Reality Crisis

(backdated to the morning after the end of the age regression plot)

Natasha had asked around and done some digging, but she hadn't found anything helpful in regards to what had screwed up Tony's brain. The most she had discovered was that he wasn't the only one. Not by a long shot. Most of the people affected seemed to think that they were thirteen. She supposed it was no surprise that she hadn't noticed the difference in Tony right away.

She'd brought him back to her apartment after knocking him out and had left him to sleep it off on the bed in her unused spare bedroom. She didn't feel bad about hitting him because it had been the right decision at the time. All the same, she'd brought some painkillers and water and her kitchen was stocked with food. Since she didn't know how long he would be stuck in the thirteen year old mentality, she hung onto the painkillers and would give him the correct dosage whenever he woke up.

There wasn't much she could make with the food here, but she managed a breakfast. Back home, she had been able to cook after all. Spending a few months posing as a sous chef would do that for a girl. It might have been a little strange to make breakfast for someone when it wasn't a part of a mission, but this was just her way. She wouldn't apologize for hitting him, but she would take care of him until he was back to normal.

Natasha was still working on getting her bearings in this new place. In fact, she still found a lot of the situation hard to believe. She'd half expected to wake up anywhere but here that first morning. So far, she'd met an interim leader and been assigned housing, but that didn't mean that she'd just accepted that she was supposed to live here from now on.

In fact, she was going to find a way home. She wasn't done with her business there and she didn't have any reason to stay in this place. It was hard to completely ignore the slight tugging that she felt when she passed by people who clearly had lost it all and kept going against the odds.

They weren't her concern, she had to remind herself. They couldn't be her concern. Not when her contract with S.H.I.E.L.D. was far from over and not when her ledger was still red all over.

Tony wasn't sure if he was happy or upset with being thrown back into the dead world. The City had been modern. Current. Extremely comfortable, especially after being trapped here for a while.

But he did NOT like being around another version of himself, and after being bailed out of jail had avoided him like the plague, instead living it up in the nightlife of the other world.

Now that he was back here he was disappointed and aggravated, but relieved to be back with his suit, and now he'd found himself with some supplies from the City that were very welcome. Good alcohol, some of the better and more finessed tools from his laboratory, and a supply of clothes from his own closet. They were all definitely making being here a lot better.

The only thing he really lamented loosing out of everything was Annie. She hadn't returned with him, and he could only assume that the City he'd been taken to was the one she'd mentioned being from. And maybe it had kept her there. Well, the company would be missed, but Tony wasn't one to dwell. Besides, she was a little gearhead. It was better that she be in a world that could nuture her potential. And his other self would undoubtedly find and employ her. Or she would find him and then he would employ her.

After a few days of intense work; and one of the bottles of good bourbon he'd otherwise decided to savor, Tony had finished the upgrades and finishing touches to the Iron Man suit. He'd focused on the mechanisms to get himself in and out of the suit with much more ease, since he no longer had assembly line machines built to take it off him. He'd also added in an additional scanner set and replenished the rocket supply. He also worked on m

Then it was ready for a confirmation run. Tony loaded himself into his suit, pleased when it adapted to his body the way it was supposed to. He left the apartment building out of the roof access, looking at the world through the eyes of his greatest creation.

He took off to run a pass over the woods, absently muttering notes about the suits performance to himself. Jarvis wasn't there to hear him, but it helped him to remember nonetheless. After making an initial pass the inventor noted a group of large rodent creatures mulling out a bit close to one of the gates.

"Great. We've been reduced to Loiter patrol," he rolled his eyes. The suit would probably be agreeing with him. He wondered what it would addspecifically, since it always seemed to have an opinion or two to share with Annie back when she could speak for it. "Well, let's go in."

He swooped in, using the propoltion technology to blast apart a rock near the creatures, sending them scurrying. One turned like it was ready to fight, but Iron Man slammed into the ground, throwing all of his weight into a punch that killed the thing outright, then landing on one knee. The rest of the small pack seemed to take a cue from the sight and disappeared, and Tony stood, looking down at the thing.

"So. Dinner, or roadkill?" he wondered, analyzing the body with his scanners and then sliding back the faceplate of his helmet as he knelt by the creature, giving its still body a contemplative poke with one finger. "They really need to make a survival manual for this place."

Annie was excited to get to work today. Not for any real reason other than she loved what she did and she was happy that they had business. She was glad for Megan and all the people that she had met in the City. She liked her life now, instead of it being a trudging terror day in and day out. Worrying, wondering, uncertainty. Things now were happy and fun and okay a little terrifying, still, but not all the time.

She bounced down the stairs that led from her apartment above the shop, down into the store itself, ready for the day. She unlocked the door (so much safer for both the shop and her, she thought, to keep that door locked always) and pushed through with a smile on her face. But when she saw that instead of the shop she was greeted by the harsh light of the sun, Annie stopped. Smile dropping.

There were a few blinks, so her eyes could adjust, she just hadn't been ready for that at all. The shop was different places some days, but never, ever, had this door gone anywhere but into the space that held her gadgets and cash register. There wasn't even another door in the short hallway that did go outside.

What became clear to her eyes as they made themselves take in the light, was that she wasn't anywhere she'd been before. Was this a really bad part of the City? Why were all these buildings run down? Where was everyone? This didn't look like anything she'd seen before. Any of it. Annie really didn't think that the City would let things get this bad anywhere, it hadn't even when it'd been forced into that body.

She turned in her spot to see if she could go back through the door, but it wasn't her door behind her. It was the door to some diner, some really not-tasty-looking diner and the smells coming from it were gross.

To make things worse, Annie was realizing that the world around her was mostly quiet. The sounds of machines were absent. The small chatterings that she was used to. Both in the City and in her own world, they were all gone. She gripped her stomach, both from the nauseating smells of whatever they dubbed food within that place, and the great loss that churned through her. She'd only been without the machines once in her whole life, and that's when the inhibitor spike had been in her back.

Tony had finally worked himself into an apartment in the Chosen housing, though he didn't like it much. He was resolved to find himself a more suitable workspace than the small hovel as soon as possible. First, though, there were more pressing matters to attend to; the most pressing being getting his Ironman suit back to a functionality that he could work with. Without Jarvis it was difficult, and he found himself reverting many of the controls to basic, motion driven switches, but he was making headway in getting it combat ready once more. He'd repaired what he could without new materials and had figured out some improvisations that would function in this environment, and had finally got it repaired to the point that he could get in and out of it without help. That was very important, as he didn't think Banner's idea of a good night included prying open another man's rear panels and helping Tony haul the heavy suit around the apartment complex a half at a time.

Still, it was time the inventor got better tools than what he'd filched from Bruce's stash and the locals after a brief trip out of the building. He needed basic supplies and whatever he could get his hands on to keep working on the Ironman suit, and to start stockpiling so that he'd be able to scavenge for whatever projects came up when the suit was done.

Putting together a backpack he'd been given with a water bottle and a heavy set of gloves Tony left the apartment, taking a couple significant pieces of the Ironman's reactor core to prevent unauthorized opening or use. He wore a heavy sweatshirt over the Black Sabbath shirt he retained from his world and his jeans and sneakers, glad he'd at least had comfortable work clothes on him when he'd been brought to this world. The sweatshirt was something of a must, however, and he tolerated the rather badly fit option because he wanted to keep his core well hidden. Shiny, powerful looking things were just too tempting to the wrong sort of people in an environment like this, Tony knew all too well.

He headed out and down into the city, sniffing out any junk or metal vendor, looking through the selection available to him as one the of exalted "chosen" types and questioning the locals on communal suppliers, scrap heaps, and possible locations that could be converted into a better workshop.

It wasn't long before he was pulling himself along under the weight of a much heavier and full backpack, water bottle held loosely in one hand and a heavy coil of water hanging from the other, trying to decide if it was worth going back to the apartment with his current finds to start building a better tool set or if he should try to find one more shop before they closed. He assumed they would soon, as the sun was almost gone beyond the horizon. He wasn't sure he had enough parts and raw materials yet to get everything he wanted to done tonight. Then again, he had enough to make a go of it, and he still hadn't slept enough to completely recharge after the battle in New York. In his head Pepper's voice berated him for not taking better care of himself.

Belia Ohorek sat at her desk, waiting. They'd gotten word to her rather quickly about the strange sites outside the city as well as the strange one who entered with one of the hunters. She had her own network always watching for something or someone new, as she felt the more information she had, the better she could serve her people.

She had to make choices everyday that she knew most wouldn't understand, certainly not the Chosen. One of these choices had long ago been that she would make sure she knew everything that came and went in her city and around her city. Now, she had someone new to deal with, although the attitude was that this new one was much stranger than any they'd seen.

Belia was willing to overlook strange if it came with a way to save her people and her world. Of course, she knew that all of this came with a price. Currently the price was quickly becoming a sense of distrust among the Chosen, which she would accept as long as they stayed. She would find away to save everyone, possibly not matter the cost.

This was it. The big moment, the final hurrah. Tony grit his teeth as he and Jarvis pushed the suit to its limits for the turn, barely managing to turn the missile in time before it hit Stark Tower. The scraping of the Iron Man chest piece on the wall of his own building being one of the only things between it and a full nuclear strike was unnerving on a level he'd never be able to express in words. But then they were clear of it, and there was nothing ahead but the portal into space.

He braced himself, not able to look at the picture of Pepper that displayed as Jarvis tried to reach her. There was no time to say anything now anyway, and he was worried that looking at her would make his ability to send himself on a suicide mission obsolete. He was really quite selfish, after all, and these aliens were ugly enough to be running towards without a picture of his girl making him want to stay.

The passing through the portal was immediate and almost anti-climatic, but the wave of relief that he'd gotten the nuke through and aimed towards the ship before it went off was quite pleasant. It was just too bad that the natural high was dampened as the power of his suit ran out. He blinked as the power went out, then grunted softly as it started to draw power from core keeping him alive. Jarvis was supposed to prevent that from happening, but he was out of the computer's control here in the middle of space.

He stared out into the alien landscape, at the explosion brought on by the nuke, then closed his eyes. It was over, all over. But the Avengers would close the portal and defeat any remaining Chitauri, and hey, Manhattan wasn't nuked. That was something. It was quite impressive, actually.

They'd let Pepper know he'd done that, and maybe she'd be impressed too. She wasn't often by him anymore, she'd known him too long and had taken care of too many of his messes. He had no doubt that the rest of the world would recognize his amazing sacrifice, but he was always less certain about his girlfriend. He figured she'd be happy, though, if she didn't try to leave him again for making her worry about his life. Or, to be more accurate, if she didn't curse his memory for actually getting himself killed.

As his consciousness slipped out a smile almost tugged at his lips, thinking about how mad she'd be this time. And then there was no thought at all, or feeling.

The Iron Man fell through the portal just as it closed, but never re-entered Manhattan's airspace. Instead it tumbled, lifeless, striking an old building and puncturing a hole through the ceiling and two floors before making an impact in the ground just inside the walls of dieFestung. Tony never knew he made it back through the portal, much less that the portal hadn't taken him home.