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Bang. Bang. Bang.
Dozens of Iron Man suits threw themselves at the Extremis soldiers in a brawl that shook the entire deck.
Killian was everything his reputation promised. The strongest Extremis host alive, and it showed. His speed, his strength, his reaction time , all of it dwarfed every other soldier on that ship by a wide margin.
Tony's armor meant nothing to him. He tore through it like wet paper, suit after suit, and Tony could only stay in the fight by burning through his reserves and cycling to the next one.
He fired both repulsors dead center at Killian's chest. The blasts landed. Killian staggered. And then the Extremis virus knit the damage shut in seconds.
"It's useless, Tony Stark!" Killian's grin was all teeth. He cocked back his fist and drove it into Tony's chest.
Crack.
The chest plate buckled inward, superheated metal melting on contact. Sparks sprayed in every direction.
"Son of a ,"
Tony took the hit like a freight train and went airborne, crashing down hard on the deck behind him.
Across the chaos, Rhodey spotted his opening. He wove through the fighting and made it to Hermione's side, hand already extended.
"Come on, we have to move!"
He didn't know who she was. Didn't matter. She was a kid in the middle of a warzone.
Hermione didn't move.
A green light blinked beside her. The Extremis soldier at her flank dropped straight to the deck without a sound.
Rhodey stared. "...What."
"Keep it down."
Hermione frowned, faintly annoyed. Then she turned to look at Tony picking himself up from the deck and tilted her head, expression somewhere between amused and pitying.
"Your armor," she said. "It's not very impressive, is it. Paper mâché, basically."
She let that sit for a beat.
"Maybe drop the whole Iron Man thing. Go with Tin Foil Man. Or — even better — just scramble it entirely. Yotn Krast. Really commits to the image."
Tony nearly choked.
This little menace was seriously mocking him right now. In the middle of a battle. While he was bleeding.
He stared at her standing there completely relaxed, arms loose at her sides, and he had never in his life wanted to put someone in timeout more badly.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. , damage report."
"Sir, seven suits have been completely destroyed. Remaining suits have sustained partial damage and cannot sustain prolonged combat."
Tony's jaw tightened.
At this rate, the Iron Legion was going to be scrap metal before the hour was up.
He looked at Hermione.
He hated this.
"Stop watching and help."
Rhodey's head snapped around. He looked at Tony like he'd grown a second head.
Buddy. What did you just say.
He genuinely could not process it. Tony Stark, asking a teenage girl for backup, in the middle of his own fight, with his own army.
Then the next second erased every thought in his head.
"Whoosh ,"
Hermione rose off the deck. One smooth motion, no running start, just up. Her wand came around in a single easy arc.
The wind came from nowhere.
It built fast, faster than weather had any right to move, cycling and tightening until it wasn't wind anymore. It was a tornado. A real one, the kind that reaches from the deck all the way up and swallows the sky, roaring so loud the sound was a physical thing pressing against the chest.
The Extremis soldiers didn't have time to react. The funnel hit them and they were simply gone, yanked off their feet and pulled in.
The screaming started immediately.
Inside the vortex, the wind moved like razors. The soldiers' Extremis regeneration kicked in , and couldn't keep up. Flesh stripped away in layers. What went in as men came out as bone.
Rhodey could not make his mouth close.
Killian had gone completely still.
He stood there watching his soldiers come apart piece by piece, and for the first time since this whole plan began, something moved behind his eyes that looked very much like fear.
He'd miscalculated. Badly.
"You're not Tony's daughter."
His voice cracked on the last word.
He looked at her suspended up there in the eye of her own storm and it finally, finally clicked.
"A witch. You're the witch."
Crack. Crack.
The last of the soldiers dissolved.
"Impossible." Killian's voice had dropped to almost nothing. He'd built these soldiers. He knew what they could do, what the virus could heal through. "That's not — they should have ,"
He knew, even as he said it. The virus hadn't failed. Her magic had simply operated at a scale the virus couldn't answer. There was no upper limit he could find to push against.
The tornado fell apart. Hermione drifted back down to the deck, light as smoke, and landed without a sound.
Tony crossed the deck toward Killian. One punch, clean to the chest, while Killian was still staring. The man went down hard.
"It's over." Tony looked down at him. "I tried to tell you. Don't pick fights with teenage girls. Worst demographic. No reasoning with them, hair-trigger tempers, completely unhinged when provoked." He shrugged. "You had fair warning."
Killian dragged himself upright. His eyes had gone past anger into something uglier.
"You think you've won, Stark?" He pointed at Hermione. "Without her, you're a corpse. You know that."
Tony held his gaze and said nothing.
He knew. He just wasn't going to say it.
"Killian," he said instead, "don't try to dress this up. Extremis soldiers, no matter how many , my Iron Legion handles that. You never had a real shot."
"Sir." J.A.R.V.I.S. cut in. "Mark 42 is returning."
Tony looked up.
In the distance, the red-and-white suit came wobbling through the air trailing a stream of sparks, looking like it had been through a shredder and asked to do one more lap anyway.
Tony felt something warm and fond stir in his chest. Even battered, it still came back.
"There's my prodigal son," he murmured. He looked at Killian and let the smile show. "Watch closely."
He spread his arms wide and waited for the suit to come home.
Mark 42 reached him, overshot the landing by six inches, and fell straight down onto the deck in a shower of loose components.
...
Tony stood there with his arms still out.
Hermione looked at the pile of parts.
Rhodey looked at the pile of parts.
Killian looked at the pile of parts.
Nobody said anything for a full second.
The anti-Tony armor, Hermione thought. Living up to the title.
She raised one fist in an encouraging little pump.
"You've got this!" she said cheerfully, and turned to walk away.
"Wait , Hermione, stop ," Tony's voice jumped an entire register. "Don't , I was joking. Everything I said, complete nonsense, forget all of it ,"
He'd felt Killian hit him. He knew what a fresh Mark 42 was worth right now, which was nothing. If she left, this was over in the worst possible way.
Hermione stopped.
She turned around slowly.
"Beg me."
Tony's expression cycled through several things.
"Bye-bye."
She turned again.
"Okay , okay, wait." He got there. He pressed both palms together. "I'm begging you. Please. Just deal with him. Please."
Hermione looked at him for a moment.
Then she nodded.
"Better."
She walked over to Killian and looked down at him with something approaching clinical interest.
"Last words?"
Killian had nothing left. He could feel it. Against whatever she was, the fight had gone out of him completely before he'd ever had a chance to throw it.
He looked past her at Tony.
"I didn't lose to you," he said, each word bitten off. "I lost to luck."
You really are unlucky, Hermione thought privately.
In the original story, he'd lost because of a reckless choice , injecting Pepper with the Extremis virus. Here, he'd lost because of how warmly Pepper treated Hermione. A misjudgment that started the whole chain.
Either way, the thread led back to the same person.
Huh. Looked at that way , Pepper was his actual nemesis. Had been all along.
➤ Next: Another Year of Quidditch
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