This was rough. A question suddenly occurred to me today.
Yes, I gave the protagonist's ability a restriction.
But I discovered a bug that seemed to make him invincible.
Copying and modifying microscopic information is his ability.
But matter carries information.
Theoretically, when Thanos comes with five Stones to steal the Soul Stone...
Lynn could give every member of the Avengers five Stones each and absolutely destroy Thanos.
Give me your suggestions on whether I should include this plot later.
I'll go with the majority. If nobody has commented by the time I get to Thanos's invasion...
I'll just go with whatever I feel like. After all, several of my books have flopped already. I'm not even sure anyone is reading this one.
After Rhodey left with the MK2, the living room remained quiet for a long time.
Tony stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows, still holding the untouched whiskey. The ice had long since melted, and condensation coated the glass, trickling down between his fingers.
"JARVIS."
"Yes, sir."
"Get me Nick Fury. The one who sneaked in a few days ago."
"Connecting, sir."
The call connected faster than Tony had expected.
There were no unnecessary pleasantries from the other end, only a deep male voice carrying an understanding that said, "I knew you'd call."
"Stark."
Tony set his glass on the bar and got straight to the point. "The things my father left behind. Have someone bring them over tomorrow."
The other end went quiet for a moment. Fury didn't seem surprised that Tony knew about this. Perhaps... he probably was never surprised by anything.
"Fine. Tomorrow morning. Wait at home." Fury hung up as soon as he finished.
Tony set his phone on the bar and turned around to see Lynn still sitting on the couch, legs crossed, flipping through a magazine with a standard "Lynn-style smile" on his face.
Tony saw through his intentions at once.
"You're still not leaving?"
"Nope."
Lynn put the magazine on the coffee table and spread his hands. "I want to witness Mr. Howard's fatherly love, and see how the new element is born while I'm at it."
He paused, then added, "You haven't handed over the house yet, so even if I wanted to leave, I'd have nowhere to go. I can't exactly go back to the Sanctum. Last time, he said I ate too much and nearly asked me to pay rent."
"Wong wouldn't bother asking you for rent. Keep making things up."
Tony leaned against the bar, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, but didn't keep trying to drive him out.
The next morning, when the doorbell rang, Tony was in the lab repeatedly screening the periodic table. JARVIS brought up the security feed, and a middle-aged man in a dark suit with a slightly receding hairline appeared on-screen, carrying a decidedly vintage leather suitcase. It was Agent Phil Coulson, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the least agent-like agent Lynn had ever met.
Lynn answered the door. At the sight of him, Coulson gave a gentle smile without any hint of surprise, as though everything was exactly as he had expected.
"Mr. Lynn, we meet again." Coulson entered the living room, placed the suitcase on the coffee table, and turned to Lynn. "I never got the chance to thank you last time at the Stark Industries complex. You saved my life, and the lives of several other agents. You were unconscious afterward, and I've genuinely been too busy lately to come and formally thank you."
Lynn waved a hand as casually as if shooing away a nonexistent mosquito. "Don't mention it. It was no trouble."
Coulson looked at him, his tone solemn. "The people you saved weren't just a few people of no consequence. They were colleagues I worked alongside every day."
Lynn nodded and didn't brush it off any further.
Coulson didn't linger. He turned to Tony, his tone returning to its usual mildness. "Director Fury sent me to deliver these. The belongings Mr. Howard Stark left behind." Tony looked at the old leather suitcase on the coffee table without immediately reaching for it.
"Now that you've received them, I'll take my leave." Coulson took a couple of steps toward the door.
"I'll see you out." Lynn followed him.
At the door, Coulson stopped. He turned, took a business card from his inside suit pocket, and handed it to Lynn. The card bore S.H.I.E.L.D.'s eagle emblem and Phil Coulson's name, without any unnecessary embellishments, as clean and simple as the man himself.
"Mr. Lynn, I know you're no ordinary person. That night at the complex... S.H.I.E.L.D. is putting together a special project, code-named the Avengers Initiative. (The original translation wasn't Avengers, but I'm used to calling it that, so I won't change it here.) Director Fury asked me to invite you to join when the time was right." Coulson sounded sincere, as though discussing the matter with Lynn. "We need all kinds of talent. Especially people like you."
Lynn accepted the card with a smile. "Agent Coulson, I'll keep the card. And thank you for the invitation. But I'd still rather stick with that unreliable playboy inside. Whenever he joins, I'll join with him."
"I understand," he said, still in that same affable tone. "We'll discuss it when the time comes, then."
Lynn stood in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame, watching Coulson walk toward the utterly unremarkable black sedan parked at the end of the driveway.
"Agent Coulson."
Coulson turned to look at Lynn.
Lynn opened his mouth, his lips moving before pressing together again. He didn't know how to say it, or whether he should. After some thought, he gave up.
"It's nothing," Lynn said. "Drive safely."
Coulson looked at him with a gentle understanding in his eyes. He didn't press, merely nodded and got into the car. The black sedan left the driveway and disappeared around a bend in the coastal highway.
Lynn shut the door, took a deep breath, opened the basement door, and went downstairs.
Tony had already opened the old leather suitcase. There were no weapons or blueprints inside, only a stack of yellowed notebooks, a few reels of old film, and a videotape labeled "1974, Stark Expo." He was crouching on the floor, leafing through the notebooks, his fingers moving with a cautious eagerness, as though afraid of tearing the paper, yet also afraid of missing something.
Lynn said nothing. He sat in a chair by the wall and quietly watched Tony slide the videotape into the player. The screen lit up, first showing a warm-toned, heavily grainy image. Howard Stark stood before the camera, his hair meticulously slicked back, wearing a suit with the broad lapels popular in that era. He faced the lens with a slightly stiff smile. Here was a man uncomfortable in front of a camera, forced by it to record an opening speech he found awkward.
"I'm Howard Stark. Everything you'll need in the future, you'll find right here."
Behind him stood the Expo model, an enormous globe surrounded by several pavilions in a simple layout. Howard's recording continued as he began explaining the Expo's design philosophy, the boundaries of technology, and humanity's imagination of the future. Tony leaned back in his chair, his hands folded over his knees, his expression subdued. But Lynn noticed his knuckles tightening slightly.
Howard paused in the recording. The camera was still rolling, but he didn't continue what he'd been saying. He turned his head slightly and looked into the lens, at someone he imagined would be sitting before the screen decades later.
"Tony."
Tony visibly stiffened for a moment. His back unconsciously straightened away from the chair.
"You're still too young to understand right now. So I suppose I'll record this for you."
Howard's voice sounded a little unsteady amid the tape's audio static. Pointing to the model behind him, he said, "I built this for you. Someday you'll understand that this is more than just an invention. This is my life's work. This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll be able to unlock it. When that day comes, you'll be able to change the world. Tony, the greatest creation of my entire life, from beginning to end... is you."
He had chosen the way available to him to say what he had never said before his death, and hidden all his love in a model, waiting for his son to discover it himself.
The recording ended. The screen went black. Tony sat without moving. His fingers relaxed on his knees, tightened, then relaxed again.
After roughly a dozen seconds of silence, he suddenly stood and raised a hand to draw a circle in the air. Orange sparks blossomed in the lab, and a portal opened directly into the Stark Industries CEO's office. Pepper was sitting behind her desk, going through documents. Startled by the portal appearing out of thin air, she looked up to see Tony leaning halfway through it, her expression somewhere between confusion and resignation.
"Tony? Can't you do things in a normal way for once..."
"Pepper, I'll explain in a bit. Where's that Expo model?"
"In the storage room. You said it was taking up space and told me to move it, but I haven't moved it yet. Why?"
"Perfect."
Tony turned and shouted through the glowing circle, "Lynn! Come help me move something!"
Lynn stepped through the portal into the office and gave Pepper a helpless smile. "He's got some new ideas again, so he's in a bit of a hurry. I'll handle the moving."
Pepper watched the two of them head into the storage room one after the other, shook her head, set down her documents, and followed to help.
The Expo model had a solid wood base, with a detailed reproduction of the 1974 Stark Expo model on top. It took considerable effort for the three of them to set it on the workbench in the middle of the lab, producing a dull thud of wood striking metal.
Tony dusted off his hands and stepped back twice, looking at the model that occupied more than half the workbench.
"JARVIS, scan the entire model. Extract the coordinates of every building, road, and landscaped path."
"Scanning, sir."
A digital reconstruction of the model unfolded layer by layer on the holographic screen. Tony raised his fingers and began manipulating the projection, stripping away all the irrelevant information one piece at a time.
Lynn leaned against the workbench, watching Tony's fingers hang motionless in midair for a long time. Then Tony spoke.
"JARVIS. Use the pavilions as a framework to construct protons and neutrons."
"Converted, sir."
A complete, previously unrecorded atomic structure slowly rotated in silence at the center of the holographic screen. Decades earlier, Howard Stark had left this behind using an architectural model of the Expo.
The lab remained quiet for a long time.
Tony stood before the screen, his head tilted slightly upward as he watched the rotating atomic structure. Then he lowered his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and looked up again.
"Dead for almost twenty years, and you're still teaching me."
His eyes reddened slightly as he looked at the structure and said with a smile, "Thank you, Dad."