“That’s everything,” Leon said.
He spread his hands.
“All tested.”
Tony straightened up in his chair with an abruptness that was closer to relief than interest.
“You’re done?
That’s — I thought we’d be here another two hours.
I was prepared to hear about your ability to reverse the flow of time.”
“I can’t reverse the flow of time.”
“You told me, explicitly, that you have all of Superman’s abilities.
All of them.” Tony held up a finger.
“I have distinct memories of you in the garage, with that particular expression on your face, saying exactly that.”
Leon landed beside him.
“You’re right,” he said, with the tone of a man who has just discovered a boomerang works.
The problem, he thought, was which Superman he’d been comparing himself to at the time.
In his past life he’d grown up watching a specific interpretation of the character — grounded, relatively realistic, the Man of Steel played by an actor whose version of the role had been the most physically accurate Kryptonian depiction he’d seen.
That was the reference point in his head when he’d made the claim.
The Superman in this world’s films and comics had accumulated, over decades of publication, capabilities that no writer had ever felt obliged to constrain — time reversal via orbital speed, solar-system-scale feats of strength, wounds healed by heat vision.
That version.
He had not been comparing himself to that version.
“I retract the statement,” Leon said.
“I have the abilities of an ordinary Kryptonian.
Superman in the comics is powerful in part because he’s the main character and writers keep adding things.
His fellow Kryptonians aren’t as capable as he is.
Neither am I.”
“So no reversing the Earth’s rotation.”
“No.”
Tony looked like he was filing this under reasonable disappointment.
“What about the ceiling?
Is there a growth ceiling?”
“Probably, yes.” Leon moved to the console and looked at the data.
“The rate of increase I’ve shown in the past six months is partly the benefit of space orbit — maximum solar absorption without atmosphere reducing intake.
In normal conditions I’ll still grow, but slower.” He paused.
“I suspect the upper limit is not dramatically higher than where I am now.”
Tony touched his chin.
“That’s actually scientifically defensible.
A reproductive species shouldn’t have exponential, uncapped biological development — the metabolic costs would be unsustainable.” He turned to his display.
“We could model it.
Take your growth curve from the past six months, account for diminishing absorption efficiency at increasing power levels, and project a ceiling estimate.”
“That’s exactly what I was hoping to do.
I’ll need your help for some of the calibration.”
“Obviously.” Tony waved a hand.
“Between us, we have a supercomputer, a suitably equipped lab, and — as of this morning — some extremely detailed baseline data.”
Leon smiled.
“Thanks, Tony.”
“Don’t be sentimental, I’m doing it because it’s interesting.” Tony stood and stretched.
“Speaking of which.
We appear to have a basement that needs to be a basement again.”
“Yes.”
Tony looked at him.
“I’ll handle Pepper.
You handle the basement.”
“Deal,” Tony said.
It took Leon approximately three hours.
The bio-force field, calibrated carefully, let him handle raw material without losing control of the impact zone.
Heat vision cut and sealed at the structural points.
Freeze breath set the concrete work faster than any cure cycle — he used it in short directed bursts, checking the set between applications.
The wall went back in sections, stronger than what had been there before because what had been there before hadn’t been designed with Leon’s involvement.
The ceiling, which had redistributed itself significantly during the morning’s events, required more attention.
He worked through it methodically, clearing the compromised sections, reinforcing the load-bearing points, surface-finishing the result with the kind of precision he could now apply to anything that had clear tolerances.
When he finally straightened, wiped the residual construction material onto his jeans, and looked around—
The basement was done.
New paint, actually.
He’d done the walls while the ceiling cement was setting.
The productivity of superpowers is unreasonable, he thought, and went upstairs.
He dropped his jeans at the pool’s edge and dove in.
The pool was warm on a summer night, the surface lit from below, the sky above it deep blue-black and scattered with stars.
Leon swam without particular urgency — back and forth, maybe thirty lengths — and eventually stopped at the far edge and simply floated there, forearms on the coping, looking up.
The sound of the waves against the cliff below the estate was rhythmic and present.
A breeze moved through the garden.
“Congratulations,” Tony’s voice said, from somewhere behind him.
“You’ve just been appointed the Stark family’s official renovation specialist.
This is a permanent position.”
“Once,” Leon said, without turning around.
“This happened once.
Next time anything breaks, you fix it yourself.”
Tony handed a glass of red wine over his shoulder.
Leon took it.
Tony sat down on the pool deck with his own glass.
“Pepper left about an hour ago,” Tony said.
“She mentioned, in passing, that I cause most of the damage in this household and that I should consider going back to running the company.”
“She’s right.”
“She’s also mentioned that you haven’t been at your company.”
“She’s right about that too.” Leon took a sip.
“Which of us is the bigger problem?”
Tony swirled his glass.
“There may be a certain regularity of negligence, yes.” He paused.
“What was it you said?
What kind of CEO stays home without showing up at the company?”
“I’ll find a president soon.
Unlike some people.”
“Mm.”
They sat with it.
The pool reflected the garden lights in slow ripples.
The wine was good — Tony never bought anything else.
After a while, there was a splash, and Tony was in the water.
He swam with the deliberate efficiency and had kept himself in reasonable physical condition out of professional necessity and personal vanity, three or four lengths, then came to rest beside Leon and looked at the same sky.
“Leon,” he said.
He didn’t say anything else for a while.
“You’ve been holding that sentence for about four minutes,” Leon said. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“If you just say it, the pressure releases.”
Tony exhaled.
“I was thinking maybe we should actually talk.
The two of us.
Have a conversation.”
“We talk constantly.”
“A different kind of conversation.” Tony looked at the water.
“The kind where I ask you things and you answer them.”
“Did today scare you?”
Tony was quiet.
“It scared me,” he said.
“And it didn’t scare me.
Both, simultaneously.”
He looked up at the stars.
“I really didn’t anticipate those numbers.
360,000,000 tons equivalent.
No one on this planet can stop you from doing anything you’ve decided to do.” He paused.
“Not even me.”
“Was that the scary part?” Leon said.
“The scary part is that anyone else learning those numbers today would be terrified of you tonight.” Tony turned to look at him directly.
“I’m not.
And I’m trying to figure out if that’s naïveté or if it’s just—” He stopped.
“Just what?”
“Just accurate,” Tony said.
He seemed to arrive at something.
“You peed on me when you were two years old.
Broadly and without apparent remorse.
And I still took you to three cocktail parties that year and introduced you to women I was trying to impress.
That’s the baseline.”
He held up his wine glass slightly, not quite a toast.
“You could hit anything with the force of a nuclear arsenal.
I am exclusively happy about this.
That’s the fact.”
Leon said nothing for a moment.
Tony didn’t lie.
Not because he lacked opportunities, but because he was the kind of person who had always found other solutions to the situations where lying was the obvious move — and who took personal offense at the idea that his real position might require concealment.
When he committed to saying something, it was what he actually thought.
Leon knew this.
He’d had nineteen years to observe it.
“I know,” Leon said.
“Good.” Tony was looking at the stars again.
“So then.
What are your plans?”
His voice was matter-of-fact, but the question was genuine: the question of a person who had just spent a day measuring the difference between someone who could change events on a planetary scale and someone who couldn’t, and who wanted to know what the person with that capability intended to do about it.
“You’ve had nineteen years in this world,” Tony continued, “and you’ve never used any of what you had to do something I would have had to talk you out of.” He glanced sideways.
“That track record counts for something.
I just want to know where you’re pointing.”
The water moved between them.
“And I include myself,” Tony added, which was, coming from Tony, the equivalent of a formal statement of trust.
“Just for clarity.”
Leon looked at the stars for a moment.