BBS - Chapter 2 : I am Bored (Patreon)

Commissioned by [Nicolae]

The Bat, The Billionaire & The Shenanigans [2]

Disclaimer - I don’t own anything. Disney does, Warner Bro does, and Rowling does.

Ireland

–Tony Stark–

He was bored. Incredibly so. 

It was perhaps the most underrated realisation of being smacked in the face with the truth that yes, this was real life. Yes, this was his life now. Yes, he was currently in the body of a ten year old, or he was ten years old now. Yes, he had powers now. Yes, they were incredibly versatile and only seemed to grow with age. 

No, this was not some incredibly detailed illusion or psychosis while he bled out after being attacked by one of his many enemies who would love nothing more than to drink his blood and piss in his skull. Well, not in those exact words, but he certainly had earned his fair share of enmity from people who were deemed savages by most of the world.

No, this was not the afterlife. If it was, it was an incredibly boring one, and he certainly did not deserve to go to the boring afterlife, certainly not Heaven, despite his many, many attempts to clear his ledger that was full of red. Where was the fire and brimstone? The Boiling Oil? The non-consensual backdoor entry? Or the Chill, if he was on another floor of Hell?

No, this was just some random world, without any of the oddities of his previous world. Not that he could investigate the entire world right now, what with the distinct lack of the Digital Age and, as such, the incredibly lacklustre security that came with that particular revolution. The Digital Revolution was just creating a digital lock instead of a physical one, and to people like him, that might as well not exist. 

But that was in the future, or so he hoped. He was sure that his mere existence was going to alter this world in widely different ways, not to mention all that he planned to do in the near future. It was inevitable that he was going to create most of what he created back in this world. Sure, many of the underlying inventions that led to the creation of the Iron Man suit and, more importantly, the Arc reactor did not exist yet, but he was sure that he could do it. After all, he was Tony Stark.

Yes, he retained the same name even in this world. This world was different from his own because he could read history books all the same. There was no HYDRA, no Captain “Language!” America, no Stark Family, no SHIELD, nothing. It was as if everything that made his world a supernatural world was removed from this one. No super soldiers, nothing. Just plain ol’ American nukes ending WWII. Which meant that there was no inheritance for him to use to advance his tech.

He had to do everything the old fashioned way, and the old fashioned way in this world was…

“Tony!”

“Yes, Ma?” He shouted back, continuing to throw stones in their well, keeping an ear out for her words; else he would be, once again, in for a beating. Sure, his Ma loved him; that was easy to see, but love could be expressed in a variety of ways, and let’s just say that the laws in his time would not have allowed his mom to express her love in the manner she currently did.

Well, to be fair to her, this was just the type of world she grew up in, and she was doing her best. At her age, being able to wrangle nine children was a superpower in its own, and his ability to deal with his eight elder siblings was another superpower. 

The fact that he didn’t use his superpower even once during his love expression sessions with his Ma, and even during the many bullying sessions by his siblings, must count as yet another superpower as well. It was incredibly tempting to do so, but he never had siblings in his previous world, and he figured that he should treasure the ones he has now. The same with his parents, and hence, the toleration of the love expressions.

When he didn’t hear her reply to his shouting, which was likely since she was, well, old, he shouted once more, only this time, amplifying his voice with the well of energy within his body, that he was not going to call it magic, no matter how hard the energy resisted his efforts to be classified into one single form of energy. 

“MA!?”

What was a type of energy that allowed you to break reality in a small manner, just by thinking about it, if not magic?

He expertly ignored the voice in his head. What did he know? He was just a voice in his head.

Finally, he heard Ma reply to his question, and even then, he had to infuse his ear with his internal energy to hear her clearly.

“Jenny’s stuck again. Go help her out, will ya?”

He grumbled, having to go away from his me time and help Jenny out once again. “Fine!”

He didn’t hear Ma again, but she knew he got the message, so he just got down from the tree he had climbed before sprinting towards the barn. Jenny was prone to be stuck there from time to time, and as was tradition, the most unappealing task was assigned to the youngest sibling. Thankfully, his internal energy allowed him to reinforce his body to make sure he could handle everything without injuring himself. 

Also, as he had come to realise over the past few years, repeated use of his internal energy had also strengthened his body beyond that of a regular human’s, or maybe he was always going to become just as strong. Either way, he was strong now, for a child, and he was thankful for that. 

In his past life, he was never the type to focus on his body. Never exercised much in high school, not much in college, and never really had a social circle that would allow him to get fit. Always partying, drinking, and working. He didn’t really have that much time for being fit. Beyond doing the bare minimum to maintain his looks and charm (Yes, he was narcissistic like that), he didn’t do anything. Then, Afghanistan happened, and he did get serious about his body. Began working out, did physical therapy, and overall tried to turn his body around from decades of neglect. Then, the palladium in his bloodstream rendered all his efforts meaningless. Then, he found the new element, and it took him years after that to get rid of all the effects of the palladium. Then, one day, he went to sleep, having done the final tweaks on the kid’s suit, and then he woke up here.

As a baby.

Yup, with blurry vision, buck ass naked, which explained the chill he felt, and overwhelmed with feeling basically too many things and nothing at once, he woke up as a baby here.

And at the time, he thought that the experience of being pushed out of a small tube was horrible. But then, he was subjected to the awesome experience of growing up. After that, he had practically cheered when he finally gained control over his bowel as well as his sleep schedule. Falling asleep anytime he had to think really hard for a relatively long period of time got really irritating after the first dozen or so times. 

Things had only gone uphill after that, especially once he discovered and took control over his internal energy.

Right now, though, he could easily exert the same amount of force that a full grown adult would, and with ease, without even using his internal energy to do so. If he used that, then he could easily overpower any regular untrained human. Then again, if he could push back Jerry, the absolute behemoth of a farm boy, being 23 years old and in his prime, then he could probably push anyone who wasn’t a supersoldier enhanced by everything that came out of a bottle.

He was brought out of his thoughts of battling Cap, and all that went down with the assassination of his parents, by the sight of the Barn. He heard Jenny inside as he sighed and went inside, ready to rescue the girl once more.

___xx___

As he swam in the river like a badass, going against the flow with ease, he realised that superpowers were a really great thing! He wondered why he never bothered to tweak the Extremis formula and tailor-make a dosage of it for Pepper and him. From all perspectives, Extremis seems like a much better superpower, if you ignore any rapid growth he might undergo in his puberty, or maybe even uncover new aspects to his power, like he theorised might happen.

Extremis gave him instant regenerative powers, heightened durability, senses, and limited pyrokinesis, making him nigh unkillable. 

The internal energy, on the other hand, seemed so much lesser, as it didn’t make him unkillable in any manner, but was so varied in its application, especially since he expected them to increase in potency once he got his growth spurt. In his mind, his internal energy superpower was clearly the best.

Taking in a deep breath, he dove deep into the river, sinking deeper until he reached the riverbed, his feet touching the surface. He grinned like a loon as he realised that he could see. Not as clearly as he could see on the surface, mind you, but he could definitely make out most things here, even so deep underwater that it was mostly dark. The vision was also tinged with a little green, making him believe that he had just developed some sort of night vision.

And this was without using his internal energy. Once he added that into the mix, using it to focus on his eyes, it was as if he had flipped a switch. The green tint went away, not entirely, but mostly, as he could now make out colors and objects clearly. A lot of stones, sand, and many other assortments of stuff that people threw in the river could be seen.

Today was a rare holiday for him, as Ma had gone to the doctor, and since he was done with all his chores, done in record time so he could finally have some alone time, he could swim around to his heart’s content. A side effect of having a superpower that seemed to improve every single part of his body was that he needed far fewer calories than usual, even if his body needed far more energy, or it should. He supposed that his internal energy compensated somewhat, but to know more about it, he would need advanced lab equipment that probably hadn’t even been invented yet.

He glanced at his stopwatch and realised that he had been underwater, holding his breath for over 8 minutes now, and was not feeling anything at all. 

All in all, it was quite the feeling to know that you were superhuman in all the ways that mattered, even when being quite literally a child. He wondered just what type of growth spurt he would hit when he finally became a teenager, especially with his internal energy. 

He knew he was going to be tall, healthy, strong, and quite deadly to girls’ hearts, but he was more curious about the internal energy than snooping around a girl’s pants. No, Pepper had beaten that out of him over the years.

The sound of his stopwatch clicking made him go back up, lest someone get worried about a kid surfacing from the river, even after they had been beside the river for a long time.

Paranoid? Not at all.

After all, he knew quite well just how zealous SHIELD and the other organisations were about finding any enhanced, whose powers could be studied, so that the world’s governments could replicate them and use them as a weapon.

And he? He could become quite the weapon, even without any of his suits. 

He supposed it was time for him to experience what it was like to fight like a supersoldier, sans the shield.

……Maybe he could recreate the shield? Without the Vibranium, obviously, since this place did not have a Wakanda, or the word Vibranium anywhere in the Encyclopedia.