Characters: James Rhodes Setting: His secluded manor outside Los Angeles. Content: G Summary: James tinkers with his armor while considering his plans but first decides it is well past time to contact Tony.
Some men had cars or trucks that they worked on. Boats. Motorcycles. Snowmobiles, or the like. Others had guns, or other sorts of weapons that they enjoyed collecting, taking apart, and putting back together. James had some of those too. Especially guns. But what he had that no other man had-with one exception, of course-was state of the art battle armor. Armor powerful enough to literally transformed James into a one man. Able to match or surpass the speed of most fighter jets, while packing more firepower than an entire infantry platoon.
It was no wonder he had been dubbed 'War Machine.'
Sure, he would never be able to match the technical genius of his best friend and frequent partner, nor ever know quite as much about the armor than the man that built it, but...he was still a Marine. The armor simply made him more dangerous than he already was.
Deep in the sub-basement of the manor outside Los Angeles proper that served more as his base of operations than his home, James sat on a stool before his suit of armor, tinkering with the hip pods. While the suit was self-repairing, he liked to get into the machinery himself whenever he could as experience had taught him never to be fully reliant upon technology. Carefully removing sludge and another thick substance he could not identify from the hidden cannon he worked, as he had for hours making sure the armor was in prime condition.
For weeks he had been preparing for an extended world tour of sorts to make his presence known to warlords that the United States was either not capable or interested in dealing with. The monsters who were allowed to perpetrate atrocity after atrocity while the rest of the world too often sat on their hands. The same sorts of threats James would have liked to have gone after years before, and perhaps would have, had he the means and not been held back by his superiors in the Corps.
But now... now was different. Now he had the means in his armor, and the freedom in his semi-retirement from the military. The only thing that held him back now, he thought as he manually closed the hip pod, was finding out what had happened with Tony before he did go. Sure, he knew enough to realize that he would not have to be bailing Tony out himself this time for once, but at the same time he didn't feel right about leaving before checking in with him.
Wiping his hands with a rag as he got up, he resolved to do just that.