章節 77: Chapter 77 Metal and Magic
Harry felt a large headache hit him and found himself in an abandoned warehouse looking at a watch. The time display on the watch showed it was 5pm, two hours before he was supposed to meet up with Agent Coulson at Stark International's main building.
His last memory was of seeing himself in his Obscurus getup showing up and saying, 'This is going to cost extra.' Harry sighed at the headache and knew he had no choice but to deal with it. That line was one of several he had prepared to deal with possible Time Travel incited Paradoxes.
One of the main things that must be avoided when time traveling is having the past self observe the future self. The few times Harry used this trick to be in the same place as his past self, he had to make sure his past self observed the actions of his future self as little as possible. Why? If his past self saw his future self make a mistake, he might not make it when it was his turn to act and create a paradox.
In the event Harry had no choice but to observe his future actions, he had to seal his memories once he returned to the past and could only unseal them once he 'caught up' to the present.
This was much, much harder than it sounded and was impossible in many different circumstances. Also, Harry's mind would always try to fix itself so he had to devote a part of his mind to keep his memories consciously locked up. Thus, the headache.
In any case, this wasn't a bad thing. All he had to do was keep to the script until he caught up to the point he told his past self the signal and then he could do what he needed.
The first thing Harry did of course was get out the Goblin Silver knife coated in the Mandarin's blood and use it to create a Blood Gem. Harry would have done this anyway once he got home, but he hadn't expected Obadiah to build Khan a suit using Tony's initial plans. No, Harry could tell it was far more advanced than that. The Ancient One told Harry that the Mandarin's rings were originally sources of power for a spaceship. Harry had seen advanced, otherworldly tech from the Mandarin before, and that suit looked like it had a few of the same principles.
Harry first used the Blood Gem to determine if the Mandarin had any children or family. Surprisingly, he did not. That would simplify a number of things since his Board of Directors had already been informed of the CEO of Khan Industries soon to come untimely death and had positioned themselves around the company like sharks circling a wounded prey.
Harry spent a full hour preparing the Kin Killing Curse that would attack Khan through his DNA. To avoid a paradox, he couldn't use it now, but he could set it for a delay and have it activate five seconds after he showed up at Stark Industries.
Anti-climatic? Sure. But Harry preferred to end the fight showing off as little as possible. Even under the guise of it being tech, what he already showed off while protecting Pepper and Coulson would certainly have Shield knocking at his door in a week.
The Summer had just started and Harry wanted to get stronger and explore Xandar and the Andromeda Galaxy to his heart's content and learn more tech.
Harry pulled up his stats and could only look on with anticipation.
[Harry Potter
Level 265 Age 16
STR 350 AGI 350
INT 570 WIS 525
LUK 50
Warrior Path Rank 37
Scholar Path Rank 47
Magic Path Rank 45
Tech Path Rank 40
Business Path Rank 36
Crafting Path Rank 33
Dragon Path Rank 29
Psionic Path Rank 31
Sex Path Rank 25]
After Rank 35, the speed at which the Paths rose was barely a crawl. The only reason his Tech Path had gotten so high was because he was researching different types of energy using tech and he'd gotten two more Ranks from his Quest to rescue Stark. Once his tech path reached 41 though, Harry had some confidence he could make actual magic amplification tech.
Currently he was unable to make any tech that surpassed what an artifact could do, which was why his prop gun was just a prop. It didn't strengthen or speed up his spells.
Of course, getting the Mandarin's suit and checking the Alien tech inside it would be useful as well. Taking over his company didn't guarantee access to the advanced tech the Mandarin had access to.
Overall, Harry had four ways to beat the Mandarin without fuss. Curse him to death, use Dragon Phoenix Fire Breath, Portal him to the Sun, and Attack him in Harry's Obscurus form and overload the tech in the same way he did with Apocalypse. Harry refused to believe the Mandarin's tech was superior to Apocalypse's. That being said, the latter three options would destroy the tech in the suit and Portaling into space might not even work since it had built in life support and the Mandarin's Rings were Spaceship power sources to begin with.
For that and many other reasons, Harry would shamelessly curse him to death. That being said, it was fine to think up a few backup plans as well. The curse should cause an agonizing, horrifically painful death within a minute of being cast, but the Mandarin might luck out somehow. Harry wasn't sure how he was even alive with Basilisk Venom running through his veins.
Wizards were not, thankfully, omniscient, so the existence of something which can prevent or slow down death due to Basilisk Venom was not impossible of course. Some rare herb found only in the desolate mountains that bloomed once every five thousand years blah blah blah, might exist.
After preparing everything, Harry morphed into his Obscurus adult form and equipped his demon mask and a lot of artifacts. Beneath his basilisk long coat was a set of enchanted vibranium armor saturated with Red Energy from Cyttorak's realm. The armor's enchantment basically gave Harry a knock off version of the Juggernaut's power. Harry wouldn't be confident in facing the actual Chosen of Cyttorak in blow for blow combat, but he was confident in being able to put a few dents in the Mandarin's armor.
The last time Harry fought using this setup was against the Immortal Black Dragon and the Mandarin would be a good punching b-... sparring partner.
Once fully equipped, Harry got his speeder bike out of his inventory. It was of course his Ultra Broom, but it looked like a speeder bike out of Star Wars which Harry was fine with. Broom handles and bristles on the back had gone out of fashion in the 17th century anyways.
After some waiting, Harry got the text from his Past self and Harry replied to inform his Past self that the Time Loop had been established. Harry could never guarantee the successful establishment of a Time Loop so if he hadn't texted his past self back, his past self would not have made the Time Loop to begin with.
Though thinking about it made Harry's headache worse.
Harry flew his speeder to Stark's place at a leisurely pace of only a few hundred kilometers an hour and when he arrived, the front yard was filled with motorcycles. Harry recognized them as the same type he saw had parked at Stark International's lab after he got there.
The yard was covered with men of Asian decent wearing sunglasses and looking like gang members. Harry wondered if they had cleavers under their shirts, but decided not to profile.
From his speeder, Harry jumped off from the air and landed in the yard.
Harry's Dimensional energy and Immortal Dragon Chi saturated body erupted in a show of light and quickly moved to strike each of the goons with a Stun Magic fist. None of them would be getting up.
The goons left the door open and Harry sped inside to knock out the three goons standing around Stark who seemed incapacitated on the couch with a hole in his chest where the Arc Reactor had been. Harry figured he probably just missed the guy who took it as he drove away, but since Harry knew that Khan would get it later, Harry couldn't proactively go out to get it back.
Instead, Harry walked over to Stark and touched him with the hand wearing the Ring of Recovery Harry got from his Save the Time Lord Quest a few years back. It could automatically remove one Status effect from himself or someone he touched once a day.
A moment after Harry touched Stark, the blue veins around Stark's ears returned to normal color.
Stark then coughed out, "They took, my reactor."
Stark's heart was slowly stopping and coughing was a way to force blood to the brain through the use of other muscles.
Harry asked, "Got a spare?"
"Workshop, downstairs, garage." Stark looked over to the side where there was a massive hole in the floor around what Harry remembered used to be a piano.
Harry ran over and jumped down, landing on an already partially crushed Shelby Cobra. Harry winched at that. He wasn't a car person but he could appreciate a classic.
Harry detected the Arc Reactor in a display case with a plaque that read, Proof Tony Stark Has a Heart. Harry decided then and there if Tony didn't treat Pepper right, Harry would prank him until he did.
Harry removed the case and put the Reactor in his inventory and Paused. He sensed a few problems with it, including the fact that it was only partially charged. Harry unpaused, took it out, and used a light Reparo Charm to reverse the degradation of the palladium while also using some Transfiguration and a tiny bit of alchemy to ensure the thing would hold up.
After finishing, Harry put it back in his Inventory and sighed. He then took it back out and did an even lighter bit of Alchemy to fix the damage to it that the repairing magic had just done. Wizard Magic didn't always work the way you wanted it. For example while repairing a copper wire, it could change a tiny bit of the copper from 99.99 percent purity to 99.9 percent purity. What a lot of people don't know is that Copper wires Only conduct electricity when it is at least 99.99 percent pure. Thankfully this Cave built Arc Reactor was built in a crude way and did not need to be perfect for it to work.
It only took three tries and five unpaused seconds to fix up the Reactor to as good as Harry could make it so once done he ran over to the Cobra and jumped up to the main floor and ran back to Tony.
Harry used a light bit of telekinesis to pull the connection wire from Tony's chest and expertly attach it to the connection plate under Tony's extremely focused stare.
Once Harry had it installed, Tony let out a deep sigh of relief. Tony's body had been in a state with barely a heart beat for a few minutes so it needed a few more minutes to move.
Harry asked, "What happened to Jarvis?"
Stark answered while taking deep, labored breaths, "Stane disabled him."
Harry walked over to the panel he put the Brilliance Phone into and opened it again. He typed in a few commands into the phone and sent a text message to Link informing him of the situation.
The lights turned on and the British voice came from the room, [System Restored.]
Harry asked, "How did Stane turn you off?"
[Mr. Stark used his Company to build this house and all its security measures. Using his clearance, Obadiah would have access to those plans which included the Security Override codes to disable me.]
Harry turned to give Stark an incredulous look that Stark could easily make out even though Harry was wearing a mask.
After taking a few more breaths, Stark said, "So sue me, I forgot he had access to those alright? Can I ask what you're doing here Demon Dude?"
"Potter is with Pepper and Link told him Jarvis went off line. He called me and offered payment to keep you safe when your call with Pepper dropped."
"Is Pepper okay?"
Harry smirked and answered, "Well, she went with Harry and some Agent to arrest Obadiah."
Stark's pale face turned if possible, even paler. He said, "I need to get to her." He slowly got up and staggered over to the stairs heading to the garage.
Harry rolled his eyes and wondered why the man didn't just call her and tell her Stane was going to kill her and to keep as far away as possible, but he couldn't remind him since that didn't happen in the timeline. He'd tease him relentlessly about it later.
Half way down the stairs, Tony's brain seemed to have realized he hadn't spoken enough in the last few minutes so he turned to Harry and asked, "What's you do to me? I should have been Paralyzed for another seven minutes. Is that a super power of yours or something you got from the kid?"
"Don't be ridiculous Tony, Potter can't make stuff that looks like it came out of Dungeons and Dragons. It is just an effect of the Ring of Recovery which allows me to remove a Status Effect once per day. I got it as a reward for a Quest to return a Time Lord to his home Dimension and defeat a group of evil space witches that were plotting to spread madness throughout the world."
Tony rolled his eyes and replied, "If you don't want to tell me, just say so."
Harry chuckled as they reached the garage and Tony pulled up to a computer and started typing in various coding changes. Harry peaked over and recognized he was changing the settings of an Operating System to use less energy.
Harry asked, "Why didn't they just kill you?"
"Obi wanted it to look like an accident. Like my heart stopped on its own and as long as he found my body and 'recovered Stark Technology' first, no one would be able to say my reactor wasn't in my chest all along. He said he wanted me to die cold and powerless."
Harry asked, "He just wanted you alive so he could gloat didn't he."
"The bastard. Can't believe I looked up to him."
Harry shrugged, "No one is the villain of their own story. He probably thinks his reasons are good enough. Before your 'Mountain Retreat Get Away' with Yinsen, you certainly weren't a saint either."
Stark froze just for a moment before he continued typing, "You're right. But I'm trying to fix it."
Harry had no doubt that Stark's definition of 'fix it' meant reducing the amount of damage his existence has done to the world to a minimum.
Harry asked, "Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?"
"Can't say that I have."
"It's a Japanese thing where when some pottery breaks in an accident, the pieces are put back together using lacquer and gold dust. When the pottery is repaired, it has beautiful veins of gold which give the piece character and a history."
"Well I'm not exactly an artsy person. Does the story have a point, Demon Dude?"
"Yeah. There are a lot of different ways to fix something. If you're creative enough and have the resources to do so, it's even possible to fix things in a way which makes them better than how they were before they were broken."
To emphasize the point, Harry reached over and tapped on the arc reactor in Tony's chest.
Tony stopped typing again just for a moment. He wasn't thick enough to ignore the obvious symbolism and Harry's point. Tony felt his prior actions had broken a lot of things and he'd spent the last week trying to fix as many of them as he could. But perhaps his methods had been a bit crude.
After a few more minutes Stark finished typing and said aloud, "Jarvis, suit me up."
The garage floor opened up and multiple robotic arms appeared and placed piece after piece of equipment onto Stark and assembled it into a red and gold metal suit.
Tony moved around for a bit and then partially staggered and said through a speaker, "Wait, did you do something to the Arc Reactor?"
Harry answered, "I took it to Radio Shack and had them tune it up for you."
"You know what, never mind. You're getting paid to keep me safe right?" He then used some Muon emission palladium repulsors on his feet and hands to hover and asked, "Think you can keep up?"
Harry snapped and used some Technopathy to command his speeder to fly into the garage where he jumped on it and said, "Got another stupid question?"
Stark shot out of the hole next to the Cobra and Harry launched himself through the garage entrance and saw Stark already flying away. Harry easily caught up to him and the pair flew in the direction of Stark International.
It had been about thirty mins since Harry saved Stark and it took another four mins for Stark's slow suit to fly to the Stark Industries Lab. Harry was timing it and knew they were on schedule.
Soon they arrived at the parking lot that was completely glowing molten red from the heat of the sun fire blasting out the Mandarin's armored fist. Stark upped his speed to the max and dive bombed the Mecha Mandarin through the parking lot, a few walls, and into an adjacent highway.
Harry flew his speeder over to where Past Harry and the gang was and shouted, "Potter, this is going to cost extra."
The Past Potter seemed to sigh with resignation which the current Harry completely understood. Pepper and Coulson saw this and probably assumed he was sighing about the increased expense. Nope, it was because Time Travel is a massive headache when the unexpected happens while using it.
Harry took his speeder over to the freeway where he saw Mecha Mandarin lifting a van to smash Tony with. Harry jumped off his speeder and delivered a Golden Dragon Axe Kick to the arm carrying the van, causing it to be smashed out of the way, releasing the vehicle which Harry had to jump out of the way from to avoid it running him over.
Harry sensed Tony overcharged his Arc Reactor with Muons in an accelerated decay reaction which produced vastly more Muons than usual for a moment. In that moment, they were directed out the front of the Arc Reactor at the Mandarin. The massive Muon beam successfully knocked the Mandarin to the side and Harry used the opening to rush up and deliver an Uppercut to the Mandarin's torso. The force of the impact caused the illusion of a rising dragon which blasted the Mandarin into the air and over to an access road near the freeway.
Harry jumped over and Tony flew up while saying, "Damn Demon Dude, you must eat a lot of spinach."
Harry landed and asked, "Popeye? Really? Are you sure you're not an old man?"
The Mandarin got up and moved to smash Harry who knocked away the blow. The air around the Mandarin suddenly started spinning rapidly as if a tornado had just formed. The Metal suit used the wind to spin itself and deliver a haymaker that suddenly accelerated to five times faster halfway through the movement. The speed up and the wind caused Harry's parry to miss the timing and Harry got a metal fist to the face that sent him through three ways and into a meter deep crater on the other side of the building next to the access road.
Harry Paused and realized that the Mandarin was probably still getting used to the suit's controls. That may have been why Stane was stalling with a monologue when Harry and the rest first got there. The Mandarin was a very skilled martial artist and he knew tech, so his skill at using the suit would only improve as the fight continued.
The Kin Killing Curse should have started killing Khan already so hopefully the battle wouldn't take much longer.
Harry unpaused and jumped back in the fight to see the Mandarin firing a laser that Tony was meeting with the repulsor beam on his hand. Harry landed on the Mandarin's back and tried direct Transfiguration to change the suit or disable it. The Mandarin's speed abrupt jumped again and Harry was shaken off and hurled to the ground.
Tony yelled, "You alright?"
"I'm fine." Harry realized what the Mandarin was doing and shouted, "He's using a built in Matter Rearrangement system to speed up the movement of his molecules. That's how he's moving so fast and recovering from damage."
The Mandarin's suit was undergoing active Transfiguration using the same ring Harry recognized could transfigure matter. That was why the dents and damage Harry had done to it weren't visible and how the massive suit clearly not built for speed was outspeeding Harry at times.
The speakers on the Mandarin's suit sounded out, "Very good. Now how will you deal with this?"
He shot a bolt of lightning at Tony and a concussive blast at Harry. Harry had experienced those blasts before and stood his ground to endure it.
Tony staggered and for a moment and Harry sensed the lightning bolt was directed through his suit into the Arc reactor making it glow with a blinding brilliance. Tony shouted, "You can have it back! Unibeam!" He fired his chest laser, Unibeam apparently, but this time the Mandarin dodged it using a sped up motion. Harry launched himself forward to deliver an unstoppable punch, but the Mighty Mech moved in a fluid motion to catch the telegraphed punch and spin around to slam Harry back into the ground using his own unstoppable momentum.
A massive crater ten feet in diameter formed and the building next to it collapsed into the crater.
Harry jumped out before he got buried and saw Khan fire a concussive shot at Tony which blasted Stark back a hundred meters.
Harry dashed forward and moved to strike Khan once more but Khan parried the strike this time and countered with a blast of close quarters sun fire. Harry spun to the side and knocked the mech's arm up, sending the flames into the air where they torched and liquefied a nearby overpass sign.
Harry pressed forward and delivered another set of body blows which each shook the armor and pushed the mech off balance. The Mandarin was already using proper footwork to dispel the strength of the strikes and started matching Harry Blow for blow. If it wasn't for the relatively excessive level of collateral damage, Harry would want to keep up the fight to grind his Warrior Path, but that would be a tad bit selfish all things considered.
The fact that the Mandarin wasn't dead already was also a mystery. The only thing Harry could think of was that the Mandarin predicted Harry would use his blood for something and figured a way to protect himself. Technically there was no way to block the Kin Killing Curse if someone had your blood, but there was also no way to block the Killing Curse so that wasn't a possibility Harry could rule out.
European Wizards thinking that Muggles were ignorant of them was completely delusional. The Mandarin recognized Harry as a Wizard when he first saw him even though Harry wasn't using a wand. That kind of insight proved the Mandarin knew a lot about wizards.
The Mandarin shot a laser beam but Harry covered his hands in red energy and deflected it. Cyttorak's chosen was considered immune to magic because Red Energy was overbearing enough to protect the Juggernaut from spells. Harry already confirmed when he was protecting Pepper and Coulson that a Red Energy Shield could stop the magic of the Mandarin's rings. He couldn't reflect it back at the Mandarin but deflecting it away from him and others was doable.
Tony returned and maintained a distance from Khan and simply pelted him with repulsor fire. The Muon concussive force was strong enough to stagger the Mandarin which gave Harry the openings needed to deliver stronger strikes.
The Mandarin hadn't gone Intangible meaning the suit probably couldn't incorporate that power, but Harry was still keeping his senses open for that disintegration beam.
The Mandarin sped up and did a backflip and landed facing Tony, He fired an enormous wave of Sun Fire at Tony who shot up into the air to dodge. The sun fire wave tracked the flying Stark overhead and Harry launched himself forward once more, this time shining with golden lightning and giving onlookers the illusion of a raging dragon. Khan sped up again but this time Harry twisted in the air to prevent himself from getting grabbed and struck Khan with the force of a titanic battering ram. The Mecha Mandarin shot backwards with a massive foot shaped dent on the chest piece and skidded hundreds of feet back.
Stark landed next to Harry and said, "Got any ideas because I'm almost out of juice here."
Harry sighed, placed his hand on Stark's Arc reactor, and cast another Reparo while reversing the Palladium degradation.
Harry said, "Don't tell anyone I did that." He didn't want Shield to think he was anything but muscle, otherwise he'd be bothered too much.
Stark replied, "Okay, that works. Oh, he's coming back."
Harry also noticed the now rocket powered charge of the metal missile coming at him. Harry decided to trade damage and charged forward as well. Harry's glowing red arm covered in golden lighting struck the Mandarin's arm causing the latter to partially cave in. The Mandarin's form sped up however and twisted, changing the attack from a punch into a tackle by sacrificing an arm.
Harry was shot back through six blocks and seven full buildings. His only solace was that he hadn't hit anyone. Harry's arm was trashed but it recovered quickly, Harry's Health had in fact been reduced in that exchange by about 10%. Harry pulled out a Potion from his Inventory and gulped it down before returning outside and seeing Stark flying higher and higher and the Mecha Mandarin following him into the air using his rockets.
Harry called over his Speeder and followed the pair up. Khan shot concussive blasts and lasers at Stark but the latter was nimble and the attacks had become predictable enough to dodge at this point.
The air was getting thin and cold so Harry cast a few warming spells on himself to prevent any issues while he continued to follow them higher and higher.
Harry could guess what Stark was thinking, but it was too bad he was wrong. Khan's rings were Spaceship power sources. It became obvious from using his energy sense that Khan was using his Sun Fire Ring to maintain the heat of his suit to use it without difficulty.
Harry pulled out his Magic Gun Artifacts and shot a few rounds which exploded off the mech's armor.
Stark shouted, "You've been holding out on me!"
Harry rebutted, "These rounds are expensive." They were too. The 'gunpowder' was made with crushed magic gems and the bullets were made of ancient Jade which held the best spells.
Khan's speakers shouted back, "You want Cold! I'll give you Cold!"
From the Mecha Mandarin's non damaged hand came beam after beam of Absolute Zero energy.
Harry and Stark were getting better at predicting the shots, but the Mandarin was also getting better at using the suit.
Stark's suit shouted, "That's not good."
Harry looked where he was pointing and saw a pair of jets approaching at a few times the speed of sound. And they just fired their missiles.
Stark flew behind the Mandarin and Harry just stood still. The missile passed him by of course. His Speeder bike looked like something from Star wars, but it was a broom and didn't emit heat. Technically, Harry's use of Warming Charms in this frigid airspace should be hot enough to track, but Harry's heat signature was as invisible as every other energy signature from him and there was no way those missiles would be able to lock onto him.
All fired missiles struck the Mandarin with a massive explosion Harry had to expand the strength of his Red Energy shield to endure. From the smoke, a laser beam shot out and was followed by an Ice Beam. Both accurately struck the jets with the last removing one of the wings and the ice beam freezing the other jet.
The first jet pilot ejected out safely, but the iced Jet did not. Stark shouted, "I'll get that guy, you play with Magic Mike."
Harry shouted as Stark flew off, "Never Use That Reference Again! I Don't Need That Imagine in My Head!"
The Mandarin rocketed forward at Harry who nimbly rolled over to dodge. Trying to match acrobatics with Harry while he was on his Ultra Broom Prototype was not going to end well for the Mandarin.
Harry shot another round of exploding ammo at the Mandarin who fired off Lasers and Ice beams and Lightning and even the occasional close quarters sun fire. Harry figured the Mandarin's remaining undamaged Hand had those four rings and the Matter Rearranger Ring. His damaged hand was almost fixed though.
Tony returned and while flying close to Harry said, "I got an idea to take him down, but I need you to keep him still."
Harry said, "For how long?"
"Five seconds."
"No Problem."
Harry flew over Khan and jumped off his Speeder to land on Khan and stick himself to Khan's back. Without the Whirlwind ring and without something to smash his back against, this was a big weak spot for the mech.
Khan shouted, "Get off me!" and tried to twist back and forth, but Harry wasn't budging.
After a moment, Harry felt something and smiled.
Harry whispered, "Through these words I cast you back, seven rings top to bottom. Bind the magic cast it out, Finite Incantatem."
Seven rings, invisible to normal humans, formed around Harry and the Mandarin. This was the ultimate spell in Antimagic Harry had made but it would have no effect against the Mandarin's rings because they were closer to technology than Magic. However those rings were not the only magics the Mandarin wore.
"Obscurus! Now!"
Harry jumped off the Mandarin's back and landed onto the Speeder which had already aligned itself for Harry to land on.
Tony fired an extremely bright Unibeam at the Mecha Mandarin's ass.
A moment later, the rocket thrusters keeping the Mandarin in flight failed and it fell back to earth. The speakers on the suit turned on one last time as the Mandarin shouted, "Ahhhhhhhh!"
Harry shook his head. He didn't really feel schadenfreude and he knew that the Mandarin was not screaming because he was falling. He was screaming in pain because the Magic Amulet Harry sensed on him which had been holding back the Kin Killing Curse had been broken by Harry's Antimagic spell.
"A little help here?"
The lights on Tony's suit turned off and he started falling too. Harry flew over and caught him. Though the speakers weren't on, Harry still heard Tony say, "Can you recharge me again? I'd rather not ride back bitch."
Harry considered it and remembered that he hadn't taken his girls flying yet, so if Tony was the first person to fly on a broom with Harry, they would not be pleased.
Harry lifted Tony up and set his hand on the Arc Reactor and cast Reparo once more.
Tony started flying under his own power again and Harry asked, "How'd you think of that?"
"Well, since he didn't ice up, I needed another way to bring him down. His hand was healing slowly so I figured the damaged thrusters wouldn't fix themselves before he hit the ground.
*Ping*
[Quest Completed: Sword and Shield
Reward: Loyalty of the Mandarin's Rings]
Harry smiled and said, "Time to get a trophy."
Once thing Harry noticed when he time travelled during a quest was that he wouldn't get the reward until the second playthrough.
Harry flew down at speeds far faster than Tony's descent and found the crater where the Mandarin landed. For some reason, it just so happened to be in the very parking lot that past Harry and Co were watching the fight from.
The trio were slow to approach the fallen giant which seemed mostly intact. Harry actually figured that the suit was built with enough support to allow the occupant to survive such a fall, but the fall wasn't what killed him, it was the Kin Killing Curse.
Once Harry approached, he felt the Mandarin's Rings. Those were artifacts the Mandarin had synched to his very life force which was why he could use them despite not being a Sorcerer. Now Harry could feel them as they had been suddenly synchronized to his life force.
Harry jumped into the crater and met the look of Past Harry and could tell his prior self could feel it too.
Coulson asked, "Is he dead?"
Obscurus answered, "100% dead. You know he was in his late seventies right? Accidental falls kill the elderly all the time. Tragic really."
Harry's speeder flew down and he pulled a net from the thing and placed it on the ground. Without visible effort, he lifted the entire motionless mech and set it on the net before he wrapped it up and attached it to his speeder. Harry then got on the Speeder and used Telekinesis to lift the mech while his speeder rose, making it look like his frail flying bike was capable of lifting all that weight. Harry's weak psionics couldn't do anything to the mentally acute Mandarin while he was in the mech and the mech resisted anything he tried thanks to the active Matter Rearranger, but now that the thing was dormant, he could use Psionics on it as he pleased
Coulson suddenly realized what Harry was doing and shouted, "Mr. Obscurus, I'd like to take that suit into custody."
Tony arrived and Obscurus said, "I'm taking it as a hunting trophy in lieu of payment. With this, Harry doesn't need to pay me."
Coulson quickly added, "It was built by Stark International so it is his property."
Tony picked up on this and said, "Yeah, if it's a trophy, I should get my half too right?"
Harry said, "It's just like Gulmira Stark. How about this, let me have the whole thing and I'll owe you a few favors and come over for a drink."
Stark immediately replied, "Deal." He only replied for Coulson's sake. He recognized Obscurus's hint about Gulmira, when Tony asked Yinsen to hide his armor to prevent it from falling into the hands of others. Tony really didn't want that suit to fall into the wrong hands and having Obscurus take it meant the Agents couldn't ask him for it. Plus, if Obscurus owed Tony a few favors, he could just ask to examine the suit himself.
Coulson frowned at that.
Obscurus noticed this and asked, "What's your name?"
"Agent Phil Coulson," he answered.
"Well Agent Coulson, how about this. Let this one go and I'll agree to a meeting later. Neither this suit nor the powers within should be used by humans. I'm not being figurative either."
The Harry of the past who had been keeping quiet until now asked, "Corruption?" Now that he was linked with the rings, he realized the problem they had.
Obscurus nodded and said, "As bad as the One Ring. No one should wear them."
Harry realized that these things contained Dragonkin Lifeforce meaning they had of course been forged using the lives of extremely powerful Alien Dragonkin and a lot of treasures and precious materials. Harry was fine because Immortal Dragon trumped Dragonkin, but any other human who bound them would end up wicked, cruel, and hungry for power and be unable to see other humans as anything but insects.
Coulson gave a thoughtful look at the suit and said, "Alright."
Obscurus nodded back and lifted the suit into the air and flew off. He knew he was being tracked via satellite, so he accelerated into the air over the Pacific and simply kept getting faster and faster. After breaking the sound barrier multiple times over, Harry turned himself and his cargo invisible and slowed to a stop. He used some telekinesis to create a pocket of air in the water and flew into the pocket and submerged it. Once below the surface, he made a portal and took the suit through it to his basement before returning to his normal form and going upstairs.
He could immediately return and take over the place of his past self and do all those interviews with Shield. Instead, Harry sat on the couch and turned on the TV. A time Turner can go back five hours after all and he'd only woken up about three hours in the past. That meant he could let the Past Harry do all the boring stuff and replace him in an hour and a half once the boring interviews were over.
Was he throwing his past self under the bus? Sure, but he figured he'd forgive himself for it.
*Author's Note*
My original idea was to have Iron Monger and Mandarin team up against Harry and Stark, but that had a Lot of problems. I wanted Iron Man to fight the Mandarin to introduce Tony to magic, but the Mandarin would kick his ass and Stane wasn't a challenge for Harry making that unappealing to write.
Then I go and accidentally 'mostly kill' the Mandarin because I needed them to meet beforehand but I hate the troupe of the Hero not killing the Villain when he has a chance I have this terrible habit of writing myself into a corner like that. I figure if the Mandarin wasn't dead after that, he'd need to be on life support, but then I thought of that Goblin suit from the 2nd Spider Man 2 movie and the pieces fell together into this hodgepodge which somehow ended with me letting Harry fight using both the Professor style (which I had to make up) and Obscurus style which was unintentional because I didn't think I'd be able to do that, though that caused its own problems I had to resolve. Still had to figure out how the curse wouldn't kill him, but if the Mandarin knows about Wizards, he probably knows about blood magic and how to prevent it from being used if an enemy has his blood.
And for those complaining that Mecha Mandarin didn't have enough other weapons. Please justify it as either the Mandarin didn't want them or the suit wasn't finished. Even in cannon it was built in less than a week.
Achievement Unlocked: 400,000 Words Reached.
Bad News: My work schedule is changing for the next month so my release rate may slow down for a while. That's why this chapter is longer than normal, to Not have a cliffhanger when I'm not sure when the next chapter will come out.
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