Tony Stark (in_extremis) wrote in oh_marvelous, @ 2010-02-25 16:18:00 |
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In Situ, vol. 3
Characters: Iron Man, open to all, multi-threadsss
Setting: New York City
Content: Blowin' stuff up. Language, violence, blood, all the good stuff.
Summary: (some of) The Avengers have created a monster, and it has some aggression to take out on the city. The Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the X-Men try to slow him down.
What if I told you I was Iron Man?
On this date a year ago, there was a celebration attended by hundreds held in a great ballroom with endless flowing champagne and h'ors d'oeuvres provided by the city's top chefs, live music and easy conversation, and an undisclosed amount donated to a selection of charities in Tony Stark's name. While many would insist they saw him that night and wished him the best of birthdays, he guest of honour, in his customarily impulsive fashion, did not attend.
A year later, a different ballroom, the current top chefs hastily preparing, the band finalizing the set list, and the places being set, and again the birthday boy would see none of it. He sat, not with patience, but with prostration, stretched across an unprepared, elegant canopied bed on the thick, dust coated white sheet that had covered it in its disuse. Very little else in the room had been so distressed; the sheets remained draped evenly over the furniture, giving everything the appearance of sterility, or some lifeless, cold apocalypse. He was tired, and he got headaches, and his nails were chewed to bleeding, but he only watched the Iron Man stalk his parents' old bedroom, unable to adapt the function of his brain like the Iron Man had done to keep it from knowing his every thought. It had all of his memories, and saw everything he saw now, just as it had all of JARVIS' stored data, and could access not just the internet, not just satellite images, not just S.H.I.E.L.D.'s databases, everything on a wireless system. It listened to telephone conversations between two unknowing strangers in Russia, and it learned Russian and what it meant to be a 56 year old veterinarian coping with the anxiety and addictive exhilaration of an affair. Tony had watched it learn, adapt, and simplify human impulses and emotions to bare survival needs, to their most animalistic desires, and ask Tony 'Why?' in a progressively more familiar way. Speech patterns, mannerisms, it even laughed in a way that made Tony sick. An arrogant, derisive scoff at the creatures that were so below it. At all of those people that were just so pathetically stupid. They needed him to protect them.
On his 36th birthday, Tony watched it processing, adapting and listening, and just waited. Something would happen eventually. It wasn't preparing to just stay here forever. There was still blood, dried brown, on the sheet where he had sat when they had first arrived and just in the light of the Iron Man's glowing heart it had ran cold, gentle hands over him, carefully extracting the shards of glass and thick splinters of wood that had been buried under his skin in the fight with a sickening, loving dedication. His wounds had healed since then. He was just a thing ready for battle again.
"We are Iron Man," the armor corrected, the first words spoken between them in the achingly silent room in hours.
Tony shrugged and looked away from it, tucking his face behind his folded arms and breathing the dust on the sheet.
"We have to go," it added after a moment, and when Tony didn't move, just slowly looked back over at it to watch it out of the corner of his eye, it took control. That was getting easier, too.
The building was already surrounded by the emergency and police response by the time Iron Man arrived. The broadcast had said unknown assailants had taken control of the convention center with hostages when Iron Man was taking to the air, but as he alighted on the pavement the situation had escalated somehow to the building on fire.
"Iron Man!" one of the officers called before he could take to the air again with the best course of action calculated. Wordlessly, he turned to take in the man's strained smile, watching him gesture with a heavy arm towards the blazing building. "Thank god, there's a million of 'em! Best we can tell is there was this computerin' convention goin' on and these guys here showed up, all dressed in these same funny green suits, and are out round the other side haulin' some equipment out. They've got about four thousand innocents in there and we don't have the manpower."
Hydra. No doubt. The fire was just a distraction to steal whatever it was that they came for and make their getaway. Without responding to the officer, Iron Man was in the air again. This could be ended neatly. He cut a clean arc over the blaze, twisting to a stop where he could see the Hydra agents scrambling out the doors 30 meters away, struggling with something heavy between them. When they hit the ground, the device cracked with the impact, and the others milling as guards sprung away to level their weapons at their attacker. They dropped, too, sudden and heavy, and the doors that had been swinging open again quickly shut. Taking them out one by one was inefficient. Iron Man gained height, raised his arm, and let loose the missile that would level the whole building. The blast choked the adjacent three city blocks with dust and debris, sending cars screeching, spinning and crunching into each other, and bringing the center of Manhattan to a standstill.