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"A frog?" Hermione repeated, her eyebrow raised in mock surprise. "My, my. An apology from Tony Stark. It truly is a strange day."
Tony, still dazed from the blast and furious at Obadiah, didn't have time for her games. "If you want apologies, I'll give you ten a day, kid, but right now, we're out of time!"
Hermione waved a dismissive hand. "Calm down, Mr. Panic. I care about Sister Pepper more than you do. She's with Agent Coulson, and S.H.I.E.L.D. has her locked down. She's safe." She paused, then added with a mischievous grin, "She actually sent me to check on you. Said she was worried you'd get yourself killed. I came in just in time to see you doing your best impression of a dying bug on the floor. Should have recorded it. Hahahaha!"
Tony's face, hidden inside the helmet, twisted in a mix of irritation and profound relief. "Glad to know she's okay," he muttered. A new, cold resolve settled over him. "Good. Then it's just me and Obie."
Down in the workshop, Jarvis finished the final diagnostics. "Suit integrity at one hundred percent, sir."
"Let's go," Tony growled, and with a powerful roar of his repulsors, he shot out of the workshop.
Hermione watched him go, a small, knowing smile on her face. The Mark III was undeniably beautiful, a masterpiece of design and engineering. "You sure you don't need any help, Iron Man?" she called out.
"Children should stay out of adult fights, kid," Tony's voice came, already distant. "Go keep Pepper company."
Hermione rolled her eyes, a silent, exasperated sigh. Ah, the rain has stopped, and the confidence has returned. I wonder who was just begging for help like a newborn kitten.
"Just try not to get your metal bits bent too badly," she called after him. "And don't forget who to call when you inevitably get your butt kicked." Then she jumped on her broom and shot off in the direction of Pepper and Coulson.
Tony, a shrinking speck in the distance, felt his eye twitch inside the helmet. That child. She drives me absolutely insane. Why is she so nice to Pepper and such a terror to me? He didn't realize that for Hermione, Pepper was a calm port in a storm, while he was the storm itself.
The battle raged. Obadiah, inside the crude but powerful Iron Monger suit, was a wrecking ball of furious steel. The Mark III, sleek and agile, was dancing around him, peppering him with repulsor blasts that sparked harmlessly off the Monger's heavy armor.
"You've improved the armor, Tony!" Obadiah's voice roared from the Monger's speakers, a guttural sound of rage and glee. "But so have I!"
With a thunderous roar of ignited thrusters, the Iron Monger's massive frame lifted off the ground, spewing thick black smoke. It lumbered into the sky, chasing after the more nimble Iron Man.
"Sir, the Iron Monger is capable of flight," Jarvis stated, his voice calm amidst the chaos.
"Thanks for the completely useless update, J!" Tony shouted, dodging a clumsy punch that would have crushed him. He was burning through his temporary reactor's power too quickly. The fight was a desperate ballet of brute force against clever agility, raw power against advanced technology.
Finally, with a sickening clang, Tony slammed into a building and slid to the ground, half-kneeling, his suit sparking. The temporary arc reactor was failing. He was out of juice.
"Hahahahaha!" Obadiah's triumphant roar echoed through the night. "My armor is superior, Tony! This company belongs to ME!"
Tony looked up, his eyes burning with defiance. Superior? Hermione's voice, from a few minutes ago, replayed in his head. "An ugly fight… on both sides." She was right. Obadiah's suit was a brute. His only improvements were bigger guns and thicker armor. The core reactor, the very heart of the technology, was his. The AI, the brains, was his. Obadiah was just a glorified thug in a glorified tin can.
Pepper watched from afar, her heart in her throat. Seeing Tony defeated, she made a silent plea to Hermione, her eyes wide with fear. Hermione nodded.
Just as Obadiah raised his massive, clanking fist for the killing blow, a sharp, clear voice rang out from the sky.
"Bombarda Maxima!"
BOOM!
A blinding explosion erupted from the Iron Monger's chest, sending a massive fireball skyward. The force of the blast sent Obadiah stumbling backward, his hulking suit listing drunkenly before crashing to the ground.
Then, Tony watched in disbelief as Hermione descended from the sky on her broomstick, a small, black-robed avenging angel. Pepper, meanwhile, rushed to Tony's side, her face a mask of frantic worry, checking him for injuries.
"What are you doing here, Pep?" Tony rasped, trying to push himself up. "I told you to stay away!"
"Don't you dare blame her," Pepper shot back, her hands on her hips, a protective glare aimed at Tony. "I made her bring me. I told her to come help you."
Coulson and his S.H.I.E.L.D. agents finally arrived, their faces a mixture of relief and bewildered awe at the sight of the small girl who had just blasted a multi-ton suit of armor.
Hermione hovered above the scene, a smug smile on her face. "Look at you, Mr. 'Adult Fights Only'," she said, her voice dripping with amusement. "Lying on the ground. Not so arrogant now, are we? This is what happens when you don't listen to children."
Tony just gritted his teeth, his face burning inside the helmet.
Hermione turned her attention to the struggling Iron Monger. "Let me handle this."
Everyone tensed. Pepper and Tony, having seen her power, had a grudging confidence, but Coulson was rigid with fear. He had no idea what this "wizard" could actually do against a metal behemoth.
Obadiah, slowly climbing to his feet, stared at the small girl who stood before him, wand raised, looking impossibly small against the wreckage. He burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! What is this, Tony? Your illegitimate child? Sending a little girl to fight your battles for you?"
Hermione sighed, a long, weary sound. She pointed her wand at the Iron Monger. The previous blasting spell had barely scorched the armor. It was thick. Too thick.
"I heard everything you just said, Uncle," Hermione said, her voice eerily calm. "First of all, I would never, ever want to be the daughter of that narcissist."
Tony groaned.
"Secondly," Hermione continued, her gaze fixed on Obadiah, "after listening to you, I have only one question."
"What?" Obadiah growled, still trying to rise.
"How can someone as utterly stupid as you exist in this world?" she asked, a look of genuine confusion on her face. Her tone was so utterly dismissive that it cut Obadiah's rage clean in half.
"What did you say, you little brat?!"
"You can't even build your own reactor," Hermione continued, unperturbed. "You stole that one from him. And you're trying to kill the only man on the planet who can build more. How exactly do you plan to mass-produce these suits once Tony is dead? Did you even think that far ahead?"
She shook her head. "And after all this tonight, after attacking him in the middle of a city… you think you're just going to walk back into Stark Industries and run the company? You'll be lucky if you don't spend the rest of your life in a maximum-security prison. Even a child like me understands this. You're dreaming. How did someone so unbelievably idiotic get into a position of power in that company? I think I could do a better job."
Obadiah roared, a primal sound of pure, unadulterated fury. Every word Hermione said was a poisoned dart, striking at the core of his carefully constructed delusion of genius. "AAARRGH! You little devil! You'll pay for that!" He lunged forward, his massive fist raising to crush her.
"Look out, Hermione!" Tony shouted, the sound of Obadiah's rage a familiar melody of his own frustrations. For the first time, he found himself genuinely enjoying someone else putting Obadiah in his place.
"Impedimenta!"
The charging Iron Monger suddenly tripped over nothing, its huge mass crashing to the ground with a thunderous clang.
Everyone, including Obadiah, stared in stunned silence.
Obadiah picked himself up, shook his head, and charged again.
CRASH! Another invisible trip. Another clumsy fall.
He picked himself up. Charged. Fell again.
Tony watched the familiar scene with a growing sense of dread and a flicker of something akin to awe. Oh no. Not this. This is so much worse than getting blown up.
After the third fall, Obadiah finally got it. He pointed a shaking finger at Hermione. "You! What did you do?!"
"It seems you're not going to come any closer," Hermione said, her smile utterly devoid of warmth. "In that case, let's make sure you stay put."
"Glacius Maxima!"
With a sharp, clear incantation, a thick, shimmering wave of ice erupted from her wand. It slammed into the Iron Monger, instantly encasing the massive suit in a suffocating shell of ice. The freezing cold spread outwards, a visible ripple, covering everything within a five-meter radius in a layer of frost. A chilling, icy wind swept over the stunned onlookers.
Obadiah, trapped inside the suit, felt his blood run cold, the warmth draining from his body. But more than the cold, it was the sheer, impossible power of the girl before him that terrified him. What is this? Magic? Superpower?
"Cold?" Hermione asked, her voice calm as she looked at the freezing giant. "Then let me warm you up."
"Incendio Tria!"
Several pillars of fire, thicker than tree trunks, erupted from the tip of her wand. They swirled and twisted like living serpents, converging on the ice-encased Iron Monger from all directions. The ice began to hiss and crack, steam erupting as fire met frost, illuminating the night sky in a blinding, terrifying display.
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