Harley

A night breeze swept across the terrace, carrying a hint of the coolness of late night.

The city lights in the distance blended into one, quiet and still. No one knew when the crisis that would trigger the appearance of the Mind Stone would arrive.

After a long while, Tony finally finished the drink in his glass and put it on the railing.

"Fine, I'll stay. But could you try to reason with it? Stop making all this noise for no reason, it's driving me crazy."

When I try to talk to it, it acts like it has no brains; we can't communicate with it at all.

Lynn laughed, "Go talk to it yourself. It's in your head, I can't tell."

Tony snorted and turned to walk back. His steps were much lighter than when he came, though he still looked a little awkward.

The smile on Lynn's face slowly faded as she watched his figure disappear down the corridor.

He looked up at the starry sky above.

The Mind Stone.

This isn't the main universe. If the Mind Stone truly appeared because of a crisis, then this impending storm will definitely be massive...

As expected, things gradually calmed down over the next week.

It was as if I had finally adapted to the new environment, and the voices in my mind had changed from soft murmurs to clear conversations.

To be precise, it was mutual teasing.

When Tony was in the lab revising the armor blueprints, it would always pop up and nitpick, saying things like, "The stress structure here is wrong; it's wasting the strength of the nanomaterials."

It's infuriating, but it's also incredibly useful.

After a few days of getting to know each other (let's consider the Mind Stone as human), Tony finally found an opportunity to have a proper negotiation with it.

At noon, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes to rest, and said to himself, "Let's talk. This can't go on forever."

"Go ahead and say it."

The voice was languid, exactly like his tone. "You can do whatever you want normally, but when I'm sleeping, eating, or with Pepper, you better keep quiet!"

Tony paused, "Also, don't just throw anything at me. I have my own rhythm."

The voice snorted, as if dismissing something. "It's no big deal. Fine, what can I do? I'm living under someone else's roof."

He was incredibly stubborn, but he finally agreed. Tony breathed a sigh of relief.

But he didn't get a chance to relax for long before he slowly started to catch his breath again.

On the surface, everything was getting better, but the unease in his heart just wouldn't go away.

What is the Mind Stone? Lynn said it is the white blood cell of the universe, and it will not appear unless it is a matter of life and death.

Now that it has appeared, and is happening to me, it means that the crisis is much closer than anyone imagined.

Lynn didn't say it outright, but Tony could tell.

He had seen too many storms in his life. From the moment he built his first suit of armor in the cave, he knew that the calmer the surface of the water, the stronger the undercurrents.

He can't wait for problems to come knocking on his door before he reacts.

SSC has Lynn, Wanda, Banner, Spider-Man- Man and his crew, as well as a bunch of capable agents.

Tony stood in front of the lab's floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the New York night view.

Below, cars streamed by, and lights formed a continuous river – this was the city he protected.

He needs someone who can carry on Iron Man's will when he's not around.

He thought about it for a long time, remembering the child Lynn had mentioned to him before.

Harley.

He remembered that boy.

Tony looked at the lights outside the window, his fingertips tapping lightly on the glass.

He trusted Lynn's judgment.

I trust his own judgment of people more; the resilience in that child's eyes couldn't be faked.

Tony turned and walked back to his workbench, swiping his finger across the holographic screen to bring up a training plan that had just been completed.

The cursor hovered over the "Heir" line for a long time. Finally, he typed Harley's name.

The night outside the window was deep, and the laboratory light cast a shadow on his face. No one knew when the storm would arrive.

But he has to pave all the roads that need to be paved before that.

It rained a little in New York the day Tony left.

He was wearing a faded denim jacket, sunglasses perched on his nose, and a travel bag tossed in the passenger seat. JARVIS had been left at the base; Pepper had only received one message: "Going out to take care of some business, will be back in a few days, don't worry."

Pepper replied with "Be careful" and didn't ask any further questions.

She knew him too well; he would speak when he wanted to, and pressing him for details was pointless if he didn't want to.

Once on the highway, the skyscrapers of New York gradually shrank in the rearview mirror. Tony rolled down the window halfway, letting in a gust of wind that carried the earthy smell of rain and the stench of manure wafting from distant farms.

"This flavor is really strong," he muttered.

A voice lazily popped out in my head. "You've eaten expired canned food in an Afghanistan cave, what are you afraid of?"

"That's different. At least you can't smell cow dung in a cave."

"That's natural. What you're talking about is industrial waste gas."

Tony didn't bother to reply. After two weeks, he had figured out the pattern of dealing with this thing: if you ignore it, it will calm down on its own. The more you argue with it, the more energetic it becomes.

We drove for two days and one night, stopping at a motel for a nap in between.

The hotel mattress was as hard as a brick; he tossed and turned, unable to sleep, but the voice in his head remained perfectly still. The next morning, with dark circles under his eyes, he continued his journey, when the voice finally uttered, "You were snoring last night."

"I wasn't asleep, why are you snoring?"

"Oh, sorry. I misunderstood, Tony. You were snorting all night."

Tony decided not to bother with it.

We arrived in that small town in Tennessee on the morning of the third day.

JARVIS, how much further?

"Three hundred meters ahead, at the end of the main street. The target building is located east of the gas station, with a sign that reads ' Keener Auto Repair '."

The car shuffled forward another two hundred meters before the rusty sign of the roadside gas station finally came into view. Sure enough, there was a repair shop next to it, with a small storefront and most of the paint on the sign peeling off, leaving only the word "China" barely recognizable.

Tony parked his car across the street, not in a hurry to get out.

He looked through the car window for a while. The repair shop wasn't big, but it was neatly organized inside. Tools hung on one wall, categorized by type, and there were no extra oil drums or scrapped parts on the floor.

A boy was crawling under an old Ford, with only his legs showing.

Tony got out of the car, walked over, and leaned against the metal pillar by the door.

Excuse me, there seems to be a problem with the brakes, could you take a look?

The person under the car didn't come out immediately. After a while, they slid out from under the car.

He was a tall, thin boy, about seventeen or eighteen years old, with oil stains on his face.

He stared at Tony for a while, his expression shifting from doubt to disbelief.

" Tony Stark?"

Tony pulled his sunglasses down a little. "You still remember me."

"Of course I remember."

Harley tossed the wrench onto the toolbox, wiped his hands on his trousers, and stood up. "What are you doing here?"

Tony casually replied, "Just passing by. I heard the mechanics here are pretty good, so I thought I'd check it out."

Harley didn't call out the clumsy lie.

The town is tucked away in a remote corner of Tennessee, more than an hour's drive from the nearest highway—a complete wasteland.

He didn't press further, just nodded and told Tony to drive the car in, "The brakes are pulling to one side, right? Let me check."

Tony sat down on a discarded tire next to him.

Harley worked efficiently, removing tires, checking the brake pump, and inspecting the brake pads.

How long have you been working here?

"More than two years."

Harley didn't even look up. "Come after school, all day on weekends. The boss is nice; he taught me a lot."

At noon, the boss called us to lunch. It was a big pot of stewed beans with bacon, and each person got a paper plate.

A difficult person came in this afternoon.

A middle-aged man driving a brand-new pickup truck complained that the brakes hadn't been fixed after three repairs. He pointed at his boss and berated him, saying the apprentice's skills were poor and demanding compensation.

The shopkeeper stood by, forcing a smile, a helpless expression on his face. Harley stood aside, waiting for the man to finish his tirade before stepping forward.

"Sir, I just took a quick look. The brake master cylinder on your car has been replaced; it's a bit smaller than the original. It's not a technical issue on our end."

He spoke steadily and respectfully, "If you trust me, I can give you a 're-training,' it'll only take half an hour."

The man paused for a moment, muttered curses for a while, and finally threw the keys at me. "If you can't fix it, you'll have to compensate me for lost wages."

Harley didn't say anything more, just climbed into the area under the driver's seat. Twenty minutes later, he came out, dusted off his hands, and said, "All done. Give it a try."

The man got in the car, drove around the streets for a while, and came back looking much better.

The boss patted Harley on the shoulder. Harley smiled, picked up the wrench, and moved on to the next truck.

Tony sat at a distance, his fingers tapping lightly on his knees.

That's interesting.

If he were younger, he would have retorted long ago if someone pointed a finger at him and cursed him, or even if someone said a few words to him.

This kid has a pretty good way of handling problems.

The next day, Tony drove to the town's high school.

As school let out, students poured out, and Harley walked along the edge of the crowd with an old schoolbag on his back.

As he approached the school gate, several older students blocked a short boy wearing glasses, threw his schoolbag on the ground, and shoved him, demanding money.

The surrounding students all walked around it, afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.

Harley stopped. He watched for a moment before walking over.

He didn't lay a hand on them, but just stood in front of those thugs and said something.

Tony couldn't hear clearly because of the distance, but he could see the leader of the thugs pause for a moment, then leave with his men.

Harley bent down, picked up the backpack, dusted it off, and handed it to the little boy.

Harley turned and walked home, his hands in his pockets, his thin silhouette stretching long in the setting sun.

Tony sat in the car, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

It's good that he's not a hothead Peter.

They know when to stand up, and they also know how to stand up.

He recalled that when he was seventeen or eighteen years old at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he would immediately confront anyone who offended him, and afterwards he felt pretty cool.

He's nowhere near as good as this kid.

On the third night, Tony went to the repair shop again. The door was half closed, and the lights were still on inside.

Harley squatted on the ground, with a dismantled, scrapped engine in front of him, parts scattered all over the floor. He held a small notebook in his hand, measuring and writing as he muttered to himself.

"Changing the angle of the intake manifold can increase power by five percent," Tony said casually, leaning against the door frame.

Harley looked up abruptly, his eyes lighting up. "You know about this too?"

Tony went inside, squatted down, and flicked the camshaft with his fingertips. "You want to modify it for vehicle mounting?"

"Um."

Harley flipped to the back pages of the notebook, which were filled with hand-drawn sketches. The lines weren't very neat, but you could see the general idea. "I've saved up an old car, the engine's almost dead, and I don't have the money to buy a new one, so I'm thinking about whether I can modify the scrap parts to make do."

Tony looked down at the sketches. The ideas were wild, but the direction was right, and a few details even made him pause for a moment.

"Here," Tony pointed to one of the sketches, "The angle you're using is fine at low to medium RPMs, but it will cause knocking when you pull it to the redline. Adjust the ignition timing back two degrees."

Harley stared at the sketch for a few seconds, then quickly recalculated it in his notebook. When he finished, he looked up, his eyes shining like light bulbs on the ceiling of a repair shop. "It'll work!"

That night, the two squatted on the ground and talked about engines for more than two hours. They talked about everything from intake manifolds to ignition timing, from reusing scrap parts to how to squeeze out the most power with the least amount of money. Harley didn't talk much, but once he started talking about technology, he couldn't stop, and ideas kept popping out, some of which were obviously things he had been holding back for a long time and had no one to talk to.

Tony squatted there, fiddling with a piston in his hand, listening to the boy next to him talk endlessly about his modification plan, while the voice in his head remained quiet, without uttering a sound.

As Harley was leaving, he hesitated for a long time before finally asking, " Mr. Stark, what exactly did you come here for?"

Tony patted him on the shoulder.

"Nothing much. I just came to see if you're still the same as before. I have to go now."

He turned and got into the car.

When the car drove out of the town, the highway was deserted.

A voice popped into my head, still a little sleepy. "Have you decided?"

"Um."

"Aren't you worried he won't be able to catch it?"

Tony rested his hand on the car window, and the wind blew in, carrying the coolness of the morning grass.

He looked at the road stretching ahead and said, "It's okay if I can't catch it. I'm not going to die tomorrow. Some things can be taught slowly."

The voice paused for a moment, then spoke, its tone slightly more serious than usual. "Isn't your thinking a bit too pessimistic?"

Tony didn't answer immediately. He paused for a moment before saying, "It's not pessimism. I just don't want to wait until something bad happens before considering the consequences."

"Is there a difference?"

"Have."

Tony looked at the road ahead. "Making arrangements after something goes wrong is called remediation. And remediation is something that's lucky if it happens even once in ten times. I don't want to gamble the outcome on luck."

The voice scoffed, " Lynn's still here. With his abilities, these things are none of your concern."

Tony chuckled, a small smile tinged with a hint of helpless resignation, "I know he's capable. But he's not capable of everything."

"You're making it sound like you're questioning him."

I'm questioning myself.

Tony pulled his hand from the car window, placed it on the steering wheel, and tapped his fingertips lightly twice. "We can't always rely on others. Lynn has Lynn own path to walk, his own troubles, and his own judgment. He can handle it today, but what about tomorrow? The day after? What if he's not here one day? Are we just going to leave things standing there waiting?"

The voice paused for a moment, then softened. "You didn't always do things this way."

"I used to think I had plenty of time. But I've realized that time doesn't cooperate. You can't wait until the lights go out to buy candles, or wait until the walls collapse to repair them. It's okay to take things slowly, but you can't be unprepared."

So you still think that one day you'll be gone.

Tony gazed at the line at the end of the road, illuminated by the morning light, and said calmly, "I just feel that some things shouldn't be regretted until it's too late, that you weren't prepared."

The voice didn't argue further, only muttering under its breath, "Fine. You drive, don't just focus on making your final arrangements, you'll get us both done in a bit."