the truth is... I am Iron Man | Glowfic Constellation

Previously - or, perhaps, much, much later:

"Yeah, we got one advantage," says Stark, "he's coming to us. We'll use it."

"All right, I have a plan." He turns to the others. "Or at least the beginnings of one. It's pretty simple. We draw him in, pin him down, get what we need. Definitely don't want to dance with this guy, we just want the gauntlet." And - "Are you yawning?" he snaps at Drax. "In the middle of this, while I'm breaking it down? Huh? Did you hear what I said?"

"I stopped listening after you said that we need a plan," replies Drax.

"Okay, Mr. Clean is on his own page," Stark says.

"See, not winging it isn't really what they... do," Quill replies.

"Uh... what exactly is it that they do?" asks Parker.

"Kick names," replies Mantis, confidently. "Take ass."

"That's right," affirms Drax.

Stark stares for a moment.

And starts to realize that this really might be the end.

Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, defender of the cosmos, isn't paying much attention to any of this debate. His eyes aren't open, but he's rapidly looking back and forth anyway, because he's seeing through the view of the Time Stone.

The Time Stone can't actually see exactly what will happen in the future, but it can view each of the limitless possibilities that might come from this, and that's what Strange needs, if he wants to formulate a plan that will defeat Thanos.

The problem is... none of them seem to involve defeating Thanos.

He has looked through millions, literally millions of futures, and in each and every one of them, Thanos wins. In the vast majority, he simply crushes them all in battle, regardless of what plans they come up with. In a few, they at least get closer - maybe by briefly wounding him, or grabbing his Infinity Gauntlet, in a few rare ones - but even in those, he manages to get it back within a few moments. Strange eventually found a few hundred timelines in which Thanos was defeated on Earth by blowing up the planet and killing everyone there, and he is seriously considering doing that because there is nothing better. Except that even in most of those, someone else eventually finds the scattered stones and causes more chaos, and if all of the superheroes are dead, they can't stop them.

A little after twelve million, he starts looking for timelines in which Thanos wins at first, but the surviving Avengers reunite and manage to defeat him later. But the problem with those is that not only are they vastly outnumbered, but Thanos usually destroys the Infinity Stones after a week or so, meaning that even if they do manage to defeat him, they won't have anything they can use to bring back all of the people Thanos will inevitably kill.

But he's still looking, and looking, and -

He's crossed fourteen million.

Fourteen million timelines, and not a single one has presented him with anything that doesn't involve the murders of at best many billions of people.

Why didn't he do this before now? He had heard of Thanos! He was on the list of possible threats to the universe - not anywhere near the top of the list, which in retrospect was a big mistake, but still, he should have tried to find out what would have threatened Earth, and fix it then. But now it's too late, and he can't change -

Well.

He could change things...

The Time Stone can't rewrite history on a scale of more than a few minutes, not on its own. But maybe in conjunction with other Infinity Stones... hmm. The Mind Stone's still on Earth. Maybe he could use it, and the Time Stone, to send his mind back into that of his younger self?

He looks through a few more timelines. Nope, looks like that doesn't work. First, because it would be tricky to do with his own mind instead of someone else's, and second, because - oh.

He needs the Soul Stone, too.

The problem is, Thanos already has the Soul Stone.

Okay. Are there any timelines in which they can steal the Soul Stone from Thanos, and then get both it and the Time Stone back to Earth, and get the Mind Stone out of Vision in time to send somebody back in time?

Well, he'll keep looking.

Total: 294

Posts Per Page:

‹ Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next ›

« First ‹ Previous 12 of 12 Next › Last »

the-legend

Thousands of miles away, a band of Ten Rings soldiers marches across the border of Gulmira, not for the first time.

They are not really prepared for an assault from the air. They are prepared to run and hide, and probably take hostages.

I-am-Iron-Man

The flight would have been very boring without Yinsen and Jarvis to talk to on the way there. Suit flight is also not the most comfortable for long distances, if there wasn’t a need for secrecy Tony would just have caught a private jet then suited up when he got there.

Eventually, he does get close enough to Gulmira for Jarvis to highlight a group of Ten Rings soldiers on the HUD. “Yinsen, targets are in the village, suggesting a visit here was a good call.” Tony sends back to Malibu over comms.

Tony flies very high to try and virtually tag as many soldiers as possible without them noticing. He assigns each of them a micro missile, lethal, unless they are too close to any civilians in which case they get some knockout gas micro missiles. Then he launches all the assigned missiles and simultaneously drops to the ground, reaching the ground just as the missiles impact their targets mostly all at the same time. A very dramatic entrance for his ‘first’ mission as iron man.

Any soldier that was under too much cover to have been tagged from the air Tony will blast with repulsor blasts from his hands and with super accurate AI controlled fire from his shoulder SMGs.

the-legend

A few of them have their own missiles to shoot at him! Far fewer both have missiles and have not run away or died, but there are still one or two who will shoot missiles in the hope that they will do anything.

I-am-Iron-Man

Tony can blast them out of the air easily enough. As long as its not a very high volume of missiles then the point defence systems can take care of missiles coming from any direction. The shoulder guns or repulsors on his back taking care of whatever direction Tony Isn’t facing.

When its the last few stragglers left alive Tony switches to less than lethal rubber rounds for his shoulder guns, he wants to interrogate a few of them.

the-legend

They would prefer not to be interrogated, but they'll probably be captured fairly quickly.

I-am-Iron-Man

Tony will use Jarvis to translate and VERY LOUDLY blare out his demands through the suit speakers into the half dozen or so most common languages most likely to be used by Ten Rings cells in this area. He will demand they tell him where their base is through very loud speakers while menacingly charging his repulsors at them and letting the electronic whine of the charging weapon rise in pitch.

the-legend

Most of them don't respond with anything more than obscenities, but one who is particularly frightened will give him the location of the base.

I-am-Iron-Man

If any Gulmirans, Gulmirites? Gulmir? If there are any locals who have come outside to watch the soldiers who have been demanding tribute and killing their people get blown up and yelled at by a golden and red robot man, Tony will put the discarded weapons of the fallen Ten Rings soldiers in their hands, wave at the captured soldiers, and will tell them to do whatever they want to the soldiers. The amount of mercy the soldiers deserve should be decided by their victims.

If nobody has come outside yet then Tony will just leave them tied up with a spool of nanotube wire that he had stored under an armor panel.

Tony has a base to crush, so he blasts off towards where the one intimidated soldier mentioned their base was hidden.

the-legend

That's cute, he thought it was actually the location of the base! Now they'll just escape from the rope and regroup... wait, they can't, they're surrounded by some very angry people who do not appear to have much in the way of mercy for the people who killed their families. Oops.

I-am-Iron-Man

That lying asshole! Theres no base here! Well, it’s not like Tony actually gave the soldier anything for the ‘information’, it’s hard to feel cheated for the nothing he got for free.

Time to search the old fashioned way like he was going to do anyway. He flies high while Jarvis scans the areas using suit cams and sensors for any traces of hidden bases. The suit can do much better recon than any shitty military drone using a shitty 2000’s quality camera, and Jarvis is essentially a digital sherlock holmes, able to put tiny clues together to infer where people are hiding. Tony also has the suit searching for traces of his Stark Industries Missiles, most of them have some quirk that is easy to search for, like the radiation of palladium.

”Do you happen to know the direction these guys would usually come towards your village Yinsen? It’d give me someplace to start.” Tony comms back to Malibu for help, also because it’s kind of lonely just flying and searching and it’s nice to talk.

Ho Yinsen

see-my-family

Yinsen points him in the right direction.

J.A.R.V.I.S.

I-say-the-wrong-cranberry

J.A.R.V.I.S. manages to find it in about an hour, with help from surveillance by the Iron Warrior. However, this allows the Ten Rings to see the Iron Warrior, and they start making preparations and shooting harmless bullets at the enormous suit.

I-am-Iron-Man

Well Tony doesn’t want anyone getting a close look at the Iron Warrior quite yet, so he tells Jarvis to get it out of there and heads towards the base himself.

Tony preps his missiles using the targeting data Jarvis gathered. Then he does the same trick of landing at the same time as the missiles impact the soldiers, blasting away at anyone not taken down by the missiles. It worked great as shock and awe last time so no reason not to use it again. Though he goes a little heavier on the repulsor blasting to conserve micro missile ammo, in case they find more bases today.

the-legend

It will not be too difficult to break through the base. There are still a few more soldiers, as well as some metal walls which he can probably melt through.

At the end, he can find the recently-promoted-temporary-leader-while-things-get-reorganized of the Ten Rings' Afghanistan branch, Abu Bakaar! Who he may recognize as one of the goons who tortured him in the cave.

I-am-Iron-Man

It’s beardy guy! Tony remembers beardy guy very well from both versions of his kidnapping. Well, lets kick him through a wall then, for old times sakes.

the-legend

And they will also run into some computers, which J.A.R.V.I.S. can probably get to work on hacking to find more Ten Rings bases.

I-am-Iron-Man

Tony lets Jarvis hack away at their files. The last time he went on this crusade he just blew up any cell that popped their head up long enough to be caught on satellite, hopefully this data gives him more of the hidden bases he might have missed in the last timeline.

If there are any leftover Stark Industries weapons, or weapons caches in general, laying around Tony will make sure to blow those up before leaving for whatever other bases Jarvis found.

the-legend

And more bases he shall find.