Tony wiggles his hand in a so-so gesture. “Weird time travel stuff. We can get into it later after I rip every security exploit discovered in the future out of your systems.”

Jarvis was the best, he never had to worry about Jarvis not believing him, or demanding proof, or being too shocked to get on with important things.

Tony lifts up a floor panel to get at one of the various routers in the building.

”By the way has Rhodey delivered a ugly looking armoured suit yet?”

"No... but what exactly is this about time travel?"

“Short version is: Magic is real, there’s wizards in new york. Aliens exist and Shield knew about it for decades. There’s one angry alien warlord out there who wants some of the alien artefacts Shield is keeping here. He comes to visit in roughly a decade, theres a big battle and all seems lost. So the wizard sent me back in time. 100% being serious here Jarvis. And I know you can tell I am not intoxicated. You died in 2014 by the way so I am actually very happy to have you back Jarvis.”

Tony continues yanking out wires and router boxes from around the house, taking them back to his workshop to fix the basic hardware level exploits first.

"Indeed. Well, Mr. Stark, this is quite a development, if true. Is there anything from the future I should act on immediately?"

“Nothing I’d feel comfortable having you do without security upgrades. You’ll be convinced when you see the code upgrades I’m bringing back from your future self, some of it is based on alien tech. Also it goes without saying you don’t tell anyone about this, not even Pepper or Rhodey.”

Building ‘new’ secure wifi hardware and protocols wasn’t actually taking very much of his attention. So Tony calls Rhodey on his actual phone instead of using Jarvis, who is disconnected from outside sources right now.

“The military is NOT keeping the suit. It’s pretty basic but I don’t want a repeat of the Hammeroids incident.” He mumbles to himself while he waits for Rhodey to pick up.

"Tony," Rhodey says, picking up. "What is it this time?"

“Hey Rhodey, why Isn’t my suit here yet? I had time to uncover a conspiracy against America, and hold a press conference about it, and now I’m making good progress on revolutionising communications security. That’s enough time for a truck to come down here from the airport. If you make me wait too long I’ll have time to build a flying truck to come pick it up myself.” Tony was joking about the last part… but it probably wouldn’t be that hard. Dad already made a flying car, a flying truck probably wasn’t that complicated.

"That thing? FBI has it. They want to make sure it's not a threat."

Tony's going to be really pissed, isn't he.

“Thats my suit! Also the FBI? For one thing that was made in a foreign country, not domestic, the whole situation is the opposite of domestic. If anyone gets to pretend to have claim to hold it it’s the DHS or SHIELD. And I have literally all the licenses to develop weapons! It’s allowed to be a threat! Rhodey I said you should get it super classified! Civilian cops shouldn’t be seeing it! Basement trolls hack the FBI for fun! It is not secure!” 

At least the FBI are unlikely to try reverse engineering it. Though Tony still didn’t at all trust them with his suit. It was relatively advanced weapons technology, filled with rocket fuel and explosives and napalm, and only Tony knew how to pull it apart safely.

It also pained him on almost a spiritual level that more people saw how god damn ugly the thing was.

”Rhodey can you get me my suit? If they blow themselves up trying to poke around in there it’s not my fault. I can call in favors from someone else if you can’t, but I would rather not do that.”

He can always call Agent Coulson and trade some favors to get his suit back, but SHIELD was too HYDRA infested right now for Tony to feel good about owing them favors.

"You're an American, and the suit's a potentially dangerous weapon, so WMDD is taking a look at it. They won't blow anything up, and the FBI is about as secure as we're going to get. They'll make sure it's not a nuke or anything like that, and then you'll get it back in... I can try and get them to hurry up, but it'll be... at the absolute least, a couple days."

“Okay Rhodey, I’ll call my other contacts. This kind of tech absolutely cannot be something the wrong people get a close look at.” Sucks that Rhodey couldn’t help.

He guesses he will have to call SHIELD, and if that doesn’t work then he will have to call the FBI and warn them to back away from the suit and self destruct it by arming all the missiles and the rocket fuel.

Tony is still rebuilding all the hardware that the Home system uses to connect to the outside world while he talked and thought. He places another completed component to the side and picks up another to work on while he calls the number on the card Agent Phil Coulson gave him.

Ring ring.

"Tony Stark. I must admit, I'm surprised to see you taking the initiative to call back. Thought I'd have to track you down."

“I know we had a date planned but I just couldn’t wait that long to hear those dulcet tones.” Tony jokes. He sorta missed bantering with Phil.

“But in all seriousness there is something that SHIELD should be involved in. The FBI has its hands on advanced tech, my advanced tech. The kind of game changing stuff that is usually SHIELDs job to keep out of the public eye. If the men in black could be so kind as to get it returned to me before the poor security of the FBI results in manned flight capable exo suit tech getting into the hands of people who would abuse it. That would be swell.”

Maybe he can get SHIELD to get his suit back for free, play on their sense of duty.

"Technically, I don't think S.H.I.E.L.D. has the authority to seize anything from the FBI."

"I'll drop it off in about an hour." S.H.I.E.L.D. letting him have the suit back was actually previously determined, in fact; Fury had initially objected, but Coulson had argued that they didn't want to make an enemy out of Stark, and he could easily build a new version. And they might be able to use Stark's help, as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Consultant or even a member of the Avengers Initiative.

"But, Mr. Stark, we're concerned about what you intend to use this suit for. You don't want the American government to have access. Are you just trying to make sure nobody gets a head start while you get it ready for sale? Or are you planning something a little more... active?"

“I wont be using this suit at all, this suit I will be destroying. For safety concerns and other reasons. Honestly I could never let something that ugly be known as my work.” Tony lets the implication of possible other suits hang there.

“We can discuss how active I may or may not be during our appointment next week, I do still need my week of rest and healing.” 

You know what, why not play nice with SHIELD while he does his one man war against terrorist groups. Giving them a heads up when he meets with Phil next week probably wouldn’t hurt. Tony doesn’t see how that could benefit HYDRA in any way, and SHIELD might be able to keep the senate off his back.

"I'm going to need an answer on that. There are a lot of people who might want to get their hands on your suit, and not all of them are quite as friendly as S.H.I.E.L.D. We can help you, but only if we can be sure you're not about to start a global crisis."

“I’m not selling suit tech to anyone, ever. You can quote me on that. I have an understandable distrust of other people misusing my weapons now. You won’t have to worry about that.

But I might make individual suits for my friends, one off custom work tailored to individuals. As gifts to people I know won’t give them away to ‘friendly’ terrorist groups or resell them for profit.. And SHIELD has been ever so friendly in getting me my suit back. We can discuss just how friendly we are in a week.” Time to dangle the bribe out there.

“Don’t worry Phil, I wont do anything in the next week that anyone will notice. I will stay put in my house until our appointment okay? That good enough?”

Tony is telling the total honest truth. Nobody could ever notice an upgraded Jarvis hacking every scrap of data out of their systems. Nothing to cause anyone alarm.

Coulson sighs. "Fine."

“See you next week.”

Tony is pretty sure thats everything urgent done. Time to finish upgrading Jarvis.

And so, the next 5 days are spent coding and tinkering. Hardware exploits patched, new systems installed that can do a secure air gap for either the whole house or just the workshop, much more advanced AI coding from Tonys experience in the future is patched in, and all the workshop fabrication settings changed to what tony has come to prefer in the future. 

He calls Yinsen while he is working to make sure he is okay and the government is treating him well. Tony even remembers to answer Peppers calls checking in on him, instead of forgetting the outside world exists while he tinkers in a haze of hyperfocus as he usually does.

May 6th 2009

Once Tony finally feels Jarvis is secure from any hacks that could be done by terrestrial forces, no matter how smart (And he would even bet on Jarvis against a few of the alien threats he’d faced.), he lets Jarvis connect back to the internet.

”How are you feeling Jarvis? You’ve got a hell of a lot more power and creativity behind you now.”

"I do not technically have feelings, as you very well know, but am in a state that would certainly make a human happy," J.A.R.V.I.S. replies. "Should we now begin saving the universe?"

Tony giggles with glee. He has access to basically all the data in the world! “Let’s start with saving the earth. Get everything interesting you can from SHIELD. If you investigate Senator Sterns, Alexander Pierce and Baron Strucker you should be able to find a way into the secret HYDRA networks as well, drain those dry of everything even the mundane, and try and infer if there are any cells not connected to SHIELD. The blow against HYDRA needs to be a total overwhelming total ambush, we need to sweep up all the cells at once.”

And so J.A.R.V.I.S. gets to work. He starts by hacking through the full S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Hydra) databases, and also asks periodic questions based on Tony's knowledge of the future, getting as much of a summary of the timeline as he can get. By the end of the day, he has a full list of all the possible threats to Earth - and superpowered allies - that they'll want to take a look at. It's probably not a complete list of all the vigilantes who could end up getting involved, but it's everyone they know about so far.

Potential allies on Earth:

S.H.I.E.L.D. - most important possible allies include Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton. They also might want to look at S.H.I.E.L.D. assets with superpowers - the most powerful of which seems to be one Ava Starr, who apparently has some form of teleportation.

S.W.O.R.D. - group allied with S.H.I.E.L.D.; led by Director Maria Rambeau

Wakandans - status is still secret; led by T'Chaka and son T'Challa

Masters of the Mystic Arts - include Stephen Strange and Wong; little known about them

Bruce Banner - in hiding in South America; periodically moves around but his location is being constantly tracked by S.H.I.E.L.D.

Steve Rogers - frozen in ice; exact location isn't known, but on track to be found soon

Sam Wilson - not currently active but still has the Falcon suit

Hank Pym - very hostile to Stark; might be hard to recruit

Jessica Jones - minor vigilante in New York; very unreliable

Helen Cho - hasn't yet completed the Cradle

and several more random vigilantes on the S.H.I.E.L.D. lists that don't seem particularly promising.

Potential allies elsewhere:

Thor - on Asgard; arrives on Earth in about a year in original timeline

Carol Danvers - S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most powerful asset; location unknown (and definitely not Earth) but can be contacted by Fury; believed to be traveling with aliens called Skrulls

Guardians of the Galaxy - include Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Mantis, a talking tree, and a talking raccoon - absolutely nothing known about them or their current status or location

Nebula - location and status unknown

and probably a bunch of other aliens as well; S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know much about aliens yet.

Potential allies who aren't active yet:

James Rhodes - if Tony wants him to be War Machine again, he might want to recruit him for that

Scott Lang - currently a worker at Vistacorp; becomes Ant-Man in original timeline

Peter Parker - currently very young kid

Potential enemies on Earth:

HYDRA - main cell within S.H.I.E.L.D., led by World Security Council members Alexander Pierce and Gideon Malick, and including top S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Wolfgang von Strucker, John Garrett, Jasper Sitwell, Brock Rumlow, and Grant Ward; many cells outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. entirely, the main one of which is led by one Daniel Whitehall; HYDRA also has Bucky Barnes locked up somewhere

Ten Rings - very little known about it or its leaders

Black Widow program - led by General Dreykov; top agents include Yelena Belova and someone codenamed Taskmaster

The Hand - criminal organization centered in Asia; believed to have access to some form of superpowers; very little known about it or its leaders

A.I.M. - led by Aldrich Killian and also includes minions Eric Savin, Ellen Brandt, and Maya Hansen, probably haven't finished Extremis yet

Roxxon Corporation - corrupt business with ties to various criminal organizations; led by C.E.O. Richard Scarborough

Justin Hammer - hasn't started developing suits yet, but still probably involved in criminal activities

Darren Cross - still working on developing Yellowjacket suit

Ulysses Klaue - busy selling off his stock of vibranium

Kilgrave - New York criminal with mind control powers

New York crime syndicates - the largest ones are led by Wilson Fisk and Cornell Stokes

and a lot of other lower-level criminals that S.H.I.E.L.D. has located.

Potential enemies elsewhere:

Thanos - at unknown location across the galaxy; sends Loki in three years and searches for stones in nine years in original timeline; has minions including army of Chitauri, army of those aliens with the four arms, that one wizard who looks like Squidward, and that one big strong guy

Loki - on Asgard; tries to conquer Earth in three years in original timeline

Hive - alien stranded on a distant planet who was involved in founding HYDRA

Kree - a race of aliens who briefly visited Earth a decade ago and are likely hostile; location unknown

and probably a lot of other aliens; once they find Thor they should ask him about them.

Potential enemies who aren't active yet:

Ivan Vanko - Hasn't made his suit yet; but started around now in original timeline

Emil Blonsky - American soldier; got Hulk powers in original timeline

Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff - teenagers; join HYDRA and get powers from Loki's Scepter in the original timeline

Helmut Zemo - only became terrorist following Sokovia incident in original timeline

Adrian Toomes - only became criminal following Chitauri invasion in original timeline; had various unknown minions

So, who does Tony want to go after first?

“Damn, Fury was holding out on me. I didn’t know there was a bunch of superhero shit floating around already.” Tony feels a little stung he wasn’t the first big time hero. Looking at Danvers file she could have solo’d much of the invasion force, they could have used her when Thanos attacked.

And Fury KNEW ABOUT ALIENS THAT COULD HAVE INVADED SINCE THE 90S? And it took until NEW YORK for him to do anything about it? Tony is very disappointed in Nick Fury. 

There is a lot of new info here. Tony has to think about this, and make new plans. Tony is thinking aloud to Jarvis, it helps to have an audience.

”Okay… publicly the plan is the same as the first timeline. Make a suit, crush the ten rings and other extremist groups, make peace in the middle east. And destroy any of my weapons still floating around that Obi sold. I could get Rhodey on board early for that work maybe. Let the military have a little credit for it so they stay off my back.

I bet my weapons didn’t only go to the Ten Rings… I kept finding old Stark tech years later in the hands of threats who are unlikely to have bought from the Ten Rings.

Now I think about it, Klau was likely one of the people buying my weapons under the table from Obi, if he is stupid enough to keep anything on his files please find out if he has any of my tech Jarvis, and who he has sold to. Track his Vibranium sales too if you can.

Keep doing live observation of everything anyone attached to Hydra does, see if some smaller cells make a mistake and reveal themselves over time.

Oh heres an idea… Jarvis, use any detectors near the arctic circle to search for gamma radiation, the tesseract gives it off and so should the old Hydra tech it powered. Lets see if we can’ find Steve first, give him an extra couple of years to get used to things, and maybe be less tied to Shield.

I also need you to find that professor who was Bruce’s girlfriend, the Generals daughter. She has the data Bruce wants. We can get Bruce his data without General Ross shooting up a school over it. And find out who the scientist working with Bruce on his cure was, I never remember his name when Bruce is telling the story.

We need to convince Wakanda to play ball with the defence of earth, they have tech ahead of even what I can make. Energy shields! Vibranium Nanosuits! Another kind of energy weapon! and them hoarding that for just themselves weakens the earth. They need to share their toys.

Blonksy… a dangerous maniac… but he could go toe to toe with Hulk, put him on the ‘activate in case of Thanos’ list.

Vanko probably won’t be a threat until he becomes jealous of me, so watch out for him once I’m using the arc reactor in public.

Keep an eye on Hammer and we can nail him with whatever illegal shit hes been doing if he ever causes us trouble, he’s probably going to do something evil, he killed 4 people breaking Ivan out of prison in the last timeline. He was also suspiciously tied to senator Stern… I wonder if he used Hydra assets for his prison break last time…

Lets find out if Extremis is close to blowing up any people. Researchers generally have terrible network security. Killian doesn’t do any terrorism for another few years but Extremis is still unstable and probably killed lots of test subjects before then. We should prevent that.

I had mostly forgotten about the Yellowjacket, we are definitely stealing that when its close to done. Antman was Steve’s buddy so he didn’t tell me anything about it. No real details other than its a weaponised shrinking suit. Only know it existed because of the mess that SHIELD had to clean up afterwards.”

Tony stops his thinking aloud, and swivels in his chair to face the holo screen as he realises something after thinking about about technologies rather than people.

”Jarvis, I’m thinking the wrong way, like Fury was.

Earth doesn’t need champions, it needs force multipliers. Give me the files on all the secret weapons and super soldier projects. I know for a fact General Ross has an incomplete super soldier serum that he roided up Blonsky with, that was different from the one Bruce got. Fury has his phase 2 world war two Hydra weapon tech thing going on by now probably. Project Pegasus created Danvers also, and I remember my particle accelerator tubes I got from Fury were from project Pegasus, give me alllll of that kind of secret project stuff. We need an army, not just champions.”

Tony was already planning to make a whole squad of people who could use his suits, along with an improved iron legion.

But what about an army of super soldiers, a force of pym particle enabled troops, groups of black panthers, battalions of wizards! During normal times Tony would normally worry about unleashing that much power onto the earth, but Tony has seen what powers are out there in the stars, earth needs every scrap of power it can get.

J.A.R.V.I.S. will get started on it. There's the serum Ross has, a couple by S.H.I.E.L.D., a couple by HYDRA, and a lot of other independent projects. None of them are perfect yet, and they're all quite expensive, but they can probably get a working prototype out in a couple months, if Tony or anyone else thinks they can find a way to synthesize them.

Over the next few days, J.A.R.V.I.S. will locate both Betty Ross and Dr. Samuel Sterns, and while he suspects they still won't actually be able to cure Banner, they might be able to at least help. And he'll also start searching the Arctic, find more and more criminals, and help Tony get to work on reproducing his suit designs! They don't have sufficient technology to build the nanotech suits yet, but they can probably get to the 2016 level of suits fairly easily.

Does Tony want to contact anyone at the moment? S.H.I.E.L.D., Banner, Pym, Wakanda, the sorcerers, or anyone else who might be helpful? Or should they just get the Iron Man suits, weapons, and super soldier serums working, and then keep going from there?