Chapter 130 - Missed Opportunity

Chapter 130: Chapter 130 - Missed Opportunity

Ororo did not return to the Institute in the morning.

By afternoon, Charles had stopped asking whether anyone had heard from her. The answer remained no, and the older students had begun showing enough interest in the question to make further inquiries unhelpful.

Night covered the grounds before Ororo appeared above the trees.

She crossed the last stretch by air and entered through her open window, lowering herself onto the carpet with care. Her feet touched first. Her knees considered the arrangement, found no merit in it, and sent her back into the wind’s support.

Lucius had finally let her leave Sands Point after dinner became a night in his bed and the following morning failed to end it. By afternoon, Ororo had stopped pretending that either of them was being sensible. She did not regret the decision. Her legs had earned the right to object.

Flying to her room had therefore been practical. It also spared the younger students a demonstration of how a woman’s stride changed after an extended encounter with seven feet of vindictive enthusiasm.

Ororo drew the curtains, floated toward the bath and decided Charles could wait until morning.

-

Charles found her in his study the next day, composed, rested and seated with the deliberate stillness of someone avoiding unnecessary negotiations with her legs.

"Did you learn anything useful about Noctis?"

"He serves excellent wine."

"I was thinking of something more relevant to the school."

"So was I."

Ororo lifted her tea. Charles waited, but she had never been frightened by silence, and she did not rush to rescue him from one.

"Is there a way to bring him closer to our cause?"

"Lucius is not someone to join causes. He negotiates with people, collects what interests him and punishes whatever offends him. Usually in that order."

"You spent more than a day with him."

"Your arithmetic remains excellent, Charles."

The answer offered no opening. Charles touched the surface of her thoughts instead, lightly enough that she gave no sign of feeling him. He found a reinforced bed, blue-white light crossing Lucius’s shoulders, a laugh against her throat and the private satisfaction of discovering that his confidence had not been entirely fraudulent.

Charles withdrew before the memories deepened. He had already learned more than the question justified and considerably less than he wanted.

"Would he help if the Institute were threatened?"

"If the threat insulted him, endangered something he wanted or offered him a useful acquisition. I will not volunteer the school to discover which reason wins. Additionally, he hates you and will do anything just to spite you."

"Did he respect your limits?"

"The ones I set, yes, because the contest interested him." Ororo held Charles’s gaze. "Do not mistake that for a principle he will extend to anyone else."

Ororo drank, then placed the cup down.

"If you want him to help the X-Men, bring him a problem he wants solved or an enemy he already hates more than you. Do not offer him belonging. He will hear ownership, and then we will spend another year repairing the lesson."

Ororo rose without allowing the furniture to witness any difficulty. The air shifted around her before the first step, carrying just enough of her weight to make the movement smooth.

Charles thanked her and let her leave. He did not reach beyond the thoughts she had already carried near the surface.

-

Tony Stark had refused to rename his tower with the defensive discipline of a man protecting civilisation from a seven-foot spelling error.

The board had not approved Noctis-Stark Tower. Pepper’s written agreement had not advanced it. Lucius had been formally removed from the building and warned away from the exterior letters. Tony considered all three facts part of a coherent legal position, even if Lucius considered locked doors an architectural opinion.

"Sir," JARVIS said as Tony crossed toward the restricted materials laboratory, "Mr Noctis has opened the federal evidence containers."

"Of course he has. Does the chain-of-custody form include a box for hostile shareholders?"

"It does not."

"Corporate law continues to disappoint me."

The federal technicians had delivered three sections of damaged Panther armour for temporary analysis. Biological material had been removed before transport, the evidence seals had been photographed from several angles, and every fragment was due back before noon. None of that had discouraged Lucius. He stood at Tony’s central workbench with two black pieces suspended in front of him, turning them beneath the scanners without touching either.

Tony entered with both arms spread.

"So the renegade kingslayer returns. Except you didn’t slay the kitty king, which creates a branding problem. I was considering King Chopper."

Lucius turned from the armour with a sigh. "Tony, my dear partner. You remain jealous of any title taller than you."

"King Chopper has energy. It also sounds like a kitchen appliance sold during late-night television."

"Then address me as His Magnificence, the Royal Butcher. It preserves dignity and accurately describes the service."

Tony approached the workbench as the armour sections rotated in the scanners. One had covered part of T’Chaka’s severed arm, the other his lower leg. Lucius had cut through both with Duskreaver before federal authorities took control of the grounds. The Uru had left a division too clean for the material around it, while the broken fibres farther from each cut recorded what blunt force had done to the man inside.

"This is disappointing."

"You amputated a king through the rarest metal on Earth and exposed his country. Your threshold for disappointment needs adult supervision."

"The armour is woven, certainly advanced but traditional." He sighed in defeat; he remembered a self-forming version stored in a small object and able to repair its own coverage, not this.

JARVIS opened the analysis across three displays. Magnified layers separated above the workbench, showing Vibranium fibres, embedded conductors and the paths force had taken around the damaged sections.

"This technology is beyond us by at least several decades," Tony murmured as he started to read the detailed reports of the scans. The weave redistributed local impact across a wider area," JARVIS reported. "It preserved the armour’s external shape during several strikes. It did not prevent sufficient force from reaching the wearer to fracture bone and damage internal tissue."

"So the suit survives the experience better than the king."

Tony enlarged the cut edge. The fibre junctions were beyond anything in Stark’s archive, but the principle was legible as adjacent sections picked up strain. A future shell could change stiffness around an impact and pass the remainder into a layer that did more than deliver it to expensive ribs.

He opened another model, replaced its uniform outer surface with linked sections and watched the projected failure retreat from the centre. A drone body might isolate the damaged section instead of losing the entire frame. The distributed defence architecture in his private model had been waiting for a skin that understood the same lesson, and Tony saved the model with the stress maps without naming the design armour.

"You are already stealing from it."

"It’s called analysis when the government signs the delivery form."

"My accounting is also improved by paperwork."

Lucius lowered the fragments into their containers. "Speaking of public property, I have a very important and tempting offer."

Tony kept reading the material map. "Calling it tempting means it is illegal, expensive or both."

"SHIELD built three Helicarriers with excellent thrusters and unreasonable quantities of weapons. They were going to destroy one another as if Washington had arranged an early Fourth of July. I planned to take one, but restraint moved me. I am willing to let you have one as well."

Tony looked up from the display, but Lucius waited without correcting himself.

"They launched three nights ago and tore each other apart. All three fell before you finished redecorating your lawn with Wakandan foreign policy."

Lucius stopped looking at the armour, his expression unchanged.

"All three?"

Tony snapped his fingers. "That was billions in taxpayer money burning. Plus I can build something better."

"I can build something much better than those flying coffins, Playboy. This was never about capability; it was about expenses because they were free."

Lucius threw his head back and addressed the ceiling. "Those lunatics destroyed my free carrier."

"You were busy."

"I was defending my home and improving international honesty. A responsible government should preserve valuable assets until I am available to steal them."

Tony returned to the stress map. "Put it in the next defence budget."

"Has the government ordered any more thrusters lately?" Lucius asked.

Tony turned from the stress map to look at him.

"Stark Industries sells equipment, and I support commerce."

"You want me to tell you when someone begins building another carrier."

"I want you to respect a major shareholder’s interest in emerging markets."

"You are rich enough to build your own Helicarrier, Lucius. Go do that."

"Building it would involve paying for it."

"Now you understand why the government was upset."

Lucius’s attention settled on the closed evidence containers. Tony moved between him and the workbench.

"Those go back to federal custody."

"I was looking."

"You look with your hands, your mind and occasionally an axe. JARVIS, guard the evidence."

"I shall endeavour to overcome my lack of hands, sir."

Tony left him with JARVIS, the federal return deadline and strict instructions that no evidence was to follow Lucius home. He had almost reached his own laboratory when his phone rang.

The number was blocked.

Tony answered without slowing. "If this is another dead intelligence agency, consulting hours have become punitive."

"Stark."

Fury’s voice stopped him in the corridor.