Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen

Tony tapped his finger on his desk, other hand propping up his chin as his eyes stared into nothing- the monitors of information infront of him forgotten. 'I still don't know enough about magic.' His eyes focused back on his monitors- schematics of new suit designs, material lists, and tabs filled with notes and theories cluttering the screen space.

Absently he picked up a plate of silver metal with Jasmine's handprint in black paint on one side. 'Jasmine is able to do basic directed enchantment, giving my suits stronger with resistance to magical effects; but it won't be streamlined, versatile and truly powerful until she creates her own separate principle. And relying solely on my daughter for this isn't a solution.' He spun the palm sized plate on his finger. 'The question is; how do I personally enchant something without being a mage myself?' 

His eyes trailed to his notes- partially filled with recordings of various experiments. 'I am unable to manipulate mana directly, and thus cast magic. However I do have a passive aura that influences what I create.' He had some of his engineers each cut a sheet of metal, polish it and paint the metal's surface under the excuse of he needed several for testing. Compared to the ones made by his engineers, the one he cut and painted- despite there being no discernable difference in the process of creation or material themselves- was consistently a fraction of a percent better in all the tests he could think to throw at it.

'And all of those sheets outperformed a mass produced one by another fraction...' Barely notable, but there. 'Jas denied there being a 'mana' residue left over- as if we had saturated the materials. So it's more likely our 'auras' passively changed the property of the materials themselves during handling, rather than continuously reinforcing it like an enchantment...' 

But what else could he try? There are enchantments that can draw on one's mana, but they can only direct it in a specified way with minimal input from the user. He and Jasmine had already created proto 'stamps' for this purpose- but the enchantments produced by Tony through that method were negligible and easily overpowered by ambient atmosphere- lasting only a minute at most before fading. Partially due to Jasmine's lack of strength in that area. Partially due to Tony's lacking direction to his own mana.

The inventor sighed, scrolling through his notes. 

'There must be a solution to this issue...' There was the material option- but magical materials were not that easy to acquire on the market, much less in the amounts he'd need to experiment with. 'There must be a way for me to learn enchanting without being a wizard or whatever myself.' 

"Tony?"

He nearly jumped out of his seat, the world coming into focus as he blinked and tilted his head to see his wife with an amused smile behind him. With a cough he swirled around in his chair, "Yes my dear?" He asked with an award winning smile that just made his wife snort. 

"Sidera is in bed," Pepper swayed her hips a bit- nowhere near like the supermodels Tony used to lay with, not that either cared- as she approached Tony and sat in his lap, "And Natasha is cuddling with Jasmine tonight after her... outburst." The woman sighed and wrapped her hands around Tony's neck.

"Outburst." Tony shook his head, "For her sure, but I'm pretty sure that can only be called 'agitation' in others." He ran his hand through his wife's red hair and smiled, "I'm sure she'll be fine. I'm pretty sure it's normal for a teenager's emotions to get the best of them. I'd be more worried if she never snapped at all... Though, thankfully she doesn't show any trace of being like me in my youth..." Tony grimaced as Pepper laughed lightly, but got serious shortly after.

"What do you think of her former godfather?" 

Tony blinked, thinking back to the brown haired wizard they had in their house a few hours prior. "Honest, Prideful and playful, but fiercely loyal. The type of person you wouldn't want in any sort of special operations." He smirked, "Like a dog... that he can supposedly turn into." Pepper rolled her eyes at her husband's joke.

"At least we don't need to worry about him notifying his leaders in Britain and accelerating our plans. Speaking of..." Pepper peeked over at the screens on Tony's desk, "How are your anti-magic measures coming?"

"Not particularly well." Tony huffed in annoyance as he swirled the chair to face his desk, Pepper in his arms. He pulled up a set of tabs filled with haphazardly written and crossed out notes, "I can accomplish some of my goals with powerful magnets and EMP's, but if there are any wizards or magics comparable to what Jasmine can output, it won't be enough. Meanwhile more passive defenses like enchantment hit another dead end- complicated further by the fact I can't cast magic myself and need Jasmine's help with it." 

Pepper quirked her eyebrow, "I'm pretty sure Maeve told us Jasmine is extremely powerful and skilled for her age, are her enchantments not good enough?" 

He shook his head, "If I was using cloth or organic silk based armor, it would be. Currently her only principle is related to her spiders, allowing her to use her magic in relation to them with extreme power. Without it she relies on raw magic, which does not have the efficiency or output necessary even with her current level of power." 

Pepper frowned, "Then what about her current suit?"

"Unenchanted for the most part." Tony opened up another tab, "The only enchantment on it is a form of shrinking and storage for the parts which is inactive when the armor is in actual use. The rest of the armor's strange properties come from Jasmine's mana flowing directly through it, passively changing its properties while she wears it." He sighed, "Unfortunately these properties only have permanence if she is actively and comfortably using it, and disperse if they are reworked into a different form- and the suits will actively resist use by anything else after she wears them. Even having them piloted by Jarvis or Jarvia shows remarkably decreased durability and performance." He shook his head, "It's like in some of those new games- as if she has a passive skill that improves the performance of her armor irrespective of the armor's base capability." 

"How... effective is her armor when she's wearing it?"

"Very." Tony shook his head, "It's well over twice as durable as the base material, and that's purely physically. To things like heat or electricity?" He gave a dry laugh. "To top it off, even the mechanical portions or the suit are further enhanced- Not that there's many with her physical strength and flexibility."

Pepper smirked at the frustration in her husband's tone, "Jealous?"

He shook his head, "More annoyed at stupid, cheating magic..." Pepper laughed at that, then smiled and gave him a peck. "Maybe you should take a break dear? You've been throwing yourself at this problem with far more vigor than usual." She tapped his cheek in concern, "Is the appearance of her original godfather causing you that much worry?"

"..." Tony looked up at the ceiling and frowned as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah... There's only so much time till we have to deal with the British magical world, if not more. And from what Jasmine's told us of them and their general disregard of 'muggles'..."

"It's only a matter of time till they come knocking with bad intentions..." Pepper finished and sighed, resting her forehead on Tony's chest. "Why can't people just stop causing others problems for once?"

Tony wryly smiled, "I don't think there could be a society without such troubles, whether through incompetence or malice... Or even by accident..."

Pepper groaned, then shook her head and looked up. "How long do you think we have til they finally figure out where Jasmine is?"

"I'm more surprised they haven't already..." He beffedly shook his head. "Even Sirius found us by sheer accident, and he said he was the only person sent to America to look. The fact they still haven't noticed her in the news at all... Or even looked into the internet..." 

Pepper laughed. "You'd think there would at least be some who would grow curious at the non-magicals new toy, find out a bit about it's inventor, then make the jump to at least investigate further..."

"I'm really starting to fear for the continued existence of wizards. At least Maeve and Zawati are not like this. After all..." Tony trailed off, briefly remembering the article about a green monstrosity rampaging through Virginia that prompted him to start investigating.

"Supernatural cases are increasing?" Pepper gave him a look, causing him to nod.

"Had Jarvis follow up on my query. After examining reports, news articles, and forums on the internet I can now confirm that more and more supernatural phenomena are appearing. From mutant awakenings, to random people acquiring powers. Hell, there's even an increase of beasts coming up from underneath the sewers."

"That's... worrying."

"What really worries me is why."

 

>>> One week later 

Bone and scales shattered under Natasha's backhand, blood and teeth splattering on the side of the wall as the lizard-person spun and flailed onto the ground, the feral beast-thing dazedly scrambling at the floor as it bled from it's missing jaw.

Several others hissed and screeched- bound to the walls of the massive stone pipe by webs. A dozen more corpses lay in various states of blunt dismemberment in the shallow water, now tainted by blood.

Nat frowned, hidden by her mask as she looked at the bodies. 'Naked. No genitals or reproductive organs.' The humanoid beasts' scales were grimy, pale and cracked, while it's body was thin and malnourished. 'These ones appear to be starving as well. And just as rabid as the last group.' Her eyes moved to the lizardmen stuck to the walls, still snapping, hissing, and squirming. 'Even in this starving state they're nearly twice as strong as a healthy adult. They hunt in groups it seems- but are too stupid to form packs or use strategies.' 

Luckily it wasn't a case of humans being turned into lizardmen. Not enough recent disappearances above ground to lend credence to that theory- unless the crocodile was getting bodies from an international organization. 'Though it doesn't seem like they can breed, so they must be being made somehow.' 

She stepped up to a bound specimen and placed a hand over it's chest- after quickly webbing up its jaw- 'They have malformed qi pathways- and not in the places you'd expect modified humans to have them.' She's found that humans that transformed into monsters still keep a general human shape and structure due to said underlying pathways- acting as a strong framework that the mutation clings to. Though she's only come across three examples so far...

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'It feels more like a normal lizard or salamander forced into human shape and enhanced.' Thanks to her increased sensitivity to the paranormal, she could feel the warped 'essence' filling the monster. 'Similar to Jaz's spiders before she contracted them. So likely originating from a failed attempt at the super soldier serum... Which Osborn was working on, and the crocodile stole...' She sighed in frustration. 'So the chances of these being a product of the crocodile is even higher...' 

Her hunt for the former doctor has not gone well over the past couple months- the hulking scaled beast suddenly going dark with no further sightings to go off of. 

'And now these lizard people broke into a subway and killed several people...' Natasha exhaled and snapped the lizardman's neck with a quick blow, moving onto the others she had pinned. 'Their qi pathways are a mess, but extremely similar. The difference lies in which are collapsed. However it does seem that all of them have some massive collapse that greatly weakens them...' Which made her first thought upon seeing their starving appearance creep back into her head, 'These are the discarded failures...' And they were already stronger than a normal human. 'If they were all like this, I doubt the croc would have let them roam around.' 

From what Tony and her could tell, the Croc had an extreme hatred for Osborn and OsCorp, and was growing more and more unstable before he disappeared completely. And if he wanted to take on OsCorp who hired tons of mercenaries, and was a huge company, the doctor would need an army... 'And if he needs quantity, only the dregs and absolute failures would be discarded...' 

Silence returned to the stone sewer, drips of water echoing down the pipe. Natasha looked down the pipe and frowned, 'What are the chances this ends in a broken section exposed to another pool of water? I really need to get that water-based gear from Tony and Jasmine...' 

The Widow sighed, 'And likely practice fighting in water... when was the last time I did such a thing?' Her frown grew, 'Probably back when I had to help Tony save people on that crew ship attacked by those weird crab-people... That was awful...' She silently walked down the pipe, eventually coming across exactly what she expected. 

"I'm starting to hate water..." 

 

>>> Next day 

"At least my webs aren't completely useless in water." Natasha sighed as she floated in the pool, her bright red hair doing its best to spread from the braid she had it in. Her qi circled through her body, allowing her to quickly change her 'friction' with the water around her. "And this is useful too..." She quickly 'slid' through the water with a tiny push, circling to where Jasmine was sitting in the water, near invisible underwater webs forming a platform in the middle of the pool as two massive eight-legged shadows moved under the water.

"Yeah, Gena's friction control is fantastic." Jasmine smiled at her aunt, a small white spider with thin red-blue lines waving its front legs from the top of her hair. Nat smiled at the little spider as she coasted around her niece with minimal movements, relying solely on her friction control, channeled through her qi. "Her control over the types of webs she produces is fantastic as well~" The little spider preened at Natasha's words, causing the woman to laugh, slide up to Jasmine, and pet the spider's abdomen with a suddenly dry hand. 

Jasmine smirked, then looked down at Nat's new suit. "How's it holding up?" 

Visually it was the same as her last; pitch black with a blood red spider motif on the back. If she was wearing the mask there would be eight slanted red eyes in total. Natasha smiled and poked the skin-tight fabric. "Very well. Your enchanting has improved." She shook her head and sat on the same platform as Jasmine, stretching shortly after as the suit seemingly vibrated. "The fact I can now somewhat control the fabric through my qi use is fantastic, though I will need to test taking things in and out of these 'pockets'." She tapped near her waist, where several near-unnoticeable bumps were present. "The fact I can fit my guns in these is ridiculous." 

Jasmine laughed, "Yeah. Spatial expanding and object shrinking enchantments are fantastic. Combining the two is just the cherry on top." The girl grinned, "It makes carrying around my phone and electronics so much easier." She tapped her right hand on her left prosthetic- now nearly indistinguishable from skin if you couldn't see the pale glow of the arc reactor on the shoulder, the connection to her torso, or the small gaps where it can slide open. 

"I hope you're not keeping everything on your arm. It's obviously something people will try to pry off you." 

"Don't worry, it's mostly just my phone and some tools. I've got backups I have stored elsewhere." The girl's eyes sparkled a bit as Natasha chuckled and looked at the very slight bumps in Jasmine's swimsuit- or more honestly, underwear. Especially considering the girl didn't really distinguish between the two once she enchanted it to work in water just fine. 

"Are you going for that new trope we saw in that anime?" 

"Why not? Infinite cleavage storage!"

The two broke down giggling at the ridiculousness of it. "Do you think the japanese wizards have already succeeded in accomplishing such?" Nat chuckled out. 

Jasmine smirked, "Be a shame if they didn't, but from what Maeve told me they still are predominantly patriarchal and stuck up over there. A leftover from before world war 2, supposedly." She sighed, "Guess the quickly changing age didn't pull their wizards along."

"Yeah. Seems to be a problem with many so-called 'secret-societies'." Natasha agreed, the serious topic calming the mood. "Wizards with their tendency to distance themselves from non-magicals are probably one of the most blatant examples. It's not too bad here, is it?" 

"Apparently it is in some parts. Maeve and Zawati are a bit of the exception, but there are some 'factions' in the USSW that are quite old-fashioned. Maeve complains about them alot..." Both wryly smiled, falling into silence as Jasmine kicked her legs in the water. 

Natasha curiously looked down towards the bottom of the extremely deep pool Tony used to test his suits in underwater conditions. The two shadows were still poking at each other, crawling about and making temporary nests. One seemingly sparkled every now and then, even the webs glinting with bio-electricity. 

"That would be useful to have while exploring those stupid underwater tunnels..." Natasha muttured, causing Jasmine to glance down and smile. 

"Yeah, Spark's webs combined with her electricity seem to be a good combination in water. Especially since it's not obvious the webs are electrified unless she is recklessly pumping her bio-electricity through it... like now..." She smirked in amusement at the girls playing, Spark chasing around her sister who smoothly slid away from the sparking spider. "Bara's grace is something you should be able to near mimic though?"

Their colors weren't obvious from the surface- Spark being a pale pink with paper-thin purple swirls over her entire carapace. Bara meanwhile was a consistent dark grey, with striking neon-blue lines on her leg tips.

"Everything but her invisibility and razor webs- though I can get pretty close to the latter." Natasha watched several of Spark's webs seemingly fall apart and start drifting. "Combined with her filtration webs giving her the ability to breathe while submerged, and she's practically a perfect underwater ambush assassin..."

"Your new mask should handle the filtration of O2 from water, as well as be even more effective at handling air-born gasses. The shrink-to-full tech should give you a couple hours of oxygen if you get into an area with none as well..." 

Natasha nodded. For the past week Jasmine and Tony had been working on exploiting the shrinking/expanding enchantments she had recently got a decent hang of. Currently they were able to have gasses and photons pass from one size to another, but liquids and solids had to be completely separated at the boundary. They were still having problems with a physical connection, like a wire, passing from one size to another. The last explosion they caused made Pepper force them into temporarily expanding the capabilities they already had. 

Still, Tony was working on a supercomputer they would shrink from the size of a room to the size of a wallet. The difficulty was apparently keeping the signal consistent to the outside world due to 'noise' introduced by crossing the size boundaries. 

The medium said enchantments were bound to was an issue as well- it couldn't be weak as breaking it tended to cause catastrophic failure, whatever was inside being quickly expelled all at once as space quickly righted itself, briefly causing heavy compression... Luckily the oxygen deposits in Natasha's masks were made in a way they would rupture and expel the gas in one direction, as well as being dispersed enough to not cause immediate ignition under most circumstances if broken... which of course limited the amount they could 'safely store'. Though, a normal human wearing the mask when broken would have their head cracked and neck snap in such a case. 

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"

Jasmine's worried question snapped Natasha out of her thoughts. She smiled and ran her hand through the back of Jas' hair, avoiding Gena in the process. "You're a bit too young for exploring underwater caverns and tunnels. I'm pretty sure Pepper would kill me if I took you." 

The girl groaned in frustration, "But leaving you to explore them on your own is extremely dangerous! I know my dad's bots likely wouldn't be stealthy enough, but if a tunnel collapses due to traps made by the croc..." 

Nat sighed and bumped her shoulders with Jasmine. "Don't worry too much. I'll be more than careful. Just work on as many supporting items as you can, alright?" Better give the girl something more productive to focus on, rather than worry. 

"Yeah..." Jas sighed, watching Bera and Spark continue their dance below. Nat smiled and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "I'll be fine. Now, I can't wait to test this mask forever." She grinned and used a quick webline to grab her mask from the side of the pool, sliding it on as she tucked her hair away, sliding in the water down to the playful spiders below. 

Jasmine watched her aunt slide gracefully through the water, mind whirling. A glint flashed in her eyes, 'Projections are limited by their source of mana, thus also limiting their range to how far their source can 'project' them. Avatar-type projections get around this by channeling their own mana into a shell first made by the contractor, allowing decent independence as long as the shell can be maintained. But how do they manifest their mana in the projections in the first place?' A smile slowly spread across her face, her hair slowly floating around her as her eyes never left her aunt. 'This requires testing.'