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Flashback:
"So what you think?" Jean asked, looking over where Dani was standing.
Danielle looked at the image in front of her, cocking her head to one side thoughtfully. The image Jean was showing Dani was the design for a suit for her. The two of them had been working on it for the past few hours and it was almost complete.
On the feet of the image was the final version of the hover boots. They were more like skimmer boots then hover really, when activated they only hovered about an inch off the ground, and they could be turned off easily with a twitch button set into the gloves of the uniform.
On the back of them were small ventral thrusters, taken from what had been some kind of large-scale delivery truck of some sort in Mojoworld, then scaled down. They couldn't push out much thrust, but they were extremely energy-efficient, and they worked on principles very much like the hover technology, simply pushing one way then another. They again had been connected to twitch sensors, though both systems took a lot of getting used to if the user wanted to move smoothly. Luckily the team had begun to train in it already, though only Dani had opted to have the boots incorporated into their combat suits.
The rest of the design was comprised of a skintight bodysuit made of green and brown streaks, with dark red here and there the color of fresh clay. On the backs of both gloves were etched the summoning array that Harry had shown Jean and Kitty. On the belt was the small bag of holding, which Dani would have to fill up beyond the base model. Over the skintight uniform was a piece of shaped body armor that left the shoulders bare.
On the back of the image was a folded down bow. That had been Harry's contribution. Dani had asked to if it was possible for her to use a bow in combat rather than a rifle, being more at home with them despite her ability to beat Nikolai three out of five times with them.
Harry had risen to the challenge, remembering how deadly bows in the hands of centaurs back home had proven a time or two. He had taken a modern bow, reinforced the steel magically, and then etched runes into it, using several arrays he had learned from Dr. Strange's library. The end result was the bow could fire arrows at nearly the speed of the sniper rifle if the user willed it.
The design was finished by a half mask, which left Dani's mouth, nose and ears free but covered her eyes and the rest of her head, finishing with a mane going down the back to protect her hair, the outside of which was etched to look like a cascade of feathers. The eyepieces were slanted and made of some kind of yellow crystal, giving the image an almost bird of prey appearance. All of the suit was done in dark green and brown, with the only flash of lighter colors being the eyes and the feathers, which were enameled dark red interspersed with a few yellow feathers here and there.
"I like it." Danielle said, smiling widely. "I like it a lot."
End flashback
The team was coming along very well, with Danielle integrating smoothly into their ranks and surprisingly taking up a position of leadership. Piotr, to Harry's surprise had no issues with that, but was not shy with his own suggestions, and sat on her hard when Dani's enthusiasm got ahead of her in tactical combat scenarios. Dani also didn't have an issue that Harry had noticed in the others, one that he addressed in no uncertain terms after one team session.
He made that session particularly brutal, hoping to drive home the message in no uncertain terms. After which, Harry squatted down in front of the younger team members, all of whom were bruised, battered and charred around the edges. This session had pitted the rest of the team, minus Ororo who was still training with Gaia against him and Jean, and Harry had specifically told her to not be gentle. To compensate, he had allowed the team to set up traps in advance, something that allowed them to come up with a decent plan.
A row of sudden explosions set into the ground separated the two of them, isolating Harry using Paige and Piotr from Jean while they concentrated their long range fire on Jean. But her telekinesis had been up to the task, rendering their sniper abilities useless even when Nikolai attempted to use the emergency heavy shot array on his sniper rifle. That had almost worked, it had knocked Jean out of the sky anyway, but her telekinetic shield and taken the brunt of it allowing her to keep going.
When she landed Jean and Amara began a ferocious duel, with Nikolai and Dani both relegated to trying to snipe at flame-haired telekinetic from afar. This ended when they were slammed to the ground by the thrown bodies of Paige and Piotr.
The two of them had fought very well, keeping in close and targeting Harry's hands with sharp stinging slaps. Piotr had noticed Harry tended to use his hands to aim his spells, and knocking them away forced his spells to go wide or simply fizzle out. But Harry's Magia Erebea allowed him to fight both of the metal clad mutants on an even footing, and when he poured more power into it he was able to knock them both out in short order.
Now with Shiang Chi standing to one side, waiting for Harry to delve out healing potions, but Harry didn't seem in any tearing rush to do so. When he spoke his voice was soft, yet it grabbed all of their attention easily as he stared hard into their eyes, one after that another. "I noticed something in these past few exercises that worried me a little, something that was there in the memories of our fight in Mojoworld. You all seem to have begun falling into problem based on ego and false confidence: none of you are dodging enough."
At their quizzical expressions Harry elaborated. "All of you assumed at several different yet distinct points during the last few exercises that your armor will stop anything that hits you when you could have instead dodged the various attacks, despite evidence to the contrary. You also all seem to be taking magical healing for granted. Those… Suits… Do… Not… Make… You… Invulnerable… And… Healing… Cannot… Bring… You… Back… From… Death." Each word in that sentence came out like hammered steel.
Harry let those word filter in, watching the faces in front of him closely until he knew they all understood his message before going on. "Understand me, I have buried friends far too often in the past. I have held the bodies of my friends as they died, breathing out their last after fighting what we all considered the good fight. I will not have the same happen here due to overconfidence. Do you all understand? This is not a game, there is no do over, an intelligent opponent allow you time to retreat so you can be healed, and we already have ample proof that even Orihalcum armor can be bypassed."
All of the teams nodded soberly, understanding his point. "Good." Harry said clapping his hands together harshly. "So from now on, we're going to have two team exercises a day that doesn't include you wearing body armor. We'll still train with it in small groups, but for this and for hand-to-hand combat I want all of you to start remembering that you are still vulnerable."
He looked over at Jean. "That goes for you too, and me. I'm going to step up my martial arts training, because it is an area where I am severely lacking, and I won't use my Magia Erebea. You'll have to do the same, without your telekinetic powers."
"Just in case we run into someone who can negate them." Jean said nodding her head seriously. "I understand, and I agree. I nearly fell into the pit of overconfidence once, I'm not going to do it again. What about Ororo?"
Harry waved one hand and ambivalently before looking over at Shiang Chi and shrugged. "She's better with a knife than I am." He admitted, "And she's taken to further martial arts instruction like a duck to water. She doesn't seem to have fallen into the same mental issue as all of you, and I assume that her battle with the six armed woman she mentioned from your last little adventure will have helped her retain her sense of mortality."
"Still, I'll inform her of the change in training regimen, and see what she thinks. For now though, all of you take off your armor, and then I'll start healing you but I won't be doing this after our out next exercises, so get that through your heads now."
OOOOOOO
The next day after that 'intervention' Harry was floating in midair across from the windows of Tony Stark's mansion in Honolulu. The man inside was apparently working on something, a design for a building of some sort from what Harry could see. Tony evidently had the same hard light systems that Jean had installed in the castle, since he was doing so while sitting on a rather nice-looking sofa and manipulating the image with his hands.
Harry waited until Tony set the glass he was drinking from down before knocking on the window. That slight sound made the man start in surprise, as he looked over to where the sound had come from. His eyes widened in surprise to see someone outside. The man outside waved. Tony automatically waved back a little uncertainly, then shook himself and stood up.
After checking with his security on one wall Tony moved towards the man, opening the nearest door to his patio. "Since you're knocking I assume you're not some kind of assassin, though I would pay good money to know how you got this close without my security spotting you."
"Trade secret Mr. Stark." Harry replied blandly, lifting up his hands to push back the hood that had been covering his head, part of his invisibility cloak, with had worn thrown over his shoulders and back. "And you should've been expecting me in any event. Our mutual acquaintance Mr. Weatherby told you to expect me. He told me you have a medical issue you need some input on? I'm Guardian by the way. May I come in?"
"Damn, is it that time already?" Tony muttered looking over at the clock and seeing that yes it was indeed two in the afternoon local time. Damn, er, well come in anyway." He closed the door after Harry entered, rubbing his hands together as he smirked. "So, is this going to be really high level technology, or something like magic?"
Harry's eyebrows rose in surprise, and he smirked at the other man. "Magic, I would assume that someone with your background would scoff at such."
"Well." Tony said slowly, as if he speaking to a simpleton. "You did pass on a little message written on normal seeming paper that couldn't be destroyed, and somehow made noises until I began to read it. By the way, I will get you back for that clang, clang crap."
"It could have been much worse, Tony." Harry replied blandly though his eyes glinted in in humor. "I could have made that last all day rather than a few minutes until you actually looked at the paper. But it's a major jump from that to believing in magic."
"Hah, but you're not denying it are you?" Tony smirked back. "But no, I had a bit of an adventure over in Asia a few weeks ago. I fought a man named the Mandarin there. He used these rings of power, each of them had a different spell on them that created a different effect. It was a tough fight, and it convinced me that this magic stuff existed, which neatly gave me a reason behind that piece of paper of yours, though I doubt the Mandarin could've done something like that."
"If he gets his power from rings or magical items, no, he wouldn't." Harry frowned wondering if he should make time to look up the man, or at the very least tell Steven about it. It wasn't the Sorcerer Supreme's job to monitor other magic users so long as they didn't threaten the earth (or the universe) as a whole, but still, Steven could know something about the times and how to shut them down if they really were magic. "Were you able to take him into custody, or at least turn him over to the local authorities?"
"No." Tony said snarled crossly. "Turns out he was the authority in the area. I was there to retrieve a few Stark Enterprise employees. The Chinese government is in the process of shutting down my holdings in their country, trying to nationalize them in a blatant power grab. Frankly I had simply decided to let them get on with it. It wasn't as if they were making much of a profit in any event, I was never so idiotic to let Stark weapons be built anywhere but in America. But I wanted to get my workers out of there, the American ones at least."
He shook his head irritably. "Of course a lot of the local workers are simply going to stay on, but that's their prerogative. What I objected to was the Mandarin taking hostages, and demanding I turn over some of our weapons designs to him. But when I beat him, well it turned out the Chinese government was working with him and vice versa. He apparently helps them deal with the Tongs and other criminal elements in return for ruling the area like his personal fiefdom."
Harry made a note of that, then sat down across from Tony. "I almost certainly will have to look him up at some point then, unless he's content to simply stay home. I have more than enough on my plate as is."
"So how do we do this?" Tony asked clapping his hands together.
"You haven't told me what your problem is yet." Harry replied with a laugh.
Tony frowned, almost pouting, though the amused light in his eyes gave that the lie. "Can't you just wave your hands and make me be cured?"
"No magic doesn't work like that, I need to know the specifics to know how to tailor my spells." Ororo didn't he knew, but she was busy, and Harry wanted to keep her healing powers a secret as long as possible. Ororo was a literal miracle worker, something Harry refused to let get out into the open.
"Now hold on now, I know George vouched for you, but I don't know you from a hole in the ground, Mister. You're going to have to tell me something about you before I trust you." Tony protested.
"I'd remind you you're the one who needs my help, Stark." Harry said, though there was no bite to his voice. Indeed, he was smiling faintly.
"And you were the one who needed that stockpile of weapons I passed on to you. So, spill." Tony grinned back.
Harry sighed dramatically, then shrugged. "I won't tell you everything, but my own history goes like this…" So saying, Harry went into his background a bit, how he had come from another dimension which had a somewhat different brand of magic, how he had met the Fantastic Four and come to this dimension. He gave an account of the war against Voldemort, and his role in it, never touching on Charles, the X-men, or his current dreams and resources.
During this recitation, Tony studied Guardian intensely, searching for lies or tells. Tony was an expert in reading faces and body language, but even he could not see any connection between Weatherby and Guardian.
Other than hair color there was nothing whatsoever to connect Harry to George Frederick Weatherby. For some reason Harry's hair refused to be cut or change its color no matter what spells or other means he tried to use on it. Still, enough people had similar hair that it wasn't important. Their accents were different, their voices were noticeably different and there was no condescension or snarky attitude in Guardian's expression.
George's eyes were blue, and he was at least ten, possibly twenty years older than 'Guardian' seemed to be. Furthermore George had a few scars on his hands, and one small one right below the right eye that eyes it Guardian did not. Indeed the only scar that Tony could see at present was the one on his guest's forehead, which looked more like a tattoo than anything else, while Guardian's eyes were bright emerald green.
George was also a heavier and taller than Guardian wider in the shoulders and about a foot taller and height than Harry. Harry was somewhat tall, but George was taller by at least a few inches, and had wider shoulders, seemingly built for strength rather than speed like Guardian.
And while George seemed able to blend into the background, his whole presence able to become unassuming, Tony doubted Guardian could do the same. Those emerald eyes for one stood out, and the man had a presence somehow, even sitting there, which matched his story. George could be a spy or soldier, Guardian was a leader plain and simple.
While Tony could tell the man was holding a lot back, he could detect no lie in the man, and he decided to trust this man. If Reed and the rest of his team were willing to vouch for him, that, coupled with what Tony could see himself made Tony decide to confide in him. Whatever their professional rivalry or their differing personalities, Tony respected Reed.
Eventually Harry finished, looking over at him shrewdly. "So, have I satisfied your curiosity enough to get you to trust me Stark, or should I just say that information was enough payment for the guns and go on my merry way?
"Not on your life." Tony said, then sighed. "When I was captured in Afghanistan, I took pieces of shrapnel to the chest, they didn't have the medical technology to remove them, but a man there was able to come up with a magnetic reactor that he installed in my chest that could keep them away from my heart."
At Guardian's shocked expression he shrugged. "Ho Yinsen removed the ones he could, but there are others to deep and too small to get to with modern tech, so he did what he had to keep me alive. The fact that it kept himself alive was of course also a point, but he did his best." Tony shook his head, remembering those final moments with Yinsen, a man who had become a friend in those few days, and something of a moral example to live up to as well.
He paused again, wondering what more he could tell the man, but then shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose it won't hurt to ask, but I also am dealing with palladium radiation, which effects the blood stream first before shutting down your organs. The device I have in my chest now works much better than the old version, and it also is my armors power source, but it is powered in turn by palladium."
Harry leaned back shaking his head. "Never easy is it." He sat silently for a moment, thinking hard before nodding. "All right, here's what I can do offhand, any more will have to wait check your condition for myself. I can put you in stasis, that will keep you alive and your body literally unchanged, your heart won't even have to beat, while I remove the original shrapnel. How far advanced is the Palladium poisoning?"
"Pretty damn far." Tony said grimly. He wouldn't tell anyone, but he had basically known that he was going to die within the next few weeks, the faint hope of Guardian's aid the only thing that he could see able to save him. "I'd say I have a good two weeks if I have to keep using it as a power source, if I don't, maybe seven or eight months."
"And does this power source have to be inside you? Can I remove that and heal the, well, the hole in your chest, if what I'm imagining is close to the reality?" Internally, Harry also noted the need to have Jean push the arc reactor design forward quickly. If tony had figured out how to miniaturize it to the level he could actually have one in his chest, it wouldn't be long before he started to use it to push into the energy sector.
"Can you actually do that?" Tony retorted.
"Yes." Harry said simply. "It won't be easy, and it won't be fast, but yes I can regrow the missing flesh and bone. I would estimate at least two possibly three hours depending on the size of the hole." Harry winced now, understanding some of the PTSD issues that Tony had been dealing with above and beyond having had his little brush with mortality. It wasn't exactly a brush, more like an ongoing paintjob!
Tony looked at him in disbelief, then barked a laugh. "All right, I'm game. Let's do this! I'd love to actually go shirtless again."
"Do you have a medical bed here, or should I just conjure one up?"
"Oh conjure definitely." Tony laughed again. "I have to see this."
Harry shrugged, and did so waving his hand. A second later a medical bed stood there in front of him beside the sofa, and Tony leaned forward tapping it. "Jarvis." he said softly. "You might want to go off-line for a bit."
"Thank you sir," said an artificial yet faintly British sounding voice from numerous speakers all around them. "My algorithms are unable to process what just occurred… I will have to deal with them slowly, possibly with the help of the data taken from your fight with the Mandarin." After a moment a low hum that Harry had only been subconsciously aware of ceased in the background, as the mansion's computer system shut down for a moment, going into hibernation mode.
"Hop on and remove your shirt." Harry instructed.
"Wait." Tony said standing up but not removing his shirt. "Is there any way I can remain awake during this procedure?"
Harry's eyes widened, and he thought for a moment. "….I suppose, but that would heighten the difficulty quite a bit. Originally I was simply going to feed you a potion that would put your body in stasis, but if you wish for your mind and eyes to keep working, I'm going to have to use a spell to deaden your body from the neck down as well as a stasis spell. I'll warn you though, it will probably be disgusting."
Tony winced, but he was paranoid about doctors at the best of times these days so he nodded grimly. "Do it."
"All right…" Harry said dubiously before seemingly addressing the empty air. "Cory." A second later a small bald creature with long ears wearing a stoner's dream of a butler's uniform popped in next to him. "I'm going to need two possibly, no… better make it four blood replenishing potions, a lot of clean sterilized wraps, a potion of skelegrow, and a nerve repairing potion. And I'll want you to remain visible after you get them just in case I need anything else."
"Yes master." The little creature said bowing before disappearing with a very faint pop.
Tony gaped at the spot where strange being had been then, making a note to find out a way to stop people from teleporting into his mansion, he turned to Guardian. "What was that?"
"That was a house-elf, a magical creature that willingly indentures himself to a wizard because they take their powers from the wizard though a sort of symbiotic bond. Now, shirt off!"
Harry watched as Tony removed his shirt, wincing a little at the size of the arc reactor, he could tell that much from having interacted with Jean's prototype, stuck in his chest as well as the veins of sickly looking blue/green that were going everywhere from that source. "Yeah, I can definitely see you need some help there, above and beyond the original issue. The cure seems as bad as the disease."
"Slower, but just as certain." Tony nodded grimly.
A second later Cory popped back in, and Harry motioned Tony to lay down. "All right, since you're so damn paranoid I'm going to walk you through what I'm going to do. First, I'm going to put your body from the neck down into stasis, then deaden it so you won't actually feel it. If I was putting your entire body into stasis that wouldn't be necessary but…"
Harry shrugged. "You could liken it I think to when you get your teeth cleaned or something, only total, you won't feel a thing." Despite having had a girl who had dentists as parents for a girlfriend, Harry didn't actually know a lot about the profession. "Then I'll remove the initial shrapnel.
He conjured up a pillow and stuck it under Tony's head, so that the man could see his own chest. "At that point, I'll probably have to take you into whatever workspace you have here and get your Jarvis to do a full body scan of you using your own system. My spells for that kind of thing are good, but I'll want to make certain." And you, you paranoid ass, would probably like the reassurance of hearing your clean bill of health from your own system. Harry thought.
Tony nodded. "In that case, why don't we just head there now?"
"Good idea." Harry replied sarcastically having already begun to push him in that direction. As he was being pushed down the stairs and then carried when they came to the stairs, floating in midair before Harry while he walked, Tony still had the wherewithal to ask. "And what next?"
"After that, you'll walk me through removing the actual generator from that cavity in your chest, then I will remove the actual cavity. Then I'll start to magically regenerate the missing chunk of flesh." He grimaced a little. "Needless to say that is going to be disgusting as all hell."
"But fascinating to watch…" Tony said looking a little green a lot around the gills despite his interest.
"After that, a full check up again to make certain neither of us have missed anything, and then I'm going to remove the palladium poison from your system, while also replacing the blood you'll lose during that process. After which I'll go home and have a drink and try to forget this ever happened. No offense but this is going to be horribly disgusting."
"But fascinating to watch…" Tony said again, sounding as if he was trying to encourage himself.
Soon enough they were in Tony's basement work area, with Tony on his bed situated over one of the 3-D image scanners that could double as an x-ray machine. It acted like one of Dr. Pym's beds only larger and actually a little better. Also much more expensive, there were few hospitals they could afford Dr. Pym's beds, and you could count the ones on one hand throughout the world that would've been able to afford this one.
Harry pulled off his cloak, placing it over one of the robotic drones that were around the room, before turning back to Tony. "Okay, let's do this."
"Wait a minute." Tony said suddenly. "Have you ever done this before?"
"Remove shrapnel, yes, heal a hole that was that large and central to someone's chest, no. I've healed worse, and I've dealt with worse myself however." Harry grimaced at the memory. He had actually nearly lost his leg at one point in the Negative Zone, and it was only his magical ability to heal that had allowed him to regenerate the giant chunk of flesh missing from his leg.
Tony blanched, but having come so far reluctantly nodded. "Do it."
Harry nodded, and began to cast spells, his hands moving over Tony's body. After a moment he looked up at Tony's face. "Right now you shouldn't be able to feel anything."
Tony's eyes had widened a little, and he nodded ever so slightly, the only movement he could do other than blinking his eyes. For a moment he felt an intense urge to scratch his nose, but he ignored it. "Yeah, I can't feel anything. This is a really fucking odd feeling, get on with it."
"I told you it would've been easier to just knock you out, but no you had to be a paranoid bastard." Harry muttered, casting more spells. "All right," he said then placed one hand over Tony's heart on his chest, sending a spell into his body to find anything foreign in there, though he had to cancel out the returns he was getting from the arc reactor in Tony's chest.
After several moments he located the shrapnel bits, whistling as he saw how close they were to Tony's heart, and how small too. Modern medicine would not have been able to remove them without doing damage to his heart, but Harry could. Slowly he took them one by one in his magical grip, pulling them away from the heart through the rest of the body, doing more damage to said body but he would heal it all later.
Tony watched as one after another tiny slivers of shrapnel were removed from his body, bursting out of his skin yet not accompanied by any kind of pain. It reminded him all to easily of the Alien movie, if on a much smaller scale. "All right." he said gulping. "Maybe I should have taken you up on being knocked out."
"Too late now you daft bugger." Harry muttered, while he removed the last of the shrapnel. "All right, time for Jarvis to wake up."
Tony nodded, then gave the command for Jarvis to come out of hibernation while Harry healed the wounds that had been caused on the surface from his spells, before casting other spells to heal the rest of the internal damage.
"Drink this." Harry ordered, holding out one of the blood replenishing potions. "You'll need it in a moment."
Tony gulped it down then asked Jarvis to scan him quickly, looking for more shrapnel.
"S-sir, I can no longer detect any pieces of metal in your words chest beyond that of the arc reactor or the magnetic array around it. The initial problem has been solved. But sir, it, you… are… speaking ….yet your heart is not moving it is, I am having difficulties equating what seems to be reality to what I know to be fact… Humans cannot live without their hearts beating… it… I am having blue screen of death moments Sir, even knowing that magic might theoretically be possible it is… my algorithms are literally fighting one another!"
"Go back off-line Jarvis!" Tony ordered quickly. "I'm not going to let you go crazy on me."
"Thank you sir." Jarvis said and immediately shut himself down.
"You just gave an AI a brain aneurysm Guardian. I hope you're proud." Tony quipped, now feeling slightly better about his own reaction to what'd been going on.
"So Jarvis is an AI!" Harry said as he placed an empty potion bottle over Tony's chest, letting it hang in midair for a moment sustained by a simple leviosa. "I might have to talk to you about him later on."
One of Tony's eyebrows went up, but he pushed his curiosity to the side when Harry tapped the metal casing of his arc reactor. "Now, how do I remove this thing?"
Tony walked him through the process of removing the palladium chip, then disconnecting the arc reactor, his eyes widening as he didn't feel anything, though normally he would have felt something when the reactor itself was removed. That feeling of disconnect got worse when Harry began to methodically remove the outer shell of the magnetic coil, and both men gagged at the squelching sounds it made coming loose from Tony's chest.
"I don't know if your friend was a genius or a madman." Harry said setting it aside on a nearby table. Behind him Cory looked a little sick as well but handed Harry another potion which he once more force-fed to Tony with one hand while his other hand was already pulsing magic into the gaping opening in Tony's chest, trying to regenerate the skin there.
These spells were not anything from his own dimension, regeneration on that level was beyond magic users there, and even most magic users in this dimension though Steven could've done it. No this was pure magic, Harry was simply pushing his magic into Tony's sinew and flesh, ordering it to repair itself, to close the gap and re-create itself regenerate itself. At the same time he gave Tony the skelegrow potion, which began the process, aided by his magic.
The task was made much more difficult because of the previous spells Harry had cast an Tony to keep his body in stasis, in fact these spells basically were fighting against the new changes, since they were made to keep the body in stasis, unchanging. Still Harry persevered, and slowly over the course of the next hour and a half the flesh began to push out from the edges of the hole, slowly filling it up.
It was a disgusting process to watch, but slowly ever so slowly the hole was rejuvenated. At last Harry stood back, wiping his brow. That had been tough, not in terms of power usage, but in concentration. Luckily Harry's control of his magic was high enough that he had succeeded, but still it wasn't something he would like to have to do again.
A few final spells to help the skin recover, and Tony's chest looked as good as new save for the veins of green, though even that had been lessened. "Now to remove the poison." Harry cut a small incision, opening up a vein, while directing Cory to feed Tony the last blood replenishing potion. Harry drew the poisoned blood out of Tony's body, filling up first one, then two and finally a third empty bottle with the greenish blood cells that had been so poisoned.
After that he scanned Tony again, then nodded, wiping his forehead again. "I'm going to bring you out of the stasis spells slowly. You may feel phantom pains, so we'll have to wait every time you feel one to make certain it is just a phantom pain. But my readings are telling me that you're all right. Your liver could do with a little work but I'm not about to help you with that one."
"Thank you ever so much." Tony said drolly, looking down at his now normal chest with a look of awe despite his tone. "Seriously though, that was amazing. Actual God damn cellular regeneration! Do you have any idea what that could be worth, how much good that could do for the world?"
"If I knew a way to do it without me personally being involved, I would." Or Ororo or other magic users he thought to himself as he went on I would do in a second. "I have plans, ideas there going forward, but it will take a while for them to come into fruition. My potions can do some of the same thing, one of the potions I gave you was skelegrow which helped regrow the bones there, and of course the blood replenishing potions helped immensely, but deep tissue, that's a different story."
The next ten minutes was spent with Harry slowly bringing Tony out of stasis. To his surprise there were only a few twinges of phantom pain, which amounted to nothing, though his heart began to beat much more rapidly than it should have. Harry cast another spell on it calming him down but as they looked at it they had power Jarvis up again.
Now that Tony's heart was indeed beating once more the AI did not have another 'blue screen moment'. "I would suggest it is simply a reaction to what has occurred Sir." The AI said after a moment. "Despite your self-control parts of your mind was no doubt panicking, and those messages were being sent to the rest of your body even if you didn't feel it."
Harry nodded that made sense to him anyway though he didn't have an actual medical background of course. Tony simply nodded, patting his chest with a look of delight on his face. "There are no words for this Guardian. This is fucking astonishing. For this, for this I owe you a hell of a lot more than all those old weapons I passed onto you before."
"Well, if were talking about you owing me, let's go have a drink shall we, and a talk." If he programmed one AI, can he program another?
The two men made their way up the stairs into the sitting area, only to find that Pepper was there, having just entered the premises. Her eyes widened at the sight of Tony walking around shirtless and no reactor in his chest! She looked at the man beside him, and immediately discerned that this was the connection that George had passed on. Heedless of whoever the hell he was, she raced over, pulling him into a hug. "Thank you." she whispered "Thank you!"
Harry glanced at Tony who grinned and patted the woman's head. "You're welcome, I'm just glad you arrived now rather than a few minutes ago. It was not a pretty process."
Tony shuddered again, and then blinked in shock when Pepper rounded on him and pulled him into a hug as well. That one went on for decidedly longer, and Harry smirked a little at Tony who was looking both content and more than a little scared, which was why Harry was smirking. He saw that reaction as Tony's bachelor response to the sudden realization that his time is such might well be over.
I hope they do get together he thought to himself keeping the thought off his face. Pepper could be good for him, and vice versa. He needs stability, she needs some excitement, and it's obvious that they like one another.
However Harry wasn't there to play matchmaker. He moved past the two of them into the kitchen at the far end of the open sitting area, pulling out a bottle of bourbon and pouring two cups, one for himself and one for Tony before looking over at Pepper. "Do you want anything to drink?"
Pepper nodded, ordering a dry martini, with extra olives. Harry smirked and asked Cory to make that one. The little house-elf had been waiting wherever it was house-elves waited nearby, and popped in quickly while Harry made a few finger sandwiches and waited for the two to finish hugging and talking about what had happened. Just as he finished the two of them joined him at the table, and he pushed the plate between them, grabbing one for himself as he downed half the glass of bourbon in one shot. It wouldn't do anything to him, but it made him feel a little better.
Tony did the same, causing pepper to look at him in surprise. Tony was never one to drink that quickly. But he shook his head. "Trust me you don't want to know."
"Medical things are disgusting, let's just leave it at that." Harry said. "Now, Tony, you said you owed me, and well, not to sound too mercenary, but I do have a way you can pay me back."
Harry explained briefly what he had and Reed were working on, the near-space array, though he made no mention at all about High Note. That information not only was covered by a Fidelius, but it was of such importance that Harry would be loath to share it with Tony in any event.
"The problem is." He finished. "That with each successive scanner we add to the system, the difficulty of reading them and interpreting what is coming through goes up. Reed's basically stated we might need in AI sooner than rather than later to run it all, and I agree with him. A system like your Jarvis would be perfect."
Tony frowned a little. "Okay for one thing, the fact that Jarvis is an AI is a major secret, the only people that know about his full AI status is myself and Pepper here. So if you could keep that to yourself I'd be grateful."
"IN that case, I'll tell you that a lot of people have suspicions in that area, including SHIELD and other spy agencies I don't doubt. Still, I'll agree not to mention it. Can you program another AI?"
"It'll take me weeks, maybe months." Tony said shaking his head. "But yeah I can figure it out. What I'll produce is an AI core, the core of the programming, the kernel or the baby at it were, what all else occurs is up to you. I will warn you however, that they have some odd questions at first, and you should probably talk to it before actually installing it."
He smirked a little. "Reed's good, but he's more of a scientific pioneer than a programmer, he can't seem to stay on one project long enough to program." Tony laughed. "AutoCAD and other programs like that are slow, and I believe there was a story a few years back about him crashing several of them by going too fast for them to keep up. Of course he could program a program to create more programs, but that in the in and of itself would require him to actually concentrate on it."
Harry smiled blandly, but he also made a note to have Reed go over the encoding for the AI. While he respected Tony, the man was still an egotist. His grandstanding with his Iron Man costume proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt, judging by the news clips that Harry had seen of the man. Whereas Reed, for all that he had other things concentrate on, as well as the absent-minded professor attitude was someone Harry trusted. At heart Reed was a humble scientist and family man, as well as a man simply trying to do good who didn't require recognition for doing so. A marked difference from Tony.
That and his attitude towards Congress worried Harry. He wasn't about to nose in however, just make certain that Tony kept his own nose out of Harry's business.
Across from Harry, Tony's thoughts were thus: No one else was doing anything about the threats that could come from outer space, despite there being numerous accounts of the Fantastic Four dealing with such threats since they had been active. If no one else was going to do it, then Tony was damn well going to help the people that were willing to step up to the plate.
Tony had seen the video recordings of several of the Fantastic Four's adventures that had occurred in public. Many of them dealt with threats from space, and Galactus in particular had given Tony nightmares for a few weeks after the giant alien had appeared. He had no more clue than anyone else how the Fantastic Four had convinced it/him to leave, Tony was simply thankful they had.
If he could help Reed and Guardian to figure out a way to see such threats coming, he would happily do it. "What about power?" he asked.
Harry shook his head. " We have connections already that will provide power for us." he replied blandly. He didn't want to give Tony a hint about what was going to be occurring as soon as possible, if he could swing it, with their own arc reactor designs. Emma would have been very proud of him for that thought.
"All right." Tony said standing up and shrugging his shoulders. "For some reason, I feel the desire to go out and get some sun. I'll be in contact through Weatherby when the AI core is finished so if you don't mind…" He shrugged then held out his hand and Guardian shook it, then shook Pepper's.
After that Harry left, while Tony went to get a bathing suit laughing softly to himself as Pepper raced off to find one of the ones she kept here for that purpose. Yet while Tony was preparing to go out into the sun, others were making more serous plans.