by Greg Cox
She started this, he remembered, so he wasn’t about to play sitting duck. Maybe she can explain what this is all about later—after I shut down this meteorological menace of hers.
He fired his repulsors at her, ready to catch Storm before she fell unconscious into the river. “Careful,” he reminded himself; the X-Man was nowhere near as indestructible as the Hulk. He wanted her contained, not a casualty.
He shouldn’t have worried. The orange repulsor rays fell far short of their target, dissipating completely several yards before they came within striking range of Storm.
Of course! he realized, mentally (but not physically) slapping his forehead. The accelerated neutrons that gave his repulsors their punch traveled along a shaft of ionized air projected from his gauntlets; obviously, that conductive shaft had been unable to make headway against the tremendous atmospheric forces controlled by the mutant heroine.
Her own thunderbolts, needless to say, encountered no such resistance. Even as Iron Man watched his repulsor rays fade away, Storm let loose with another concentrated blast of lightning. He tried to evade the bolt, but the jagged electrical spear followed him wherever he flew, drawn by the crystallized iron in his armored suit.
Zap! Sparks flew as lightning struck his helmet, sizzling in his ears. The refractory coating over the outer layer of high temperature enamel shielded his flesh and blood from much of the lightning bolt’s charge. The armor’s internal displays, though, flickered alarmingly, before coming back on-line. Diagnostic routines reported minor malfunctions throughout the sophisticated circuitry of the suit, including damage to the secondary neural net processor, the ventral foot altitude sensor, and even, ironically, the LIDAR weather scan sensor port.
Ouch, he thought.
Storm had drawn both first and second blood. Iron Man realized he had to strike back, ideally with a weapon that didn’t depend on the atmosphere as a conductive medium. His plasma bolts were not an option; they were too powerful to use against an opponent who was neither armored nor invulnerable.
Never mind whose side she’s on, I don’t want to blow her to atoms. Tight-beam sonics were less lethal, but Storm might be able to deflect the sound waves by manipulating the very air through which they traveled.
Magnetism, on the other hand, functioned just as well in a vacuum as it did in a gaseous environment. Maybe that was the ticket. Iron Man arced above Storm, swooping around to catch her from behind. The projector in his chestplate flared brightly as he attempted to snare Storm with his tractor beam, the same beam he had used to pluck that unfortunate shipwreck victim from the river. In theory, the magnetic beam would seize hold of the iron in Storm’s blood, holding her fast within the beam while he towed her back to the authorities.
A little trick I learned, Iron Man recalled, from the X-Men’s old nemesis, Magneto.
The irony was not lost on him.
Catching Storm with the beam proved easier said than done, though. At the last minute, the flying mutant banked to the left, escaping the beam, then performed a graceful loop-the-loop that left Iron Man sweeping an empty swath of sky with the tractor beam while Storm climbed toward the clouds above him. Iron Man hastily adjusted his own trajectory to try to bring her back in line with the brilliant purple ray emanating from his chest. The chase turned into an intricate aerial ballet that tested the limits of Iron Man’s maneuverability. He had always thought that his sleek metal armor was the last word in aerodynamic design, but Storm not only glided effortlessly upon the prevailing winds, the very currents of the air seemed to go out of their way to accommodate her every swoop and spiral. No matter which way she turned, she always had a strong tailwind at her back, whereas he was constantly buffeted by an opposing squall. Iron Man started to feel like he was competing in a game that had been stacked against him from the start. How did you win an air battle when the air itself was fighting for the other side?
All he needs to do is strike me with that ray once, Storm thought, redoubling her efforts to stay one cloud ahead of her mechanized adversary.
She had no idea what sort of energies were at work within that radiant purple beam, but thought it best to stay well clear of its path. Too much was at stake to risk being immobilized once more; her head still ached from the psychic and physical toll of the Hulk’s shock wave while the Beast remained out of commission, so that only she and Cyclops remained to stand against the Avengers, the authorities, and, quite possibly, the Hulk. One mistake, she knew, and she would feel the unguessable effect of Iron Man’s weapon upon her own form and flight. Such a defeat would leave Cyclops alone and outnumbered.
Never! she vowed. Despite the occasional tensions between them, Cyclops was a dear friend whom she was not about to surrender to the uncertain mercies of their present adversaries. .
And then there was Rogue, who might be at greater risk than them all....
For all that was at stake, the skybome pursuit was exhilarating in its way. Mighty winds blew her through the firmament, drying her hair, skin, and garments as she soared up and down and back and forth, changing direction constantly so as to confound her armored opponent. Bursts of cleansing rain washed the island’s mud from her limbs. Only soaring thus through the open sky did she ever feel truly free, unhemmed by walls or ceilings, and at one with the elements. Thunder pounded in perfect synch with her heartbeat while lightning gathered behind her eyes and within her fingertips. She pitied Iron Man; trapped as he was in his cold metal shell, how could he possibly savor the miracle of flight as she did? He was cut off from nature, not to mention his fellow man.
I could not endure that, Storm knew. The very thought of trapping her body and soul inside a cramped, lifeless machine made her shudder.
A luciferous streak of light fell across her path, and she barely dived beneath its ominous glow in time. Glancing to left, she caught a glimpse of Iron Man zooming toward her on an intercept course, steel-clad fists tearing through the gossamer fabric of her clouds. His gilded mask was surprisingly expressive, the angled slits of his mouth and eyes conveying grim determination. Parallel rows of signal lights ran along the top of his helmet, blinking in sequence according to some unknown computer program.
Computers. Storm had no doubt that computers controlled many of the functions in Iron Man’s armor, just as they did in most technology these days. Despite her reverence for the natural world and its ancient ways, she was not uninformed about modem computers—and their weaknesses. An electromagnetic pulse of the right magnitude, she recalled, could seriously disrupt a computer and its operations. Shadowcat, the X-Men’s resident computer genius, had explained this to Storm rather vigorously after a couple of unfortunate accidents involving Ororo’s powers and the Xavier Institute’s computers. She and Kitty Pryde had even managed to duplicate the phenomenon in the Danger Room.
Let us see, she resolved, if Iron Man’s formidable technology can be as temperamental and touchy as Kitty’s precious programs.
A luminescent white glow filled her eyes, masking her vibrant blue irises and dark pupils. Calling upon memories honed through constant repetition, she released the pent-up electrical energy in her fingertips in a single high-intensity pulse that flared so briefly that it had vanished completely from sight before its effect was felt....
“What the heck?” Colonel Lopez exclaimed as a harsh burst of static assailed his ear.
He yanked his walkie-talkie, which he had been using to converse with the commander of the Canadian forces across the river, away from his head and glared at the malfunctioning device. “Hello?” he asked, cautiously raising the walkie-talkie back toward his ear, but the line was as dead as his chance at a promotion after this fiasco. He shot a blistering glance at his second-in-command, who looked just as befuddled as the rest of his troops.
Judging from the confused and/or irritated faces he saw along the front lines, his walkie-talkie wasn’t all that had screwed up. Suddenly, in a single instant, all their expensive electronic hardware had just gone completely FUBAR
: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.
Playing a hunch, he checked his pocket compass just in time to see the needle swing toward Goat Island, southwest from where he was standing, then back again toward magnetic north.
“Typical,” Lopez muttered. The supertypes’ freakish powers were even messing with his compass. Not to mention the drastic changes in the weather. He felt another layer of stomach lining bum away and searched his pockets for a Turns. Blast it, he thought, why couldn’t all these heroes and mutants and monsters stay in the Big Apple where they belonged?
First, his computer crashed. Then Iron Man did.
The luminescent displays before his eyes blinked out of existence. His glowing chest unit went dark. The limbs of his armor locked into place, the servos that amplified the motion of his muscles grinding to a halt. And, perhaps most significantly, given his current altitude and position, all six micro-turbines in his boots shut down at once, turning the world’s most sophisticated man-shaped flying machine into several hundred pounds of dead weight.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaa—!” Iron Man exclaimed, the single syllable stretched across a vertical drop of over a thousand feet.
He hit the river with an enormous splash. Ordinarily, a Plexiglas layer would automatically drop into place to prevent water from entering through the mouth slit in his helmet. But with the armor frozen until the computer rebooted, Tony found himself coughing and sputtering in a desperate attempt to keep from drowning in the icy water. The wild rapids tossed him about like a piece of driftwood. Rocks clanged against his helmet he took a bumpy ride down the river. Fragmented glimpses of sky and spray spun before his eyes when his head wasn’t dunked beneath the waves altogether. Blurry smears of water speckled his protective lenses.
Have to Jiang on, he thought fiercely, guessing at once what had happened. He knew too well what the right kind of EMP could do to his armor, and how long he needed to recover. Thanks to constant improvements in the software, it took precisely 2.34 minutes for his armor to reboot, a significant gain on earlier systems which had needed a full three minutes to come back to life. All he needed was a couple of minutes and he’d be raring to go again.
Unfortunately, he went over the Falls in seconds.
Using the Internet, Iron Man had scanned the history of Niagara during the flight from Manhattan. Over the years, he had learned, at least fifteen people had deliberately gone over the Falls in barrels and other “protective” devices, five of whom had met horrible deaths. Now, against his will, Iron Man’s armor had become merely the latest high-tech barrel.
Beneath multiple layers of diamond dust, enamel, iron, and micro-circuitry, a comfort layer of firm rubber padding cushioned Tony Stark’s vulnerable human flesh. Tony had never been more thankful for that padding than now, when he abruptly found himself bouncing roughly over the rapids at the crest of the Falls, then smashing repeatedly against the side of a cliff as he plummeted downward, spinning helplessly out of control. A hundred bumps and jolts jarred his bones while the omnipresent pealing of millions of gallons of cascading water drowned out the rest of the world. Frothing chaos was all he could see, rotating wildly before his eyes. Inside the armor, Tony held his breath as he braced himself for the worst, i.e. hitting the bottom.
But which Falls had he gone over? The Horseshoe Falls, which emptied into the fabled Maid of the Mist pool, or the American Falls, which fell directly onto a deadly pile of rocks at the base of the cataract? Not even the most reckless daredevils of yore had ever risked a trip over the American Falls; the unlucky souls who accidentally took that fatal plunge never survived. To his horror, Iron Man realized he had no idea over which Falls he had been flying when the EMP knocked his armor for a loop; his extended dogfight with Storm could have taken him over either drop. Could even his armor, its protective force field off-line, protect him from a crash landing upon those deadly rocks? He had to admit he wasn’t sure.
Thanks to Storm, I’ve gone from super hero to crash test dummy in one fell swoop ... !
An anxious moment of uncertainty stretched on for what felt like forever until he slammed into something hard—and kept on sinking. After falling a hundred-plus feet, the surface of the pool felt like cement, but it was still only water. He’d gone over the Horseshoe Falls after all! His entire body felt like one big bruise, and he was dizzier than the Human Top, but he was still in one piece.
Let’s hear it for Stark Solutions quality control! he thought jubilantly. Niagara could enter an eleventh documented survivor into their record books, provided he didn’t drown in the next few minutes.
His heavy armor weighed him down like an anchor as he sunk to the bottom of the pool, landing with a dull thud upon the silty floor. Holding onto his breath for as long as he could, Tony waited desperately for his armor to reactivate. His lungs ached for fresh air, his cheeks bulged with carbon dioxide. It took all his will and selfcontrol to keep his jaws tightly clenched together, holding onto the stale air pouring out of his lungs. Tiny bubbles escaped through the cracks between his teeth, rising toward the surface, leaving him behind. With his lights and sensors dead, he could see nothing through the murky liquid, not even a glint of daylight. He started feeling light-headed, a sure sign of oxygen deprivation; unlike the infamous Sub-Mariner, Tony Stark couldn’t breathe underwater.
Just when he felt like he was going to have to try, gills or no gills, his armor came humming back to life all around him. The start-up sequence initiated on schedule, redundant circuits and auxiliary systems coping with whatever components had been burnt out by the EMP. The plexiglass mouth shield slid smoothly into place, and none too soon. Automated breathing tanks, utilizing cutting-edge rebreather technology, pumped a precisely calibrated mixture of oxygen and nitrogen into his helmet, which he inhaled as eagerly as if it were the world’s most intoxicating perfume.
When I build a barrel, I build it right, Tony Stark thought proudly. Systems reports scrolled before his eyes and he scanned them feverishly, scoping out the extent of the damage that the armor had incurred during its jarring trip over the violent cataract.
The bad news: the chest projector was thoroughly trashed, the primary lens cracked into three pieces, which meant no tractor beam until he had a chance to make some needed repairs, nor even a spotlight to shine through the murk at the bottom of the pool. A slurry of silt and water, left behind when the mouthpiece sealed itself off from its aqueous surroundings, trickled down through the neck assembly, raising goosebumps on his skin.
He figured he’d probably picked up a few dents as well.
The good news: the jet turbines in his boots had survived intact, meaning he had the means to escape this watery launching pad.
About time, Iron Man thought; he would have to do something about speeding up the whole rebooting procedure. Maybe there was a way to get it down to a minute or less, possibly by streamlining the primary initialization codes....
Part of his mind already grappling with the technical problems involved, he took a few more deep breaths to clear his head, then used a cybernetic command to activate his boot jets. A half-dozen micro-turbines ignited at once, generating over two thousands pounds of thrust, enough to send him rocketing up through the gloom to the churning surface of the pool. Radio signals from orbiting satellites told him where he was and which direction to fly, so that he took the straightest route possible to the open air, emerging dramatically from the Maid of the Mist pool like Excalibur thrust upward by the Lady of the Lake. Cool-air venting, ringing the soles of the boots, mixed chilled air with the jet exhaust, so as to avoid cooking every fish in the pool.
“All right,” the golden Avenger said, searching the sky. Nano-wipes cleared the silt and water specks from his optical lenses. “Where’s that tricky weather witch?”
Storm had not flown far since dropping Iron Man from the heights. Perhaps she had lingered overhead to ascertain whether Iron Man had indeed survived his plunge, maybe even contemplating a rescue attempt. Whatever her intentions, her influen
ce over the environment remained readily apparent; looming gray thunderheads, swollen with unspilled rain, blotted out the sun, throwing a gloomy shadow over the world-famous scenery. External sensors in Iron Man’s armor registered a 15 percent increase in atmospheric ozone; obviously, Storm had lived up to her name.
But how often could she pull off that EMP trick? lion Man decided not to take any chances. The swirling mists at the base of the Horseshoe Falls hid his return for at least a second or two; Iron Man used that momentary surprise to fix Storm within his targeting display, then unleashed a barrage of tight-beam sonics to rattle her nerves and break her concentration.
It worked. The soaring mutant threw her hands over her ears and grimaced in discomfort.
Kind of like what your buddy Banshee did to Nick Fury and his people, Iron Man thought, appreciating the poetic justice of his ploy. He kept up his sonic assault as he flew toward the airborne heroine.
Afflicted by the relentless sound waves, Storm lashed out instinctively, not with a calculated pulse, but with a raw and elemental thunderbolt that lit up the entire sky before exploding in a shower of sparks against Iron Man’s armor. Hundreds of gigawatts crackled noisily, but this time the golden Avenger was ready. The energy conversion system of his armor, running several layers below the enamel and iron plating, absorbed the massive electrical charge and channeled it into the suit’s overall power supply. Energy reserves, which had been depleted during his battles with both Storm and Hulk, filled to capacity, leaving him with power to spare.
Feeling more than a little like a latter-day Benjamin Franklin, Iron Man fired Storm’s own lightning back at her, in the form of blazing repulsor rays.