robot jumped from above.

She turned, raised her palm, and shot it out of the air with a rail spike to the core.

The floor shook as a larger mech dropped into the chamber. Nine feet tall, triple-barreled minigun arms, with thick armor plates and an internal fusion core.

It locked onto both of them and fired.

The room filled with thunder.

Yelena barely moved. Her shoulder plates flared and caught the barrage. The shields pulsed under the strain, flickering... then stabilized. She walked through the storm of bullets, unbothered.

"That's useless. Just give up and surrender. I promise to kill you painfully," Yelena said with an arrogant grin.

She raised her arm and fired a single bolt into the mech’s knee.

The joint exploded. It collapsed with a roar of metal.

Natasha flew forward. Her suit was glowing with red-hot energy. She simply punched through the robot.

Booom! A giant hole in the chest followed by an explosion. 

Natasha rolled her shoulder.

“That all of them?”

Yelena checked the scanner. “For this level. They weren’t trying to kill us. Just slow us down.”

“Didn’t work.”

“Nope.”

Natasha pressed her palm on the ground. "Let's just blast down to the main chamber instead of wasting time." 

[Ironman] Ch: 106 [Howard Stark. Sr.]

[INTERROGATION CHAMBER – STARFIRE BASE, SUBLEVEL 4]

The chamber was bright.

Ghost hung from an energy rig suspended above the floor. His limbs still severed, his body a grotesque fusion of man and failed machine. Stripped of his suit, he looked like something torn out of a failed experiment: scorched flesh webbed with circuitry, broken bones half-healed around implants, skin fused to alloy like wax to wire.

His chest pulsed with blue light from the mini arc reactor that Yelena had grafted into his chest cavity to replace his suit's power source. It was the only thing keeping him alive.

Yelena stood behind a transparent energy shield, hands clasped behind her back. 

A holographic screen hovered nearby, projecting constant vitals and energy readouts across the wall. Ghost’s core flickered irregularly. His body was degrading by the minute.

“Vitals are holding,” Hermes informed. “Pain levels... extreme. Neural surges are unstable.”

Yelena stepped through the energy shield. It shimmered around her, then vanished as she passed. Her eyes were locked on the ruined man hanging before her. She stopped just a few feet from Ghost. He hung there, barely breathing, his body twitching in slow, painful pulses.

“You really fucked up,” she said, voice even. “But you already know that.”

Ghost lifted his head slightly. His face was mottled with burns and stretch marks from where the phasing tech had fused into his nerves. His eye flickered like a dying signal light.

“You can’t stop it,” he rasped. “Even if you kill me, he’ll find someone else.”

Yelena leaned closer, ignoring the stench of scorched bio-mechanical rot.

“I’ll ask once,” she said.

Her voice was calm. Cold.

“Give me everything. Where your boss is. What he wants. Who else is working with him. What tech you’ve been using. Every last piece of it.”

She turned and walked to a table built into the wall. A small tray extended from it with a mechanical sound. She reached into her jacket, pulled out a small blue vial, and placed it gently on the tray.

“This is the Bio-Nanites,” she said. “It’ll repair you. Nerves, organs, bones. It’ll burn away the phasing damage and fix your DNA. No powers. No suit. Just a clean start. Human again. Alive.”

She let the words sit for a second, then looked over her shoulder at him.

“Or…”

Yelena reached into the other side of her jacket. She took out a second vial. This one was black. The fluid inside swirled like smoke trapped in water.

She held it up, turning it so the light caught it.

“This one doesn’t heal. It rips you apart, neuron by neuron. But at the same time will heal you and repeat the process again and again.”

She placed it beside the nanite vial and walked back toward him. She stopped just before him and looked him in the eye.

“You get to choose. Give me what I want and walk out of here whole. Or refuse, and I find out anyway. Slowly.”

She stepped back, folded her arms, and waited.

“Tick tock,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

Ghost let out a slow, ragged breath. His one working eye locked onto Yelena.

“You expect me to believe you’ll let me live?” he said, his voice broken and dry. “You hate me. You butchered me. You think I don’t know how this ends?”

Yelena said nothing. Just stared.

He laughed, a bitter, metallic sound. “I give you what you want, and you kill me anyway. That’s how this works.”

His head tilted forward, blood dripping from his chin. “But… if you can really fix me... if you can undo what the phasing did… if you can stop the decay... I’ll tell you everything.”

A pause. Then: “I want to live without pain, even if it's for a moment. I’m done rotting.”

Yelena looked at him for a long moment.

Then she stepped over to the tray, picked up the blue vial, and walked back toward him. The light in the room caught her eyes just right... They looked hard, cold, calculating. “You lie to me,” she said, holding up the vial, “and I’ll make sure your new body stays alive through every second of what comes next.”

She stabbed the injector into his chest and pushed the plunger.

The bio-nanites hissed as they entered his bloodstream. Instantly, the blue core in his chest glowed brighter. His body jerked. Muscles twitched. Nerves flared. Skin began to knit together. Bone crackled as it began to realign and grow.

Ghost gasped. His breathing sharpened.

Yelena grabbed the reactor and ripped it out of his chest.

"GAAHHHH!!" Ghost screamed in pain.

Blood gushed out, but the wound was already healing.

[Ten minutes passed.]

The energy rig hissed, then slowly lowered Ghost to the floor. His body convulsed one last time, then settled.

The transformation was complete.

No more torn muscle, no exposed tech, no stench of rot. His limbs had regrown. His skin was whole. The scarring was no more, the cybernetic remnants were eaten by the nanites. He looked… human. Breathing. Alive.

He stared at his hands in disbelief, ran trembling fingers across his chest, then his face. His voice came out as a whisper:

“I feel... warm.”

He fell to his knees.

Yelena stood a few feet away, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

“That’s enough,” she said flatly. “You got your miracle. Now talk.”

Ghost looked up at her. The mask was gone. His face was lean, drawn from pain and time, but whole. 

“I’ll give you everything,” he said.

He took a shaky breath and started.

“The facility... It’s buried in the Arctic shelf, near the old Alpha Station ruins. Deep underground. No satellites ever see it because it doesn't broadcast, and it's in the blind zone. You have to know exactly where to look.”

He paused, then continued.

“It's run by someone you won't believe. His name is Howard Stark.”

Yelena frowned. “Howard Stark? What the fuck are you talking about? You wanna die?”

Ghost shook his head. “Not him. Not your Howard. His father.”

Yelena narrowed her eyes.

“Howard Stark... Senior. Anthony Edward Stark's grandfather.”

"You gotta be kidding me," Yelena mumbled. Everyone who was hearing this conversation from the control room was surprised.

Ghost continued. “He faked his death decades ago. He was the founder of a classified program called Project Tomorrow. It was supposed to be the next leap in human evolution, hybrids of man and machine. Living weapons. Thinking machines. Arsenal Units.”

Yelena’s eyes widened. She’d heard whispers of the name Arsenal before when she was still a Widow. Rumors. Wiped files. The Red Room, back then, tried to find the info on the original project and planned to use it to enhance the Widows, but failed. 

“He was brilliant. Terrifying. He wanted to crack the limits of biology, defy aging, illness, even death itself. Thought time was the enemy. So he built the prototype and used himself as the baseline. But there was a failure. A massive explosion at the primary facility. Everyone thought he died.”

“But he didn’t,” she said.

“No,” Ghost replied. “He lived. Trapped in the prototype exo-armor he created. It was never meant to be permanent, just a casing for evolution. But after the blast, it fused to him, and there's no way to remove it without killing him. He’s been alive in there ever since, barely holding on. Decades.”

“And now,” Yelena said, putting it together, “the power source is failing.”

Ghost nodded. “That armor runs on ancient fuel tech. It's unstable and dying. The only thing powerful enough to sustain him indefinitely is Stark’s arc reactor. He’s desperate. His body is decaying inside that armor. Every moment is pain. But his mind? He's still the same brilliant man with the obsession of conquering time.”

Yelena stared at him for a long moment.

“Why didn’t he just come out? Ask Tony for help?”

“He hates Tony and Howard,” Ghost said. “He thinks they are weak. He calls Tony a diluted idealist. He wants the future built on his vision, not his grandson’s compassion. Why help others by giving away the future when you can control everything and everyone and live like an apex being forever?”

Yelena’s voice was flat. “What about you? Are there others working with him? What technology does he have?”

Ghost looked down. “He promised to cure me. Said if I helped him get the reactor, he’d fix the decay from the phasing tech. Said he’d build me a new body. I didn’t think I had a choice. And there's no one left but the two of us. Mandarin was working with us, but they fell in a single night. We turned to Madame Hydra, but Hydra fell the same way, and she was killed. Then we roped in Hammer. We were working with him for a time, but he was also killed. Then came Ross promised him the supply of a newly discovered metal in exchange for a new Arsenal Unit, but he also disappeared. Not to mention, our effort to get the Symbiote also failed.”

Yelena stepped forward. 

“Cloning technology?" She asked. She doesn't care about the dead. What caught her attention was the mention of building a new body.

[Ironman] Ch: 105 [Ghost]

[EARTH][Location: Unknown][Time: One day after Starfire launched for the Sun]

The wind screamed across a white desert, dragging clouds of ice across jagged formations of frozen earth. Buried beneath the surface was a facility long forgotten by the world.

But inside the walls of the deep chamber, there was no wind. No natural light or sound. Just the slow hum of decaying machinery, the hiss of old hydraulics, and the labored breath of something not quite human.

In the center of a reinforced chamber, surrounded by rusted equipment and cracked screens, lay a figure in a suspended state. Wires pierced into his spine. Metal tubing ran from his arms into the machines. His face, what remained of it, was mostly gone. One eye glowed red behind a skeletal steel frame. His voice, when it came, sounded more static than speech.

"Status..."

A cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows. The signature shimmer of tech phasing shimmered over his body. He was wearing a grey suit, and his face was hidden behind a grey mask.

The infamous infiltrator... Ghost. [Earth 1610 version]

"Starfire has launched," Ghost said. "Stark is off-world."

The figure in the chair shifted slightly, metal grinding softly beneath his skin.

"Good... Begin extraction. I want the arc reactor."

Ghost tilted his head. "Security's tight. Stark's system uses live retinal scans and adaptive passcodes. Any wrong step and the whole base locks down. So far, all our drones, hacking, and infiltration attempts have failed. Could fry half my tech on the way in."

The voice from the chair rasped like broken code. "You've done worse for less."

Ghost didn't argue.

The cyborg continued, slower now. "That arc reactor... The limitless energy. With it, I can abandon this... shell."

He raised one arm. The fingers trembled. The flesh around the metal frame had all but decayed. His body had lasted too long, barely kept alive by patchwork upgrades and a will to survive.

"I will rebuild. Perfected. No more dying piece by piece. I'll become the perfect cybernetic human in existence. I'll beat time itself. And when I am whole... You get what I promised."

Ghost said nothing, but his gaze lingered. Behind the mask, pain pulsed through his nerves. His body had begun deteriorating months ago. Something in the failed phasing tech he had used. His organs were failing. His mind was crumbling with each passing moment. The very thing that made him a ghost was killing him.

"I'll get it," Ghost said. "But if I bring you that reactor... You fix me. No delays."

The half-man nodded, cables twitching from the back of his skull. "I don't need you broken. I need you invisible."

Ghost activated his stealth field. The air shimmered around him and then fell silent. Only his footsteps remained, then even those faded.

The cyborg leaned back, the chair groaning beneath him.

"In the end... Stark won't save the future. He'll build the key to mine."

..

[Starfire Base – Midnight]

The wind outside howled across the desert. Inside, the base was quiet. Too quiet.

Ghost was already in and had hacked through the system. It was difficult and took him 3 hours to crack it, but he found his target.

He crouched low in a dark corner of the upper hall. His upgraded suit shimmered with soft pulses of blue light, cloaking him in near-invisibility. A small scanner pulsed on his wrist, mapping out power flows, sensors, and motion triggers. He moved like a shadow, slipping past every trap and camera thanks to his intangibility and invisibility.

No sound. No alert.

"Too easy," he whispered.

His eyes locked on the reactor vault marker glowing on his HUD.

He was close.

Every step brought him closer to the center of the base, where Tony Stark's arc reactor was stored. He moved into a side hallway. The scanner blinked green. No threats.

He reached a tall metal door, labeled STORAGE – TECH SECTOR 3. And there was a small warning: StarkTech doesn't play fair

Ghost smirked under his mask and phased inside.

Rows of equipment lined the walls. Containers of spare parts. Energy cells. Diagnostic tools. At the back, under a set of lights, sat a tall cylinder locked in a security cage.

'The arc reactor.'

It was exactly where it was supposed to be.

He walked forward slowly, scanning it. No signs of active traps. But he missed one detail. The floor plate beneath him glowed faintly. Then clicked.

Ghost froze.

Behind him, the door slammed shut. The lights overhead flickered. A dull hum filled the room. His scanner flashed red.

"Containment field activated," a voice said from hidden speakers.

Ghost turned, but it was too late. The suit began to flicker, and his stealth faded. His legs went heavy. His suit was shutting down. He reached for his emergency phaser, but it shorted out in his hand. Sparks flew. The HUD inside his mask died.

"No," he growled. "No, no, no!"

The walls of the fake storage room lit up with hidden emitters. It wasn't a storage unit.

It was a containment cell.

And standing on the other side of the transparent door, arms crossed, was Yelena. Next to her stood Natasha. Behind them were the Widows and security bots.

"You picked the wrong night," Natasha said.

Yelena tilted her head. "You should've read the fine print. StarkTech doesn't play fair."

Ghost pounded a fist against the glass.

He didn't say a word.

He just stared at them.

Natasha leaned in closer. "We knew you were coming the moment you stepped inside the outer gate. Tony built detectors that read quantum signatures. Your suit burns just a little too bright."

Yelena added, "And instead of stopping you, we let you in. So we could trap you. Smart, right?"

Ghost didn't answer.

His suit continued to shut down piece by piece.

Trapped.

Powerless.

And out of time.

Yelena walked to Ghost and looked at him with pity, "You know what we do with thieves? Well, you will." She clenched her fist. The nanites swarmed down her arm, forming a gauntlet etched with glowing lines. A holographic screen flared to life above her wrist.

She entered a sequence.

From beneath the floor, panels slid open with mechanical clicks. Multiple tentacles surged upward: flexible, seamless, forged from adamantium-bound nanites. They whipped toward Ghost and latched onto his limbs, torso, and spine with precision.

Ghost struggled. He activated his backup power source and tried to phase, flickered, tried to twist free, but the tentacles held. The adaptive nanites countered every frequency and phased signature his suit pushed out. Plus, the adamantium was capable of absorbing foreign energy. All in all, there was no way for him to escape.

He reached for his hidden explosives. A light fizzle. That was all. No boom. The tentacles had already severed power flow to his storage nodes.

The floor hissed as more tendrils slithered around him, pulsing with blue light. His systems were being scanned, mapped, and stripped down line by line. Warnings flashed across the dying HUD in his visor. His backup escape routes, hidden AI injectors, self-destruct killswitches... All offline. One by one.

He gritted his teeth and activated the failsafe: Hypersphere.

A ripple of distortion started at his gauntlet, flickering in and out of sight. It was his last trick. A fold-pocket into the fifth dimension, designed to hide anything.

But Yelena was already moving.

Her eyes narrowed. Two of the tentacles snapped back, reshaped into plasma blades, and struck with blinding speed.

The gauntlet arm came off first. Then the other.

Ghost screamed, a raw, choked sound. Blood sprayed everywhere like a freaking geyser.

His legs followed next.

Sliced clean, the blades reformed into clamps and pinned what was left of his body to the floor.

Yelena turned her hand slightly. The tentacles pulsed with green light as they released targeted bursts of bio-nanites, sealing off the bleeding, stabilizing his vitals just enough to keep him alive. And then put the chopped arms and legs in separate containment boxes.

Ghost gasped, head twitching, blood pooling beneath him.

His mask cracked along the jawline. One eye barely opened. He looked at Yelena, then Natasha, then at the blurred lights above him.

"You shouldn't have come here," Natasha said, voice flat. 

Yelena knelt beside him, her voice quieter now.

"How dare you try to steal something that my man worked so hard for? He worked day and night, ignoring his own health, just to make this world a better place. And you motherfucker... I'm gonna take my time, killing you."

Ghost lay motionless, disarmed, dismembered, and defeated.

"Strip his suit. Shift him to the interrogation chamber. Time to find out the bastard behind this freak," Natasha said. She then turned back to the Widows. "Suit up and spread out. Code: Omega Lockdown. You see or feel anything weird, no matter how small it is. Report me." 

Her hand reached into her jacket's pocket. Her fingers touched the small vial. The Aegis Serum. It was time for an upgrade and then... HUNT.

[Ironman] Ch: 104 [Cosmic Storm]

[Exterior – Near the Wreckage of the Skrull Cruiser]

The sun blazed behind him like an endless godfire, but Tony flew straight toward the ship.

The Model 50 armor shimmered in high-spectrum silver, its surface constantly adjusting, nanite plates flexing, reconfiguring, reflecting the worst of the heat and radiation. Before him, the massive remains of the destroyed Skrull vessel tumbled through zero-gravity, its spine cracked open like a dead leviathan in space.

Inside his helmet, Tony’s HUD pulsed with warning icons:

☢ RADIATION STORM INCOMING – T-MINUS 3:17
☠ RADIATION LEVELS SPIKING
🧬 UNKNOWN ALIEN BIO-ORGANIC MATERIAL DETECTED

“Alright, let’s make this fast,” he muttered.

His thrusters flared once as he reached the shattered remains of the central hull. Bits of melted green alloy drifted past him. Organic mesh twitched where it hadn’t fully died, reacting to the solar energy. Some of it still pulsed faintly with energy.

“Hermes, scan for surviving tissue samples. I want intact DNA strands and any psionic organ clusters.”

“Scanning,” the AI replied. “Alert: Residual neural energy detected in sector 4-C. Psionic residue confirmed.”

Tony flew low, dodging a floating spike of alien plating. His left arm shifted, nanites forming into a molecular scalpel. He cut a section of membrane from a twitching growth node.

The node hissed. Briefly. Then died.

“Yeah, yeah. There's a first time for everything. Never thought it'd be alien autopsy,” Tony muttered, storing the sample in a contamination storage formed by his nanites. The box then got attached to his waist.

“Hermes, full environmental wipe on the container. No cross-contamination.” He then released a swarm of nanites. "Collect as many samples as possible."

“Confirmed.”

Next, Tony approached what had once been the command nexus of the Skrull cruiser. Blackened bone-like structures framed the chamber, and shattered control columns stuck out at odd angles. Instead of wires or data screens, the ship had used a blend of tactile nerve threads and psionic interfaces.

"Interesting tech. Almost organic."

He landed with a soft magnetic click inside the wreck.

“This tech isn’t dead. Just brain-dead,” he murmured, crouching beside a curved node that blinked faintly.

His right hand morphed into a drill-tendril interface. He pushed it into the psionic root bundle.

“Begin extraction. Language. Memory fragments. System design. I want everything.”

The HUD lit up.

SKRULL NEURAL INTERFACE COMPATIBLE
BEGINNING TRANSLATION...
DOWNLOADING TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE:

>Cloaking Arrays
>Infiltration Drone Patterns
>Psionic Signal Boosters
>Neural Suppression Fields

*Encrypted data found* 

EST. DOWNLOAD TIME: 00:47 SECONDS

“Good enough,” Tony muttered, glancing at the timer for the solar storm.

☢ T-MINUS 2:12

Back on Starfire, Sue’s voice cracked through his comm.

“Tony, the radiation just doubled! We’re reaching critical levels out here!”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he replied, sweat starting to build under the helmet as the solar intensity pounded the armor. The Model 50 was still holding. 

Another alert pinged.

SECONDARY CORE FOUND – SKRULL ENERGY DRIVE COMPONENT DETECTED
FUSION-PSIONIC HYBRID
CONDITION: STABLE
EXTRACTION RISK: MODERATE

“Yeah, I’m not leaving that behind,” Tony said, floating toward a glowing green mass half-melded into a ruined power spine. He extended his gauntlet, and the nanites morphed into a containment pod.

He ripped it free.

The second he did, the wreckage groaned. What was left of the internal systems began to destabilize.

“Uh, guys?” Tony called over the comm. “I just pulled a hot battery from an angry alien skull-fortress. Time to go.”

Sue: “You think? Radiation in the lab just tripped Omega-Red. Get back... NOW.”

Hermes: “Solar storm impact in one minute.”

Tony activated his thrusters and launched back toward the Starfire, the wreckage starting to collapse behind him. Small explosions of green light burst as alien systems overloaded and died, scattering psionic energy into space like embers from a fire. The nanobots flew back and merged with his armor.

00:42
00:35
00:29

The Starfire was already pivoting, shielding plates expanding, reactor fins closing like petals.

“Hermes, open the belly... auto-dock, fast lock,” Tony snapped.

“Confirmed. Hangar doors open. Autolock on standby.”

Tony flew forward...

He entered the ship at full velocity. The doors sealed behind him with two inches of clearance.

☢ CME IMPACT: 3... 2... 1...

Sue's hand hovered over the shield control. She was just about to hit the final lockdown when everything... stopped. Not like a normal stop. More like the air itself froze. Light bent strangely. Sound vanished. Time paused. And then...

A massive wave of energy passed through the ship. It reached inside every atom, through every wall, into every cell.

It lasted for 3 minutes.

And they got blasted by the cosmic storm for 3 minutes straight.

Sue gasped and stumbled. Her fingers twitched, her knees gave out, and her body hit the floor before she could finish locking down the final sequence.

Johnny felt it too. He was halfway to the engine room when it hit. A warm, pulling force rushed over him. His body locked, eyes wide. Then he dropped, completely unconscious.

Ben, inside the lower deck, had just braced himself against a bulkhead when the energy slammed into him. His eyes rolled back. He collapsed like a stone.

Even Tony, who had just landed, didn't have the time to react. The Mind Stone in his head pulsed, and he dropped instantly.

Everything went quiet.

.

.

[Med Bay – Hours Later]

Beeping. Faint and rhythmic.

Tony opened his eyes slowly. The lights above him were soft. Everything hurt, but not in the usual way. It was like his body had been rewired. His chest felt heavy, but his mind felt... clearer.

He sat up.

Next to him, Johnny groaned and rolled over. Sue was lying on the bed beside him, eyes fluttering open. Ben was on the far side of the room, one leg over the side of his med pod, looking confused.

Elena stood at the center of the room. Calm. Watching them.

Tony cleared his throat. His voice was rough. “Elena… what happened?”

“You were all knocked out by the cosmic storm,” she said. “Systems went offline for eight minutes. Emergency shielding engaged. I brought you all here.”

Tony swung his legs off the bed. “System status?”

“Everything is stable,” Elena replied. “No damage. No core disruptions. Ship functions at one hundred percent, and I collected enough Cosmic energy as per the program in case of an emergency."

Johnny sat up slowly, rubbing his head. “That didn’t feel like any storm I’ve ever been through.”

Sue leaned forward. “It was inside us. Not just outside. I felt it... move through me.”

Ben said nothing. He just stared at his hands, clenching them slowly, testing his grip.

Tony looked down at his own fingers. His skin shimmered slightly in the light. Just for a moment. Then it stopped.

“Elena,” he said, his voice lower, “run full diagnostics. On all of us.”

“Yes, boss,” she said, already tapping into the med system.

Elena stood motionless as holographic scans rotated around her, displaying layered body diagnostics of each crew member: Tony, Susan, Johnny, and Ben. The med bay lights flickered in soft white pulses, syncing with the biometric monitors. In the air above the beds, transparent 3D body maps spun slowly, showing internal systems, neural patterns, blood cell behavior… and faint traces of something new.

“Diagnostics complete,” Elena said, her voice calm but focused. “All vitals are within optimal range. Heart rate, neural activity, bone density, muscular regeneration... all stable.”

Tony furrowed his brow, tapping on the edge of his floating vitals. “You’re not seeing any mutations? No genetic drift?”

Elena shook her head once. “There are faint traces of cosmic energy residue in your bloodstreams. It's embedded at a cellular level, but it’s not destabilizing. There are no side effects. No decay. No cellular breakdown. If anything… your systems are performing slightly better than before.”

Tony stared at the data.

Johnny blinked. “Wait. Are you saying we just got hit by a solar nuke and came out... buffed?”

Sue sat forward. “This energy shouldn’t have integrated with us. Our bodies should’ve rejected it, or we should’ve...”

“Died,” Ben finished, still watching his hands like they weren’t entirely his. “But we didn’t.”

Tony stood slowly. His joints didn’t ache. His head wasn’t throbbing. The Mind Stone… was quiet. Not dormant, but no longer hurting. 'This is it.'

“Elena,” he said, as he deactivated the main screen. The nanites in his body began to work. Shifting in his eyes. “Run a parallel test. Compare my neuro-sync patterns from 24 hours ago to now. Put it in my private display.”

Elena brought up the scans.

Side by side, Tony’s brainwave maps pulsed. The older one was erratic, too much neural activity, spiking around the Mind Stone interface. Overload. Nerve degeneration.

But now?

The new one was smooth. Stable.

Controlled.

Tony looked at Sue and gave her a nod.

"Perfect Evolution?" Sue said in a low voice.

"I think so. We are all touched by the Cosmic Radiation. We've all changed, but how? I've no idea. We need to stay under the quarantine till we figure out what changed," He said while clenching his fingers. 

Johnny cracked his knuckles. “Okay. Not saying I’m against a cosmic power-up, but what does this mean? Long-term?”

Elena answered. “Unknown. But based on current readings, your biology has adapted to the radiation. The cosmic energy has merged into your baseline function. You’re stronger. Faster. And from a cellular standpoint, more durable.”

Tony turned to Ben. “How do you feel?”

Ben flexed one arm. “Like I could punch a moon in half.”

Johnny leaned back and grinned. “That’s our baseline now? Moon punches?”

Tony looked at the room. One by one, he made eye contact with each of them.

"Ok. Sorry for putting you all in danger. But to stop the Skrull invasion, it was necessary. Yeah, I know you all have many questions, and I promise to explain everything. But right now, we should go home before more Skrull ships show up."

"You owe us like six crates of beer," Johnny said with a little chuckle. "And I'll take one of your mecha."

"Done," Tony said.

"Dang!" Johnny punched his fist on his palm. "If I knew you'd say yes, I'd have asked for 2 mechs."

Tony then turned to Elena.

“Set coordinates for Earth. Activate FTL.”

Elena responded instantly. “FTL charging. Estimated jump window: 45 seconds.”

Johnny stood and stretched. “Well, I’m not complaining about getting home early. But uh… what do we tell the world? ‘Hey, we flew too close to the sun and now we glow a little in the dark’?”

Tony looked at him.

“We'll give them what they want to hear and keep the cosmic radiation storm a secret. We need to know the full extent of what we’ve become. Then we'll take it from there. One step at a time.”

[Ironman] Ch: 103 [The Skrull]

Tony spun toward the main console, fingers flying across the control panel. A large holographic display lit up in front of them, projecting the live feed from the ship's exterior sensors.

The spacecraft appeared instantly. Dark green. Covered in bio-organic plating that shimmered against the solar radiation like living armor. It had no visible engines, just a faint pulse of emerald light at its rear. The design was sharp, angular, clearly not human.

Ben and Johnny burst into the lab, both half-suited and wide-eyed.

"Something's happening," Johnny said. "We felt the ship shift."

"Yeah," Ben added, cracking his knuckles. "And not in a good way."

Tony didn’t take his eyes off the feed. "That's because we’ve got company."

The ship zoomed in closer, the HUD outlining it with threat markers.

Tony said, "That's a Skrull vessel."

Johnny blinked. "A what?"

Tony turned to face them fully. "Skrulls. Shapeshifters. Parasites with a superiority complex. So far, every space-related accident tied to any breakthrough in tech or exploration? Them. The failed lunar expeditions. The Mars drone disintegrations. That time the ISS lost signal for twelve hours and claimed it was a glitch? Skrulls. They’re the reason humanity’s been crawling instead of leaping forward."

Ben frowned. "Why?"

"Because they want us stuck," Tony said. "What we are doing is a threat to their dominance. Evolution is dangerous to them. Knowledge is dangerous. So they sabotage, assassinate, manipulate... from the shadows while planning for an invasion."

Susan stared at the projection, still processing. "And right now, we are close to discovering something important..."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Yeah. We’re very close. Starfire is proof humanity can not only reach the sun but survive it. Our readings, our tech, even the solar radiation capture protocols... they’re watching us break the ceiling. And they don’t like it."

The ship outside shifted position. Its green light grew brighter. Smaller drones began to deploy, spreading like spores.

Johnny grinned. "Well, guess what? We don’t like them either."

Tony turned to him and Ben, smirk returning. "That’s the spirit. You two ready to control some mechas and kick some alien butt?"

Ben cracked his neck. "Been waiting for this."

Johnny rolled his shoulders. "Time to light 'em up."

[Command room]

Tony tapped the console, and a new interface unfolded from the wall. Ten mechas powered up simultaneously in the mech bay. Each one, designed for rapid deployment and solar-energy-enhanced combat. Smooth black surfaces shimmered as solar radiation channeled into their cores. Their eyes lit up blue, synced to the neural feedback from the ship.

"Remote control is live," Tony said. "Choose your loadouts. And Sue. Leave this to us. You focus on finding that storm."

"On it," Sue took over a side computer.

Johnny picked the flame-based mecha, its arms ending in plasma igniters and solar jets. Ben selected a brute-style mech with reinforced arms, shield generators, and kinetic amplifiers. Tony took over five mecha, and the remaining mecha and combat bots are being controlled by Elena. 

The moment the mecha bay doors opened...

Ten adamantium-armored titans flew into space, their cores glowing like second suns. Radiation spilled from their reactors, thrusters flaring against the solar backdrop. Behind them, smaller combat bots deployed in precise formation, leaner, faster, fully autonomous, each one armed with high-output plasma rifles and laser-guided nanoblades.

The Skrull drones swarmed forward in organic clumps, shape-shifting mid-flight, their frames distorting into predatory forms. Some resembled horned eels, others flying daggers. They moved like locusts, thousands in number, forming attack vectors in tight spirals.

Tony’s voice crackled over the shared comms. “Engage. Prioritize their main ship. Anything that gets too close, erase it.”

His five mechs split in synchronized choreography, each one armed with a different system. One wielded twin arc blades. Another, an energy cannon. The third: shockwave boosters that could flatten a Skrull pod in a single pulse. 

All the mech and bots were customized with experimental solar radiation absorbers that turn the solar energy into a weapon and a secondary energy core.

Johnny’s mech shot forward, jets of raw plasma bursting from his shoulders. He spun mid-flight, launched twin streams of solar fire, and sliced through three drones like they were paper. The mechs adapted the heat from the sun, overclocking their output. 

Ben simply shot forward in a straight line, smashing through the enemy drones and slamming into the first Skrull strike ship like a meteor. His mech’s arm transformed into a gravity hammer, the blow sending a shockwave through the alien hull and rupturing its entire midsection. The shield dropped thanks to the celestial adamantium's special property to absorb energy. Metal and green fluid sprayed out in zero-G. A second Skrull drone tried to flank him. Ben turned and launched a charged shield blast, the kinetic energy shattering its carapace.

Elena, controlling three combat bots in tandem, wove them through enemy fire like dancers through blades. One bot latched onto a Skrull hull and detonated an internal energy spike, bursting it from the inside. Another engaged two drones at once, blocking a barrage with its adamantium shield while stabbing both enemies with dual spears mounted on its arms.

The Skrull main vessel began pulsing, preparing to fire.

“Main cannon charging,” Hermes warned.

“I see it,” Tony replied. One of his mechs flew up and forward, folding its arms inward. The chest opened, and the solar cannon primed.

Tony narrowed his eyes.

“Firing.”

A beam of compressed solar energy roared from his mech’s core. It tore through space like a white-hot blade, punching a hole straight through the side of the Skrull ship. The ship buckled but didn’t fall.

Johnny whooped through the comms.

“That's your idea of knocking?”

“They didn’t answer the door.”

The Skrull ship unleashed its cannon.

A black-green beam of corrosive plasma sliced through the field, melting one of the drone clusters in its path. But when it struck Tony’s lead mech, the adamantium shell held. The energy washed off in waves, redirected through the armor’s lattice system, and grounded through the solar fins. Zero damage.

Tony’s mech tilted its head slightly.

“My turn.”

He launched forward, twin arc blades glowing gold. He tore through two drones in his way, spun, and slammed both blades into the main ship’s frontal ridge. Sparks exploded across the hull. The ship screeched, literally, as the organic parts reacted to pain.

Behind him, Ben’s mech grabbed one of the Skrull boarding pods and used it like a battering ram, crushing through another drone wave.

Johnny twisted through a knot of enemies, igniting flares from his mech’s arms and roasting three at once.

“This is almost unfair.”

“It is,” Tony said. “They just don’t know it yet.”

Elena triggered her backup bots. Ten more stealth bots swarmed from beneath the ship’s underside, diving into the exposed core of the Skrull vessel. Inside, they exploded with precision charges, destabilizing the ship’s internal gravity coils.

The Skrull cruiser began collapsing inward.

Tony’s five mechs regrouped in a V-formation.

“Hermes. Final strike. Feed all reactor energy into primary weapon systems. Elena, shield the Starfire.”

The mechs obeyed instantly. They went behind the prime mecha and fed it all their energy. Then the prime unfolded its arms. Plasma vents glowed brighter. Solar fins expanded like wings, spinning like a freaking giant ass spinner on fire.

“Fire.”

The beam that followed was blinding. It ripped through the Skrull mothership from bow to stern, cleaving it clean in half. The shockwave cascaded out in a cone, shattering every remaining drone nearby.

Silence followed. Then...

[Skrull cruiser: Destroyed]
[Enemy count: 0 lifesigns]
[Allied damage: 5 bots]

Tony took a deep breath.

Johnny finally spoke.

“Did we just win?”

Tony watched as the remains of the Skrull vessel broke apart and drifted, burning in the light of the sun.

“We just told the universe we’re not prey anymore.”

Ben grunted, leaning back.

“So who wants to bet that was just the scouts?”

Tony didn’t answer. He stared at the wreckage. He knew Ben was right.

This was only the beginning.

"Begin DNA extraction. Now, I can build a Skrull detector," Tony said with his usual arrogant grin.

"No time. A solar storm is headed our way," Sue said as she put up the feed on the screen. 

The calm that followed the battle lasted exactly forty-two seconds.

Then, alarms began to scream.

The lights on the command deck shifted from combat-red to ultraviolet blue, the ship’s highest priority alert. Solar radiation pulses flared across every screen.

Sue stood in front of the main monitor, fingers flying over the controls as data surged in.

“Massive ejection from the surface!” she called out. “It’s a full-blown Category Omega storm! Our drones won't work in this situation.”

Onscreen, the solar field twisted violently. From the sun’s corona, a plume of raw plasma surged outward, a massive coronal mass ejection (CME), bigger than anything they’d yet seen. It moved like an ocean wave... only this wave could crush a planet.

Johnny's eyes widened. “How long until it hits us?”

Sue replied instantly. “Four minutes. Maybe less. The initial radiation pulse will cook us if we’re not sealed in. The ship will hold for 10 minutes or so. That's just my calculation.”

Ben was already plotting the course, “Then let’s MOVE!”

"No," Tony said as he activated his Model 50 armor. Silver nanites flowed out of his skin pores, covering his skin. "I'll extract the DNA. Sue, capture as much radiation as you can. Ben, keep your hand on FTL. We got only one shot. Let's beat the impossible again."

[Shazam] Ch: 11 [Make Him a Monster]

AN: Well, it took some time to write this chapter. Too many things are going on in here at the same time so, it was kinda hard, even for me lol. Anyway, hope you like it.

---

[FAWCETT CITY – NOON] [Downtown] 

The sun burned overhead, indifferent to the chaos below.

The black armored truck barreled through Midtown, sirens off, windows tinted. Bloodsport sat across from Joker inside, his finger hovering near the panic trigger. Joker was strapped to a steel chair, mouth gagged, head tilted like a broken puppet. His eyes twitched slightly.

Then came the first shot.

The reinforced windshield spiderwebbed. The driver slumped forward, dead.

Two more shots punched through the front tires. Rubber exploded. The truck lurched. Bloodsport's body slammed against the wall as the vehicle lost control. It skidded sideways, tires shrieking across pavement.

A magnetic disk that was lying on the road flew up as if someone knew exactly where the car would skid.

Booom!

The explosion lifted the truck like a kicked can. It flipped twice, metal clanking, until it slammed roof-down into the intersection.

Smoke poured from the wreckage.

Bloodsport dragged himself out, ears ringing, ribs screaming. He saw his escort team, what was left of them. Six trained men, reduced to silence in seconds inside the vehicle. Precision kills, headshots. No wasted ammo. He then quickly dragged Joker out of the burning truck and threw him on the road.

Then the shooter stepped into the light.

Deadshot.

Leather, armor, the signature wrist cannons. His mask caught the sun like a mirror. His eyes were fixed on Joker.

Bloodsport spat blood, rose to his feet, and unholstered two compact rifles from his back holster. He said nothing. Deadshot tilted his head.

"I figured they'd send a pro," Deadshot said. "Didn't think they'd send you."

Bloodsport fired.

Bullets zipped before words did.

Deadshot dove sideways, wrist cannons lighting up mid-roll. Bloodsport countered with a burst from his twin rifles, the recoil kicking through his bruised frame. Shattered glass and ricocheting lead tore through storefronts as civilians scattered, ducking behind burning cars and overturned food carts.

Deadshot vaulted over a sedan, landing behind cover.

"You always follow orders like a good little soldier?" he called out.

Bloodsport moved low, switching mags without looking.

"I follow smart orders. Joker dies, we lose the map to every bomb he's planted."

Deadshot popped out and fired a tight spread aimed at the knees. Bloodsport slid behind a mailbox, rounds biting the metal inches from his leg.

"Not my problem. Someone paid me enough to save that clown."

Bloodsport lunged from cover, spraying suppressing fire. Deadshot ducked behind a wrecked police car, his mask tracking every shot. The bullets chewed through the car door, glass cracking and metal popping.

Deadshot rolled out low, arm raised. His wrist cannon launched a small grenade.

It clinked once on the pavement.

Bloodsport swore and dove sideways as the grenade burst in a flash of light and concussive force. The shockwave knocked him flat. His rifles clattered away.

Deadshot moved fast, sprinting through the smoke, stepping over broken glass and bullet casings. He fired short bursts to pin Bloodsport down as he closed the distance.

Bloodsport shook off the daze, blood dripping from his temple. He pulled a blade from his boot and flipped up, knife ready.

Deadshot reached him.

They collided hard. No words. Just fists, elbows, and knees. Bloodsport slashed, Deadshot blocked with his armored forearm, and countered with a knee to the gut. Bloodsport grunted but didn’t go down. He swung the knife again, slicing Deadshot’s side.

Deadshot twisted, grabbed Bloodsport’s wrist, and drove his head into Bloodsport’s nose. Bloodsport staggered. Deadshot tried to go for the finishing shot, wrist cannon to the chest.

But Bloodsport grabbed his arm and forced it upward. The cannon fired into the sky.

With his free hand, Bloodsport slammed his knife into Deadshot’s thigh.

Deadshot cried out, staggered back, ripping the blade out. Bloodsport tackled him into a newsstand. Wood and paper flew. They rolled through the wreckage, each trying to get the upper hand.

Deadshot got there first.

He slammed his gauntlet into Bloodsport’s jaw, once, twice, then pinned him with a knee to the chest.

Joker, still gagged, still strapped, watched from where he lay on the pavement, grinning beneath the muzzle.

Deadshot turned toward him.

Bloodsport used that second to grab a broken plank from the ground and crack it across Deadshot’s head. The mask held, but it knocked him sideways. But this flicker second was enough for Deadshot to throw an electric disk on the ground near Bloodsport's feet.

Both men drew their guns simultaneously.

Standoff. Ten feet apart.

Guns up. Chests heaving.

Then... sirens. Distant, but closing in.

Deadshot didn’t lower his weapon.

Bloodsport stared him down.

"You walk now," Bloodsport growled, "or we both die here."

"I don't think so," Deadshot put his guns and...

ZZzappp!!!

...the electric disk under Bloodsport’s feet lit up.

A pulse of blue energy exploded upward.

Bloodsport screamed as the charge shot through his body. He dropped like a brick, smoking, shaking, nerves fried. His guns clattered across the ground.

Deadshot stepped forward, limping from the knife wound in his thigh. He kept his gun trained on Bloodsport, but didn’t shoot. Not yet.

Sirens were louder now. Police drones buzzed in overhead.

Deadshot glanced up. One minute, maybe less, before they had eyes on everything.

He looked over at Joker, still tied up, still gagged, lying on the hot pavement like a corpse at a crime scene. Joker's eyes danced. Even gagged, he was laughing.

Deadshot walked over and grabbed Joker by the straps.

“You better be worth it,” he muttered.

He pulled out a small black beacon, pressed it. A silent signal.

Above, cloaked in clouds, a stealth transport decloaked just enough to reveal itself. A cable dropped. Deadshot snapped it to his belt.

He gave Bloodsport one last look.

“You’ll live.”

Then the cable yanked him and Joker upward. Fast. Like a ghost vanishing into the sky.

Seconds later, the transport was gone.

The sirens finally arrived. Squad cars screeched in, doors flew open, and armed officers shouted commands. Drones hovered, scanning.

But Deadshot was gone.

Bloodsport lay on the street, coughing, burned, and pissed.

He looked up at the smoke trail in the sky.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

Then passed out.

[Inside the stealth jet]

Deadshot cut Joker's restraints and then slumped down, leaning his back on the metal wall.

A door slid open.

Lex Luthor walked in.

He was calm and dressed in a black suit. His face showed no emotion.

He looked at Joker. Then at Deadshot.

“You brought him in alive,” Lex said.

Deadshot nodded as he checked his wounds. “Just like you paid for.”

Lex turned to Joker and stepped closer. He studied him for a moment.

“This is your big plan?” Lex asked. “Blowing up a city to kill Superman? You think some bomb will be enough to kill him?”

Joker tilted his head. He started laughing. "Heheheheh! Ahahahaha!" Loud, high-pitched, unhinged laughter.

Lex didn’t flinch.

Joker leaned forward, grin wide, eyes gleaming.

“Oh, Lexie, don’t be so basic. It’s not about blowing up a city. It’s about turning your god into a monster.”

Lex raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

Joker spoke slowly, clearly enjoying every word.

“The bombs are real. Big, nasty things. But they won’t go off unless someone touches them. Someone fast. Someone brave. Someone like Superman.”

Lex frowned. “He’ll try to disarm them.”

“Of course!” Joker said, almost clapping. “He’ll see the timer, hear the ticking, and like the boy scout he is, he’ll grab it and throw it into the sky or fly far away.”

Joker leaned in.

“And that’s when it explodes. You see, each bomb has a tiny winy camera with Supes' face and suit as a trigger mechanism.”

Lex narrowed his eyes.

“What’s inside the bomb?”

Joker smiled wider.

“Just a little dust. Kryptonite. Enough to weaken him. And a pinch of fear toxin. Not enough to kill him. But enough to make him see things. Feel things. Things he can’t control.”

Lex was quiet.

Joker giggled.

“He’ll go crazy, Lex. He’ll lose it. Punch holes through buildings. Maybe a few people. And then your precious Justice League? The Justice Society? They’ll have one choice.”

Joker mimed a gun with his hand and pulled the trigger.

“Put him down.”

Lex looked at Joker for a long time. Then he turned to Floyd.

“Keep the clown alive. No matter what.”

Deadshot grunted. “Yeah. Got it.”

Joker leaned back, still grinning.

“It’s gonna be a hell of a show.”

The aircraft flew into the clouds, disappearing into the sky.

...

[WEST DOCKS]

[Joker’s Old Hideout]

The building was a half-rotted warehouse tucked between a meat processing plant and a burned-out car lot. Seagulls circled overhead like little winged judgment machines. Rust coated the exterior walls. The front gate hung by one hinge. If buildings could sigh in disappointment, this one would be doing it hourly.

Harley Quinn stood in front of it, chewing bubblegum and twirling a crowbar. On her back was a big school bag that she might have stolen on the way. Her expression was thoughtful, like she was trying to decide if she wanted to rob the place or set it on fire. Maybe both.

"Alright, Mister J," she muttered to herself. "You went off the deep end. Again. Left your toy chest wide open. Shame on you. Now I gotta clean up after ya."

She kicked open the side door.

It swung wide with a creak straight out of a horror movie.

Inside, the air was stale and smelled like gunpowder, old greasepaint, and betrayal. A crooked lamp buzzed in the corner. The place was mostly empty now, someone had already swept through and taken the weapons. But Harley knew better than to think Joker kept all his goodies out in the open.

She walked across the floor, boots echoing, eyes sharp.

"Money, money, money," she sang quietly. "C'mon, puddin’, where’d you stash your piggy bank?"

She yanked a curtain aside. Nothing.

Pulled open a file cabinet. Just clown makeup, old photographs, and three jars full of teeth.

"Gross," she said, slamming it shut.

Then she noticed it. A smear of red on the floor. Smudged like someone dragged something heavy. Or someone. Her eyes followed the trail to a corner wall where a clown poster hung crookedly.

Harley narrowed her eyes.

"You cheeky bastard."

She ripped the poster down, revealing a keypad hidden behind a fake electric box.

Four digits. No labels. No hints.

But she didn’t need them. All of Joker's safe has the same number, and she knew it.

She punched in 0401.

The keypad beeped. Green light. The wall clicked.

The secret panel opened.

Behind it? Jackpot.

Stacks of bills bundled with Joker cards. Gold bars. Some stolen Wayne tech. A duffel bag of diamonds the size of marbles. And tucked in the back, a mannequin wearing one of Joker’s old purple suits, complete with a rose in the lapel and a tiny pin that read Kiss Me, I Bite.

Harley gave a low whistle.

"Hello, retirement plan."

She tossed aside the mannequin and started shoving cash into the bag. Her hands moved fast. Bills, coins, a couple of small vials of fear toxin, and one very confused wind-up penguin toy.

She zipped the bag halfway when something caught her eye.

Her very first hand-made Classic Harley costume. She took it and examined it for a few seconds before stuffing it into her bag. 

Harley spotted the metal barrels in the far corner as she zipped the duffel shut. Her eyes squinted through the gloom. Faded yellow labels. Black hazard symbols.

“Jackpot number two,” she muttered.

Gasoline.

She walked over, pried the lid off one, and gave it a sniff. Her nose wrinkled.

“Yup. That’s the stuff.”

Harley grabbed a broken mop handle from the corner and used it to knock over one of the barrels. The gas glugged out in waves, soaking into the concrete floor like it was thirsty for revenge. She kicked over a second, then a third, dragging the trail across the room like she was painting with destruction.

She walked to the center of the warehouse, pulled out a lighter from her jacket, and flicked it open. The flame wavered for a moment, then held steady. Her face glowed in the soft light.

She looked back once. The old safe. The purple suit. The mannequin.

“Goodbye, you manipulative, giggling asshole,” she whispered. “No more rewind. No more shrine.”

She dropped the lighter.

Flames erupted instantly. A wave of fire roared across the gasoline. It sprinted up the walls like it had been waiting for years. The air filled with smoke, heat, and the smell of Joker’s legacy turning to ash.

Outside, Harley stepped into the street as the windows blew out behind her. Glass and smoke poured into the air. She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, her silhouette lit by orange firelight. She didn’t look back.

High above the city, a satellite feed picked up the bloom of heat.

Inside the Batcave, Batman stood in front of a massive screen, his jaw tight.

The image zoomed in. The figure was unmistakable. Blonde pigtails. Red hoodie. Duffel bag. Flames behind her like some chaotic goddess.

“Harley,” he said quietly.

He tapped a command into his gauntlet.

“Flash,” Batman said through the comm.

“Yo,” Flash answered. “You see the warehouse fire?”

“Already on it. Harley Quinn is on foot. Alone. West Docks. Knock her out and bring her to the cave. Do it fast. Don’t engage her in conversation.”

“You mean don’t flirt with her.”

“I mean don’t waste time.”

“Copy. Fast, quiet, and unconscious. Got it.”

Batman closed the feed and turned back to the array of monitors showing Fawcett City. The bomb alerts were blinking red across the map. He found ten bombs. One had just been confirmed by the worst possible source.

Superman’s voice came through the encrypted channel, tight and urgent.

“I found one.”

Batman turned. “Location?”

“Tony’s Pizza. Downtown.”

He paused, then added with a hint of something colder.

“It’s live.”

Without another word, Superman shot into the sky, breaking the sound barrier as he flew. Behind him, the clouds rippled, parting as he disappeared toward the heart of the city. Toward the first bomb. 

[A few minutes earlier] 

Inside Tony's Pizza...

John has a talk with Tony about the messy explosion at the delivery place, and how he lost the bike there. That place was sealed. Tony said he had already talked to one of the local police. John can go there and pick up the bike, and he'll also get proper compensation for the dangerous situation he got caught in.

But John asked for another job instead of the compensation for Harley. And well, he got one. She'll be in charge of cleaning the place. Then, he walked out of the shop and felt a weird, uneasy feeling. It's been a while since he felt this way. He looked around. His eyes darted everywhere. 

Then...

A guy came riding on a bike, stopped near the shop, parked the bike, and simply ran away. He looked scared and was sweating buckets. 

John wanted to go after that guy, but his instinct told him that bike was bad news. There was a small bag strapped to the back seat. He quickly ran over there and carefully unzipped the bag and...

"Fuck!" 

Inside was a bomb with a vial of green glowing liquid. A couple of wires and a timer. It was a freaking bomb. 

Anyone in his place would have run away in fear. But he maintained his calm. Green liquid. Could it be Kryptonite? Or, some kind of toxin? Virus? Then he squinted his eyes and saw a tiny camera above the timer.

Superman, at the same time, landed behind him.

Everything was in motion now.

And time was running out.

Poll result

1) Atomic Requiem: He can deconstruct any metal or synthetic compound into its base atoms and reweave it into a new material structure, like a living forge/lab.

2) Cosmic energy

----------

The clone and inventory can be made if MC can utilize the power of the Space Stone, which he already has.

Mirror body is kinda too OP. Let's hold it back for now.

[Ironman] Ch: 102 [The truth]

[Starfire – Research Deck | Day 6 in Solar Orbit | 2:17 AM Ship Time]

Inside the lab chamber, soft blue lights glowed from the containment fields. Monitors flickering with real-time biometrics, wave-form graphs, and molecular simulations. Tubes of plasma and radiation-exposed samples floated in magnetic suspension.

At the center of it all, Tony stood still, face pale, eyes locked on the data.

His hands worked with surgical precision. A vial of irradiated plasma in one, a drop of his own blood in the other. He injected it slowly into the sample dish, then slid it into the analysis scanner.

He didn't blink. He didn't breathe.

The scanner spun once, twice, and beeped.

Tony leaned in.

The cell clusters were merging. No rejection. No inflammation. For five seconds, the reaction was stable.

Then the dish cracked.

The lights flickered, and the sample destabilized, boiling into nothing.

"Dammit," he whispered. "That was close."

He reached for another vial, knuckles white, temples slick with sweat. The sharp, stabbing pain behind his right eye hadn't stopped in hours. It was like something inside his skull was expanding, pulsing with heat, trying to crack him open from the inside.

The Mind Stone.

He was using the stone's power to amp up the process. The spectrum of the samples he collected wasn't perfect. He needs something more powerful and raw. But the space was vast, and to search for something like that was like searching for a needle in an empty void.

And, he was running out of time.

He had barely eaten. Barely rested. He couldn't afford to.

He needed a breakthrough. Needed the radiation to bind. To fuse. To evolve him before his body finally broke under the pressure of an Infinity Stone.

Behind him, the door slid open quietly.

Susan stepped in, barefoot, wearing a loose white lab shirt over black leggings, her hair tied up in a messy bun. She'd been off-duty for the last few hours, resting, unlike him.

She paused in the doorway.

The lab smelled like ozone and coffee and something faintly metallic.

She watched him for a long moment. He didn't turn around.

Then she stepped closer.

"You haven't slept in two days," she said.

Still no answer.

She walked up beside him, gaze flicking over the display.

Onscreen: another failed reaction. Another destroyed blood sample. Another dead end.

She looked at him. Really looked. The hollow under his eyes. The tension in his jaw. The tremor in his hand when he thought no one was watching.

And the fear he was barely containing.

"You're not just here to study cosmic radiation," she said quietly. "Are you?"

Tony finally looked over at her.

His eyes were bloodshot.

"Of course I am," he replied, voice flat. "It's the greatest unexplored energy spectrum in the system."

"Try again."

She held his gaze.

Tony exhaled through his nose and turned away, walking to another panel. His hands moved automatically, queuing the next round of tests.

"This radiation," he said, "it's not like anything we've cataloged. It's reactive, adaptive. It recognizes organic matter. It bends to it. For a second, I had it. A real symbiosis."

"And then it tore itself apart," Susan said.

Tony didn't reply.

She stepped closer. "From what I can see. You're pushing like you're on a clock."

He didn't move.

Her eyes fell on the blue vial on the table. "Don't tell me that you are planning on injecting that in your body?"

Silence.

Susan's tone lowered.

"Tony... what's wrong? Talk to me."

Tony sighed. He took a deep breath. One hand rested on the table, and the other rubbed the back of his neck.

"Hermes. Activate soundproof barrier," He ordered.

"Affirmative," Hermes replied. Instantly, a faint invisible barrier appeared over the room, and the door locked. 

"Alright. Take a seat," He pointed at the stool beside him.

Susan sat slowly, not taking her eyes off Tony. 

Tony didn't look at her when he started speaking. 

"I didn't want to drag anyone into this. Not unless I had to. But I guess that moment's here."

He touched a small panel beside the console. A holographic model of his own head appeared. Layers peeled back: skin, muscle, bone, neural pathways. At the core, a glowing shard was embedded deep in the center of his brainstem. 

Susan's breath caught. "What is that?"

"It's called the Mind Stone," he said. "One of six Infinity Stones."

"Infinity Stones?" She raised an eyebrow.

"There are six of them," he said. "Infinity Stones. Each one controls something fundamental to the universe. Space, Time, Reality, Power, Soul... and the one in me: Mind."

Susan didn't interrupt. She just listened.

"They're... ancient. Forces that existed before the universe as we know it even formed. When the balance of reality starts to shift, when something big is coming, they show up. In different ways. Different forms."

He tapped the hologram. The glowing shard inside the model's brain pulsed slowly.

"This one showed up in me. I was a kid. No one noticed. Not even me. At first, it just felt like... clarity. Like I could see the world differently than everyone else. And it made sense. Equations. Patterns. Inventions. Everything came naturally."

He looked down at his hand, flexed it once.

"But it never stopped growing. Over the years, it became part of my mind. Woven into my brain tissue. Like a root system wrapped around every neuron. You can't remove it. If you try, I die instantly. I've checked."

Susan's voice was soft. "And it's killing you."

Tony nodded. "Yeah. Slowly. At first, it gave more than it took. But now..."

He pulled up a scan. It showed microscopic cracks forming along his spine and skull. Nerve tissue burning under pressure.

"My body's breaking down. I used the Super Soldier Serum to delay the damage. Bought myself time. But that time's running out. Even with all my upgrades. My healing nanites are struggling. Every hour, the stone pulses. Every pulse eats at my limits. I've maybe got a month left before things go critical."

Susan stared at the image. Then she closed her eyes for a second. Processing. Then looked back at him. "That's why you brought us here. You wanted to hit two birds with one stone. Do cosmic radiation research and use that research to fix yourself."

Tony nodded again. "Cosmic radiation like this... It's pure. It changes everything it touches. There is a unique cosmic storm out there that might save me. If I can find the right signature, if I can trigger the right reaction... I might evolve past the point where the Mind Stone kills me."

"Evolve?" she asked. "Is that why you told me to study radiation's effect on human biology?"

"Yeah. I'm desperate here, Sue. If I fail to find that storm, I won't have a choice but to take certain risks. And you are the only one with enough knowledge to find a way to eliminate the side effects. I'm sorry for not revealing the whole truth because secrets like this can hurt lots of people and might hurt you or anyone who knows about its location. There are many entities out there who are looking for the stones, and if they find out that one is in my head, guess what would happen?" Tony asked as he looked into her eyes.

Susan sat quietly, staring at the glowing hologram of Tony's brain. Her mouth was slightly open, but no words came out for a long moment. The weight of everything he'd just said hung in the air, thick and heavy.

Finally, she spoke, her voice low and a little shaky.

"This is… this is a lot, Tony."

He nodded once, not pushing her.

"I mean… Infinity Stones? Ancient forces? Entities looking for them?" She shook her head slowly, as if trying to make it all settle in her brain. "How is this real? How can something like that even exist?"

Tony leaned against the table, tired eyes locked on the image. "I've asked myself the same thing every day since I first learned what it was. Physics breaks down around these things. Logic doesn't work the way it's supposed to. You've seen how our readings out here behave, particles moving through time, responding to thoughts. That's just the edge of it."

Susan stared at the hologram, then at him. "And these… entities? You're saying there are others out there who know about this? Who want this? And how do you know?"

Tony nodded. "The Stone showed me things. Some of these threats are ancient. Not alien in the way we think. They are from outside. Beyond the edges of our galaxy. Some call them cosmic beings. Others, gods, Titans, and Celestials. The things we thought were myths are real. And they want the Stones."

"To harness such power... If they get their hands on them, then?!" Sue's eyes widened at the thought.

"Yup," he said. "One Stone alone can change the fate of a planet. All six together? They could end a galaxy, universe, rewrite time, even wipe out reality and start over."

Susan looked stunned. "That's insane."

"I know," Tony said quietly. "And now one of those things is buried in my skull."

She ran a hand through her hair, trying to stay calm. "So… if they find out where it is…"

"They'll come," Tony finished for her. "And they won't ask politely."

Susan stood and started pacing slowly, one hand on her temple.

"So all this, building Starfire, gathering us, flying up here, it's not just about the science. You're trying to survive long enough to stop what's coming."

"Exactly. But I can't do this alone. I need help. I've seen the coming threats, destruction of the world, parallel worlds, different timelines, the multiverse with countless variants of us... All in all, a change is coming, and we aren't ready. Not by a long shot. That's why I'll survive this. I'll evolve and create a team of superheroes with power and skills. Together we'll face the coming threats. And before you say anything," Tony turned to the computer and pulled up the image of the Celestial Island.

Sue's eyes widened as she leaned forward.

The giant dead body of a celestial.

"Is that...?!" She stuttered. 

"Proof. Sometimes words aren't enough. So, here's a proof. The dead body of a celestial that I'm harvesting on Earth. That thing didn't even get to mature completely," He said.

"Damn it! Tony. This is like... Haa..." Sue sighed as she closed her eyes for a moment. 

Tony waited for her reaction.

"So, this brain thing. I'm the first one to know? What about Natasha and the others? Your dad?" She asked.

"You are the first one to know," He replied.

"This is too much for me to process in such a short time. Right now, tell me what I need to do. I'll help. But after this is over. I need to know everything. If you want my help, I want the truth. If they are really coming as you said, then we have to be ready. And unless I know what I'm walking into, I won't be able to help."

"So, just like that? No yelling about hiding the truth or anything around that part? A punch?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe later. Right now, let's search for this cosmic storm."

Just then...

The warning signal activated. Hermes' voice came from the comms...

[Unidentified spacecraft detected]

[Activating weapon and defense systems]

"The fuck?!" Tony stood up. "Show me the live footage."

[Ironman] Ch: 101 [Sun & Radiation]

The second FTL jump ended with a ripple through space. The ship stopped close to Mercury, the engines humming softly as they stabilized its orientation.

The cockpit lights adjusted instantly to compensate for the overwhelming brilliance outside. Every window darkened with high-reactive tint layers, shifting automatically to protect the crew's eyes. Even then, the light pouring from the star before them was unlike anything they'd seen.

They were here.

And the Sun filled the sky.

Massive. Blinding. Alive.

Flames rippled across its surface in colossal arcs. Solar flares curled out like reaching hands, each one larger than entire planets. The corona shimmered like a white halo stretched across space. Even from this distance, the sheer presence of the star was suffocating.

Inside the command deck, everything went quiet. No one moved. No one spoke. Johnny sat forward, mouth half open, his visor lit up with tracking data.

"Holy…"He trailed off. 

Susan stood by one of the side panels, hand resting lightly on the bulkhead as she stared through the adaptive shielded window. "It's beautiful," she whispered. "Violent, but beautiful."

Ben didn't say a word. He was sitting near the navigation console, hands clasped together, eyes fixed on the burning sphere outside. The fire reflected faintly in his pupils.

Tony stood at the helm, fingers resting lightly on the control surface. His heart was pounding, but his voice stayed steady.

"We did it."

He brought up the system diagnostics.

"Hermes, run a full structural integrity sweep. Confirm hull temp stabilization and nanite shell behavior under current radiation levels."

"Confirmed," Hermes replied. "Hull is holding at 99.9 percent efficiency. Nanite weave adapting. Temperature within tolerance range."The ship floated calmly now, angled to shield itself from the worst of the direct solar wind while remaining close enough to run their tests.

Tony tapped a command. A new screen opened. Complex data points. Unfiltered readings. Energy waves, the likes of which had never been mapped this closely."Activating cosmic radiation scanner," he said. He used the radiation from the Tesseract and his Mind Stone to create it.

The ship's lower panels began to shift. One by one, plates opened to reveal a circular array built deep into the belly of the vessel. Light sensors, pulse meters, graviton counters, and a prototype particle web unfurled like a flower, facing the storm of energy ahead.

The scanner lit up."Radiation spectrum mapping initiated," Hermes confirmed. "Collecting solar wavefront data. Unknown particle streams detected."

Data scrolled across the screen at speed. Red, orange, and violet bars shifted rapidly. High-frequency waves. Exotic energy signatures. Tony narrowed his eyes.

"These... aren't in the known cosmic background spectrum. These particles... they're behaving like... they're thinking."

Susan stepped beside him, her tablet already syncing with the main feed. "They're skipping across dimensional phase shifts. They're partially phased in and out of our timeline. That's why we couldn't see them before."

Johnny leaned forward. "Are you saying these particles exist... between seconds?"

Susan nodded. "Maybe even outside of what we define as time and space. This could explain mutation irregularities. Power anomalies. Everything we've seen and never understood."

Ben stared at the screen, his usual calm giving way to awe. "So this is it. This is what we came here for."

"Still feels like a dream, doesn't it?" Tony said.

They stood together in silence as the ship continued to scan. Outside, the Sun raged. Energy pulsed outward in waves older than civilization. Every second brought in a new stream of information. Radiation types they didn't even have names for. Fluctuations that defied current astrophysics. Entire pockets of data where the laws of relativity bent like paper.

"Begin recording sequence," Tony said. "Isolate all unknown streams. Start simulation predictions for long-term biological exposure."

Hermes responded instantly. "Simulation model building. Estimated time to full predictive breakdown: two hours, fourteen minutes."

The scanner kept pulsing.

The data kept flowing.

And for the first time in human history, someone was finally reading the truth written in the light of a star.

...

[3 DAYS LATER]

Inside, the Starfire had become a working lab in motion.

On the command deck, a glowing sphere hovered in the center console, an active model of the sun’s outermost corona, rendered in real-time from live data. Radiation currents swirled inside it. Unknown particles traced long arcs, pulsing with color the moment they entered high-energy states.

Tony sat on the main console platform, sleeves rolled up, surrounded by floating displays.

“Waveform resonance has stabilized,” he muttered, fingers moving across the holo-panel. “We’re finally getting consistent readings on those phase-flicker particles.”

Sue stood beside him, her hair pulled up in a bun, a datapad in one hand, a stylus in the other. She was reviewing energy anomalies, cross-checking scans from the ship’s radiation grid against her own notes.

“They’re looping,” she said. “Every twenty-six hours, the exact same fluctuation. It’s not random. There’s a rhythm. Like everything is alive. The energy, the sun... It's unexplainable.”

Tony paused, glanced at her, then turned toward the sphere.

“I thought the sun was chaotic. But this...” He ran a diagnostic trace through the waveform. The pulse came up again, twenty-six hours on the dot. “It’s structured. Somewhat predictive. Could be used to generate a time-lock field... or even stabilize dimensional portals if we can somehow harness this limitless energy.”

Sue raised an eyebrow. “You're thinking applications already?”

He looked over at her, that glint in his eye. “Always.”

A few decks down, near the engineering cradle, Johnny Storm was wedged halfway into a maintenance panel. His arms were covered in grease, and his tone was somewhere between annoyed and smug.

“Ben, if I get fried fixing this plasma conduit again, I’m haunting your room with the ship’s alert voice.”

Ben, standing beside the open panel with one foot up on a pipe, grunted. “If you get fried, you’d probably enjoy it. Quit whining and check the secondary flow valve.”

Johnny tapped the interface. The screen flickered. “There. Stabilized. Happy now?”

Ben bent down and checked the output on his tablet. “Yep. Heat shielding’s clean. Reactor feedback’s holding.”

Johnny pulled himself out, wiped his hands on his pants, and looked toward the long observation window near the corridor.

The Sun pulsed outside like a living god.

Even now, days into the mission, he still got chills just looking at it.

“Can’t believe we’re here,” he said, quieter now. 

Ben followed his gaze. “Three days. No damage. No freak flares. And we’re still breathing.”

“Still no sign of space madness either,” Johnny added, tapping the side of his head. “Though I think Tony’s been muttering equations in his sleep.”

Ben chuckled. “That’s just him being Tony.”

They both turned when the alert chime sounded overhead.

Hermes’ voice rang through the speakers. “Radiation wave approaching. Low intensity. Estimated impact: 4 minutes.”

Johnny looked at Ben. “Want to double-check the deflector array?”

Ben sighed. “Do I look like I trust your last fix?”

They headed toward the port-side shielding controls.

Back in the research hub, Tony pulled up the new data overlay from the ship’s sensor sweep. Cosmic radiation waves curled around the ship like smoke underwater. The ship's motion was slowing slightly, not from drag, but from sheer proximity to the solar mass.

He turned to Sue. “Start the secondary particle net. I want a direct capture. I think this wave’s carrying more than radiation.”

Sue nodded and keyed it in. “Let’s see what the sun wants to tell us today.”

In the far distance, the flare wave began to reach out, less like a blast, more like a ripple brushing space. The scanner’s energy field caught it mid-curve, and the net activated, wrapping around the particles and holding them in suspension.

The holographic display lit up again, brighter this time.

Unknown particle signature: Class-7 energy distortion
Containment: Stable
Reading status: LIVE

Tony’s expression didn’t change, but his voice had a razor edge to it. “That’s new.”

Sue nodded slowly. “We’ve never classified a particle signature that volatile before. It's... folding.”

“Folding into itself,” Tony confirmed. The Mind Stone in his head was feeding him new information on the spot. “Freaking hell. That’s a proto-structure.” 

Sue leaned in. “You think it’s building something?”

“I think,” Tony said slowly, “we just found a particle type that might not originate from our universe at all.”

They both stared at the display in silence.

Behind them, Hermes’ voice returned. “Warning. Magnetic eddy forming ahead. Recommending trajectory shift.”

"Elena, take the helm," Tony said, tapping his earpiece. 

"Alright, boss," Elena's voice came from the other side. Her base body was in the main control room. 

As the ship pivoted slightly, skimming the edge of a solar eddy that twisted space into a spiral, the engines glowed brighter, pushing the Starfire into a tighter, more agile arc.

Tony turned to Sue, steady again. “Three days in and we’re rewriting the rulebook.”

Sue didn’t look away from the display. “Let’s just make it to day four.”

"Alright, Hermes, collect a portion of the radiation and release the rest. We don't want to overload the containment field," Tony ordered.

[Ironman] Ch: 100 [Ignition]

[Command room]

Tony stood at the edge of the room, arms folded, watching diagnostics scroll by. His jacket was half unzipped, collar loose, hair still damp from a shower he took a few minutes ago. He hadn’t left the command deck since the final systems check.

Behind him, Howard paced slowly, holding a glass of water in one hand and a tablet in the other. “You’re still reviewing that same data set,” He said without looking up. “You’ve already combed through it six times.”

Tony didn’t turn around.

“Then I’ll make it a lucky seven.”

“You’re not going to find a glitch that isn’t there,” Howard said. “Not unless you plan to invent one before morning.”

“I’d rather do that than miss one that kills us.”

Howard stepped closer, voice low and even.

“You’ve already built something the world wasn’t ready for. You think I don’t know the weight that comes with that? Hell, I wore it for half my life.”

Tony finally looked over. His eyes were sharp, but tired.

“Yeah, but you built it and left it behind. I’m flying into a star with three people who trust me not to turn them into cosmic dust. Bit of a difference. Haaa... Sorry. Just a bit.. You know...”

Howard didn’t flinch.

“You’re doing what I never had the guts to do. I hid behind the excuse of national security and cold war paranoia. You? You just said screw it and handed the world a better future.”

Tony looked away again, toward the ship.

There was a soft beep. The comm terminal on the wall lit up.

“Incoming call,” Hermes announced. “Encrypted. Location: Stark Mansion.”

Howard blinked. “Maria?”

Tony moved to the panel and tapped it.

Maria’s face appeared on the screen. Her hair was pinned up, and she wore a gray sweater, the background behind her a familiar blend of bookshelves, fireplace, and the old Stark grand piano.

“You’re both still awake,” she said.

Tony smiled faintly. “Sleep’s a luxury I’ll catch after not being incinerated.”

Howard stepped closer, folding his arms. “You’re calling pretty late.”

Maria’s eyes softened a little.

“It’s not every day my son flies into the heart of the sun. I figured I could get five minutes from his busy schedule.”

Tony leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.

“You’ve got all the minutes you want.”

There was a pause. Then Maria asked, gently, “Are you scared?”

Tony didn’t answer right away. He exhaled slowly.

“Honestly? Yeah. I’ve done dangerous. I’ve done reckless. But this... this is new. There’s no roadmap. No safe distance. Just trust in the math and faith in the team.”

Howard looked down at the floor.

Maria gave a quiet nod. “Good. That means you understand what’s at stake. I’d be more worried if you weren’t scared.”

Tony gave a dry smile. “Comforting.”

Maria tilted her head, looking at him through the screen like she was trying to memorize every detail.

“I want you to promise something,” she said.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “That depends.”

“Promise me,” she said softly, “if things go sideways... you come back. Whatever it takes. You bring them back too.”

“I’m not going to...”

“Tony,” she cut in, gently but firmly.

He stopped.

Then nodded once.

“I promise.”

Howard reached out and put a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “you don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore.”

“I’m not doing this to prove something,” Tony replied. “I’m doing it because I can. Because if we don’t go now... someone else might. Someone who won’t come back. Besides, I get to test myself... My very own limits.”

There was a pause. Then Maria smiled.

“You’ve always carried the world like it was your job.”

Tony looked at her, voice softer.

“Someone had to.”

Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer, then she nodded.

“You’re going to be fine. Just don’t forget who you are up there.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said. “And I’ll make sure there’s chilled lemonade when you land.”

Tony chuckled. “Add some extra ice. I’ll probably be solar-fried. So, I'll need some ice.”

Howard stepped forward, straightening his jacket.

“Be careful up there, son.”

Tony glanced between both of them. “I will.”

Maria gave one last smile.

“I love you, Tony.”

His voice caught for half a second before he answered.

“I love you too, Mom.”

The screen blinked out.

Silence hung for a moment.

Howard didn’t say anything. He just stood beside his son, both of them watching the ship outside.

Finally, Tony spoke.

“Forty-eight hours.”

Howard nodded.

“Just enough time to change the course of human history. Again.”

...

[Location: Egypt – Small Town Bar, 11:43 PM]
[One Night Before Launch]

A local bar full of mismatched furniture and locals nursing drinks with the kind of silence that came from years of heat and history. A single ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, not doing much against the warmth. A jukebox in the corner played something bluesy and old, the vocals fuzzy but soulful.

At the far end of the room, Susan, Johnny, and Ben sat around a beat-up wooden table, half-lit by a low-hanging lamp. A few empty glasses were already gathered in the center. A bottle of arak sat between them now, half-drained.

Johnny leaned back in his chair, boots up on the table, a lazy grin on his face.

“Okay, but seriously,” he said, swirling the last inch of his drink. “If tomorrow goes sideways, I at least want it on record that I suggested we go to Hawaii instead. Y’know... sand, sun, no chance of spontaneous combustion.”

Susan gave him a side-eye and sipped from her glass. “You’d burn either way. At least this time you’re built for it.”

Ben chuckled, voice low and gravelly. “Ain’t much difference between lava and solar plasma anyway. Just gotta make sure you don’t fly off the ship mid-jump.”

Johnny raised his glass. “To not flying off the ship mid-jump.”

They all clinked glasses.

The arak hit sharp, sweet, and dry. Susan winced a little, then shook her head.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said. “Like... actually going. Into the sun.”

“Technically, we’re orbiting near the corona,” Johnny said, pointing a finger. “Not jumping in. We’re not retarded. Yet.”

Ben exhaled, elbows on the table. “You scared?”

Susan hesitated, then answered honestly.

“Yeah. Kind of. Not of dying, exactly. Just of not finishing what I started. Of not making it count.”

Johnny nodded slowly. “Yeah. I get that.”

Ben poured himself another shot and hadn’t drunk it yet. He stared at the glass, then said quietly, “I’m not scared of what’s up there. I’m scared of not coming back to what’s down here.”

They all went quiet for a moment.

Outside the bar, a wind rolled through the alley, lifting a fine veil of desert dust under the moonlight.

Susan leaned back, folding her arms, her voice low. “You know what gets me? We’re standing on the edge of something no one’s ever done. And there’s no cheering crowd. No medals. Just... us. Drinking in a half-empty bar.”

Johnny gave a small shrug. “Kinda poetic, though. If we die, at least it wasn’t over cheap beer and fake applause.”

Ben raised his glass again. “Then here’s to dying smart. Or not dying at all.”

They clinked again, quieter this time.

The bar’s owner passed by, barely giving them a glance. Locals had already figured out these three weren’t from around here, but no one asked questions. Some people just had a look about them. Like they were already halfway gone.

Johnny smiled to himself, eyes distant. “Y’know, I always thought I’d go out doing something reckless and cool. I guess this qualifies.”

Susan looked at him. “Just don’t do anything extra reckless. We’ve got enough unknown variables without you pulling a stunt mid-flight.”

“I make no promises.”

Ben finally downed his drink and let the burn settle.

He set his glass down with a little thud, then leaned back in his chair.

“You know,” he began, voice slower now, lower, “I’ve seen a lot in my life. Been through a lot. Wars. Labs. Loss. Survival. And I always figured the real geniuses were the ones who could break something down to its smallest piece.”

Susan and Johnny looked over, listening.

“But Stark?” Ben said, looking at them now. “He’s different. He doesn’t just break things down. He builds things that shouldn’t even exist. Things that defy logic. A ship that flies without fuel. Armor that thinks for you. Medical tech that saved people no one else bothered with. And that FTL drive?” He shook his head. “That’s not just invention. That’s... vision.”

Johnny let out a low whistle. “Coming from you, that’s heavy praise.”

Ben didn't smile. He meant every word.

“I’ve worked with smart people. Been around scientists who were called brilliant. But Tony Stark… he looks at the impossible and sees a blueprint. I’ve watched him rewrite what we thought was physics. Hell, I watched him put nanites in a walking AI that argues with him like it’s his sister.”

Susan smiled faintly, but stayed quiet.

“So yeah,” Ben said, resting his arms on the table. “Let's forget about the bad thoughts of dying and whatnots. Be positive. I believe in this mission. One hundred percent. I believe in Tony and the hard work we've all put into this mission. Let's come back alive, right here after this mission, and we'll sit right here and drink... With Tony and everyone."

Susan looked at Ben for a long moment, then nodded, slow and sure.

“Deal,” she said. “Right here. Same table. Same bottle.”

Johnny tapped his glass against the table twice, a little ritual. “And no funerals. That’s the new rule. If anyone dies, they get yelled at in absentia and then brought back with enough tech to make it awkward.”

Ben cracked a small smile. “Agreed.”

...

[Meanwhile...] [Tony's room]

Natasha sat on Tony's face, rocking her hips, her breath hitching as he teased her with his tongue. She tasted so sweet, and her smell was intoxicating. Her fingers were entwined in his hair, guiding him, but Tony needed no direction. He knew her body as well as he knew his own tech, and he was applying all his expertise to her pleasure.

Yelena, facing away from him, was riding his cock at her own pace, her hips rising and falling in a smooth, steady rhythm, in the reverse cowgirl position.

The room echoed with the symphony of their pleasure. The wet sound of Tony's tongue against Natasha's slick folds mingled with the rhythmic slapping of flesh against flesh as Yelena rode him. The bed creaked under their movements, a steady, unyielding beat that matched the tempo of their bodies. Natasha's moans filled the room, punctuated by the occasional gasp as Tony hit just the right spot. Yelena, lost in her own rhythm, let out a series of soft, breathy sighs, her fingers gripping Tony's thighs tightly.

Natasha was close, her breath coming in short gasps. She abruptly stood up, her fingers finding her clit, rubbing furiously. Tony looked up, watching her, his tongue still glistening with her arousal. She threw her head back, her body tensing as she cried out, her orgasm washing over her. And then, she squirted, a torrent of her juices flowing out, coating Tony's face. He opened his mouth, catching as much as he could, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction at the taste of her. Yelena, caught off guard, paused for a moment before resuming her rhythm, a small smile playing on her lips at the sight of Tony's face.

"Fuck!" Natasha's thighs trembled as she slumped on his stomach, her body still convulsing with the aftershocks of her orgasm. She leaned down, kissing him deeply, her tongue exploring his mouth, tasting herself on his lips. The kiss was sloppy, passionate, a primal dance of their desire. Tony's hands gripped her ass, pulling her closer, his cock still hard and buried inside Yelena.

Yelena, watching their passion, picked up her pace, her hips moving faster, her breath coming in shorter gasps. She reached back, her fingers finding Tony's, entwining them as she rode him harder.

Tony broke the kiss, his breath ragged. "Harder, Yelena," he said, his voice a low growl.

Natasha slid beside him on the bed as he shifted his focus to Yelena.

Tony grabbed Yelena's butt cheeks, spreading them open, his eyes locked onto the sight of her riding him.

Her pace quickened, her breath hitching as she took him deeper, her body tensing with each thrust. He guided her hips, helping her set a punishing rhythm, his fingers digging into her soft flesh. He watched, his breath ragged, as his cock disappeared into Yelena's pussy with each thrust. The sight of her taking him, her body yielding to his, was almost enough to make him lose control. Her pace was relentless, her hips slamming down onto him, her breath coming in sharp gasps. He could feel her tightening around him, her body responding to the punishing rhythm he set.

Yelena's moans grew louder. Her body tensed, her fingers digging into Tony's thighs. "Tony... I'm... I'm so close," she gasped.

Tony's grip on her hips tightened, his fingers digging into her soft flesh.

"Come for me," he growled, his voice laced with desire. She cried out, her body convulsing as she came, her pussy contracting around Tony's cock. And then, she squirted, coating Tony's cock with her juices, her body shuddering with the force of her orgasm. Tony groaned, feeling her release, his own body tense with the effort of holding back. "Fuck, Yelena," he said, his voice a low rumble. "You feel so fucking good."

Yelena stood up, her pussy was dripping. Her juices was coating his cock.

"Wow! Shit! Hehe..." She chuckled.

Natasha, still breathless from her own orgasm, pushed Yelena back onto the bed, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "My turn," she declared, straddling Tony in a cowgirl position, her pussy sliding onto his still-hard cock.

Tony groaned, his hands gripping her hips as she began to move, setting a slow, teasing pace. Yelena, watching them, bit her lip, her fingers already finding their way to her clit, ready to join in the symphony of pleasure once more.

Natasha rode hard, her boobs jiggling with the rhythm. Tony, his hands greedy, reached up and cupped them, his thumbs brushing against her nipples, making her gasp. He squeezed them gently, feeling their hardness, their sensitivity.

"Fuck! Squeeze them hard," Natashe moaned.

Yelena, not wanting to be left out, moved to the side, her body leaned over Tony's face, her tits inches away from his mouth. He opened his mouth, catching Yelena's nipple between his lips, sucking gently.

"Mumm~" She moaned, her fingers still working her clit, her body moving in sync with Natasha's.

After sucking her nipples for a minute or so...

As soon as Tony moved his mouth away from her, Natasha leaned in, her lips crashing onto his. The kiss was hungry, aggressive. Her hips continued to move, slamming down onto him with each thrust, her pussy swallowing his cock whole. Tony's hands gripped her hips and began to rock his hips, meeting her rhythm. Natasha's tongue explored his mouth. She moaned into his mouth, her body tensing as she felt another orgasm building.

Tony's body tensed as Natasha's pussy clenched around him, his own orgasm building. "Fuck, Natasha," he groaned into her mouth, his hips bucking to meet her thrusts. "I'm close too."

Natasha, hearing this, kissed harder, her pace quickening. She could feel his cock throbbing inside her, the sensation pushing her closer to the edge. Yelena, watching them, her fingers going in and out of her pussy, whimpered at the sight. "Cum inside her," she gasped, her own body responding to the scene unfolding before her.

Tony's hands gripped Natasha's hips tighter, as he slammed into her hard and fast, his cock swelling inside her. "Cum with me, Nat," he growled, his voice strained with effort. "Cum with me now."

Natasha cried out, her body convulsing as she obeyed, her orgasm ripping through her. She continued to move, her hips slamming down onto Tony's cock, drawing out his own release. Tony groaned, his body tensing as he came, his cock pulsing inside her, filling her with his hot seed.

Yelena, watching them, her own body shuddering with pleasure. Her fingers moved faster, her own orgasm crashing over her as she watched Tony and Natasha cum together.

"Shit! Gonna cumm~ FUCKING GOD!" She screamed while spraying her squirt all over the bed sheet.

After the orgasm...

Tony lay in the middle of the bed, Natasha and Yelena collapsed on either side of him, their bodies glistening with sweat and satisfaction. The room was filled with the sound of their ragged breaths and the soft rustle of the bedsheet beneath them. Tony's arms were wrapped around the two women, his fingers tracing idle patterns on their bare skin.

Yelena was the first to stir. "Well, that was... intense," she said, her voice still breathless.

Natasha chuckled, her hand resting on Tony's abdomen. "Intense is an understatement," she agreed. "I think I saw stars."

Tony smiled, his eyes closed, enjoying the feel of their bodies pressed against his. "I think we all did," he said, his voice a low rumble. He opened his eyes and looked at the two women, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Next time, let's do it in the hot spring."

....

[Space mission day]

After saying goodbyes, hugs, kisses, and one final system check, the team boarded the ship. They were wearing their space suits.

Everything was in place. 

For a moment, everyone closed their eyes and took a deep breath...

"Ready?" Tony asked.

"Ready!" Everyone said in unison.

"Ready for launch..." Tony entered the launch code. "In... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." He pressed the launch button.

[Shazam] Ch: 10 [Fawcett Countdown]

[BLACK SITE: LEVEL 7 – SECURE MILITARY INTERROGATION FACILITY]
[LOCATION: CLASSIFIED]

It was a regular interrogation cell. A single metal table sat between them. Chains rattled as Joker adjusted in his seat, arms cuffed, legs shackled to the floor. The lights buzzed overhead with a hum that could drive a sane man mad or comfort the insane.

Across from him sat Amanda Waller. That cold, expressionless face could make most criminals shit.

But not him.

Never him.

He was smiling.

His mouth was split with that familiar, crusted grin. One eye was swollen shut from the Peacemaker takedown. His hands twitched occasionally, like they missed holding something sharp.

Behind a one-way glass, Peacemaker and Bloodsport watched in silence. Well, one of them was silent.

Peacemaker leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

"I give it ten minutes before she makes him piss himself."

Bloodsport didn’t answer.

"Five if she cut off his balls," Peacemaker added.

[Inside]

“So,” Waller said, tapping the screen. “Let’s talk about explosives.”

Joker leaned back until the chair creaked.

“Oh, I love explosions. Big ones. Loud ones. The kind that leave teeth in neighboring zip codes.” He giggled, then licked his lips. “You got a favorite, Wallsy? I bet you're a C4 gal. Classy, controllable. Not too flashy.”

Waller didn't blink.

“We intercepted chatter two weeks ago about a weapons convoy hijacked en route to a secure military depot in Arizona. Classified cargo. Stolen from under our nose.”

“Ohh, yes, I heard about that,” Joker said, eyes gleaming. “Tragic. A real whoopsy-daisy on national defense’s part.”

“You stole it.”

“Did I?” He leaned in, chains rattling. “Me? Lil’ old me? I mean, you’d need a serious plan. Satellite blind zones. Corrupt officers. Diversion convoys. Exploding goats. And maybe a trained dolphin, depending on the route. That’s a lot of work, Amanda.”

“You hijacked a military truck moving RDX, HMX, Tetryl, and enough TNT to flatten half a city. You disappeared it without leaving a single trail.”

Joker’s grin widened. “Magic.”

Waller’s tone hardened.

“Where is it?”

Joker giggled.

“No, no, no, you’re skipping ahead. That’s not how we play this game. This is foreplay, Mandy. You don’t just walk in, tie me up, and ask where I’m hiding my toys, unless you are into one of those kinky foreplay. Hehehehe!”

She leaned forward, her face cold as ice.

“I know what you are. I know how you work. You don’t steal that kind of firepower unless you have a plan.”

"Do I look like a guy with a plan?"

Waller’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes. You do. You just don’t follow one.”

Joker burst out laughing, loud and wheezy, like a car crash in slow motion. The kind of laugh that filled up the room and squeezed the air out of it.

“Oh-ho-ho! That’s rich! You get me, Amanda! You really, really get me!” He slammed his cuffs on the table like it was the punchline to a joke only he could hear.

Behind the glass, Peacemaker tilted his head. “Is he flirting with her?”

Bloodsport didn’t move.

“I think he’s flirting with her.”

Inside the room, Joker was calm enough to wipe a trickle of blood from his lip with his tongue. “See, here’s the thing, Wallsy. You got your B-listers out there, always planning. Blueprints, schedules, PowerPoints. I mean, have you seen Riddler’s murder board? It’s like a TED Talk hosted by a serial killer.”

He leaned forward with a rare, serious expression.

“But me? I don’t plan. I simply act on impulse. That’s what makes it beautiful. You people spend millions trying to predict threats. Building algorithms. Running scenarios. But you can’t predict chaos, Amanda. Chaos doesn’t tick in neat little boxes.”

Waller didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

Joker’s voice curled around the room like smoke.

“You’re scared of that, aren’t you? That no matter how many cameras you wire, how many files you flag, I’ll still slit your throat in the one second your system hiccups. Not because I want to kill you, oh no, that’s too easy, but because it’s funny. Because you’d never see it coming.”

Waller stood slowly. Her chair scraped the floor like a blade dragged across tile. Joker watched her, head tilted, smile unwavering.

“Okay,” she said. “You want to play games?” She walked to the door and pressed a button on the wall. “Bring in the boys.”

A mechanical buzz, a click, and the door opened. Peacemaker strolled in first, cracking his knuckles, followed by Bloodsport. Joker’s smile didn’t fade, but his eyes flickered.

Waller left.

“Ohhh,” he sang. “Daddy’s home. And he brought his angrier boyfriend.”

Peacemaker walked right up to him and slammed both fists onto the table. “You think this is funny?”

“Yes,” Joker whispered, grinning. “This part especially.”

Waller stepped aside, folding her arms. “You’ve had your time to talk. Now they’ll get their turn.”

Peacemaker moved behind Joker, yanked his head back by the hair. Joker winced, but his grin stayed.

“Got a message from that convoy’s driver,” Peacemaker said, leaning down. “He’s blind in one eye now. Half a jaw. Lost three ribs and pisses in a bag.” He grabbed a baton from his belt, flicked it out. “Said the guy who did it, laughed the whole time.”

“Sounds like a hoot,” Joker said through clenched teeth.

The baton cracked down on his ribs.

THWACK.

Joker wheezed, breath caught somewhere between a laugh and a scream.

Bloodsport didn’t say a word. He walked to the side table, rolled up a canvas kit, and started laying out tools. Scalpels. Pliers. A bone saw. Something that looked like a dentist’s drill and smelled like burnt copper.

“Oooooh. Now that’s new. Floyd 2.0’s got an upgrade. What’s next? Teeth-pulling? Nail stuff? Maybe we skip to flaying?” Joker said, still laughing.

Bloodsport walked over, calm as a surgeon, and knelt beside him.

“No. We're going to start small.”

He grabbed Joker’s hand, cuffed tight. “Just need one finger.”

Joker blinked. “Middle one, I assume?”

Bloodsport didn’t answer. He twisted. A pop cracked through the room as Joker’s pinky dislocated. 

"Hehehehe! Aaahahahaha!" Joker's laughter echoed in that tiny cell. 

Peacemaker smirked. “You’re not gonna last long. You know that, right?”

Joker shivered with delight. “Oh, I don’t last at anything. I’m more of a… climax-and-run kind of guy.”

CRACK. Another finger. Joker laughed again, louder. 

Peacemaker slammed the baton on his face.

Bloodsport spoke. “We’re not here to beat you. We’re here to break you.” He leaned in close to Joker’s ear. “There’s a difference.”

Joker chuckled weakly, blood leaking down his chin.

“You ever thought maybe I want to break? Maybe I’m trying to see how far it goes before even you start enjoying this.”

Peacemaker stepped in. “Enough of the foreplay.”

He pulled out a military-grade shock collar and strapped it around Joker’s neck. Joker’s eyes went wide for a second.

“What’s the safe word?” he rasped.

Peacemaker grinned. “There isn’t one.”

He hit the button.

Z-ZZZT.

Joker convulsed, the table shaking beneath him. His laugh turned to a gargling howl.

Bloodsport grabbed a scalpel.

Waller’s voice came over the intercom. “You’ve got five minutes. Then I want a location. Or pieces.”

[5 minutes later]

Peacemaker’s patience snapped.

With a growl, he drew his sidearm and shoved the barrel against Joker’s forehead. Blood dripped from Joker’s nose, lip, ears.

“Tell me where the bombs are,” Peacemaker said through clenched teeth. “Or I paint this wall with your skull. Then I'll rip out your balls and shove them down your neck.”

Joker wheezed. His voice came out thin and cracked, like a bad signal through a busted speaker.

“…what time is it?”

Bloodsport paused mid-reach. Peacemaker stiffened.

“The hell did you say?” Peacemaker asked.

Joker coughed, a bubble of blood bursting at the corner of his mouth. His tongue licked it clean with unsettling care.

“I said…” He chuckled, spitting red across the table. “What time is it?”

Bloodsport looked at the wall clock. “Eleven-oh-seven.”

Joker smiled through broken teeth.

“Ohhh. Good. Right on schedule.”

He leaned back, as much as his chains allowed, and tilted his head toward the ceiling.

“You boys ever try mixing HMX with a dash of VX nerve agent and a slow-burn RDX casing? No? Fun stuff. Quiet at first. Then boom... nerve melt, lung collapse, and everybody within a city block turns to twitching jelly. Then depending on the wind and weather, it'll spread like a freakin' plague.”

Bloodsport moved first. “Where?!”

Joker’s laugh was low now. A rasp.

“Fawcett City,” he whispered. “Downtown. Library. School. Hospital. Pizza shop. Maybe a petting zoo if we’re lucky.”

Peacemaker grabbed his collar. “WHERE IN FAWCETT?”

“There are twenty,” Joker hissed. “Twenty lovely little parcels. Spread all over town. All synced. All counting down.”

His voice cracked into a singsong hum.

“One hour left, boys. Give or take traffic.”

Then, he turned his gaze toward the one-way glass. He couldn’t see her, but he knew Waller was there. He smiled, soft and slow.

“Tick. Tock. Mandy.”

BOOM.

The walls trembled.

Dust rained from the ceiling.

The lights flickered.

An alarm wailed to life, red beacons flashing across the hallway outside. Joker’s head snapped back as he let out a sound that could only be described as pure madness.

“AAAH–HA! HAAA! HAAA! HAHAAAAAA!
AAAA–HAHAHAHAHAHA–AAAAAAA!
HOOOHOOOOO!
OHHHHH THIS IS TOO GOOD!”

Blood poured from his mouth, but he didn’t stop. His whole body shook with glee.

Peacemaker backed off, staring.

Bloodsport cursed under his breath and bolted for the door.

Joker's laughter bounced off the steel walls like shrapnel.

“Let’s see how good your task force really is, Wally!” he shrieked. “Let’s see how many little meat puppets you can save before they all go pop pop pop!”

He leaned forward, face split by a grin not even pain could kill. Then he spat out a broken tooth with a tracker.

“Round two,” he whispered. “FIGHT.”

...

Red warning lights. Sirens. Somewhere down the corridor, a secondary explosion shook the floor.

Amanda Waller didn’t flinch.

She walked toward her escape route. One hand was already at her earpiece. The other tapped a biometric panel beside a thick security door. It hissed open, revealing a concealed corridor leading deeper underground.

“Bloodsport,” she said into the comm. “Package the Joker. You’re moving to Site Echo. Secure him under Level 10 lockdown. Blackout cell. No sound. No light. No one in or out without my approval.”

Bloodsport’s voice crackled back. “Roger that.”

He was already yanking Joker out of the chair, shoving a needle full of sedative into his neck. Joker’s grin twitched as he slumped.

“Oooh… site to site. Feels like a field trip…”

Bloodsport tightened the restraints and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of rot. “Shut up.”

Waller tapped again.

“Peacemaker.”

“I’m here.”

“Forget the clown. We’ve got a breach team in the facility. No one unauthorized gets out. You lead Task Force X. Contain it. Neutralize intruders. Capture whoever’s calling the shots.”

“Copy. Kill first, ask questions while reloading.”

“Make it fast. We’ve got bombs in play.”

...

[WALLER’S SECURE ROOM – MOMENTS LATER]

The heavy blast doors sealed behind her. Waller slid into the command chair and started the computer. She tapped a few keys, then slammed a red button.

[SECURE JUSTICE CONFERENCE CALL – ENCRYPTED]

Waller wanted to contact the Justice Society too, but they weren't on good terms with each other, and she didn't want them to tear apart the city with their unconventional means. 

Three faces appeared on screen.

SUPERMAN: Standing on a rooftop.

BATMAN: In the Batcave.

FLASH: Eating pizza on a rooftop.

Waller didn’t waste time.

“We have an incident. Joker planted twenty bombs across Fawcett City. Nerve agent combined with HMX, RDX, and possibly VX. Coordinated. Timed. Detonations have already started. He said the bombs are synced.”

Batman leaned in. “Casualty risk?”

“If they go off? Tens of thousands.”

Flash cut in, voice distorted by motion. “I can cover the city in under ten seconds if I know what I’m looking for.”

Batman was already typing. “Joker likes symbolism, look for clusters near landmarks or places with emotional resonance.”

Superman’s gaze lifted. “I’ll start with the hospitals. If even one bomb goes off, it’s a massacre.”

"Joker said this is round 2," Waller said, looking at Batman. "Which means he prepared more... There could be more explosives out there. Gotham, Metropolis, Bludhaven... It could be anywhere out there. You know Joker better than anyone. You know how he works. Stop Joker's plan. Batman."

...

[Batcave]

Batman had already informed the remaining members of the Justice League and was going through the satellite feeds. There's only one person who knows everything about Joker and his plans. 

Harley Quinn.

[Shazam] Ch: 9 [Life with Harley Quinn]

[1 Week Later – Fawcett City – John Mason’s Apartment]

The sun filtered weakly through a cracked window in John’s apartment, doing its best to brighten a place that had made peace with the shadows. Dust floated lazily through the air. The coffee pot burbled like it was trying to die with dignity. Somewhere under the couch, a sock was actively growing mold.

And in the middle of it all…

Harley Quinn.

On the floor. Wearing a mismatched pair of John’s sweatpants and a tank top that said “Guns N’ Mental Breakdowns.” She was cross-legged, hair in wild pigtails, no makeup, and entirely absorbed in yelling at a cartoon on the old box TV.

“NO, NO, NO, you stupid duck! You don't make deals with the weasel mob! They’ll double-cross you and eat your breadsticks! GOD!”

She hurled a pillow across the room. It hit the fridge and slid down with a pitiful flop.

John, standing in the kitchen in a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, didn’t even flinch. He sipped his coffee, eyes heavy with the thousand-yard stare of a man who hadn’t had his own bathroom mirror to himself in a week.

“Is this gonna be your whole morning?” he asked.

Harley turned dramatically, eyes wide, clutching her imaginary pearls.

“Excuse you, my whole morning started with existential dread and a cold Pop-Tart, so maybe let me process my feelings through cartoon violence, huh?”

John looked at the empty box of Pop-Tarts in the trash.

"You ate six."

"I had feelings six times."

He walked over and opened the fridge. Harley watched him like a raccoon sizing up a dumpster.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.

“What?”

“That last yogurt cup. It’s mine. I wrote my name on it in eyeliner.”

He looked. Sure enough, there was a smudged “H” on the foil lid in what might’ve been mascara. Or blood.

“You mooch everything else. You don’t get to claim dairy rights.”

“It's cherry vanilla. I’d die for cherry vanilla.”

“You’ll survive.”

“You don’t know that,” she pouted. “My bones are delicate.”

“You got thrown through a window and landed in a dumpster. You’re not delicate.”

Harley paused. “Okay, first of all... rude. Second, dumpsters are softer than people think. Third, I fell on top of you. It was a soft landing. You saved my ass. So, you must know how delicate I am.”

She did a little pose, arms out like a gymnast who just made an extra flip and landed on her coach.

John shut the fridge.

“There’s nothing in here. You ate everything. How the hell do you keep your body in shape?”

“You could’ve shopped yesterday,” she said, now chewing on the TV remote. “Instead, you spent three hours at that creepy thrift bookstore buying another depressing novel about lonely cowboys.”

“They were samurai.”

“Same thing. Tragic loners with swords and no emotional vocabulary.”

He poured more coffee and stared at her over the rim of the mug.

“You’re still here.”

“Yup! Like mold, only cuter,” she said brightly. “And guess what?”

John didn’t ask.

“I washed the dishes! Sort of! Well, I rinsed two of them. The rest are soaking.”

“In what? Beer?”

“...Possibly.”

He walked to the tiny table and sat down, opening the newspaper. 

Harley rolled across the floor like a log and popped up next to him, chin on the table.

“You ever think maybe this is fate?”

“Fate?”

“Me. You. Our lives colliding like two trash barges in the harbor of destiny?”

John didn’t look up. “No.”

Harley leaned closer. “You snore, by the way.”

“I don’t.”

“You do! It’s not loud. Just... tragic. Like the sound of a man haunted by all the groceries he never bought.”

John sighed through his nose.

“You want to keep crashing here,” he said slowly, “you need to get a job.”

Harley snorted so hard it turned into a full laugh. She fell off her chair and landed in a pile of mismatched socks. “A job? You want me, Harley freaking Quinn, PhD, chaos connoisseur, two-time Arkham escape champion, to work retail?!”

John took a sip of coffee. “I was thinking something less… customer-facing.”

“Ooh, like robbing an ATM!” she said, popping back up. “Perfect. I’ll crack open a few tonight, just a couple, to renovate this place and maybe buy a new toaster. The one from the billboard poster in the gas station.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No ATM robbery.”

“Ugh! You are such a buzzkill, y’know that?” she said, slopping down dramatically on the floor, again. “Like Batman, but with less money and more moral constipation.”

John didn’t respond. He just took another sip of coffee like it was aspirin for the conversation.

Harley propped her feet up on the table.

“Listen,” she said with wild sincerity. “I got a plan. I knock over, say, four ATMs. Maybe five. Depends on how giddy I feel after the first one. Then we ditch this dingy apartment, yeah?”

John didn’t look up.

“I’m talkin’ a nice place. Like a real home. Fireplace. Fridge with an ice maker. Bath towels that match.”

“You're gonna commit multiple felonies for better bath towels?”

“And curtains,” she added proudly. “Then, once we’ve stacked enough green, I’ll get plastic surgery. Boom. New face, new name, no more bounty posters!”

“You’re already hard to track.”

“Exactly! But now I’ll be unrecognizable and hot.”

“You’re already...” John paused, realized where she was steering the conversation, and backpedaled. “That’s not the point.”

Harley kept going, undeterred.

“Then, we leave the country. Somewhere warm. Quiet. Maybe Argentina. Maybe a farm. No more cops, no more Joker, no more Task Force X breathing down our necks.”

She went back up on the chair again and leaned in close now, eyes wide with a kind of chaotic sparkle that could light a city or burn it down.

“We settle in. Live normal. Get married. Have kids. You name the first one. I name the second. We raise ‘em right. Teach ‘em to steal responsibly. Get two pet hyenas, a couple of dogs, maybe a cat. Grow some potatoes. I’ll wear overalls. You’ll chop wood shirtless.”

She took a breath, dreamy now. “We’ll have pie. I’ll learn to bake. You’ll teach me how to use a shotgun without dislocatin’ my shoulder again.”

John just stared at her, unblinking.

“You done?”

Harley grinned.

“Not even close. But go ahead, dream killer. Tell me it’s not romantic.”

“It’s not romantic.”

“Oh, come on! How is that not the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard?”

John pointed at her. “Robbing five ATMs, committing fraud, surgically altering your face, and dragging me to rural Argentina to raise chaos-spawn hyenas, dogs, and cats and then children... It is not romance.”

Harley looked mock-wounded. “You say that now. But you wait. Once you’re chopping wood with your shirt off while I’m yelling about burnt pie crust, you’ll think back to this moment and weep with gratitude.”

He rubbed his temples.

“You need a real job.”

“And I need a waffle iron,” she said with a shrug. “We don’t always get what we want.”

John stood, mug in hand, and walked to the sink.

“I’ll talk to Tony. See if he needs help at the pizzeria.”

Harley wrinkled her nose. “You want me to work for pizza guy?”

“You already eat for free. Might as well earn it.”

Harley gasped. “Are you… pimping me out for marinara?”

He raised one eyebrow.

She smiled slowly. “I like it. Spicy.”

“Jesus Christ,” John muttered, rinsing his mug.

Harley leaned back in her chair, arms behind her head, eyes drifting up to the ceiling.

“…But seriously. If we ever do move to Argentina, I want a goat. I’ll name her Barbara.”

“I’m calling Waller and telling her where you are.”

“You’d miss me.”

“…Unfortunately.”

Harley grinned.

"Then it's settled. We’re roommates with unspoken sexual tension and potential for mild war crimes. Like a sitcom. Only messier."

John just muttered under his breath and walked toward the door.

“Where you going?” she called.

“To talk to Tony.”

Harley pointed finger guns at him. “Tell him I’m a hard worker, good with knives, and only mildly unpredictable on Wednesdays.”

John paused in the doorway.

“And Harley?”

“Yeah?”

“No robbing ATMs.”

“...Fine. I’ll rob a vending machine. You never said vending machines.”

He shut the door behind him with a sigh. Through the wall, he could hear her giggling like a lunatic.

He was already regretting it.

But it was too late.

The chaos had a key now.

[Noon]

The sky was a dull gray, like it was thinking about raining again but hadn’t fully committed. Humidity clung to the air. The sidewalks shimmered faintly with old puddles and smudged gum stains.

Harley Quinn pulled her red hoodie over her head and locked the door to John’s apartment with a little hum on her lips and a twirl of the key. She tucked it into the hidden pocket inside her sweatpants, the ones she swore she’d return but had absolutely no intention of giving back. They were comfy. Dangerous people didn’t give up comfy pants.

She glanced both ways down the street. Nobody. No Task Force X. No Joker goons. No ninjas. No flaming hyenas.

So far, so good.

"Stay safe, apartment full of tragic male energy," she whispered before skipping down the steps like a sugar-fueled assassin.

She had no plan.

Correction: She had three plans, and all of them were stupid. But in her world, stupid usually meant fun.

Plan A: Find food. John’s fridge was a sad, echoing cavern. A black hole where nutrition went to die.

Plan B: Acquire some cash. Not robbery per se. More like reallocation of funds.

Plan C: Revisit some old enemies. Namely, her ex. The one who had two kneecaps a week ago and probably swore revenge while applying butt bandages.

Harley grinned as she bounced down the street.

“Time to pay mama’s bills, puddin’.”

Ironman Quick POLL

Tony's power: Choose any 2.

1) Clone: I doubt I need to explain this one.

2) Atomic Requiem: He can deconstruct any metal or synthetic compound into its base atoms and reweave it into a new material structure, like a living forge/lab.

3) Inventory/Isolated space: Store things & living beings. This time, no penalty or restriction.

4) Infinity Mirror Body: Tony’s body becomes an infinity fractal of armor and consciousness. Every attack against him is absorbed, multiplied, and reflected as data, allowing perfect adaptation on a quantum level.

5) Cosmic energy control: Similar to Captain Marvel

---

You can also suggest some.

ELENA Base Form

[Ironman] Ch: 99 [48 hours before the launch]

[Time: 6:21 AM – 1 Month After First Moon Landing]

The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, but inside the underground Starfire hangar, the temperature was already climbing.

The ship stood suspended on its elevated service cradle. Panels were open across its surface, coolant lines hanging, reactor shielding exposed, nanite reinforcers crawling slowly over the hull, rewriting structure at the molecular level. Overhead, massive robotic arms were rotating the backup fusion plates into position.

Tony stood on a catwalk high above the deck, hands on the railing, eyes scanning a projected overlay hovering midair. The heat map pulsed in red.

> FTL Engine Core Status: 117% baseline output. Thermal saturation within 42 seconds. Core coolant pipes: 68% efficiency.

He sighed and muttered, “Too damn hot for something we haven’t even pushed past Mars yet.”

Down below, Johnny Storm was on his back beneath the ship’s auxiliary heat sink array, covered in sweat and grease, muttering curses through a bite wrench. “I told you we should’ve split the loop through two layers instead of one; this entire section’s bottlenecking under pressure.”

“You also told me fusion paint would reflect solar flares,” Tony called back, “and the last time we tried that, the panel flaked like a croissant at Mach 3.”

Johnny grinned. “Which is why we’re replacing them with flared adamantium mesh now. I learn. Slowly.”

A few feet away, Ben Grimm was hunched over a set of shock-absorption pylons, tightening massive bolts with a torque wrench bigger than most people’s legs.

“These stabilizers weren’t built for prolonged magnetic pull,” Ben said, voice gruff but steady. “If we hit turbulence near a gravity eddy, they’ll shear.”

“Noted,” Tony said, swiping the data into a task queue. “Reinforce them with double-density damping foam. The kind we tested for Jupiter re-entry sims. Should absorb G-force drag without cracking the casing.”

Behind him, holographic readouts rotated through worst-case scenarios:

—Solar Flare Blast Impact: 76% hull survival
—Radiation Pulse Delay: 3.6 seconds (too long)
—FTL Exit Jump Margin: 5.3 km off-target

And no margin for error.

Every system needed to be perfect.

Not just space-ready, but sun-ready.

No rescue crews. No backup ships. No radio help if something went sideways.

It had to work.

“Hermes,” Tony said, turning toward the central console. “Initiate full-environment test cycle. Conditions: High solar wind, 300% UV saturation, mixed radiation spectrum, and simulated debris field from coronal mass ejection.”

“Confirmed,” the AI replied. “Initializing simulation. All personnel, brace for internal gravity shifts.”

The room dimmed. A protective dome sealed around the main core chamber.

Inside, the Type-Zero suits powered on.

Five humanoid forms stood in the center of the test zone, suits adjusting themselves as the temperature began to spike. The air shimmered from rising energy waves. Plasma vents hissed. Radiation simulators lit the walls with blue-white flickers.

The suits flexed in unison: helmets scanning, backs glowing faintly as their independent propulsion systems engaged.

Sue stood outside the dome, eyes narrowed as she monitored neural sync rates and biometrics. “Heart rate oscillation is within limits. Radiation shielding is holding at 98.7%. But feedback on the tactile interface is a bit slow.”

“Slow equals dead,” Tony said sharply. “Recalibrate the suit firmware. Drop the buffer delay to half a millisecond.”

Sue was already typing. “Done.”

The suits began running drills.

Lunges, leaps, coordinated evasions—one suit simulated a hull breach while another simulated solar exposure. Auto-seal functions kicked in. Smart fluid barriers hardened.

Test results:
Seal breach response: 0.4s
Internal temperature spike: Neutralized
Radiation counter-absorption: Holding

Tony exhaled. “Okay. That’s one part of the equation.”

“Still need to test sustained FTL stress on the human nervous system,” Sue added, glancing at him. “You really want to risk it with people onboard?”

“No. But we’re out of time,” he said. “We test in two days. With us in the seats.”

“Pilot candidates?”

"Count me in," Yelena said, walking forward. "I got nothing better to do, so might as well be for help."

"Nope. I'll go. Can't always stay behind. Johnny, you are with me," Tony said, turning toward him.

"Yes!" Johnny jumped up. "Finally, some real action."

...

[Time: 6:02 AM – Day of the Manned FTL Test]

Inside the prep bay, the team suited up.

Tony’s nanite suit crawled across his skin like liquid steel, layering itself seamlessly. The plates settled around his spine and limbs. Power readings synced to the neural link embedded in his collarbone.

Johnny stood to his left, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. He activated the nanites, and they flowed over his body, forming a suit. It's same as Tony's. 

"Feels like I’m stepping into a goddamn sci-fi dream. Please tell me there’s a laser sword somewhere in this thing."

"Behave and I’ll let you borrow a plasma cutter," Tony replied, glancing at the mission clock. "Now stop talking. Focus."

They boarded the ship.

Inside the sealed cockpit...

Tony sat in the left command chair. Hands steady. Eyes locked on the forward HUD. His vitals were green across the board. Core temperature, oxygen levels, neural sync, nanite retention... all perfect.

“Hermes,” he said aloud, “activate internal grav-cushion. Pre-launch mode.”

“Confirmed,” Hermes replied. “Pressure systems engaged. Navigation locked. Solar wind forecast nominal. FTL aperture precharging.”

Beside him, Johnny flexed his fingers in the co-pilot seat, then looked down at the interface embedded in his forearm display. He let out a slow whistle.

“This thing has enough computing power to simulate weather on Jupiter and still stream The Godfather in 4K.”

Tony didn’t look over. “Focus.”

“Focused. Just... impressed.”

"Take us out of Earth's atmosphere," Tony ordered.

"Affirmative," Hermes replied.

The Earth slipped away fast, shrinking in the rear display. Clouds curled like slow-moving waves. The ship passed the Kármán line without turbulence, soundless and smooth, its grav-null system absorbing every bit of force.

Johnny stared out the side viewport, eyes wide. “Okay… okay, this is surreal.”

“Eyes front,” Tony said. “We’re not out here to sightsee.”

Hermes spoke through the cockpit. “You have cleared exo-atmosphere. Trajectory is stable. Energy levels optimal.”

Tony’s fingers danced across the main controls. Systems confirmed. Fusion sync steady. External temperatures: stable. Hull response at 99.3%. Perfect conditions.

He turned to Johnny. “You ready?”

Johnny snapped out of his daze and nodded. “Let’s do this.”

“FTL drive, standby mode,” Tony said.

Hermes responded. “Engaging containment field. Routing power to the core conduit. Initiating aperture fold in five… four… three…”

The lights inside the cockpit dimmed.

Outside the ship, the space around the hull shimmered like bending glass. Vibrations hummed deep in the structure, not mechanical but resonant. The forward field bent in on itself, folding space like a sheet of paper tugged from both ends.

“…two… one…”

The ship vanished.

There was no flash. No sound.

Just a snap.

And then silence.

Inside, everything froze for a split second. The stars outside warped into long lines, curving around a central point. Space looked like it was collapsing forward. Time distorted slightly—perception thinned.

Then the ship stabilized.

Hermes’ voice came through again, smooth and unshaken. “FTL successful. Distance traveled: 178 million kilometers. Arrival zone: Martian Orbit.”

Johnny blinked hard. “Wait… that’s it? We’re here?”

Tony checked the systems. Mars was right in front of them. Red and looming. The dust storms visible even from this range. Orbit speed synced. No damage.

“We’re here,” Tony said.

He leaned back slightly in his chair, letting the weight of it settle in.

The readings were clean. No systems overheating. No nerve degradation. Johnny’s vitals were stable, if elevated... adrenaline spike. Understandable.

“FTL stress test complete,” Hermes confirmed. “Neural latency: 0.0021 seconds. Core temperature normalized. No deviation. All systems normal.”

Johnny looked over, stunned. “You just cracked faster-than-light travel… and it felt like nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Tony said. “The ship bent the rules of physics in half and wrapped them around a gravitational tunnel like a pretzel. That kind of energy could burn through Jupiter if we lost control. It worked because everything was perfect.”

“And because I helped upgrade the cooling system,” Johnny added with a grin.

Tony smiled. “That helped.”

From orbit, Mars was quiet. Peaceful. The ship hovered with perfect calibration. Below them, the red dust swirled across long-dead riverbeds and canyon ridges.

Tony stared down at it for a few moments, then tapped the console.

“Begin remote terrain scan. Full atmospheric pull. Soil analysis, radiation profile, electromagnetic drift. I want it all in the next five minutes.”

Hermes acknowledged. “Initiating orbital scan.”

Johnny leaned back, hands behind his head. “You think we’ll ever build on this place?”

“Yeah, why not? I'll give you a call,” Tony replied. “But we gotta survive our mission sun.”

The cockpit remained silent for a moment. 

They just watched the view...

Then, after the scan was completed, Hermes spoke again. “Scan completed. Return window optimal in 36 seconds. FTL corridor remains open. Recommend return to minimize strain.”

“Take us home,” Tony said.

The engine pulsed again. Light twisted. Time blinked.

And they were gone.

...

[Starfire Base, Earth Orbit]

The ship reappeared like a thought. No explosion. No sonic boom.

Just presence.

The command deck lit green.

“Hermes,” Tony said, voice calm. “Broadcast mission success to all channels. And tell the others… we’re ready.”

Down below, on the command floor, Sue Storm got the ping.

Yelena leaned forward. “They made it?”

Sue smiled. “They made it.”

..

[Mission Command Meeting Room]

The room was quiet when Tony walked in.

Floor-to-ceiling displays lit the walls, cycling through data from the FTL test: star maps, stress curves, vitals, telemetry. One still image showed the ship in Martian orbit, red dust visible beneath it.

Howard stood near the table, arms folded, already scanning the brief. Susan sat next to him, reviewing radiation maps. Johnny leaned back in a chair with his boots on the table. Ben stood against the far wall, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

Elena, now in her new physical body, leaned on the console near the door. She looked exactly like a human. The nanite-adamantium shell fit her like she was born in it.

Yelena and Natasha entered last, side by side.

Tony walked to the head of the table and placed a small black drive onto the surface. Instantly, the display behind him synced.

"FTL drive: stable. Hull integrity: Optimal. Crew vitals during transit: optimal. It's time," He looked up. "We leave in forty-eight hours."

Johnny gave a low whistle. “Two days? Damn. I was hoping we’d get a week to celebrate.”

Ben grunted. “We ain’t going on vacation.”

Susan leaned forward, her voice calm but sharp. “We have a flight path locked?”

Tony nodded. “Sun-side orbit. Heliosphere arc sweep. Six-step jump sequence. We drop drones first to map the solar wind. Elena will help run diagnostics in real time. Then we follow in tight formation.”

Howard gave him a look. “You’re flying blind into a solar storm. Even with shielding, we’re not sure what’s going to hit us.”

Tony met his gaze. “Which is exactly why we’re going. Because if we don’t map it ourselves, we’ll never build anything beyond it. We’re done guessing. We do it. Or we stay grounded forever.”

Yelena stepped forward. “Then I’m coming with you.”

Tony didn’t blink. “No.”

Her expression tightened. “Why not? I’ve been cleared for flight. I’ve trained harder than half your roster. You’re walking into the most dangerous star in our system, and I’ve had your back through worse.”

Natasha’s voice cut in. “If she’s going, I am too.”

Tony looked at her. He didn’t say anything at first.

"I know what you are thinking," Yelena frowned. “We’re not glass. We can handle it.”

Tony sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“It’s not about handling it. It’s about who’s watching the Earth while we’re up there. We need a rescue team ready all the time. The secondary ship that Elena and Dad made would be able to endure our target location for at least 30 minutes. And it got FTL. So, it should be enough to bring us back if something happens up there. And I need you, Yelena, to be on standby. You get it?"

He turned and tapped a panel. Dozens of maps lit up. Power grids. Reactor sites. StarkTech installations. Medical hubs. Law enforcement overlays. The Earth had changed in six months. It was running cleaner, smarter, and freer... but it was still new. Still fragile.

Tony’s voice was quiet now. “Someone’s got to make sure everything we built doesn’t fall apart while we’re gone. Someone I trust. You will be in charge of everything, Nat.”

Yelena clenched her jaw. “That’s not fair.”

Tony didn’t argue. “I know.”

He turned to Howard. “Dad, keep the power balanced. Keep my inventions out of corrupt hands. Keep the reactors from being turned into politics.”

Howard gave a slow nod. “I’ll hold the line.”

Tony looked back at his crew.

“Susan, Johnny, Ben, you’re my primary mission team. You’ve all been briefed. You’ve all trained. You’ve all worked too hard to get here.”

Johnny grinned. “Let’s light it up.”

"Take a break. Wrap up the loose ends. Don't leave anything you'd regret later," Tony said in a low voice. "Dismissed."

....

NEXT: SPACE TIME

[Ironman] Ch: 98 [Starfire: The Trial Launch]

[Location: Sahara Desert – Stark Base]
[Time: 9:00 AM]

Hot sun, a little heatwave, and the usual sand... At the center of the massive base stood the Starfire ship, finally complete.

It looked like a giant blade pointed toward the sky. The front was curved and sharp, with panels across the body that seemed to pulse with energy. The extra coating of nanites' shielding was shimmering under the sun. Inside, the giant arc reactor was glowing with a soft blue hue. Thick anchor clamps held it in place on the launch platform.

Everyone stood at a safe distance behind the barriers.

Tony was in full gear, watching the launch screen. He wore a simple black jacket over his casual shirt and his usual jeans. Beside him stood Howard, holding a tab, looking proud. He wore a white suit and sunglasses, calm as always.

Behind them stood Susan, Johnny, and Ben. Sue was holding a tablet. Johnny had his arms crossed and kept checking the sky like he was waiting for fireworks. Ben didn’t say much. He just stared at the ship, impressed.

Natasha stood next to Yelena and a small group of Widows, around Tony and Howard. They were alert as usual. Beside them were a few NASA reps and engineers, mostly quiet. Some looked nervous. Others looked amazed.

Howard looked at Tony. “All clear. We have launch permission. Took a few calls, but it’s done.”

Tony gave a small nod. “Alright, let’s make history.”

He turned to the nearby console and tapped the control.

“Hermes,” Tony said. “Start final system checks.”

“System checks initiated,” the AI replied. “Arc Reactor stable. Power distribution at 100 percent. Navigation locked to lunar coordinates.”

Tony looked back at the group.

“No one panic if it wobbles. It’s the first launch. If it crashes, we just pretend this never happened.”

Johnny laughed. “Please let it fly. I put my name in the engine housing.”

Sue shook her head. “Of course you did.”

“Remote pilots ready?” Tony asked.

Howard nodded, looking at the tab. “Online. All bots in position.”

Inside the ship, several humanoid robots stood at their stations. All of them were controlled remotely. 

“Launch sequence starting,” Hermes said.

The clamps on the ship unlocked with a loud click. The ground rumbled.

Arc energy surged along the bottom of the ship. A deep hum filled the air.

“Ten seconds to liftoff,” Hermes counted.

Everyone watched. Nobody spoke.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

A massive beam of light burst from under the ship. The Starfire began to rise, slow at first, then faster as the arc thrusters kicked in.

The ground shook lightly. Dust swirled around them. 

The ship climbed higher, leaving a glowing trail behind. Everyone tilted their heads back as it rose above the base, above the clouds, and into the sky.

Cheers broke out across the base.

One of the NASA engineers clapped. “It’s holding course.”

Tony checked the display. “Speed climbing. Stabilizers good. Pressure normal.”

Howard grinned. “Look at that. She's flying like a dream.”

Sue watched the ship vanish into the sky. “Unreal. It’s actually working. And look at the speed.”

One of the NASA guys mumbled with a shocked expression, "Impossible."

The rest just stood there in awe.

Johnny raised his hand. “High five, anyone?”

Ben gave him a look but slapped his hand anyway.

The display showed the ship leaving Earth’s upper atmosphere. Arc Reactor output held steady. The bots were all reporting stable status. No faults.

Hermes spoke again. “Starfire has entered orbit. Preparing for moon trajectory jump.”

Tony turned to the group. “Next stop, the Moon. Now the question is, how fast can it go?" He then turned toward Johnny.

"We are doing this? Tell me we are doing this?" Johnny said in excitement.

Tony reached into his jacket and pulled out a small black box. It fit in one hand and had a single big red button in the center.

Everyone noticed.

Sue narrowed her eyes. “What is that?”

Johnny grinned while rubbing his hands. “Oh boy, here we go.”

Ben crossed his arms and smiled quietly. Even Natasha raised an eyebrow, while Yelena just smirked. Tony held the box up, looked at it for a second, then turned and handed it to Howard.

“Want to do the honors?” he asked.

Howard took the box, confused. “What is this?”

Tony gave a small shrug. “You’ll find out after you push it.”

Howard looked at the button, then back at Tony. “You’re giving me a mystery box. On a rocket launch day. With a red button.”

Tony nodded. “Exactly. The big red button.”

Howard sighed and gave the group a glance. They all looked curious, but no one said anything. Finally, he pressed the button.

The moment he did, the launch screen changed.

A new window popped up on the main screen.

FTL Drive: Engaged
Jump Sequence Initiated
Destination: Lunar Orbit > Experimental Warp Test Zone Alpha

The display zoomed in on the ship. Energy lines lit up along its sides. Panels shifted and retracted. A bright pulse grew at the core.

The ship stopped moving for half a second.

Then it vanished.

One second, it was there.

The next, gone. No noise. No flash. Just empty sky.

The NASA engineers gasped.

“What the hell was that?” one said.

Howard stared at the now-empty screen. “What did I just activate?”

Tony smirked. “FTL drive. Faster than light. First test run. If it works, they’ll hit the Moon in under six seconds.”

“Six seconds?” Sue said, blinking.

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, we didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Ben added, “He bought our silence by allowing us to work on it. And I gotta say. It was an honor to work on such a sophisticated device.”

Yelena looked impressed. “I thought it was just a theory.”

Tony looked at the data feed. “Nope. Real. And it's working.”

On the screen, the ship reappeared in lunar orbit. Just like that.

Telemetry data poured in. Systems normal. Bots are still active.

The ship was stable.

FTL worked.

Everyone stared at the screen. No one said anything for a few seconds.

Then Howard let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

Tony folded his arms. “Welcome to the future.”

Johnny laughed. “Okay, now we high-five again.”

Ben didn’t argue. He raised his hand. They slapped hands.

Sue still stared at the screen. “You built an FTL drive without telling anyone?”

Tony shrugged. “If I had told people, they would have tried to sabotage it. Didn't want to risk it.”

Natasha looked at him. “You’re lucky it worked.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Tony said. “That’s science.”

The Starfire had reached lunar orbit.

Now came the hard part: landing.

Everyone stood around the command screen, watching closely. The bots aboard the ship had already started prepping for descent. The trajectory was tight, calculated down to the meter.

“Hermes,” Tony said. “Begin lunar landing protocol. Keep it slow.”

“Executing protocol,” the AI replied.

On the screen, the ship adjusted its position, thrusters pulsing in short bursts. It began to drop toward the Moon’s surface.

Altitude indicators dropped steadily.

Ten thousand feet.
Five thousand.
One thousand.
Fifty.

Soft dust kicked up as the ship lowered into the landing zone—a flat patch of grey terrain near the Moon’s southern edge.

“Landing complete,” Hermes confirmed. “No damage. Surface stable.”

Cheers erupted again from the NASA engineers. Even the quiet ones looked impressed now.

Tony gave a small nod. “Alright. Time for the fun part.”

He tapped a few buttons on the console. On the Moon, the cargo bay of the Starfire opened. A ramp extended. Dozens of drones flew out first, scanning the area, taking high-resolution photos, checking radiation levels, and mapping terrain data.

Behind them, four humanoid bots rolled out with a case. They walked across the surface like it was Earth, stabilizers keeping them balanced.

They reached a spot near the ship and stopped.

The largest one opened the case.

Inside was a metal flagpole and a folded flag.

The bots planted it firmly into the Moon’s surface. A white flag with the Stark Industries logo.

One of the drones hovered in front of the flag and took a photo.

The image flashed on the command screen:

STARK INDUSTRIES – FIRST PRIVATE LUNAR LANDING
Timestamp: 1991.

Beneath it: a perfect view of the ship, the flag, and Earth in the distant background.

“Send that to every major news outlet,” Tony said, grinning.

“Already done,” Hermes replied. “Viral within seconds.”

Next came the sample drones. Smaller, round-bodied, and fast. They scattered across the terrain, drilling small cores, collecting soil, and scanning for hidden materials.

Inside the ship, the mech bay came alive.

TITAN-1 powered up. So did TITAN-2 and TITAN-3.

The ramp widened, and the first mech stepped out slowly.

Then came the suits.

Five Type-Zero space suits rolled down on a trolley. Built-in systems activated automatically. Their visors glowed faintly as they stood upright, powered and synced to base control. (He did more customization on the suits)

Sue stepped closer to the screen. “They’re moving like humans.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. That’s the point. The nanties + AI. We'll get perfect data.”

The mechs began walking the perimeter. Each of them deployed sensors, stress pads, and energy probes.

They checked the ship’s landing gear, anchor points, and ground tension.

“Integrity stable,” Hermes said. “No fractures. No shifts.”

Tony crossed his arms. “Good. Let the suits run a full systems test. Atmosphere cycling. Propulsion. Comms. I want every bug flushed before we set for the real mission.”

Tony watched the screen for another moment. The ship was fine. The bots were working. The systems were running.

He slumped down on the chair with a heavy sigh. After years of endless planning and working, he has finally reached his goal. Now, just another step to take. 

...

[Location: NASA Mission Control – Houston, Texas]

The main room at NASA was pure chaos.

Dozens of technicians stood frozen at their stations. Engineers stared at their screens. The mission director sat slack-jawed in his chair. The overhead projector still displayed “MISSION: ARES”, a government-funded lunar initiative that had been in development for nearly eleven years, after six past failures. Neil Armstrong was the first to land on the Moon, but the ship and the entire crew just vanished. Since then, NASA launched six space missions, and each of them failed for some reason. (SKRULL INVASION)

Now?

They were watching Stark’s livestream.

Every detail streamed in real-time:

The ship's touchdown.

The drones mapping the Moon’s surface.

The bots collecting samples.

The mechs walking casually across lunar regolith like it was a training field.

A voice finally broke the silence.

“Is that... is that a giant robot walking on the Moon?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” one of the analysts said, eyes wide. “And it just deployed seismic anchors around the ship’s perimeter.”

Another voice chimed in from the corner: “Sir... the telemetry is public. He’s uploading all the data through open StarkTech servers.”

“Wait! What?”

The analyst tapped a key. A holographic overlay bloomed across the command table.

Moon Surface Map: LIVE

Radiation Levels: Nominal
Soil Composition: Updated
Lunar Ice Presence: Confirmed Pockets (Sector 9)
Energy Field: Contained
Autonomous Control Sync: 99.98%

Someone swore under their breath. Another just whispered: “Holy hell…”

The Director stood slowly, eyes fixed on the Stark Industries flag.

“Put me through to the White House,” he said.

“Line’s busy, sir.”

“Then get me the Pentagon.”

“They’re watching it too, sir.”

[Global News Outlets – Twenty Minutes Later]

📰 STARK INDUSTRIES CLAIMS FIRST FULLY AUTONOMOUS MOON LANDING
📰 NO CREW. NO ROCKET FUEL. NO MISTAKES.
📰 NASA STUNNED AS STARK OUTPACES ENTIRE GLOBAL SPACE PROGRAM
📰 HUMANITY’S NEXT FRONTIER RUNS ON ARC REACTORS

🛰 Live Feed Viewers: 792 Million
🌍 Global Trend #1: “HE DID IT”
📷 First Private Flag on the Moon – Image Shared 81 Million Times

...

[Location: Kremlin – Russia]

The Russian space agency quietly paused their lunar project.

“Should we proceed with the Baikal launch?” someone asked.

The Director of Operations rubbed his temples. “No. Nobody remembers second place.”

[Location: CNSA Headquarters – Beijing, China]

A high-ranking official stared at the feed.

He watched the drones lay a reinforced supply depot on the Moon’s surface. One of the mechs knelt to install a reactor anchor point.

His aide whispered, “Sir... What's our plan? The Arc Reactor is better than we first imagined.”

The man turned toward the room, his voice quiet and sharp.

“Forget the mini reactors. I want the real deal. Begin negotiations. We need access to his energy systems. Immediately.”

..

The remaining countries were also in shock and well, the demand for Arc Reactor increased.

..

[Back with the Tony]

Tony didn’t react right away. He just watched the numbers climb.

Stream views.

Telemetry pings.

Scientific validation requests.

Hermes projected a new screen. Direct Messages: 2,341,191
Government requests. University partnerships. UN statements. Even one from the Vatican.

Natasha handed him a fresh cup of coffee.

He looked at her. “Think I broke the planet?”

She raised a brow. “You just gave it a spine.”

Howard whistled as he scrolled through the headlines. “You’re officially the first man to land on the Moon remotely, using a machine you designed, with a fleet you built, and no casualties.”

"Not alone. I've had help," Tony looked at Howard and then back at his team. 

Ben and Sue gave a slight nod.

Johnny leaned over the console. “Yeah, but when do we get to go?”

Tony looked at him, then the others. “Soon. One more round of tests. Then the real mission.”

Sue asked, “You mean...?”

Tony turned toward the screen.

"Yeah. 1 more test and we'll officially start our real mission. The Sun."

---

AN: Space mission on Ch: 100. Finally.

[Ironman] Ch: 97 [Aftermath]

AN: Think of it as an interlude chapter.

----

[Time Skip: 1 Month Since the Stark Expo]

The world didn’t change overnight.

It took some time.

[Location: Wall Street – New York City]
[Day 3 Post-Expo]

The stock market plunged harder than it had since the Great Depression.

Medical conglomerates that had monopolized diagnostic imaging saw their shares plummet by double digits within 48 hours. Investors scrambled to unload stocks in legacy companies producing X-ray, MRI, and CT scan machines. Lawsuits were drafted. Lobbyists started calling in favors.

None of it worked.

Ticker after ticker turned red:

Medigen Inc.: Down 92%

NeuroScan Solutions: Bankruptcy filed

PathCore Diagnostics: Liquidated

RxLife Imaging: Delisted

Emergency meetings were called. Lobbyists scrambled. Boardrooms erupted into finger-pointing frenzies. But it was already too late.

Every major hospital and clinic had already placed orders for AMS units.

[Location: Global Medical Networks HQ – Boston]

“What do you mean they canceled?”

“They canceled everything. Our contracts. Our machines. They don’t need full-body MRI anymore when StarkTech’s scanning in five minutes without the radiation.”

“But... we own the market.”

“You owned it. Stark just gave it away at $80 a unit.”

[Location: Public Clinic – Chicago, IL]
[Week 1 Post-Launch]

The line outside wrapped around the block. Inside, a nurse slid a compact AMS scanner over a young woman’s abdomen. In less than three minutes, a live 3D model displayed a tiny, dark irregularity.

“Ma’am,” the nurse said, pointing to the screen, “that’s a tumor pressing against your lower intestine. Early stage. Completely treatable.”

The woman covered her mouth, tears welling up. She’d been denied screenings three times due to cost. Stark’s machine just saved her life... for free.

[Incident Log – AMS-Confirmed Life Saves – Week 2]

Newark, NJ – A 12-year-old collapsed at school. AMS unit flagged a burst blood vessel near his brainstem. Emergency responders rushed him into surgery. Full recovery.

Phoenix, AZ – An elderly man was found unconscious in a park. AMS scanner showed signs of carbon monoxide poisoning from a nearby maintenance leak. The leak was located. Twenty-seven lives saved.

Atlanta, GA – Post-accident trauma victim appeared stable. AMS scan revealed micro-fracture in the spinal cord. Surgery was performed within the hour. Paralysis avoided.

Hospitals that once charged thousands for delayed, incomplete diagnostics were forced to adapt or shut down.

The AMS had become standard. Globally.

...

[Location: LAPD HQ – Downtown Los Angeles]
[Week 2 Post-Expo]

The Aegis Training Program went live.

Two weeks. Rigorous. Immersive. No shortcuts.

Each officer ran drills inside simulation chambers designed by Stark AI: threat analysis, non-lethal takedowns, crowd control without escalation, mental health protocols, and live-fire reaction tests under heartbeat-monitoring metrics.

Those who passed were certified with body metrics, reflex maps, and emotional stress tracking. The Aegis Suit knew its wearer better than their own partner.

And when these newly trained cops with the suit finally hit the streets...

[Footage – Downtown Detroit]
[Week 3]

Two armed robbers took hostages inside a pharmacy. Traditional SWAT had the perimeter. Clock ticking. Tensions rising.

Then, one officer in an Aegis Suit walked in, unarmed.

The suit’s HUD lit up in real-time:

Threat Level: Yellow

Hostage Vital Signs: Elevated

Suspect Micro-movements: Analyzed

Exit Routes: Predicted

Tactical Suggestion: Voice Calibration 3.1 / Non-lethal Pulse Glove Ready

In under 22 seconds, one suspect was disarmed by a shockwave pulse, the other stunned by an auto-deploy adhesive round. No shots fired. No injuries.

A local kid streamed it live. The video hit 17 million views in 24 hours. Caption: “This is how it should be done.”

[NYPD, Chicago PD, Seattle PD]

Deployment rolled fast. The suits did something that no one expected. Stop the corrupt cops. Misuse of power triggered lockdowns, immobilizing the wearer. Data streamed directly to oversight boards.

Brutality dropped 76% in the first two weeks of implementation.

Now, the corruption rate has also decreased, and the corrupt ones have been exposed. Thank to the data shared to the boards, many gangs and criminals were arrested faster than they could escape.

And other countries noticed.

[Location: Geneva – International Security Summit]

Requests flooded in.

Japan wanted 500 suits for their elite riot response teams.

Germany placed a test order for border patrol applications.

Brazil signed a contract for favela-based rapid medical/rescue hybrids of the Aegis model.

And many more...

International trade around StarkTech boomed.

Old defense contractors? Left in the dust.

...

[3 months later...] 

The Energy War had begun.

[Location: Wall Street – Energy Sector]

The ticker feeds bled red.

Texaco. Down 61%.
Gulf Oil. Delisted.
ExxonMobil. Halted pending review.
Shell. In talks to restructure.

Investment firms scrambled. Calls went unanswered. Analysts on live television looked visibly pale. The oil giants were collapsing way too fast.

Why?

Because Tony Stark flipped the switch on the energy economy, reality followed. He wanted to hold back, but with the space mission coming up soon, he decided to amp up his creations and release them as fast as possible because up there, anything can happen. He just didn't want his creations to rot in some lab.

[The Announcement – Two Weeks Ago]

Tony’s voice played across the world:

“Micro-reactors.
Clean. Compact.
Power output: up to 3.8 gigawatts.
Lifespan: 17 years.
Size: backpack.
Installation cost: $1,200.
Maintenance: $20 every six months.
Fuel? None. Just stabilized zero-emission cores.
First public units shipping next month.”

No one believed it at first.

Until he demoed one on live television by powering a midtown Manhattan block during a planned blackout.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tony said, sipping coffee on a rooftop as lights blinked on across the city, “that apartment, that deli, that elevator, that traffic light, well, this entire block... is running on a core the size of a thermos.”

[Global Headlines That Week]

📰 OIL IS OVER: THE $5 TRILLION COLLAPSE BEGINS
📰 TONY STARK CRIPPLES COAL IN UNDER 72 HOURS
📰 ELECTRIC COMPANIES WARN OF ‘UNMANAGEABLE DISRUPTION’ AS USERS CANCEL GRID DEPENDENCY
📰 NASA SIGNS EXCLUSIVE DEAL FOR MICRO-REACTORS – PLANS LUNAR BASE IN 1992

[Location: Texas – Oil Refinery Shutdown Footage]

News helicopters circled above as a refinery shut down operations. Thousands of workers poured out of the gates. Some confused. Some furious. Some already packing up.

“They told us energy was forever,” one manager said. “Turns out they were just renting the future while Stark went and bought it.”

[Location: Tokyo – Clean Car Rollout]

The Stark Motors EV line launched silently on Japanese roads.

No gas.

No charge times.

No exhaust.

No sound.

Just pure, endless torque and performance.

Auto dealers were mobbed. Toyota and Honda, caught flat-footed, scrambled to catch up. Volkswagen tried to sue. The lawsuit was dismissed in under 24 hours.

[Electric Grid Panic]

Governments panicked. Utility companies begged for regulation. Power plants started shutting down out of sheer irrelevance.

People were returning rented generators. Solar panel suppliers slashed prices by 80% overnight. Entire electric grids were being dismantled.

StarkTech energy pods, suitcase-sized reactors, were now running:

Homes

Airports

Cargo ships

Satellites

Airplanes

Farms

Subways

One farmer in Nebraska powered his entire operation, silos, irrigation, sorting lines, with one unit and a couple of cables.

[Environmental Impact – 90 Days In]

Carbon emissions dropped 42% globally.

Air quality in Shanghai improved by 60%.

Ozone regeneration recorded near the poles.

Sea life spotted returning to oil-drilled coastlines.

Environmentalists wept. Literally.

Footage of a 9-year-old boy hugging his mother while pointing at a blue sky went viral. Caption: “He’s never seen clouds this clearly before.”

[Energy Giants Retaliate]

They tried.

Lawsuits: All dismissed.

Sabotage attempts: Tracked, caught, exposed by Stark AI.

Propaganda campaigns: Debunked in real-time.

Market manipulation: Firewalled by blockchain-based StarkEnergy ledgers, transparent to regulators and users alike.

Tony had planned for everything.

...

[Inside Stark HQ – Horizon Facility]

Tony watched the energy curve on a floating display.

Old grids:

Collapsing.

New grid:

Decentralized. Clean. Autonomous.

Powered by people, not corporations.

Natasha leaned in beside him, sipping coffee. “You know they’ll come at you harder now.”

He nodded, eyes on the data. “They’ve already tried everything but honesty. Let’s see how that works out.”

[Revolution Summary: 90 Days Post-Expo]

Global oil consumption down 74%

Petroleum wars? Over.

Cities running on microgrids.

Nations saving billions monthly.

Energy poverty reduced by 87%.

Gas stations closing, converted to charging/diagnostic kiosks.

[Final Global Headline That Month]

📰 STARK TECH ENDS ENERGY DEPENDENCY — AND PROBABLY CHANGED CIVILIZATION FOREVER

And yet, this wasn’t even the biggest thing he was planning...

[6 months after the Expo.]

The Starfire was almost ready for its first test launch. Tony put 80% of his time into it and increased the number of construction robots. He even upgraded his AIs to handle the intense task.

Johnny and Ben worked alongside Tony on the ship's engine and main core reactor. Although Tony has AIs, he still prefers to do it by hand with some personal touches.

As for Sue, she was studying cosmic radiation and researching its effect on human biology. To increase her research speed and make it perfect, she needed real cosmic radiation or something similar. So, Tony managed to extract some energy from the Tesseract and gave it to Sue for her studies.

Also, during these six months, Tony also made a body for Elena, out of the new gen nanites made from the natural adamantium.

Yelena returned from Celestial Island after planting enough robots and left some Widows to protect the place. The Widows take turns to guard that isolated island. According to Tony's calculation, within the next year, they should be able to extract all the resources from that place. Apart from the natural adamantium, he also found some crystals that are capable of energy absorption. So, the robots are mining those stones. 

Since this operation was very big and he had very little time to watch over everything, Tony involved his dad and told him his plan. Well, Howard agreed to help him with new bases for the storage. 

Oh, what about SHIELD?

They are also running on Micro Reactors. And Tony made sure to put in proper security measures. No one will be able to hack it or mess with it. 

...

Next Chapter: Starfire: The Trial launch

[Shazam] Ch: 8 [Chaos in a Robe]

John walked to the alley, the rain soaking his hoodie and darkening the cement beneath his boots. He stopped just short of the dumpster, looking down at the soggy figure sitting with her back against the brick wall. Harley had her arms wrapped around her knees like a sad clown at the end of a party. Her pigtails drooped. Her makeup looked like a watercolor crime scene.

"You've been following me for ten blocks," John said, voice flat.

Harley didn't look up. She sniffled loudly.

"You have really loud boots, y'know that?"

He crossed his arms.

"And those dogs weren't helping."

Harley sniffed again and finally glanced up at him. Her eyeliner had merged with her tears into a kind of abstract sadness painting.

"You mad at me?" she asked, voice small.

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Because you kinda stomped away like you hated me and also pizza."

John stared at her. The rain continued to pour. He could've just walked away. He should've. Any rational person would've.

Instead, he sighed. Long and low. The sigh of a man who had accepted that chaos had moved in and brought glitter.

"Come inside," he said.

Her head shot up.

"For real?"

"Yes. But don't make a mess."

Harley's eyes lit up like someone had just offered her a pet hyena and a birthday cake in one go. She scrambled to her feet and saluted him.

"Yes, sir! No mess. Cross my heart and hope to avoid another grenade bath."

John turned and walked back toward the apartment. She bounced behind him like a soaked puppy with clown makeup.

"So," she said, practically skipping, "do you have snacks? I'm low on blood sugar. That tends to be when my worst decisions happen."

"Figures," John muttered.

She gasped dramatically. "Do you not have snacks? Because I swear, if I walk into a sad bachelor apartment with zero snacks, I will scream."

"You can scream outside."

"Fair."

They reached the door. John unlocked it and stepped inside. His place was small, bare, and dim. A couch that might've been stolen from a doctor's waiting room, a table with one chair, and a big box TV, in the OLED and holographic era. It didn't smell bad, but it didn't smell good either. Neutral. Like a man who survived on ramen and regret.

Harley stepped in and immediately kicked off her boots, leaving muddy clown-print socks on the tile. She spotted the couch, ran toward it, and flopped down like a toddler after recess.

"Oooh, squishy. This is the kind of couch you only find in murder documentaries or Craigslist ads with bad lighting."

John locked the door and kicked off his own boots.

"Told you not to make a mess. Get up, there's the bathroom," He pointed at the closed door on the right. "Take a bath. Use the body wash, not the soap. The towel's inside, and there's an old robe. Wear that." 

Harley stared at him like he'd just handed her a key to Disney World and a bazooka at the same time.

"A bath?" she said, mouth slightly open.

John didn't respond. Just started peeling off his wet hoodie like this was just another Tuesday, which, for him, it probably was.

Harley pointed at the bathroom door. "Like, for me?"

"Do you see anyone else here?"

She blinked. "I mean… technically no, but emotionally, I'm carrying a lot of ghosts."

"Shower. Now."

"Yes, daddy!" She jumped down, her clothes making that awful shlorp sound of wet fabric peeling off pleather. She walked toward the bathroom like a defeated swamp rat. Halfway there, she turned back.

"So, is this one of those situations when, after bathing, when I open the cabinet, there won't be any towels. Then I'll peek out asking for a towel, and then you will bring me a towel, but instead of handing it over, you'll pull me out naked and... We'll have some wet fun? Like that movie, Staying on Top."

John narrowed his eyes, pointed his finger toward the door, "Bath. NOW!"

"Tehehehe!" Harley quickly went inside while laughing.

The door closed.

There was a loud clunk, followed by muffled humming, then the sound of something falling. A shampoo bottle? A shelf? A toothbrush cup?

"Don't come in here! That was on purpose!" she shouted from behind the door. "Ooohh! Lavender body wash and jasmine soap," She mumbled a bit too loudly. 

John stood there for a moment. 'What did I just do?' His socks squished audibly, probably judging him for every life choice that led to this moment. He rubbed his temples, took one breath, and caught a whiff of himself.

"Ugh."

Rain, gunpowder, blood, and dumpster juice. The signature cologne of people with bad luck and worse timing.

He took off his shirt, already regretting offering Harley the only good towel. He rummaged in the closet and found a backup towel that smelled faintly of mothballs. Good enough. His eyes went toward the wet couch. He sighed again before wiping his body. After that he started cleaning up the wet spot.

The bathroom door opened 30 minutes later. A cloud of steam poured out from inside.

Harley stepped out wrapped in the robe, her hair wet and curling around her face like someone trying to cosplay a tired poodle. The robe dragged on the floor and covered her hands entirely, making her look like a depressed cultist.

"I feel like a soggy marshmallow. Ohhh! Wow~"

She stopped dead in the hallway like a cartoon character spotting a pie on a windowsill.

Her eyes locked onto John, who stood in the middle of the room, shirtless, still toweling off his wet hair. The dim kitchen light glinted off his chest like he was in a low-budget cologne commercial: damp, muscled, scars, and very much wrapped in nothing but a towel that looked like it had been stolen from a motel in 1986.

Her jaw dropped slightly.

"Hoooly abs," she whispered.

John didn't look at her. He was busy patting down the back of his neck with the raggedy towel and completely ignoring the wide-eyed, slightly trembling clown girl gawking at him.

"Is this what you look like under all that broody silence?" Harley muttered, inching forward like she was stalking a majestic, damp jungle cat. "You walk around with that 'don't talk to me or my trauma ever again' face, and meanwhile, you're smuggling two kegs and a roadmap to Sin City under that hoodie?"

John sighed. Loudly.

"Don't start."

"Oh, it's already started, sexy sad man," she said, clutching the robe tighter like she was afraid her ovaries might jump out and embarrass her. "You got muscles in places I didn't even know muscles had the right to live."

He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. "You done?"

"Not even close. I've got material for days."

She pointed at his abs. "That one? That's the 'I carry trauma and possibly women from burning buildings' muscle."

Then his shoulders. "Those? That's 'I hug like I mean it and maybe accidentally crack a rib, but it's okay because I'll kiss it better' shoulders."

She pointed at his arms now. "And those are just rude. Like, call the cops rude. You could crush me with those. Politely."

"I could also throw you out the window."

"Ohhh, baby," she fanned herself with her sleeve. "We goin' full Fifty Shades or just skipping to the 'get outta my apartment' part?"

John didn’t even respond. Just brushed past her. He disappeared into the bathroom with a door slam that was more annoyed than angry.

Harley stood in the hallway alone. She sighed, dramatically, like someone who’d just been denied a free cupcake and an emotional support boyfriend in one go.

“Rude,” she whispered before running toward the couch and flopping down again. She took a deep breath and let it out like a balloon giving up. Her fingers tugged absently at the robe belt.

She muttered to herself.

“Y’know, Harley… you could’ve stayed home today. Could’ve had cereal. Could’ve murdered some creep with a crowbar. Could’ve watched reruns of That’s So Raven and trauma-danced your feelings out.”

She blinked at the ceiling.

“Instead, you followed a pizza delivery ninja through a hallway massacre, almost blew your butt off, and now you're sitting on a stranger’s couch smelling like lavender and crying on the inside.”

She looked toward the bathroom door again.

Water was running. Steam snuck out under the door like it was trying to escape the awkward tension.

Harley flopped onto her side.

“What am I doing here?” she said into the couch cushion.

The cushion didn’t answer. Rude.

Her voice cracked a little.

“I mean, he’s nice, sure. In that emotionally constipated, man-of-mystery, ‘I saw war and now I sleep with one eye open’ kinda way. But he doesn’t smile. He doesn’t talk. He looks like he eats nails and bathes in gasoline. And I’m just…”

She sat up slowly, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of the robe. 

“I’m just a walking meltdown in a robe and poor life decisions. Mr. J will now search for Harl and try to kill her. I should have shot his head instead of butt. But pufffffhehehe! Butt... Every time he tries to sit, he'll remember 'lil 'ol Harl.”

A few minutes of arguing with the couch and herself...

She sat up, pulled the robe tighter, and glanced toward the bathroom. Steam was leaking out from under the door like a smoke machine on discount. She could hear him in there. The water. The occasional thud of a shampoo bottle hitting the wall. Maybe he was trying to scrub the regret off his soul.

She stood and wandered toward the kitchen like a raccoon who’d been kicked out of a rave. She opened the fridge. Inside was a half-empty bottle of mustard, two cans of beer, and something that might’ve been lasagna back in 1997.

“No snacks,” she whispered in horror. “He’s worse than I thought.”

Then the bathroom door creaked open.

John stepped out, now in sweatpants and a black T-shirt. His hair was damp, his eyes tired, his skin steaming slightly from the hot shower.

Harley just stared.

“You clean up nice,” she said softly, voice smaller now.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, still kinda broody and unapproachable. But now with less garbage juice.”

John ignored the compliment and walked past her to the kitchen. He opened the fridge, stared at the mustard like it had personally betrayed him, then shut it again.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Harley nodded, curling her fingers around the robe sleeves like a child in a borrowed blanket.

“There are two cup noodles in the cupboard,” he said, walking toward the cupboard.

“You cookin’ for me?” she asked, hopeful.

“I’m boiling water and pouring it in the premade cup. That’s not cooking. That’s surviving.”

“Ohhh, sexy and modest. Be still, my tragic little heart.”

..

..

[45 Minutes Earlier – Just After the Explosion]

The explosion had blown out a quarter of the top floor. Flames, smoke, and debris were scattered everywhere. Not to mention the heavy rain.

“This is bullshit!” Joker spat, slipping on the edge of a puddle. “She shot me! In the ass! That’s crossing a line! Now, I won't be able to sit anymore. And my kneecap! That bitch! I won't be able to walk straight anymore. What would bats think? A cripple opponent?! No, no, no, no....”

The larger of the two goons, still clutching an SMG, shouted over the wind, “Boss, we gotta move! That blast lit up half the block!”

Joker staggered forward, eyes wild. “I’ll kill her! I’ll cut her open and fill her with fireworks! Heheheh! I’ll put a laugh track in her lungs!”

They somehow managed to drag him down the stairs and were about to go toward their cars but...

A heavy THOOM overhead. Mechanical. Rhythmic.

One of the goons stopped running.

“Uh… boss? You hear that?”

Joker paused. Eyes narrowed.

From above the building, something descended.

A black VTOL jet.

Silent at first. Then the sound surged: hover rotors, stealth thrusters, electromagnetic scanners flickering blue along its belly.

Task Force X had arrived.

Inside the cockpit, Amanda Waller's hologram stood with her arms crossed, looking down at the infrared display.

"Target confirmed. Joker. Two clowns with him. Bomb residue all over the rooftop. Signature matches stolen GCPD tech from six weeks ago."

She turned her head slightly.

“Flag.”

Rick Flag, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, locked and loaded, gave a sharp nod.

“Copy. Deploying assets.”

The VTOL's rear hatch opened.

Three figures leapt out.

Peacemaker: Helmet gleaming, automatic rifle ready.

Katana: Silent. Sword already in hand.

Bloodsport: Guns attached to his arms via magnetic armor, eyes scanning the drop.

They landed hard on the rooftop

Joker’s eyes widened.

“Oh, shit.”

The three landed in a triangle around him.

Peacemaker cracked his neck. “You’re under arrest for violating at least seven federal ordinances, domestic terrorism, bringing me here in this shithole raining mess and being a total dick.”

Joker looked around wildly.

"You government freaks again? What’s next? Gonna throw me in another exploding collar daycare center?!"

He turned to run, but Bloodsport was faster. He fired a high-velocity net that wrapped Joker mid-limp.

Zzzzzzzt—Electric shock.
Joker screamed and collapsed, twitching.

The two goons raised their weapons.

Katana didn’t even flinch. She moved at an inhumane speed.

Two slices and a second later, their heads rolled on the ground as blood spurted out of their severed neck like a fountain. Their bodies spasm on the wet ground, covered in blood and rain.

...

[Back at John’s Apartment]

The rain had slowed. Just tapping now.

Inside John’s apartment, things were quiet.

He sat on the floor against the wall, eating cup noodles. Harley sat cross-legged on the couch in the oversized robe, her hair wrapped in a towel like a cone of cotton candy. She slurped from her own cup, eyes locked on the TV.

It was tuned to a local news station.

“Breaking News: Massive explosion in downtown Fawcett City tonight. Authorities have no confirmed death toll, but multiple eyewitnesses claim it involved the Joker and his gang. Government agents were reportedly seen on site. Task Force X assets were deployed.”

The camera cut to shaky cell phone footage of Peacemaker dragging Joker, electrocuted, growling, and drooling.

[Ironman] Ch: 96 [Science, bonds & a new team]

The plaza buzzed with energy. Booths stretched in all directions, showcasing everything from levitating wheelchairs to personal water filtration pods that fit in your pocket. Drone couriers zipped through the air delivering coffee, while children tested magnetic shoes that let them walk up short walls under supervision. Scientists, inventors, students, and guests swarmed every corner, talking, sharing, laughing, and filming everything they could.

The Expo was alive.

Tony walked beside Howard down the central path, the crowd parting subtly as they passed. 

“You remember Senator Adams, don’t you?” Howard said, nodding toward a man near one of the green-energy display towers.

Tony gave a slight nod. “Still has that stick up his spine, or did he get it surgically replaced?”

Howard didn’t smile, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth was enough. “Play nice. He pushed through some of the early permissions for the Starfire initiative. We need him.”

Tony adjusted his sleeve and extended a hand. “Senator. Glad you could make it.”

Adams, a stocky man with perfectly styled hair and eyes that missed nothing, shook his hand. “Mr. Stark. Or should I say... the revolutionary?”

Tony smiled thinly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That comes next week.”

Adams gave a humorless laugh. “You’ve got half of Capitol Hill calling me. Oil lobbyists are chewing glass. The medical board is in full-blown panic. What the hell did you just do?”

“Made it a little harder to ignore people suffering,” Tony said. “You're welcome.”

They talked for a few minutes before moving...

Next came a woman in her sixties with silver hair and a cane, Irine Lane, director of the Stark Biomedical Division. She stood near a modular prosthetic display. A boy with one arm was trying on a new limb that responded to neural pulses in seconds.

“Irine,” Howard said, walking over.

She turned and smiled. “Well, if it isn’t both Starks in one place. What’s the occasion, besides the world changing?”

Tony returned the smile. “Just figured I’d check in on the ones actually making change happen.”

Irine gestured toward the boy. “This is why I never retired. Every year, something new makes it all worth it.”

A group of researchers approached next, foreign delegates from Europe, South America, and East Asia. Howard took over the introductions, handling them like a veteran businessman. Tony shook hands, nodded, and answered the occasional technical question, but his eyes were always scanning the Expo around him.

He was watching it happen. Real change. Not theoretical. Not hidden behind patent walls or NDA clauses. Open. Flowing.

A few booths down, a college team from Nairobi was demonstrating a solar-powered atmospheric water extractor. A crowd had formed around them, cheering when they poured clean water into a waiting glass.

Howard leaned in. “We built a company. But this? This feels like something bigger.”

Tony looked around. “It’s because it is. This is what the world looks like when the smart people get a seat at the table instead of a bill.”

They paused in front of a display showcasing Susan Storm’s RECODE simulations. There was a line forming of people just wanting to talk to her team. Mutants, parents, doctors... some hopeful, some skeptical, all listening.

Tony watched in silence for a moment, then said, “You still think I should’ve scaled it back?”

Howard didn’t answer right away. He followed his son’s gaze, took in the moment, and said, “No. You did what I couldn’t. You took the fire and walked straight into the storm with it. Just be ready for the blowback.”

Tony smirked. “Always am.”

Over the next few hours, they talked and met many important people. 

[Approx. 3 hrs later]

Backstage, the noise of the crowd faded behind thick reinforced walls, replaced by the low hum of cooling fans and the quiet buzz of light panels overhead. Cables ran neatly along the floors, and a few stagehands hustled back and forth, managing feeds and schedules.

Tony ducked past a row of curtain-draped partitions, loosening his collar as he moved toward the corner of the green room, then stopped.

Maria Stark sat calmly at a small folding table, legs crossed, a linen napkin laid out like she owned the place. On the table: two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, a pitcher of lemonade, and a pair of glasses already sweating with condensation.

She didn’t look surprised to see him. She poured a glass without looking up.

“Grilled turkey on sourdough,” she said. “With extra mustard. Because you always come down from adrenaline with a crash and then get snappy when your blood sugar dips.”

Tony blinked, then slowly walked over. “How did you even know I’d be back here right now?”

Maria glanced up, one brow raised.

“You’ve done three full circuits of the Expo floor, your tone shifted mid-speech, and your left hand kept twitching when you talked to the senator. That’s your ‘about to vanish for ten minutes’ tell.”

Tony pulled out the chair and dropped into it. “Either I’m way too predictable, or you’re still secretly psychic.”

“You’re not predictable. You’re just mine,” she said, handing him a glass. “And I know how my son thinks when he’s holding the world in one hand and pressure in the other.”

Tony took the glass, sipped, and let out a long breath. “You didn’t have to come loaded with snacks. I'm 22."

Maria gave him a look. “You’re 22 and stubborn. You’d rather pass out from low blood sugar than admit you forgot to eat.”

He unwrapped the sandwich. “Okay, valid point.”

For a few moments, they sat in silence. The muffled sound of the Expo filtered in: cheering, announcements, the low murmur of hundreds of voices, all orbiting the storm he’d stirred up.

Maria reached across the table, brushing a piece of lint off his sleeve. “You know they’re going to push back, right? The ones with power. The ones who made their empires out of people staying quiet and sick.”

Tony nodded, chewing slowly. “Yeah. I saw it in their faces already. Some of them want to throw lawsuits at me. A few probably want to throw grenades.”

She smiled faintly. “Let them try. Just don’t carry all of this alone.”

He looked at her. “You mean, let you worry?”

“I mean, let us help,” she said. “You’ve built something amazing. But even fire needs tending.”

He leaned back in the chair, watching the condensation trail down the side of his glass.

“I didn’t expect today to feel like this.”

Maria tilted her head. “Like what?”

Tony exhaled through his nose. “Like it mattered. Like people actually saw it for what it is.”

She smiled again. This one was proud. Bright. Sharp.

“It’s because they did, sweetheart. And you didn’t just give them a new future. You gave them hope and the belief that there are still good people in this world who care for them.”

Tony looked down at the last bite of his sandwich.

“…God, you’re good.”

Maria reached for her lemonade, her smile widening. “I had practice. Your father used to fall apart every time he invented something important, too. And he didn’t even have nanotech or media coverage.”

Tony stood slowly, brushing crumbs from his hands. “Thanks for the fuel-up, Mom.”

"So, you, Natasha, and Yelena..." She said with a knowing smile.

Tony paused mid-step, then turned back, eyes narrowing with exaggerated suspicion. “What do you mean you, Natash, and Yelena?”

Maria sipped her lemonade, unfazed. “Oh, please. You think I haven’t noticed the sideways looks? The hushed conversations? That little smirk you get when someone mentions their names?”

Tony scratched the back of his neck. “Okay, first of all, there is no smirk. That’s just my face processing complex logistics. And you only met them like thrice.”

Maria raised a brow. “Complex logistics. Is that what we’re calling feelings now?”

He slumped back into the chair with a groan. “We are... It’s complicated.”

Maria leaned forward, folding her hands on the table. “I don't need to know if it's complicated or not. I just need to know if my son is happy.”

Tony didn't even need to rethink his private life's decision and his love life. He simply loved them both, and they loved him.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I am.”

Maria nodded once, satisfied. “Good. Then don’t screw it up.”

“Wow. That was fast. No questions? No ‘what are your intentions with my son’ moments?” Tony asked.

"No. I talk to them often, behind your back of course, when Yelena calls me to learn cooking or Natasha calls me to know your favourite books and music... Well, I trust them. I just hope you know what you're doing. And as long as you are happy, I'm good," She replied with a warm smile.

..

[A few minutes later...]

Tony left the backstage room feeling lighter, the last of the sandwich fueling more than just his body. He buttoned up his suit jacket again and made his way through the quieter side corridor of the Expo center, moving past the buzzing control stations and reinforced partitions.

He headed toward the VIP section.

After everything she'd pulled off today, he figured Susan deserved a check-in.

He reached the door marked VIP 7 and knocked twice.

Susan stood there, sleeves rolled up, hair now loose from the formal bun she’d worn earlier. Her expression relaxed into something warm the second she saw him.

“You survived the mob,” she said, stepping aside.

“Barely,” Tony said. “But your section stole half the spotlight. So I figured I’d come and borrow some back.”

She smirked and motioned for him to enter. “Come in. I want you to meet a couple of people.”

Inside, the room was big, designed for comfort with soft couches, a stocked refreshment bar, and a wall screen still looping Expo highlights. But it was the two figures inside that caught his attention.

A younger guy leaned back on the couch, clearly mid-story, gesturing animatedly with a bottle of soda in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. Blonde hair, movie-star jawline, and the kind of chaotic charm Tony could spot a mile away.

The other was solid. Broad-shouldered, red hair, wearing a simple jacket and jeans. His posture was more reserved, but the way his eyes tracked Tony showed a sharp awareness.

Susan walked over and gestured between them.

“Tony Stark, meet my brother, Johnny Storm. And that over there, trying to look like he’s not bored by all of this, is Ben Grimm.”

Johnny grinned and stood, offering a handshake. “Big fan. The new holographic tech made my job a thousand times easier. And your presentation was just awesome. I saw those investors' faces. Ha! They must have lost billions of dollars, all thanks to you. Good job. You just destroyed some people and probably made them poor.”

Tony shook his hand. “Johnny Storm… You’re the one who turned down a full ride at CalTech to build a rocket bike in your garage?”

Johnny shrugged, not at all ashamed. “And it flew. For twelve seconds. Then exploded. But those twelve seconds were beautiful.”

Tony chuckled, already liking him. Then turned to Ben and offered his hand again. “And you must be the infamous college roommate who could bench press a car.”

Ben got up and took the handshake, strong grip, and grounded presence. “Just the front half of the car. It was an old Volvo.”

Susan sat on the arm of the nearest couch and watched the three of them, clearly enjoying the subtle dynamic test happening in real time.

“So,” Tony said, glancing between them, “You two thinking of joining the big cosmic science ride?”

Johnny nodded. “Susan gave us the overview. Space. Radiation. Closest to the Sun. Sounds like a Tuesday.”

Ben leaned against the wall with arms crossed. “Sounds insane. But I trust her. If she’s going, I’m not far behind.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at Susan. “You already pitched them?”

She shrugged. “They’ve known about my research for years. And you said I could bring two people. I chose the ones I’d trust to hold the line if the ship exploded.”

Johnny turned to Susan. “Wait, it might explode?”

“It was a metaphor,” Susan replied dryly.

Tony rubbed his chin. “I mean, it's not off the table. But we’ve got eject systems. Mostly.”

Ben exhaled and shook his head. “Jesus.”

Johnny flopped back on the couch, arms spread out. “Okay, but hear me out... what if it explodes and we get washed over by cosmic radiation? Do we get superpowers? You know, like mutants?”

"Johnny," Sue gave him that look.

"What? Just curious," He shrugged.

Tony snapped his fingers. “That’s the energy I like to hear.”

Susan rolled her eyes. “Don’t encourage him.”

Tony looked around the room again, more thoughtful now. This is it. The perfect team. Instead of Reed, it'll be him. 

[Shazam] Ch: 7 [Pizza, bullets & Harley Quinn]

AN: Slightly big chapter. Approx. 3k words.

---

John stood frozen in the hallway, hands still half-raised, while Harley Quinn leaned against the doorway like she was in the middle of hosting a tea party instead of a murder scene. The pizza bag lay forgotten at his feet. The man in purple kept groaning on the floor, dragging his shredded knees across the cheap tile. His cries were background noise now.

Harley twirled the pistol on her finger once, then pointed it lazily at John’s foot, not aiming, just gesturing.

"You ever wonder how a girl like me ends up with a guy like him?" she asked, motioning behind her to the bleeding mess. "Lemme tell ya a story. Or two."

John didn’t move. Didn't speak. He knew better.

Harley’s eyes sparkled. She grinned. The kind of grin that said 'I’m about to say something really messed up, and I’ll be smiling the whole time.'

"So! Puddin’, back when he wanted to impress me, he told me this real sweet story. Said, ‘Wanna know how I got these scars?’ Right? Classic line. Real rom-com material."

She mimicked a deep, gruff Joker voice and tilted her head, eyes wide and wild.

"My father was a drinker. And a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not. One. Bit."

She stepped forward, pacing slowly, like a cat in a cage.

"So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it! Then he turns to me, and he says, ‘Why so serious, son?’"

She licked her lips and mimed holding a knife.

"He comes at me with the knife… ‘Why so serious?’ And he sticks the blade in my mouth… ‘Let's put a smile on that face!’"

She put her gun into the waistband and stretched her mouth with her fingers and whispered, "And… why. So. Serious?"

Her voice dropped with that last line, her body still. John could feel the shift in the air.

Then she blinked. Snapped out of it. Tilted her head the other way and chuckled.

"But guess what? That wasn’t the real story. Not even close. That was just the version he gave me."

She walked back to the doorway, stepping right over the groaning Joker like he was a stain on a rug.

"Last night, I got all worried. Y'know? He said he was goin’ on a job, important stuff, top secret, kiss kiss goodbye. So I tail him. Real sneaky. Full Harley ninja mode. Harl was worried about Puddin'. Couldn't help."

She grinned widely, but the corners of her eyes tightened.

"And what do I find? Huh? You wanna know?"

John didn’t answer. Just watched.

"I find him in some crummy apartment with this other girl, sweet little thing, all doe eyes and daddy issues, and he’s spinning her the same shtick."

Harley’s voice dropped an octave again. Her grin turned venomous.

"Oh, you look nervous. Is it the scars? Wanna know how I got 'em? C'mere, look at me. So, I had a wife, who was beautiful…like you… tells me I oughta smile more…"

She mimicked Joker’s limp hand gestures, mocking him with eerie accuracy.

"She gambles. Gets in deep with the sharks. One day, they carve her face. We got no money for surgeries. She thinks she's hideous, but I wanted her to know that she is the most beautiful woman in my eyes. So I put a razor in my mouth… and do this to myself. For her."

Harley stopped in front of John again, her smile gone now. 

"And she leaves. Can’t stand the sight of me. And now I see the funny side. Now I’m always smiling.”

She looked down at Joker, still groaning.

"You believe that crap? He’s been feeding different sob stories to every lost girl with eyeliner and a trauma folder."

She looked up at John again, and for a second, the madness slipped. Just long enough to show the pain beneath.

"Turns out, I was just another version of the lie."

Harley’s smile came back, sharp and toothy. She turned, lifted her boot, and stomped hard on Joker’s bullet-wounded ass.

The man screamed like a banshee. His voice cracked and echoed down the hallway.

“Aw, shut up, ya big baby,” Harley muttered.

She glanced at the pizza bag on the floor.

"Hey, is it still hot?"

John shrugged.

She skipped over, crouched, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a box. She opened it, the steam rising like a holy offering.

"Ooooh, meat lovers. Jackpot."

She picked up a slice, folded it like a pro, and took a giant bite.

“Mmff! Mm-hmm. Yeah. This’ll do,” she said, mouth full, still chewing. "Tony finally listened. Extra cheese."

She took another bite, sauce already on her chin.

Then she kicked Joker again.

“That's for lying about having gout. Who even lies about gout?”

Another kick.

“That’s for throwing my good hyena plushie in the trash!”

She paused to chew, then kicked him once more for good measure.

“That’s for ruining my life.”

Joker wheezed, curled into a sad little ball of agony. His makeup was smeared, one eye swollen shut, blood splattered all over the floor.

Harley licked grease from her fingers, then looked up at John.

“You want a slice?”

He shook his head slowly.

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, tearing into another slice like it owed her money.

John turned and was about to walk away.

"Enjoy your pizza," he said.

“Wait.”

John paused.

Behind him, Harley’s voice had changed. Smaller. Quiet.

“I need a hug.”

He turned around. She was standing there with pizza in one hand, tears running down her cheeks, her mascara smudged like war paint.

"I know I'm a psychopath," she said. “I know I’m nuts and loud and violent and did unspeakable things with a bazooka once, but right now... I just want someone to hold me for, like, ten seconds without me threatening to stab them.”

She sniffled. Then tried to smile, but it crumbled.

John stared at her for a beat, 'Shit! She's too cute... Fuck! My soft spot for Harley Quinn. Just a hug and I'm out of here.'

Then walked back.

He opened his arms.

She threw herself into the hug like she was diving into a pool. Nearly knocked him over.

“Don’t read into this,” he muttered.

“Mmhmm,” she said, face buried in his chest. “Just ten seconds.”

“Just ten seconds.”

“You smell so good. Maybe fifteen.”

“Don’t push it.”

They stood there in the hallway, Joker moaning on the floor, a half-eaten slice of pizza still in Harley’s hand.

Joker groaned on the floor, blood dripping from his nose, knees wrecked, lips cracked. He rolled over just enough to glare at Harley and spit a thick wad of red onto the tile.

"You goddamn psychotic bitch," he growled, voice raspy and wet. "You shot me. In the ass! You shot me in the fucking ass!"

Harley didn’t flinch. Still buried in John's arms, she just gave a small hum like she was listening to music.

Joker coughed and looked up at John with one swollen eye.

“You. Delivery boy. You want cash? Real cash? Help me. Kill her. I’ll pay you anything. Ten million. Twenty. A blank fucking check. Just end her and get me outta here.”

John didn't even look at him. He tightened his hold on Harley slightly.

"You're not worth half a meat lover's pizza," he muttered.

Joker wheezed. “You’re a goddamn moron. She’ll turn on you too. They all do.”

"After lying and ruining her life, what do you expect? A fucking medal?" John said with his usual expressionless face. 

Harley gave Joker the finger over John's shoulder without even lifting her head.

Then, a scream echoed from the stairwell.

"Boss!"

John’s eyes snapped toward the sound. 'GUNS!' He moved fast.

“Down!” he barked.

He grabbed Harley, spun, and tackled her to the ground just as a barrage of bullets ripped through the hallway.

The walls exploded in a hail of plaster and splinters. Fragments of wood and tile sprayed over their heads. Light fixtures shattered above. The pizza bag took a round straight through the side, exploding in a puff of pepperoni and cardboard.

John held Harley close as they hit the floor hard. Her pizza slice flopped onto the tile next to them.

From the stairs, four of Joker’s goons poured in, dressed in clown-themed riot gear, SMGs in hand. One of them had a grenade belt slung across his chest like party favors.

“That bitch shot the boss!” one yelled.

“Shoot around him, idiots!” another screamed.

Bullets ripped the hallway apart. Joker screamed again, not from the pain in his legs but from pure frustration.

"Stop shooting near my fucking spine! Goddammit, my kidneys! I need those to laugh properly!"

John and Harley crawled inside and rolled behind a tipped-over table just inside the apartment. The table didn't last long, and they somehow managed to roll behind the kitchen counter. 

Harley stared up at John’s face. Hard lines. Calm eyes. No flinch, even as bullets cracked past them and glass rained down like angry confetti. He was holding her tight, body coiled, chest heaving. And for a second, just a beat too long, she forgot about the shooting. Forgot about the Joker bleeding in the hallway. Forgot about the world.

Who was this guy?

She didn’t know him. Delivery boy. Pizza hands. Big eyes, low voice, didn’t talk much. One of those quiet weirdos you never notice until they’re body-slamming you out of a bulletstorm. Bat's moody and broody cousin?

Why?

Why was he doing this?

Why put his life in danger for her?

Her brain spun like a busted carousel. Guys didn’t do this. Not for her. Not without strings. Or poison. Or a loaded laugh track and a knife in the back.

Besides, she was the reason the bullets were flying. She was the psycho ex with the bleeding ex and a bad case of emotional whiplash. He should’ve run. He should’ve let the clowns ventilate her skull and collected his tip from Satan. Instead, here he was. Arms around her like a human shield with opinions.

She blinked. Bullets punched holes in the cabinets above them.

"Why?" she shouted over the gunfire, eyes locked on his. “Why are you helping me?”

John didn’t answer. He just checked her over, hands, arms, blood, not hers, and looked back at the counter. 'Good, she ain't hurt.'

The man had the emotional range of a toaster.

She huffed. “You some kinda white knight in crusty jeans, or what?”

Still nothing. Just a flicker in his brow.

“Are you, like, into me or something?” she asked, still panting. "Like love at first sight?"

“I just didn’t want you to die while holding pizza,” he muttered.

“Oh my God. That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Harley.”

“Yes, love?”

“Shut up and look for your gun.”

She reached for her gun, the one she’d tucked into her waistband like a cocky idiot.

Gone.

Of course, it was gone. Had to have skidded under something during the roll. She patted the floor, nothing but dust and a lone pepperoni slice sliding slowly toward the fridge.

“Shit,” she whispered. “It ditched me. Unreliable little traitor.”

“Yeah,” John said without looking. He was watching the hallway like a hawk, eyes tracking movement between bursts of gunfire.

He peeked over the edge of the table. One of the goons was trying to flank. He ducked back just as a bullet nicked the tabletop and sprayed chips across his knuckles.

Joker's voice came from outside, "Keep shooting. Shred them to smithereens. Hehehe! Ahahahaha! DIE BITCH!"

"Just how many goons did he call?" John asked. 

"No idea. 10, 20... No idea. Nada."

Harley scrambled, scanning the floor like she was hunting for an earring. There, under the radiator. Her pistol. Spun just out of reach. Of course.

She rolled onto her stomach, wiggled forward. John's hand shot out, grabbed her belt.

“Too exposed.”

“Don’t kink-shame me right now, I’m busy.”

“Harley.”

“I almost got it!”

Another burst screamed past. She grabbed the gun, twisted, and kicked back toward cover. John yanked her the last couple of feet. She landed in a heap next to him, victorious, gun in hand.

“Ta-da!”

“Good. Now shoot.”

“With pleasure, sexy.”

She popped up, pistol first, and fired three quick shots. One of the goons dropped with a grunt, purple feathers flying from his clown wig.

“Ohhh! Right in the nosehole! You see that?” she yelled.

“Focus!”

“Let me have this!”

Another hail of bullets sent them ducking again. She shot down another one. The bullet hit the poor guy's groin. 

A burst of laughter popped from Harley’s throat as the second clown dropped, squealing like a stepped-on squeaky toy. She pumped her fist in the air before John pulled her down. 

“Two-for-one special! That’s a BOGO, baby!”

She peeked up again and...

Click.

Harley blinked. Pulled the trigger again.

Click.

“…Oh no.”

She looked at the gun like it had personally betrayed her.

“Really? You run outta bullets now? After everything we been through?” she said, shaking it like it owed her child support. “I fed you! I cleaned you! I let you shoot my ex’s buttcheek!”

John’s eyes were already scanning. “How many shots did you fire?”

“I dunno! Two? Three? Plus the kneecap. And the ass. Worth it.”

A metallic clink bounced against the tile next to them.

Harley turned her head. Her face froze.

“...Aw, hell.”

Grenade.

John grabbed her, one arm around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head like he was dipping her for a dance… except this dance ended in defenestration.

They crashed backward through the already half-shattered window, glass raining around them in sparkly death confetti. Harley shriek-laughed the whole way down.

"WHOO! GERONIMOOOO..."

BOOM.

The explosion behind them blew out what little was left of the apartment wall. A shockwave of fire punched them mid-air, sending them flying like two action figures yeeted by a sugar-rushed toddler.

They hit a dumpster with a loud, fleshy THUNK, metal echoing like a gong in a comedy funeral. Harley bounced once. Then rolled. And landed on top of John, face-first into his chest.

Silence.

Then, a muffled groan.

“Uuuggghhhhhh…”

John.

Harley lifted her head, hair a mess, mascara a war crime, her face a perfect O of wide-eyed shock and delight.

“We lived!”

'Fuck! My back!' John just blinked up at the sky like it had personally betrayed him. “Barely.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, it was a soft garbage landing! All banana peels and broken dreams.”

She sniffed.

“Okay, and maybe a little rat pee.”

She sat up on his chest, straddling him like a very chaotic cowboy. Bits of pepperoni stuck to her elbow. She flicked one off and inspected his face. 

Although chaotic... But for a moment, John noticed the other side of her. A tiny flicker of a worried face, which was instantly replaced by that classic grin.

“Eyes working?" Harley said. She then opened his lips and checked. "Teeth alright." She touched his ears and checked. "Ears still symmetrical and not shot. Good.”

“I think my spine left without me.”

“Ohhh, poor spiny,” she cooed, poking his nose. “You need some chiropractic revenge later.”

John groaned again. “Get off.”

Harley grinned, didn’t move an inch.

“Aww, but you’re so comfy. Like a hot beanbag with commitment issues.”

He raised one eyebrow.

She sighed, dramatically. “Fine, fine. But I’m gonna remember this. You and me. Garbage ballet. We made art, baby.”

She slid off him with all the grace of a drunken cat, then reached down and helped him sit up.

Behind them, the fire alarm in the building started howling. Screams and distant gunshots still echoed from above. Sirens, too.

John winced and rubbed his shoulder.

“You okay?” she asked.

“No.”

“Cool, me neither.”

She plopped down beside him on the asphalt, both of them slumped against the dumpster like the world’s weirdest couple’s photo shoot.

She glanced sideways at him.

“You ever think maybe fate brought us together?” she asked.

John coughed. “You mean the grenade?”

“No, not that fate. Like, the metaphorical kind. The meet-cute one. You, me, pizza, bloodshed, betrayal, and now garbage hugs.”

“I didn’t hug you in the garbage.”

“You fell with intent.”

John didn’t answer. Just stared at the road.

Harley leaned her head on his shoulder.

“You’re weird,” she whispered.

He didn’t argue.

Then she lifted a soggy slice of meat lovers from the bin between them. It was half-melted, probably contaminated with seven flavors of dumpster disease.

She offered it to him.

“Still want a slice?”

John slapped that piece away from her hand as he stood up. "Get out of here before your ex's goons arrive. God! I need a bath and a new job." He walked away, leaving Harley there alone...

Or, that's what he thought.

Harley kept following him, keeping her distance and hiding here and there... Not to mention, she was giggling when a couple of street dogs were barking at him for the whole three minutes, but he didn't even bother with them and kept walking. 

John finally stopped before his tiny apartment. The heavy rain washed some grime and smell from his body. He sighed and looked back. Yup! There she was hiding in the alley. He could see her thanks to the car parked near that alley. The car's side mirror.