Tony was bent over the half-ruined shell of Mark 42 when the air in Harley Keener's shed bent sideways for half a second, and Lucius Noctis stepped out of nothing as though Tennessee had always intended to accommodate teleportation.
Harley jumped so hard he nearly cracked his head on the hanging shelf behind him. The potato gun came up at once, held in both hands with all the fierce seriousness only a clever child and a deeply unserious weapon could manage.
Tony did not flinch.
His face was still bruised from Malibu, his nerves were dragged thin by sleep deprivation, fake terrorists, real explosions, and the slow humiliation of needing to borrow workshop space from a kid with better practical judgement than half the Senate. At this point, surprise had become an expensive hobby he could no longer afford.
So he looked at Lucius, brought his hands together in a slow, unimpressed clap, and let the sound die in the little shed among cold tools, motor oil, and bent suit parts.
"Such a friend you are," Tony said. "I challenge a terrorist, lose my house, get shot at, crash in Tennessee, discover the face of international terror is a chemically relaxed actor in drapes, and now you decide to visit."
Harley's eyes moved between them.
"You know this guy?"
Tony did not take his gaze off Lucius.
"Unfortunately."
Lucius raised one finger with the solemn air of a man about to improve civilisation.
"As the smartest person in the room," he began.
Harley's brow furrowed.
Tony stopped clapping.
Lucius inclined his head once.
"I shall return in a moment."
Then he vanished.
The shed went still, and Harley lowered the potato gun a fraction.
"That was weird, right?"
Tony dragged a rag over one gauntlet plate and spoke without hurry.
"Kid, at this point weird is just a unit of measurement."
Harley kept staring at the empty patch of air where Lucius had stood.
"Does he always do that?"
"Yes."
"Does he always leave in the middle of an argument?"
"Yes."
"Does he always talk like he owns every room?"
Tony gave the boy a flat look.
"Yes."
Three states away and roughly 656 feet under Alkali Lake, Lucius reappeared in his bunker with the expression of a man briefly inconvenienced by friendship.
His private army's nearest soldier snapped to attention before the teleportation ripple had even fully faded. The man stood in telepathic obedience with his rifle strapped, boots planted, face empty of everything except the parts Lucius had left useful.
Lucius looked him over once, decided he was stupid enough for the task, and crooked a finger.
"You," he said.
The soldier stepped forward at once.
"Sir."
Lucius gestured lazily.
"You are now taking part in a performance. Whatever I tell you, you will go along with it. Do not improvise or think. Do not become ambitious. These are all activities beyond your station."
The soldier started a salute.
Lucius caught him halfway through it, seized him by the shoulder, and teleported them both back to Tennessee.
They reappeared in the shed with enough force to rattle a tray of bolts off the bench.
Harley jumped again. Tony did not. That was partly resilience and partly the kind of fatigue that made astonishment feel like unpaid labour.
Lucius arrived with one hand already raised theatrically.
"Oh no," he announced. "I have been kidnapped and taken hostage."
Then he turned his head and gave the soldier a wink so aggressive it almost counted as semaphore.
The soldier, who had been mentally conditioned into near-perfect obedience but not elegance, responded first with a full barked salute.
"Sir, yes, sir."
Tony closed his eyes.
Lucius's smile faltered.
The soldier corrected as best he could, swung the rifle up at Lucius's chest, and stiffened into position.
"You are a hostage, sir," he declared. "Please refrain from escape attempts and unnecessary movements."
Harley looked at Tony.
"Is this supposed to be happening?"
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose.
"No. That's what makes it worse."
Lucius dropped to one knee with both hands moving behind his back in a painfully unconvincing imitation of restraint.
"Ah," he cried, looking at Tony with all the grace of a drunk theatre major. "I have been struck in the back."
The soldier glanced down at the rifle, then back at Lucius, uncertain.
Lucius widened his eyes and flicked his gaze meaningfully towards the weapon.
The soldier still did not understand.
Lucius clutched his own side and pitched the performance harder.
"Oh, agony, such brutality. Such unlawful captivity."
Understanding dawned slowly across the soldier's face.
"Oh."
He aimed at Lucius's back and fired.
The gunshot tore through the shed so hard that Harley flinched, and Tony's jaw locked at once.
Lucius jerked forward.
For one instant, he looked more offended than hurt, which was correct in spirit if not biology.
Tony moved without thinking, one hand catching Harley by the shoulder and dragging the boy behind him.
The child swore, 'Holy fuck.' Tennessee had not neglected its education.
Lucius started to rise.
The wound in his back was already knitting, muscle drawing closed under the torn fabric while the bullet dropped wetly to the floor.
The soldier saw him moving and, to his terrible credit, assumed the appropriate response was further commitment.
He fired again, then again, and then again.
The rifle cracked through the cramped shed in a vicious rhythm. Brass hit the floorboards. Harley twisted under Tony's arm, trying to look despite Tony's hand now over one ear and the other shoulder, forcing him down behind the bench.
"Do not," Tony snapped.
"I want to see."
"No, you really don't."
Lucius, meanwhile, had gone from theatrical victim to incandescently furious in less than a heartbeat. The first bullet had been survivable. The second had been irritating. By the fourth, the performance had ceased to amuse him.
He turned with superhuman speed, but the idiot hit him once more in the side on the way round. Regeneration closed it almost immediately, which did nothing whatsoever for Lucius's mood.
"You dumbfuck," he shouted, lunging forward.
He caught the soldier by the throat one-handed and hauled him off the floor as though he weighed nothing. The man's boots kicked once.
"I told you to play along," Lucius snarled. "Not to reenact an execution."
The soldier made a strangled sound and dropped the rifle, trying to salute again. Lucius spun and slammed him into the ground hard enough to crack one of the planks under him. He was drawing his foot back for a kick that probably would have reduced the man's ribs to loose geometry when Tony cleared his throat.
Lucius froze.
He turned around in less than a blink. The anger disappeared so fast it would have been impressive if Tony had not known by now that Lucius's face was capable of criminal acts without needing witnesses.
By the time he fully faced them again, he was smiling brightly and warmly, like a liar who had never been challenged by reality in his life.
"Tony," he said, tone full of wounded innocence, "you would not believe what has happened to me, my dearest and closest friend."
Tony stared while Harley peeked around his elbow and stared harder.
Lucius gestured towards the soldier, who was currently concussed, winded, and trying to remember whether he had ever had a pleasant childhood.
"This evil man kidnapped me. That is why I was unable to come to you earlier." Lucius looked back at Tony and spread his hands as if unveiling a settled legal matter. "You can ask him if you doubt me."
On the floor, the soldier made a groan that could generously be interpreted as agreement by anyone deeply invested in lying.
Tony let a long silence build.
Then he looked at Lucius the way men looked at architectural failures they had once mistaken for style.
At some point, and Tony could not now identify when, he had allowed a blatantly self-serving mutant sociopath with the acting instincts of a kicked peacock to become his best friend.
It was not one of his better decisions.
Harley was the first to break.
"That," the boy said, pointing at Lucius, "is the worst hostage story I've ever seen, but the shooting effects were good."
Lucius turned to him with mild surprise.
"You are very young to have such standards."
"I've seen better lying from dogs."
Tony let out one tired breath through his nose that nearly became a laugh out of sheer exhaustion.
Lucius placed one hand to his chest.
"The cruelty in this shed is astonishing."
"The cruelty," Tony said, stepping away from Harley now that bullets had apparently stopped for the moment, "is that you thought any of that would work."
Lucius frowned at him.
"It nearly did."
"No."
"Emotionally, perhaps."
"No."
Harley pointed at the soldier on the floor.
"Is he dead?"
Lucius glanced down.
"No. Merely disappointing."
The soldier groaned again.
Tony looked from the rifle on the floor to the bullet holes in Lucius's clothes, to the not-bleeding body those clothes were still wrapped around, and then back to Lucius.
"You know," Tony said, "most people apologise when they arrive late. They don't stage amateur kidnapping theatre and get shot five times in a child's shed."
Lucius sniffed.
"I did not wish to be ordinary."
Harley folded his arms.
"You weren't in danger of that."
That one landed. Tony actually smiled.
Lucius, seeing himself outnumbered by low breeding and sarcasm, decided to retake the field through dignity.
It did not suit him, but he tried anyway.
He reached with telekinesis and hauled the soldier upright, and held him there until the man's eyes managed to focus on the room again.
"You," Lucius said very quietly, which for him meant the danger had become more personal. "When I require acting, I do not require enthusiasm with firearms. Nod if you understand."
The soldier nodded once.
"Good. You may return to the bunker and think ashamed thoughts."
He teleported the man away without ceremony.
The shed settled into silence again, except for the wind outside and the faint click of cooling metal from the half-repaired suit.
Tony looked at the space where the soldier had vanished.
Then he looked at Lucius, at the bullet holes in Lucius's shirt, and back again.
"I want to be very clear," Tony said. "If this is your version of checking on a friend, your friendship package needs a warning label."
Lucius brushed nonexistent dust off his sleeve.
"My dear Tony, I came all this way to see whether you were alive, competent, and still worth speaking to. That is devotion in its purest form."
"You brought a gunman."
"I brought a narrative."
Harley gave Tony a look.
"I like him less now."
Tony folded his arms.
"That's because you are smart."
Lucius surveyed the shed, the damaged suit, the improvised tools, Harley's potato gun, and Tony's face, which still looked like Malibu had attempted sculpture with explosives.
For all his lateness, the sight was satisfying, with Tony alive, the armour in pieces, a clever child already judging him, and a fake prophet waiting to be unmasked. Yes, the afternoon had improved.
Lucius smiled, properly this time, which on him still looked dangerous.
"Well then," he said. "Explain what idiocy you have uncovered so far, and do try to keep up. I paused some important ...things to be here."