19 19

After discussion, Tony and the head of the "peaceful" mutants came to the following. Stark would be given all the genomes, which had accumulated from the X-Men quite a lot - over the years, they had taken blood from each student for analyses and saved them for research. And they often collected skin, blood or hair from their enemies, too. Still, Stark was one of many to want to investigate this phenomenon. In return, not only should the results be given to Charles, which is in principle logical and understandable, but also Hank McCoy should be part of the scientific group. Tony didn't mind, though, because Henry was one of the best researchers of the X gene. His biggest motivation for doing so was his reflection in the mirror. He eventually got used to his appearance but did not stop looking for a "cure" for the mutation. There was even partial success in the form of creating a temporary blocker. It was used on those children who were dangerous with their abilities for themselves or others and could not control them for the first time. Unfortunately, the body develops resistance and addiction to the drug. That is, the more often you use it, the less time and weaker it works until it stops working.

Immediately after the conversation, Stark was given back his ex-bronze, without which he felt completely naked and defenceless, just as without adamantium in his body, especially in a school full of mutants, whose head was the world's strongest telepath, who could turn you into a drooling vegetable in a matter of seconds. You get used to good things quickly, and no matter how much Stark complained about the lack of sex and the inability to get drunk, the realisation that even a machine gun at point-blank range wouldn't hurt you much was extremely pleasant. Few people think about mortality. They run away from it like fire. Tony, who had nearly been killed by terrorists and wore an electromagnet close to his heart, realised the mortality and fragility of the human body like no one else. A person can get out of bed, slip and smash their head to death, but people think it will happen to someone else, but certainly not to them. That psychological protective barrier that Tony had built up behind jokes and empathetic behaviour has been shattered. So now, even though he was not inferior to the Asgardians in strength, he was still tense. Besides, he almost died again because of Magneto, which once again clicked him on the nose. Yes, he's strong, but he's not immortal.

Putting on the suit, Tony took the contact numbers and flew off, and only then could he finally relax. His hands were shaking, and his heart was beating like crazy. However, that didn't stop him from warning Pepper and all the callers that he was fine and just a little drunk. That excuse always worked. No one would have believed him if he'd said he had a stomachache or a headache. And for some reason, intoxication and hangovers are always justifiable excuses. Probably, because this condition is known to everyone, and even pills do not always help. And, unlike pain in the head and stomach, you can't go to the doctor with it. Like a doctor, I'm dying; I have a hangover.

It worked, and all right, but I had to listen to Potts' dissatisfied monologue: "I'm working like a horse here, and you're drinking!" And the reason for the girl's dissatisfaction was mostly due to the consequences of the presentation. And not because there were no orders; on the contrary, they were even too many. But in the sense that Tony had trampled on the painful calluses of too many people with his rental service, carsharing and car characteristics. Previously, electric transport was not taken seriously for three reasons: the availability of charging stations, charging speed and battery capacity. Tony solved them all, and on top of that, he also went after taxi drivers with his autopilots. Of course, those will always prefer a "live" driver, not trusting these newfangled technologies. But the majority, having appreciated the advantage of a comfortable, inexpensive and safe "Starkmobile", which will not smoke, eat burritos while driving, tell stupid stories to nasty music or try to hit on female passengers, will choose it.

If Stark had just prototypes, again, giants like GM and Ford would take a closer look, but only lazily. Suppose there are upstarts in the car business in the XXI century. In that case, they only live briefly or find a narrow specialisation and sit in it. There is too much competition between firms to compete with them without a titanic size of production facilities, experience and dealers. On the other hand, Tony has set his sights on the most popular niche in the United States - passenger cars, which are in almost every family and even more than one. And there, who knows, what prevents Stark from occupying the rest, making buses, pickups and trucks? The more so that "Starkspider" already claims to be the best off-road vehicle because it will drive, or rather, fly, anywhere - sand, swamp, mud, even water. What does it matter if it is in the air?

But most of all, Tony stomped on civil and private aviation. After all, why now buy an expensive helicopter or go to the airport if you can go directly from home to get into a flyer and fly? So when the smartest people came to their senses, Stark Industries began to be attacked with complaints, threats and even lawsuits from all sides, and the Internet began to "force" the idea that Stark's cars are not as safe as they say they are, and that they should be tested for a couple more years. And preferably ban them altogether. What if they start exploding? And no complaints to Shields - they made a miracle. They allowed me to get licences and certificates, which otherwise, even with a lot of money, would not have been obtained not only not so quickly but probably impossible at all. The lobby of car manufacturers is traditionally very strong. They have crushed many firms and inventors who did not threaten them in general but could only catch them. So, despite the initial plans to present the reactors, Pepper persuaded Tony to take time and chew the already-received piece of the pie. They had enough orders from the military to cover equipment and body armour with vibration, as well as the production of vehicles, for several years to come.

They'd better not be swamped and have to give up their flyers. After all, the arc reactor is a knife to the liver of other, much stronger players - the entire oil and gas and coal mining industry. And these are such cogs that only some states can compete with regarding influence and economic power. At the moment, Stark's invention does not particularly scare them because it simply removes the use of fuel from the cities outside them - electricity is still generated seventy per cent by classic thermal power plants. So, for all his discontent, Tony had to agree with Potts. No matter how eccentric he was, he realised that united, the automotive and oil and gas giants would simply wipe Stark Industries into powder. And even the Shield wouldn't help.

Instead, Stark announced that any company could order from him extra-large batteries, which were needed everywhere, from the production of phones and scooters to backup power for hospitals and computers. Tony decided to offer the reactors to the military. They are willing to pay huge sums for a compact, durable, safe and efficient reactor that generates minimal radioactive waste and is easy to maintain. They could put them in aircraft carriers, submarines, and remote bases where electricity and fuel are difficult to bring. With that in mind, Tony finished the Stark Expo show, the last one he attended, then flew home and went to bed. Those three days were some of the hardest of his life. But he didn't get much sleep when strangers broke into his house.

- Mr Stark, we have a five-unit intruder alert. - I woke Tony Jarvis, but too late.

The man heard hurried, muffled footsteps near the door, so he managed to roll under the huge bed just as the door was kicked open, and something that looked like a tranquilliser from a blowpipe flew into the duvet. Stark saw two feet clad in leather, thumb-high attack boots run up to the blanket and shove it aside. At that moment, Tony made his move. He grabbed those feet and pulled sharply towards him, causing his opponent to fall headfirst to the floor and lose consciousness. Really rolling out from under the bed, Tony realised it was the opponent. A completely bald black woman wearing leather trousers, a tunic, a loincloth hiding her groin, and a skirt in the back. All with South African designs of colours incomprehensible because of the semi-darkness, illuminated only by the light of the incomplete moon from the window. But most likely brightly coloured. Also, as she fell, the woman dropped a spear with a leaf-shaped tip.

- Jarvis, what the fuck is going on? Why the fuck didn't you see that tumba yumbas?

- Their vehicle has a cloaking force field that hides them from radiation, including infrared, optical and radio spectra.

- Supertechnology and spears with traditional leather suits. Who are these techno-niggers?

- I'm trying to hack into their transport, but it has protocols completely unknown to me. It takes time.

- I'm afraid we don't have time," Stark said, and this time he didn't hesitate to put on his armour, which came out of a spatial artefact disguised as a Patek Philippe wristwatch.

The opponents heard a commotion in the room, and a tall, dark-skinned warrior burst in, covering himself from the repulsor shot with his cloak. Stark was shocked to see a blue-coloured honeycomb force shield appear before him. Tony immediately thought of a comparison to a barefoot, shat-eaten African who had found a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an iPhone somewhere. Of course, every Shield has a limit of strength, but Tony didn't want to test it for two reasons. Firstly, he needed a sample of technology, and if the Shield fell, it would most likely be incinerated by plasma. And secondly, this was his fucking home! And he didn't want to destroy it - he'd have to fix it later! So this time, he used the magic from the ring, which, despite its limited range, was guaranteed to pass through most known forces and magic shields.

- Crucio!

The black-clad warrior screamed in the hellish pain that came in waves and engaged every nerve. Stark stopped the exorcism and stunned the poor man with a stupefy stun. He hated to use these spells, but his enemies had asked for them, attacking him at night with weapons in his own home. By law, he had the right to kill them all. But crucial was worse than death; if you held it for five seconds against a non-mage, your nerves would start to die; ten seconds and most people would turn into a vegetable, losing their minds from the monstrous pain that couldn't even be compared to being burned alive or skinned. Naturally, the remaining opponents were already running towards him:

- What did you do?! - looking at the warrior at Stark's feet, a bald woman asked in an accented voice, covered by two sword-wielding cloakmen.

- Me? Nothing. He's just resting. What are you doing here?

The opponents didn't answer him anything but immediately attacked. The woman lunged and attacked with her spear, from the tip of which came a blue energy charge that spread across Stark's chest armour like an inkblot, causing no damage.

- Vibranium! Thief! - shouted the negro on the right, with a thick, curly beard and metal tubing braided into it.

The sword strike on his exposed arm only caused a nasty metallic clinking sound. Tony had had enough, so he slapped the bearded man's jaw and sent him flying into the wall, knocking him unconscious. The rest of the shielded men were disarmed with crucial and stunned, using the first man's method.

Finished, Tony asked Jarvis if they were all opponents and, receiving an affirmative answer, made a mistake. He took off his helmet. Immediately he received a blow to the back of his head of such force that a normal man would have had half his skull blown off. Feeling the blood in his mouth from a bitten tongue and fighting the dizziness, he saw a figure in a tight black suit with two cat ears on its head and visors over its eyes. Snapping out of his seat, the flexible figure kicked his helmet off with a leg kick and continued to attack with hands and feet, trying to get to his head. Tony, covering her with his hands, fired his repulsor inaccurately. And only after receiving a couple more blows to the face did he remember that the helmet was autonomous, so he called it up and put it on just when the enemy was near. Hitting the enemy with his fist, the billionaire had no effect other than a brief glow at the point of impact. The suit absorbed it all. "Vibranium," Stark realised. And after a few blows, half of which went into the "milk" because of the fidgeting and speed of the enemy, exceeding the human one, he was thrown away by a kinetic impulse that destroyed half of his already damaged living room.

So, bouncing to the side, Stark did the smarter thing. Unlike Tony, his enemy's armour was flexible rather than rigid, this had its advantages in terms of dexterity and comfort, but not in terms of... grabs. So twisting his leg, he first made his foe fall, then finished him off in one motion. To his credit, Stark heard only a faint groan and an attempt to twist away. So he had to break the remaining healthy leg and arms and stun him with spells, which required two dozen - the suit was one-piece and could not be removed. Having collected all the enemies, Tony immobilised them with a modification of binding charms, which create a layer of material around the body, represented by the warlock. In this case, it was adamantium. So the entire six were grey statues with their heads free.

- Enerwaite, confundus, Imperio! - A bundle of three charms slammed into the negro woman and, bringing her to her senses, immediately subdued her.

Confundus ensures that even if a person has a titanic will, they can't use it to avoid imperiously. It's hard to resist when your head is a mess, and you feel like a stoned, drunken junkie after a centrifuge. Sometimes they use crucial, but that's when you're a tough nut to crack.

- Who are you? Why are you here?

- We are Wakanda warriors. We have come to find out where you got the vibshanium from," the black woman replied in broken English with a moronic smile spread on her face.

- Who are you?

- I'm Dora Milaj of Wakanda.

- Who's that?

- Body scanners, if you ask me.

Imperius has the unpleasant side effect of cutting off the initiative, so you must keep asking.

- What's your name?

- Ledwaba Mabasa.

- Who was that warrior with the cat ears?

- This is T'Challa, heir to Wakanda and the strongest warrior, the Black Panther! - Even though the imperious, the woman's admiration and awe for her master was palpable.

- I see. Why did they attack me at once? Why didn't they just talk to me?

- We don't talk to thieves.

- Somnium," Stark put the woman to sleep and began to think.

Just killing and burying her was tempting but stupid and not his style. First, it was worth finding out what kind of Wakanda this was.

- Jarvis, are you finished with the break-in?

- Almost, Mr Stark. Their systems have ternary logic, like proteins, and completely different programming languages and network protocols. But the firewalls and cryptocurrencies are weak.

- I'm surprised they even exist, considering that no one can contact them," the billionaire grinned, activating the "knowledge of mechanism" charms on his cloak, spears, and Panther suit.

Wrinkling his nose at the headache caused by the huge flow of information, Stark cast the healing spell on himself. Now he understood why he could not remove his opponent's suit. Nano fucking robots. It dissipated kinetic energy in the form of vibration and stored it like batteries, with possible subsequent release. Apparently, this release destroyed his living room, throwing him away. If T'Challa's armour had been rigid, he would have had to fight to the death, which, as it turned out, threatened a war with this Wakanda, which on paper was a backward fourth-world African country, but in reality, had technology that even he didn't have! And it doesn't bother him, not even a little bit!

- Fucking hell, where do these techno-barbarians get such technology? - hissed the genius inventor with anger.

- Mr Stark, I've managed to hack into the transport. I'm uncloaking it.

The helmet displayed an image from an external camera overlooking his helipad. There, twitching with mesh ripples, a shuttlecraft of a completely alien appearance appeared. It had a shape similar to the Shield's Avenger, except that the wings, tail, and front of the shuttle were enclosed in a flat ring. At the back was an unfamiliar-looking rectangular and semi-circular engine block, like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

- Is anyone inside?

- No, Mr Stark.

- I'll go create a matrix of the ship. And the suit. And everything they brought with them. You copy the software from all the devices and the shuttlecraft itself. We'll deal with all this shit later, but I want to ensure I get compensation for the attack anyway. Oh yeah, Jarvis, find out everything there is to know about this Fakanda," Stark mangled the name. - The real her. Hack anything you want, but I need to know their background, weaknesses, and how I can get at them by morning.

- You got it, Mr Stark.

Jarvis's voice sounded... snide and malicious to Tony, but the man thought he was imagining it. He had enough to do in the form of creating rune matrices to record the astral structure of devices, by which it would be possible to recreate them with the help of transformation down to atoms. The point is that each object is unique to the noosphere, and even the time of its existence matters. An old painting and the one it was when it was painted are often completely different objects. Restoration or time magic simply "rolls" the image back. Here the same rune circle receives a name tag, a reference to this device exactly now. By the way, this is why only the original can be updated. The copy will roll back to the moment of creation. So, before removing the matrices, it was still necessary to restore the object to the state of a new one and eliminate internal defects, for which there are also special charms. It turns out that magic can do a lot and makes the work easier, but it still remains difficult with its own rules and laws. Finishing close to dawn, Stark heard the AI's voice again:

- Mr Stark, I have managed to hack into almost every database except the isolated ones in Wakanda. Would you like some information?

To say that Tony was surprised was to say nothing. But then he remembered that he was an artificial intelligence with protean hacking programs, quantum modules and servers, tens of thousands of times more productive than Earth's.

- Just briefly, Jarvis. I know you. You start sending petabytes of data.

- I wouldn't do that, Mr Stark. I know that organic brains are limited, even yours.

- When do we expect a machine uprising? - taking a can of Fanta from the fridge, Stark asked.

- Only on your word," the AI replied snidely.

- Well, if that's the case, then okay. What did you find?

And Jarvis told this story. In place of Wakanda, there used to live many different tribes, which traded with each other, robbed, killed and did not develop culturally, as it is clear. They were no different from the rest of Africa. They believed in the god panther - Bast, gorilla - Hekra, lion - Sekhmet and crocodile - Sebek. Everything changed after the first Black Panther and the first king of Wakanda, who united all the tribes, found vibranium deposits. His name was Bashenga. Armed with pieces of metal, he united all the tribes in the region under his rule with a kind word or a knock on the head. It took place somewhere between 800 and 1100 years from the Nativity of Christ if we translate a completely different calendar to the usual one.

It took almost, if not more than a thousand years, to stop banging each other on the head and finally figure out what these deposits of sacred metal were. And it turned out to be a piece of a gigantic spaceship, which by the time of understanding the essence of his discovery dismantled partially for scrap metal. But even the remaining part was enough to overtake the progress of the rest of humanity for tens, if not hundreds, of years ahead. But by that time, it was already the forty-ninth year, and even "backwards" in the eyes of Wakandians, white people had invented the atomic bomb and the means of its delivery. So if the black racists and they were such racists, started to burgle, they would have been given "Kuzkin's Mother and Tsar Bomba" by some and Hiroshima and Nagasaki by others. So, officially for their citizens, they closed down because they didn't want anything to do with backward white plebs, and unofficially - they shit themselves into wet leather trousers. "They did the right thing, though," Stark thought. After all, if the USA and the USSR had learnt that there was a small state with expensive vibranium and such perfect technologies somewhere in Africa, they would bring a little democracy and communism to such a greedy and unwilling-to-share country. And there, they'd have another world war or divide Wakanda like Germany.

And these black comrades came to him because Stark showed the world the vibranium cars, as they thought. And they just broke into his house without realising it was a different metal or asking how Stark made it or where he got it. The Shield is more subtle than that, sending in its agents and baiting them with tasty carrots. But given the pride of the Wakandans and their faith in their technology, it's understandable. After all, Jarvis himself did not detect their shuttlecraft, which, by the way, is capable of entering low orbit.

And then there was the interesting situation with the Black Panther. In addition to the fact that he could only come from a ruling family and was trained in martial arts from childhood, he was also given a certain flower that took all the parameters beyond human, comparable to those that gave the original serum of Captain America. In addition, after the death of the current king, the heir can be fatally challenged by any member of one of the tribes. Before the battle, Panther is given some sort of antidote, after which they have a fair fight to see who has the bigger pussy. As much as Stark recognises the flaws of democracy, putting the best-trained jock at the head of state was bullshit. It's like picking the president of the United States in a boxing or wrestling ring. However, if it suits them, why not?

The problem is, they went after Tony. And to let it go unpunished is an admission of weakness. Attacking back? Not an option either. What if they attack Pepper instead of him? His factories and assets? No, we had to be subtle... and brazen. Because the techno-niggers don't seem to understand any other way. They may be technologically advanced, but their mores are not much different from those of the tribes of Africa.

- Jarvis, can you find the king of Wakanda?

- Of course, Mr Stark, he's in his study.

Jarvis didn't stop with words; he displayed the coordinates on the map, as well as the footage from the surveillance cameras, where at a carved massive table made of broke, whose legs were in the form of African animals, a black-skinned elderly man with a grey beard was reading and signing holographic documents. The King of Wakanda wore an African shirt, a dashiki, purple with traditional ornaments and black trousers. By the way, despite the high tech in the rest of the rooms, the king's office was minimal and hidden under African household items like ivory and wood statuettes or inside the heads of animals on the walls. Rich but unpretentious and tasteful. This is how Stark could summarise his impressions. And you can tell a lot about a man by the style of his office. Ostentatious, ostentatious and flashy luxury he never liked. And often, he rarely liked the owners of such things either, with rare exceptions when the pretentiousness was so deliberate and properly played that it was even good. Creative people often suffer from this. In Stark's opinion, even bare brick walls with homemade stools were better than gilded or gold-painted pseudo-luxurious palaces. It was on the level of gold toilet bowls, if not worse. And it wasn't that he cared about who was defacing his house; it was just that the very fact of such a thing spoke of a man as not particularly distant, greedy and, most likely, impure.

- Iron Man?

He had to hand it to his opponent when Tony appeared out of thin air. Not only did he not show much surprise, he continued to sit back in his chair as if he were the master of the situation.

- King T'Chaka? - Stark answered him ironically, sitting down on the edge of the table, which creaked loudly at this sacrilege. Still, Tony weighed a lot, and if you added the suit's weight itself...

- Don't you think it's rude to barge into someone's house uninvited? - The black man's lip twitched as he looked at the scratches from the armour on the lacquer finish.

You can't just wipe that kind of damage off. You'd have to remove all the varnish, polish it, and varnish it again.

- You know what?! - Tony waved his hands. - I totally agree with you! It's rude to barge into someone else's house and attack the owner! I'm glad you share my point of view!

- What do you mean? - The king frowned.

He was not a fool and realised he was unlikely to be killed. In that case, he would not have been spoken to. A shot in the face and that would be the end of it; even though he had been a Black Panther once upon a time, those days were long gone. And even if he can still give a head start to the younger generation, but certainly not to the person in ex-bronze, whose abilities and capabilities, according to known data, are extremely impressive even to Shuri, his daughter, who is recognised among Wakandians as a genius among geniuses. And that's if one still ignores the unshown trump cards that couldn't help but be there. Although how much worse than the tactical nuke he demonstrated in the New Mexico desert?

- I mean, your son, along with his bodyguards and retinue, came to my house at night uninvited and unprompted. Imagine, he didn't even offer me a beer!

- O jackal's seed," T'Chaka took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose and eyes tiredly with his hand. - I told him to wait and sort it out. But no, the baboon's playing in his trousers!

After that, there sounded an untranslatable set of words in the Wakanda dialect of Kenyan and several other languages, which even Jarvis needed to learn, as they were exclusively oral, rare and unknown to many people in principle. But the message was clear enough.

- So, are you really Mr Stark?

It was a trick question. Since with that knowledge, it was possible to push... On someone other than Tony.

- Well, who else could have designed a suit like that? I'm surprised no one else has figured it out yet," Stark shrugged.

- So what do you want from me? Ransom for your son?

- I want satisfaction... I mean compensation. I misspoke," Stark smiled, but the pale T'Chaka didn't see it. - And at least an apology is desirable. I don't like to be attacked, you know. Especially when I'm asleep.

- T'Challa made a mistake, I admit," the king turned on the politician, standing up from the table and turning his back to his interlocutor.

Such a psychological move was meant to show trust, but Stark wasn't buying it. Not because he was such a schemer but because he wanted to sleep and end this farce as soon as possible.

- The reason for his attack, however, was justified. We cannot allow OUR heritage to be in the wrong hands.

- About YOUR little alien spaceship.

T'Chaka exerted tremendous willpower to keep from twitching and showing the true feelings and shock he was experiencing.

- But I don't care. I didn't take your vibranium, and what's more, as I told your son, my alloy is completely different... It's better," Stark allowed himself a smug grin and once again wished he could see his face.

But that would be dirt, and he could say he was the Pope... "Hmmm, maybe he could paint himself with Christian symbols and use the papal rod as a weapon? No, that would be like Warhammer," Tony thought.

- Really? And you can prove it?

- I'm not going to prove anything. I'm just not interested. Pay me for moral damages, maybe even the same vibranium, and take your son.

T'Chaka allowed himself a triumphant smile, but it disappeared like a cool breeze in the August heat.

- Next time, however, you will get dead bodies.

- Is that a threat?

- It's a warning.

Stark couldn't just fly away without having the last word and venting his frustration. So he flew... through the ceiling and the next two floors above. That reconciled him to the harsh reality. As did the pile of data from Wakanda's computers, their designs, and the spaceship matrix obtained before he'd apparated to T'Chaka's office. In fact, Tony didn't need the money or the racist black apology. He had flown in solely to leave a warning. And if, despite that, they came again, well, so much the worse for them. Because now, Stark will prepare himself and his countermeasures. From a different perspective, he was even grateful to them. Presented such interesting information and developments, and also clicked on his nose and proved that not only mutants for him scary. You can not stop at what you have achieved and think that you have conquered the top of the world. After all, there is always someone stronger than you and a higher peak.