2 The Appledore
"So Mr. Magnussen, Can I get an autograph?" Said Stark after Jarvis showed Charles's details on Tony's spectacles.
"Of course, Mr. Stark. I will give you an autograph, but first, How are you? You look haggard. Ignoring your physical health, as I can see a torch sticking out of your chest, is your mental health alright?" replied Charles while looking concerned.
"Oh yes yes, I'm Perfect! What about you? Pepper was telling me that you had something for me?"
"Ah yes, Mr. Stark, what I have for you since the past 5 months actually is information about the person who has been stealing from you."
As soon as Carles's words finished, there was a sort of tension in the air. Pepper looked at Tony as he gave her a look.
"I don't understand, Mr. Magnussen" Said Pepper very carefully.
"Actually Madam Potts, I am talking about Obadiah Stane. Half a year ago, I came across his transaction details with a terrorist organisation, Ten Rings."
At this point the colour of both Tony and Pepper's face was white. They had just been discussing this and now they were told that this information could have been available to them at a much earlier time, and Tony could have saved himself from getting abducted in Afganisthan if Pepper had given Charles an appointment immediately.
"In this Hard drive, there is enough information about the transaction details between Obadiah Stane and various shell companies which, on further investigation, can be linked to the terrorist organisation which abducted Mr. Stark."
Charles pulled out the upper half of his Hard disk from his inner west's pocket to show Tony, after which he immediately pocketed it again.
"Apart from this, I also know that this torch….or should I say the Micro Arc-Reactor powered by Palladium is poisoning you. So I have an alternative to it before the damage becomes irreversible."
Pepper was white as a sheet by now. She didn't know that the thing inside of Tony's chest was actually poisoning him. She had not accepted this fact herself but she knew that she cared about Tony way more than she should.
"Also, before you interrupt me to tell me that you are already looking at alternatives and you don't need my help, or if you ask me how do I know so much, then let me tell you, Mr Stark, before a Bestseller Author, I was a Private Investigator."
Charles had already infiltrated Obadiah Stane's office with his teleportation magic while Tony was kidnapped and downloaded everything he could.
Being a PI, he obviously knew hacking, and learning new things was never hard for Charles. Especially after coming to the Marvel universe, he actually felt that he could see the world a little differently. This was his most prized skill. He could learn anything.
"Let's talk business then, shall we? What do you want in exchange for all this information?" Said Tony decisively.
"Appledore" Replied Charles with a smile.
.
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Charles was discussing with Tony and Pepper for the entire night about the new element his father left him, the details of how Stane was stealing weapons from Stark and selling them worldwide, and also about what he wanted from Stark, or more precisely, what this Appledore was?
Appledore was the name of a project, a building so to speak which will be financed by Tony.
Tony accepted this price after he verified that the new element left behind by his father was real and Charles wasn't lying.
It would also increase the efficiency of his Arc Reactor so this price was reasonable.
Pepper sent off Charles to the gate after which Charles went to his house and started to open a portal.
Ulysses Klaue was sleeping peacefully in his ship when suddenly his head separated from his body. Charles had already found his location some time ago, and now he knew that the time was right. He kicked Ulysses Klaue's head to the side and started to throw all the Vibranium inside of a small portal near him.
He then proceeded to throw all the weapons and ammunition as well and finally, he cut off Klaue's thumb and used it to unlock his computer from which he stole all his money as well.
'The dead won't need it' He thought.
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The Next morning, there was a news that an explosion had occurred in an abandoned shipyard in South Africa, but no major news channel covered it.
Reports said that many weapons were discovered there and it was found out that it was actually a hideout of a weapon's supplier. But, since everyone died in the explosion, not much information could be found.
There was another news a couple of weeks later which every news channel was talking about and that was that Tony Stark had revealed that he was Iron Man.
This news launched Stark Industries stocks to a new height and Charles was suddenly the owner of 1.2% of the equity in Starks.
The meaning of this is that just the yearly dividend from Stark Industries was enough for him to comfortably live his life.
This whole thing was over pretty quickly because of Charles. Obadiah Stane died before he could even assemble the Iron Monger armour.
During this time, Charles had also set up a lab in his house in which books on Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Deep Learning, Quantum Tunneling, etc were neatly placed with bookmarks while Charles was trying to study the Vibranium he stole from Ulysses Klaue with his magic.
He was trying to use his magic to manipulate the Vibranium but it was proving to be a very difficult feat.
.
.
.
Almost a year has passed by now, and many things changed.
First of all, there was no Warmachine, as Charles had conveyed this to Tony in an indirect manner that if he doesn't have a verification system in his Armor, then anyone can just come and take it. This ensured that Tony asked Jarvis to not allow anyone inside of his labs and even put multiple biometric scans in the armour.
In this past year, Tony and Charles have become good friends and even Pepper liked to be around him.
Tony had completed his end of the bargain and Charles's Appledore was completed.
It was One-fourth the height of the future Stark Tower, which was later Avenger tower.
This had all the state-of-the-art labs that one could hope for. A nice residential suit better than most 7-star hotels and the best thing was that it was completely off-grid.
In the center of it, there was a huge Arc Reactor powering everything inside.
Tony had although refused to share the technology of making the Arc Reactor with anyone, he still made one for Charles in exchange for the video of his Parents getting killed by Bucky, and the name of the organisation which ordered it. Hydra.
Tony was sure no one can reverse engineer his Arc Reactor, and he was right. No one from Marvel world was as brilliant as Stark, but alas, Charles was not from this world.
Charles was in front of a glass room, in which a child of 8 or 9 years was painfully convulsing, and after some time, an orange light surfaced on his body and he blasted violently.
'Maya really is a genius.' He thought as he saw his failed attempt at copying Maya Henson's work.
Charles had already sought Maya Henson way back and sponsored her research. He already had a lot of money from Stark Industries's dividends payouts and his multiple Bestsellers such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter (A Modified Version where Harry and Hermoine end up together), etc.
Charles wasn't fast with her, he slowly and slowly made her realise that he was a good man. Even after sleeping with her multiple times, he would not just leave, but prepare a breakfast in bed, go to dinner dates, etc.
He made Maya completely fall far him and that resulted in today, where she called him and asked him to come to their lab as soon as possible.
A small smile was plastered over his face as he entered the lab situated at the outskirts of New York.
"It's Successful! The experiment is finally successful!" Screamed Maya with joy as she came into his arms and hugged him.
"Then let's test it." Said Charles with a small smile.
Maya's smile vanished at that.
"How? We can't do human experimentation until we get the approval from the necessary authorities, right? And we haven't even made our research known to them. It would take well over a month to get that.
"Well, Experiment on me." Charles said without changing his facial expression in the slightest!
"NO! I will not risk your life!"
Charles kissed her forehead and started to walk towards the experimentation room.
He saw a healthy mouse caged in there, who was shinning with orange light occasionally.
"Charles Wait!" Maya ran after him but before she could do anything, he pulled out the injectors and injected himself with the Extremis serum.
Maya was terrified. She was someone who wouldn't even let someone else die for the research of her Serum, and to witness the love of her life risk his life for her serum, she was petrified.
Soon, She came out of her stupor and commanded other researchers to get some equipments after which she ran towards Charles and made him lie on a surgical bed. Within few seconds, Charles was exposed to a variety of rays which were essential for the DNA restructuring process.
Charles on the other hand was using Sorcery to monitor himself. He wouldn't risk his life like that, but he knew that Maya will not let him die.
The Serum was already a success, it was that Maya was unsure about the Human Experimentation but Charles was not. He was also a part of this program since it's inception and knew almost everything there is to know about it.
He soon felt it.
The constraints of age being lifted from his soul, The constraints of what made someone human being shaken heavily, his healing ability was through the roof and finally, he felt the heat. The power of thousands of degrees of temperature at his fingertips.
Maya was monitoring the entire situation carefully with tears in her eyes while the other staff was watching it with worried faces.
"It's a success!" A woman who was monitoring Charles's vitals said with joy when she saw that they were stable!
Everyone let go of the breath they were holding. Maya was crying by now and slowly and slowly started to come towards Charles who got up from the surgical bed and removed the pulse rate monitoring clip from his finger.
"Charles!" Maya couldn't take it anymore. She was in a panic attack! She thought she would lose him! She immediately ran towards Charles and hugged him but suddenly everyone's expression changed.
"You know, Love. Shah Jahan, The Creator of Taj Mahal had every construction worker's and architect's hands dismembered so that no other Taj Mahal could be made"
When he said that, people all around him fell on their knees from terror as they saw that Charles's right hand had gone through Maya's chest and he was clutching her heart as it came out from her back.
"Now I really don't want another like me, so….."
There were screams of agony, there were begging but what was not there, was Mercy.
Charles had already planned this even before recruiting Maya Henson and after her worth was over, the worth of everyone present here was also over.
"Don't run. It will not result in a different outcome. Just pain and suffering."
He had already locked the lab and no one could even call from here due to the signal jammers.
"This ability is quite unsightly" Said Charles as he vomited literal Lava on a male researcher who thought that he could tackle Charles from behind.
Within 20 minutes, he killed all the 20 Employees of his secret lab with no one left the wiser.
There was blood and mutilated body parts everywhere on the floor.
Charles typed a couple of things in the main server and soon even the servers were fried and all the research on Extremis was gone, just like that.
"Time to clean up."
A small portal appeared beside Charles, from which he took out several explosives he stole from Ulysses Klaue. This much explosive was enough to level mountains, and that was exactly the use of such explosives, it was to mine around the quarries and construct roads.
After lying down the explosive, Charles got inside of the portal and flipped a switch, after which a deafening explosion took place in Hudson, New york. Forget the lab, most of the houses in the suburbs were destroyed as well.
More than 20 families, vanished.
Tony was fighting Ivan Vanko right now. It was a joke, he thought.
This Ivan Vanko thought that using Hammer's resources, he could beat Tony, but he was so wrong. Tony easily defeated Ivan Vanko's army of Armors and then had him and Justin Hammer arrested when suddenly Jarvis told him about a Level 7 earthquake at the outskirts of New york city.
And sure enough, within just a few minutes, every news channel was showing the absolutely heart-wrenching footage of the destroyed homes.
"It was a little too much, but S.H.I.E.L.D can't be under-estimated. Their forensic team is no joke." Came Charles voice as he was experimenting with something in the basement lab of the Appledore.
