Tony had started again, the storytelling of demolishing three of the four helicopters for the third time.
The number had remained four throughout the account, and Tony somehow looked decisive that he could have taken the fourth as well if the opportunity arose.
What changed was the amount of the attack that Tony had apparently defeated through engineering, nerve, and personal magnetism; anyone else would have panicked, but not the great Iron Man.
Lucius listened from beside Harley's workbench with his arms folded.
Tony stood over Mark 42 and used a scorched gauntlet to illustrate the helicopters' approach, as if the boy who owned the shed had also supplied a scale model of Malibu.
"The first one came in low. Tactical mistake. The second one committed to the same line because apparently, coordinated murder doesn't include an imagination budget. I downed them both."
Harley tightened a screw in a salvaged brace and looked up. "You told me the suit got Pepper out."
"It did. I designed the suit, so every rescue performed by the suit remains my rescue. That's basic intellectual property."
"And Maya Hansen?"
Tony pointed the gauntlet at him. "Also rescued. Efficiently, heroically, and while my house was falling into the ocean. Keep up, brat."
Beneath the performance, the Mark 42 had got Pepper and Hansen clear while Tony downed three of the four attacking choppers and escaped in armour already coming apart around him.
The last helicopter had helped turn the mansion into expensive coastal debris.
It was still impressive. Lucius refused to encourage him by admitting that.
"Then the flight system failed over Rose Hill." Tony moved the scorched plate through a steep descent. "Not my fault. Damage accumulation. I converted an uncontrolled impact into a survivable landing."
Harley rested both hands on the bench. "You made a hole in the ground."
"A controlled hole."
"You were stuck in it."
"Temporarily positioned below grade."
Lucius understood why Tony liked the boy.
Harley treated the billionaire's dignity as raw material and wasted none of it. A true gem waiting to be polished. Not like some Iron Hearted thief with bitch complex.
Tony tapped the scorched boot against the bench. "After the landing, I pulled myself out, recovered the armour, and dragged all that uncooperative engineering until I found this shed. Then one of the men in town tried much too hard to look ordinary. I watched him, followed his group without giving them a target, and found the place where the Mandarin story was being manufactured."
Harley tilted his head. "You left out the part where your armour didn't work."
"That was included under uncooperative engineering."
The Mandarin was Trevor Slattery, an addicted actor dressed in borrowed menace.
The face was false. The murders behind it were not, and Aldrich Killian remained at the centre of them.
Tony managed to make the discovery sound like a personal victory over international terrorism, bad theatre, and substance abuse at the same time.
"He had the voice, the robes, the cameras, and no operational knowledge of his own operation. I have met product spokesmen with more involvement in the product, and I once employed an entire marketing division."
Lucius let the words pass him. The useful part of Tony's account had ended several minutes ago. Tony was alive and had earned a modest opportunity to boast.
He had not earned an unlimited one.
Tony kept talking while Lucius rose a few inches from the floor and drifted sideways through the cramped shed.
Floating required less effort than walking around the tools, suit components, and two people who had arranged themselves with no respect for a man of his dimensions. Harley tracked him with the same expression he might have given a tool being used incorrectly.
Lucius reached the Mark 42.
Damage had spread through every layer. Impact had warped the outer plates, torn actuator housings loose, and broken connections across the control mesh.
Harley and Tony had already stabilised the worst sections with the limited equipment in the shed. Their repairs were clever, particularly the boy's substitutions, but cleverness did not create missing material or restore circuits burned out in flight.
Lucius placed a finger against the breastplate.
Phastos's gift opened the machine to him. The armour ceased to be a collection of damaged parts and became a complete design with every fault marked by its own interruption.
His technopathy followed the dead connections. Telekinesis lifted the separated plates from the bench and held them in their intended positions without a single edge touching.
Tony's account slowed.
Lucius drew warped metal straight. Cracks closed under controlled pressure.
Matter transmutation restored material where the attack and crash had stripped it away, while threads of cosmic energy rebuilt the smallest ruined paths inside the armour. He did not replace Tony's engineering with his own. That would have invited an argument lasting through the next invasion. He restored what Tony had built and left every deliberate choice intact.
The left boot sealed first.
Harley put down his screwdriver.
One by one, the gauntlets flexed in the air. Their finger joints aligned, tested their range, and locked.
The damaged faceplate smoothed beneath Lucius's thumb. Scorching vanished only where it concealed a fracture, because the remaining marks did not prevent the armour from working, and Tony deserved a visible reminder that challenging televised terrorists had maintenance costs.
The pieces came together around a space. Connections seated as actuators answered, and the arc of status lights travelled from the boots to the helmet before settling into a steady glow.
The restored Mark 42 lowered itself onto the floor.
Tony had stopped speaking.
Lucius turned away from the armour and examined him. Bruising darkened Tony's face and continued beneath his shirt. Small cuts crossed one temple and both hands. None of it threatened his life, but pain had been collecting interest while he worked.
Lucius raised one hand.
Biokinesis passed through Tony in a sweep. Torn tissue joined as swelling receded, and blood trapped beneath the skin broke down and cleared. Tony's posture changed when the ache left his ribs, although he tried to disguise the relief by standing straighter and looking offended.
Lucius removed his hand and found both Tony and Harley staring at him.
Gratitude was about to become awkward. He rescued them all.
"If you intend to thank me for repairing your battered body, your battered face, and your even more battered armour, begin by looking at yachts. I expect taste, discretion, and enough deck space to make senators feel poor."
Tony's right fist came towards Lucius's mouth.
Lucius teleported once and appeared at the other end of the shed. The punch crossed empty air. A hanging wrench swung from the disturbance, and Tony turned with the steady care of a man revising several friendly decisions.
Lucius placed a palm over his chest. "Look at you. This aggression is getting out of hand. My delicate psyche cannot survive such hardship. What is it this time? I did not even scam you on this occasion."
Tony pointed at him. "You serial defiler of fruits, you could do all of that while standing around, and you let me spend days dragging, wiring, soldering, freezing, and being corrected and rescued by a child. A smart child, yes, but still a child."
"You needed character development."
"I passed that period of my childhood," Tony retorted. "Unlike some people who sell shady potions."
"Are there any other shady people selling potions other than me?" Lucius asked genuinely. When Tony gave him a deadpan stare, he cleared his throat and dismissed the accusation.
"If I had arrived earlier, you would have missed valuable time in Rose Hill. You found a shed, acquired a small engineer, and learned humility. Most men require years for that kind of growth."
Harley glanced between them. "He didn't learn humility."
"The treatment may require another session."
Tony's finger remained fixed on Lucius. "You could have saved me a mountain of trouble."
Lucius studied the accusation and found concern hiding beneath it. Tony was furious because Lucius could have solved the practical problem. He was more furious because the late arrival had forced him to wonder whether help was coming at all.
That part deserved an answer. Lucius had never developed a comfortable one, so he chose cruelty with comic timing.
"Tony, I understand that you are under stress. Your poor little mansion was reduced to coastal gravel. Pepper may have stopped giving you a hand. She is also taller than you, which must become difficult during formal photographs or some positions..." Tony cut him motioning to the kid with his eyes.
Harley, though, tilted his head a bit and asked. "What are the positions for Mr Fruit Defiler?"
"This gentleman will explain to you about them all in details copper boy."
Tony blinked. The kid did not get it for a moment, then raised his eyebrows.
"I'll be steel man, not copper." Lucius ignored the boy and turned to Tony to continue.
"None of these tragedies excuses abusing the friend who crossed several states to improve your afternoon."
Tony's pointing hand stalled.
His mouth opened. He looked prepared to dispute the mansion, the hand, the height, and possibly the definition of friendship in one uninterrupted response.
Lucius lifted a finger before he could begin.
"On top of those lovely reasons, I am not a stable person. I get offended very quickly."
The Mark 42 rose behind Tony.
He turned at the change in weight on the floor. Harley stepped back from the workbench as the armour floated over Tony's shoulder and crossed the shed towards Lucius. Every restored joint remained locked in perfect alignment until Lucius closed his raised hand.
The armour folded inward.
Its shoulders struck its breastplate. The legs wrapped around the collapsing torso, and the helmet vanished between them. Plates buckled with a series of hard reports. Lucius kept the pressure contained so no fragment escaped towards Harley or the tools. The standing suit became a dense, uneven mass, then a compact metal ball small enough to fit between his hands.
He opened his fingers.
The ball dropped into his waiting palm. Its weight drove his hand down less than an inch.
Tony watched the object that had been his only working armour.
Lucius held it up beside his face. "Not only am I prone to militant reactions, but my physical prowess is also extreme."
He closed his bare hand.
Metal groaned against his fingers. The sphere compressed again, losing another third of its size as his grip forced out the last empty spaces. One sharp edge pressed against his skin and flattened before it could cut him.
Harley's eyes moved from the crushed armour to Lucius's hand. He did not look impressed. He looked as though he had discovered a new reason not to lend Lucius anything.
Tony swallowed. His raised fist opened, and both hands settled where Lucius could see them.
That was better. Friendship relied upon mutual respect, and fear remained one of the more dependable forms.
Lucius smiled. "Lucky for you, my dearest friend, I am also a very good friend. I generally forget small misgivings."
He set the compressed sphere in the air.
This time, he made them watch every stage.
The sphere loosened. One crease lifted from its surface, then another, as though the metal were rejecting what Lucius's hand had done. Plates separated from the solid mass and travelled outwards. The helmet emerged flattened between them, recovered its depth, and opened its faceplate before Tony for one deliberate second.
Tony looked into the empty eye slits.
"I dislike you on an engineering level."
"You disguised jealousy as dislike."
The faceplate turned away from him.
The rest did not follow the orderly sequence of an assembly line. A shoulder opened from the ball while both boots regained their shape above it. Empty housings filled as fused mechanisms divided and returned to the places Tony had assigned them. The compressed weight expanded into a complete frame around empty air, with Harley's brace still fitted where the boy had left it.
The Mark 42 settled onto its feet for the second time.
Its eyes lit. Both palms charged for half a second, safely aimed at the floor, and powered down. The armour opened its faceplate, ran a complete movement check, and closed it again.
Tony crossed the shed and placed one hand on the breastplate. His gaze moved through diagnostics only he could see. He tested the right gauntlet, then the left shoulder, searching for the error that would let him dismiss what had happened as a trick.
He found none.
"Full control response, stable power and flight surfaces are reporting green, sir." Came Jarvis's voice.
Tony looked over the armour at Lucius. "You crushed it twice."
"And repaired it twice. You are focusing on the negative because of your height-related insecurity."
Harley approached the suit and inspected the brace he had built. Lucius had restored it along with the original assembly instead of erasing the boy's work. Harley noticed. His fingers traced the clean connection, and his expression eased by a degree.
"Why crush it if you were going to fix it?"
Lucius lowered himself until his shoes touched the floor. "Education. Tony learns best when tuition is expensive."
"That was my armour."
"Exactly."
The repaired suit had changed the room. Tony was no longer stranded, and the people behind the false Mandarin no longer had the safety of believing he lacked armour. His attention had already shifted from repairs to the next decision, now that pain had stopped competing with it.
Tony touched the helmet. "I need a secure connection to Pepper before we move. No public signal, no announcement, and nothing AIM can trace. If Killian still thinks I'm dead, I want him to keep enjoying the mistake."
That explained the silence. Tony had returned to Rose Hill without exposing his survival after following the trail to Slattery. Calling Pepper through an ordinary channel would have warned Killian at the same time.
Lucius could provide a safer route. He considered offering it immediately, then remembered Tony's attempted punch.
Consequences mattered.
Lucius looked around the little shed. "Boy, do you have beer?"
Tony stared at him.
Harley shook his head.