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the truth is... I am Iron Man
Unable to defeat Thanos, Tony Stark gets sent back in time to fix the last decade.
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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.

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Tony Stark and Peter Quill squabble about who will make the plan to beat Thanos, until Mantis brings to the groups attention that Dr. Strange is doing something very peculiar.

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Even for a day like today, that was a strange sight. Dr. Strange was floating off the ground while his head whipped from side to side so fast it looked like his outline was blurring.


It’s probably some magical fuckery going on but Tony has never before seen anyone look like they are glitching out of reality, so maybe he should be worried.

”Hey Strange? You alright?” Tony calls over, while slowly walking towards him in case it is not actually alright. As tony gets close Dr. Strange seems to snap out of it and fall back to the ground with a cry. Tony moves forward to grab his arms, “You’re back, you’re alright.” Whatever Strange was doing did not seem like a fun time to Tony, judging by the deep breaths and panicked look in Strange’s eyes just as he comes out of whatever trance he was in,

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"Hey, what was that?" asks a worried Parker.

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"Went forward in time," replies Strange. "To view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."

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"How many did you see?" Quill asks, apprehensively.

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"Fourteen million, six hundred and five."

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Tony did not like where he suspected this was going, but he had to ask. “In how many do we win?”

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Zero.

"Time's... complicated. The problem is, even with knowing the future, there's enough randomness that we won't be able to know exactly how any given plan will turn out. Which is why we're going to need two plans." This is an outright lie, and he knows the first plan doesn't work, but he also knows that if he tells them from the start to follow the second plan, they won't.

"We have to ambush him. I'll draw his attention at first, as soon as he arrives, then Stark hits him from the air. Which won't be enough to knock him out, so Parker, Quill, Drax, you're going to help me engage him on the ground. And then out of nowhere, someone's going to arrive to help us - some blue cyborg, I don't know her name, and then that should be enough for us to distract him long enough for me to portal Mantis onto his head, and put him to sleep. Only very briefly, though. So we'll have to all pin him down, and then take the gauntlet off of him in just a minute or so."

"And if anything goes wrong with that - " which it will " - which I don't know if it will, then we have to go for the Soul Stone. That's one of the four Infinity Stones Thanos already has, the orange one. We need that stone to have any shot at defeating Thanos, if we don't win this battle immediately. So plan B is, we claw the orange one out of the gauntlet, and then run to Earth as fast as possible, and try to use the three stones to - " go back in time and redo everything " - fight Thanos from there."

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What does Strange mean that he wont be enough to knock Thanos out? He’ll find the biggest god damn thing to hit Thanos with, that’ll show Strange who can’t knock things out. Tony can already see something floating in the weird gravity, a building sized chunk of ship? Probably from a ship, sure looks techy enough to be from a ship. Lets see Thanos walk off a building to the face! Nobody gets to tell Tony Stark he Isn’t enough.

”I’m taking that as a challenge.”

As to the rest of the plan, using alien sleep powers sounded pretty good, a lateral thinking engineers solution of sidestepping how strong Thanos was and just stealing his gauntlet.

If it were up to Tony for wich stone to steal, he would steal the space stone, so Thanos has to take the long way to anywhere, while Strange can just portal the Avengers and stones around as needed. But he’s not the one with future sight so he guesses he will just have to trust Strange that the soul stone is the important one.

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"Uh, hang on, blue cyborg sounds like Gamora's psychopathic sister," interjects Quill. "Meaning Thanos's daughter. Nebula. What's she doing here?"

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"Trying to kill Thanos, it looks like."

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"And she just shows up right now. Sure. Well, you heard the cape dude. Mantis, you... I don't know, go do space jumping jacks over there until it's portal time. Drax, you finally get to fight Thanos."

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"I will tear off his neck and shove it down his throat!"

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"You'll hold onto his leg while the rest of us defeat him."

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"And I will hold it so hard that his veins burst open like Quill's mixtape!"

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"Dude, is that what happened to it? I had to spend a month getting that fixed, and you said 'I would never touch such a worthless device - '"

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"That is not what my voice sounds like!"

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"We have ten minutes!"

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These ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ downright made Tony look mature. Charming antics was his thing but these idiots took it to man-child levels. Plus this was half of the life of the universe at stake here, no time for antics.


Tony glares at Starlord, this guy seemed to be the idiot in charge of these aliens. ”I’m the richest guy on earth, I will buy you a mountain of tapes if you get serious. Hell you can own the music industry if you get your heads in the game. There’s too much at stake here to be wasting time arguing like children.” 

Tony jets off before he can get a response to go manoeuvre the absolutely huge floating piece of ship up to above and in front of where Dr. Strange will be waiting to get the Titans attention, ready to slam it down once Thanos is in position. His jets strain to move that much mass but he can position it in time.

Over suit coms he calls Peter. “Hey kid? If he’s still up after my initial strike, don’t try to take this Thanos guy head on alright? he sounds like a powerhouse and your armor is a lot thinner than mine, focus on tying him up and stopping him from using the stones against us. Can you do that for me?”

He hates that Peter got pulled into this fight, he’s just a kid, a brave kid but still a kid, and he admits to himself he would feel so bad if Peter got hurt. Tony did call Peter in for the sokovia accords thing but none of the Cap’s friends would have seriously injured the kid, but this was not a fight till one side surrenders kind of fight.

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"I... I mean, sure, Mr. Stark, I'll try to tie him up and all, but I can handle this. I'm an Avenger now."

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How does the kid always manage to pull at his heartstrings like this. “Yeah kid… you’re damn right. You are an Avenger.” Tony is too proud of a man to let all the pride and worry he is feeling leak into his voice, but some slips through.

“Be careful alright? Your aunt would kill me if I brought you back injured.” If we survive at all… is not a thought he says out loud, morale was important.

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"All right, Mr. Stark."

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A few minutes after everyone is in place, Thanos will arrive.

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"Well, you look more like a Thanos," says Strange. He has practice, in making sure he isn't trembling.

Strange will keep Thanos distracted, let him give a speech about his plans and all, until Stark is ready to attack.

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Extra thrusters on! And Tony SLAMS the office building size chunk of ship down into Thanos. The ground cratering under the impact site. Not even a hulkbuster suit could just tank a hit that big.

Tony can’t help but brag a little because that impact was pretty damn awesome. “Peace of cake, Quill.” He smugly says over the coms.

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"Yeah, if your goal was to piss him off!" snaps Quill, flying forward.

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Thanos manages to block most of the impact with the Power Stone, and then uses the Reality Stone to turn it into a flock of creatures flying straight at Stark.

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Well, here's Parker with some webs for Thanos's eyes!

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And Drax with a knife!

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And Strange, with a summoned blade.

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Thanos can defeat them all within seconds.

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Well, there's also Quill, leaping through the air to slam a gravity bomb onto his back. "Boom!" he says, disappearing through a portal with his middle finger up.

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"Don't let him close his fist," Strange whispers to his cloak, and it wraps around the stunned Thanos's gauntlet.

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"Magic!" shouts Parker, jumping through a portal and punching Thanos. "More magic!" he shouts, appearing at another angle. "Magic with a kick! Magic with a - "

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Thanos pins Parker to the ground. "Insect," he mutters, before throwing him away into Strange, and tearing the cloak off of his arm.

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Tony circles back after escaping the magic bats.


Well that’s not good, Thanos shrugged all that off like it was nothing, and now his hands were free again. Micro Missile time? Yeah It’s Micro Missile time, it should at least keep him off balance. 

Tony peppers the area around Thanos with explosions.

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Well, if you want to throw fire at him, he will throw it right back at you.

He breaks off a web from one last effort by Parker, and now -

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As prophecied, Nebula's ship slams into Thanos, dragging him across the ground and burying him in the wreckage.

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"Well, well," says Thanos.

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"You should have killed me," snarls Nebula, igniting a baton in electricity.

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"It would have been a waste of parts!" Thanos growls back.

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Nebula screams and rushes forward, slamming the weapon into Thanos's head. "Where's Gamora?" she shouts, desperately.

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Thanos merely tosses her away.

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But now Strange has had enough time to strike. Summoning a spell, the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, he binds Thanos's gauntlet in place.

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Drax arrives from behind, kicking his leg down and forcing him to kneel.

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Quill binds his other arm with a gravity bomb.

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And Parker pins him down further with a web.

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The purple asshole seems restrained enough! Tony jets in real quick to start pulling the gauntlet off, But Thanos is not making that easy with his super strong fingers holding the glove in place on his hand from the inside. 

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Mantis lands on his head! And hopefully he should be asleep long enough that they can - oh, he's really resisting.

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Thanos seems to be struggling less, though the grip on his gauntlet isn’t getting any weaker. Tony turns to Mantis. “Is he under? Don’t let up!”

 

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"He is very strong!"

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“Parker! Help, get over here. She cant hold him much longer, lets go.”

If one nano suit wasn’t enough to yank off the glove, maybe two would be.

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Parker will help out!

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Quill, however, lands in front of Thanos.

"Thought you'd be hard to catch! For the record, this was my plan." His voice wavers. "Not so strong now, huh? Where is Gamora?"

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Everything is so blurry. Did someone say Gamora? "My Gamora."

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"Bull shit. Where is she?"

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Oh no. "He is in anguish!" Mantis cries.

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"Good!"

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"He... he mourns!"

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"What does this monster have to mourn?" Drax shouts, still tugging on Thanos's leg.

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Oh, no.

"Gamora," whispers Nebula.

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Quill turns to her, realization starting to dawn on his face. "What?"

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"He took her to Vormir. He came back with the Soul Stone. She didn't."

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From context Gamora seemed like she was someone close to Quill, and that body language did not look like he was reacting well to the news.

“Okay, Quill, you gotta cool it right now, you understand?” If Quill does something stupid and wakes up Thanos, half the universe dies! He cannot be that stupid.

He’s turning towards Thanos, leaning in closer. Fuck! The idiot is that stupid!

”Don’t, Don’t, Don’t engage, we almost got this off!” The desperation in his voice clear as Tony almost screams those last words.

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"Tell me she's lying," says Quill, staring at Thanos in horror. "Asshole! Tell me you didn't do it!"

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"I had to!" Thanos forces from his mouth.

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"No you didn't," Quill mutters, blinking. "No, you didn't." He slams his blaster into Thanos's head, not even caring at this point what Mantis is trying to do, just trying to kill him and -

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Exactly as he knew it would happen. "Things are not going as planned!" barks Strange. "Get the Soul Stone, now!"

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Drax is bored of holding onto Thanos's leg, and he wasn't particularly listening when he was told that it would kill him the moment he touched it. So he lets go of Thanos, jams one of his knives under the orange stone in the gauntlet, and yanks it out in triumph.

His body turns orange, nearly translucent, and then it's not there at all.

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Strange sends his cloak forwards, and it catches the stone. It immediately begins to disintegrate, but there's enough time for Strange to reach out with the Eye of Agamotto, and catch the Soul Stone right next to the Time Stone.

The Eye of Agamotto is not, as it so happens, supposed to be capable of holding two Infinity Stones at the same time, but it almost is, and Strange can reinforce its strength with magic just enough for it to barely hold together. But it won't last long - and Strange won't, either.

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Roaring in fury, Thanos wakes up, tosses Mantis and Parker off of him, and kicks Strange across the planet.

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Fuck! The blue guy just fucking vanished! Tony blasts everything he has at Thanos, the nanobots forming into missiles as fast as he can fire them. Using up this much nanobot mass was not sustainable but they need to keep him off balance.

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"We need to get out of here, now!" Strange shouts, portalling away from Thanos. He summons portals under each of the others, trying to call them over, but each time, Thanos teleports right after him, and he can barely escape by himself.

He's seen the timelines. They can't get out of this without sacrifices.

So he portals Parker, Quill, and Mantis to land on top of Thanos, and then runs for Stark.

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Quill roars and shoots Thanos in the face.

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Thanos growls, wrenching Mantis off of him before she can put him to sleep again, and slams her into the ground hard enough to at least knock her out. His eyes closed to avoid the oncoming shots from both Quill and Stark, he still manages to connect his fist with Quill's gut, and knocks him flying with the full force of the Power Stone.

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But Parker wraps all the webs he can muster around the gauntlet, and yanks Thanos back, anchoring himself with his suit's metal legs. "Go!" he yells to Strange and Stark.

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Tony hesitates to leave and looks back at Peter Parker, he can’t leave the kid. Thanos will kill him if he leaves the kid here. The past few years mentoring Peter had firmly cemented him into someone Tony couldn’t imagine life without. How could Tony ever leave him to die?

He stands there long enough to be obvious about hesitating. “Peter!” He calls out over comms.

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"Just go, Mr. Stark! I'll - "

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Thanos growls, yanks Parker to his feet, and clenches his fist. The Reality Stone glows in the gauntlet, and the webs start to melt away from him, liquefying on the ground beneath him.

Parker... does the same.

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“NOOO!” Tony lets out a cry of anguish as Peter melts away before steeling himself and jetting towards strange.

Peter was gone. Don’t think about it, focus on the mission. How could he let him die. Don’t think about it. Trillions of lives are still at risk. He died because of me. Then honour his sacrifice by getting away and winning!

Even as he tore himself apart emotionally, Tony was still focused on the mission.

”STRANGE! TAKE US TO JOTUNHIEM!” He yells out using the suit speakers. But one hand is in front of him with his fingers clearly crossed. He really hopes Strange understands this is a bluff, and really fucking hopes Thanos doesn't know what crossed fingers means in human culture. What a stupid way to show he’s lying, but Tony couldn’t think of anything else to signal strange about the bluff quickly enough.

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Strange nods, opens a portal, which in fact does go to Jotunheim, and brings them both there. Thanos has followed them, so he opens another, to Hala. Thanos is still on his trail, so he then portals to Wakanda, and makes sure Thanos is still following - that way, Wakanda will seem like just one of many distractions, and Thanos won't think that's their actual destination. Then he goes through a rapid series of portals to the Sanctum Sanctorum, Strange's old house, several random famous monuments that pop into his head, and finally the Avengers Campus. They wait for a few moments, making sure Thanos isn't following them any more, and then return to Wakanda.

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They've found themselves at an area deep in the forest. Vision, and Bruce Banner in the Hulkbuster, have finished taking down the last two of Thanos's lieutenants. Approaching them now are a large group consisting of Prince T'Challa, Okoye, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, Bucky Barnes, Rocket, and Groot.

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"Tony!" says Bruce. "I knew you would show up! Hey, this Hulkbuster's missing an arm, you have any spares lying around?"

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Steve stares at Tony, and looks away with a wince. But he turns back. "Tony. Good to see you. We're running out of time here. They weren't able to get the Mind Stone out of Vision. If you have any ideas, we can try, but Thanos might be getting here soon."

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Tony is very glad he has a helmet on right now and nobody can see how upset he is. With eye commands he increases how synthetic his voice sounds, to hide if his voice breaks. 

“Strange found a plan involving the soul stone by viewing possible futures, He didn’t have time to explain the plan before Thanos got there. We grabbed the Soul Stone from Thanos with the help of some guys called Guardians of the Galaxy. We are the only ones who made it out.” Tony says in a flat voice.

Don’t think about Peter.

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"Hold on. The Guardians? Quill, Gamora, Drax, Mantis? They're dead?"

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"I am Groot?"

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"Yeah, we're not... not everyone's going to make it here. Listen, we're running out of time. Thanos is searching for us, but he has the Space Stone, and he can locate us quickly. There's only one future left where we beat him. We have to - " Strange winces, as the two stones he's holding keep sucking power from him, even harder and harder. "All right. I have a spell I can cast with the Stones, and it's essential if we want to defeat Thanos. You're all going to need to surround us, and make sure Thanos can't get to us. Stark, get over here. Vision too, we don't want Thanos getting anywhere near the stone in your head."

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"No," says Vision. "It's too late. We cannot allow Thanos to have the stone. Wanda, if you - "

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He can actually be almost honest about this one. "It's pointless. I've seen the futures. If you destroy the Mind Stone, Thanos steals the Time Stone from me and uses it to undo everything and get the Mind Stone back. We have to protect you." Until I yank the Mind Stone out of your head at the last second.

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"All right," says Rhodes. "Tony, this guy knows what he's doing?"

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“He seems to be pretty good at magic stuff, and unless you have any better ideas I say we go for it. Because Thanos doesn’t even need to touch you to kill you, he cannot be beaten in a conventional battle.”

DO NOT THINK ABOUT PETER BEING MELTED INTO GOO.

“Strange’s predictions so far have been accurate. The Wizards plan had us almost get the Infinity Gauntlet off of Thanos.”

Tony glares at the walking racoon. “I’m guessing they were your friends? Well you can thank your pal Quill for fucking that plan up. We were seconds from getting the gauntlet off of Thanos while the antenna girl had him put to sleep before that fucking idiot woke up Thanos because he got mad about his dead girlfriend. Putting trillions of lives at risk and getting everyone else killed.” And now peter is dead.

It was unfair of him to throw that at the racoon but Tony needed someone to blame right now and Quill was very easy to blame for this.

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"Tony, cool it. Uh..." Rhodey gestures at the raccoon whose name he doesn't actually know, "just get over here, fight Thanos, and we'll see if your friends are okay afterwards."

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"You, shut up. And you," he points at Stark, "quit dissing Quill and where the hell are they, are any of them alive, I..." he looks around, starting to cry, "I'm not - "

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"All right, we don't have time for this." Strange flicks his wrist. Rocket disappears through a portal, and Groot too, just in case. "Any of you who are capable of staying calm and not risking the fate of the universe any more than it already is, get into position. Thanos is coming."

Then he teleports up to Shuri's lab, where he grabs a spare Black Panther helmet, and puts the Soul Stone inside so that he can avoid dying for the necessary two minutes or so. And then he brings it back through one more portal, stands next to Tony, and opens the Eye of Agamotto, beginning the spell.

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Just a few seconds later, a very angry Thanos arrives.

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Tony turns to Dr. Strange. “Do I also go fight? Or…..” Still not entirely sure what the plan is supposed to be.

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"No, you stay here," Strange mutters as he ties together various glowing green strands of light. "Just keep an eye out on Vision and me, shoot Thanos from a distance. We need you alive."

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Bruce charges at Thanos with a punch from the Hulkbuster! And Hulk, if you want to come out any time soon, that would be great!

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Thanos uses the Space Stone to imprison him in a brick wall. With the Power Stone, he knocks each of Sam, Bucky, Romanoff, and Okoye out of the way before they can reach him. And he keeps moving forwards.

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T'Challa rushes towards Thanos, and tries to sink his claws into Thanos's armor.

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It'll hurt, but Thanos can mostly block even vibranium. He slams T'Challa to the ground, and keeps coming.

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Wanda gestures to Steve and Rhodey, and they fall back next to Strange, Tony, and Vision. Then she blasts Thanos with bolts of red energy, forcing a shield of magic towards him.

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And at the same time, Thor arrives from the sky, and a bolt of lightning knocks the already injured Thanos off of his feet and across the forest.

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Thanos looks back and forth between the blue and red blasts of magic flying at him, then teleports away, and appears behind Strange, Stark, and Vision.

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Steve slams his twin shields into Thanos's chest, knocking him back.

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Rhodey's shoulder guns open fire, launching hundreds of bullets at top speed towards Thanos's eyes, while he lunges forwards with an explosive baton.

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Thor looks back and forth, locates Thanos, and throws Stormbreaker straight at him -

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- and Thanos grabs Rhodey off the ground, and holds him up in the way of the axe.

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Tony tries to repulser blast Thanos in the arm so he drops Rhodey, but the range is quite far and repulser blasts are more a medium range weapon. He is fabricating micro missiles and launching them as fast as he can but he doesn't think they will reach Thanos in time.

 

Tony feels so helpless having to stay put, and as the axe flies toward Rhodey the bottom of his stomach sinks in horrible anticipation.

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Rhodey gasps, and then Thanos drops him, and he doesn't move any more.

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His axe gone, Thor summons another blast of lightning, and throws it at Thanos - 

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- and Thanos catches it with Stormbreaker and throws the axe right back to slam into Thor, exploding with electricity.

Stormbreaker lands a few feet away from the group. Thor, Wanda, and anyone else who was still conscious are all knocked far away.

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Steve lunges for Stormbreaker, and manages to swing it into Thanos's arm, although not the one carrying the gauntlet. "Whatever you're doing, hurry up!"

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"All right!" shouts Strange. He finishes connecting one last loop of the fragments of light, and the complicated spell appears to be finished. Then he scrambles for the helmet holding the Soul Stone. "Tony, put your hand here!"

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“Rhodey…” DON’T THINK ABOUT DEAD FRIENDS. Everything gets bottled up, there is only the mission.

Tony puts his hand over the Soul Stone and sure fucking hopes the Wizards plan works.

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Thanos wrenches Stormbreaker out of his arm, pushes Steve away, and slams his fist into Vision's metal skull, tearing the Mind Stone out.

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But Steve knocks it out of his hand with one of his shields, letting it roll across the ground as he pushes the other into Thanos's neck.

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Thanos snarls, clenches his fist, and the Space Stone glows. Tendrils of blue light lash around each of Steve's limbs.

Thanos opens his fingers.

Each piece of Steve falls to the ground.

Then Thanos reaches for the Mind Stone -

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- which is in Strange's rapidly disintegrating hand.

Strange screams, and knocks Thanos away with a burst of golden light. Then he grabs onto the Soul Stone as well, and as his body glows with power, he turns to Tony.

"I lied. There's no timeline where we win - at least, not starting from now. But starting from back when this all began... well, I have no idea, but you'd better make it work."

"You get a second chance, Tony," he whispers, and then green and orange and yellow light fills the air.

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The year is 2009. Tony Stark is in a military Jeep, surrounded by soldiers and rock music.

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February 13th, 2009

Tony jolts to awareness with a yelp. “Steve!” DON’T THINK ABOUT DEAD FRIENDS! 

And then the fact he is somewhere completely different finally registers in his mind. He does not have very long to process it however, the truck is suddenly shaken by an explosion.

“What’s going on?” Tony asks in a panic. He tries to form his armor but nothing happens. His heart rate immediately spikes like crazy now he doesn’t have his armor to keep him safe. 

One of the soldiers yells “CONTACT LEFT!” Before the driver hops out of the truck to engage the threat. She immediatly gets gunned down before she even leaves the cabin.

“JIMMY STAY WITH STARK!” the soldier sitting across from Tony tells the soldier next to Tony, and then leaves the truck to try and defend it.

”Stay down!” The soldier next to Tony yells at him and pulls him down into the seat.

Confused and panicked Tony does as he is told, without his armor he is helpless anyway. Through the windshield, tony sees the soldier that had been sitting across from him that left the truck gets shot in the head.

“Son of a bitch!” Exclaims the soldier next to Stark, presumably Jimmy, before he starts getting out of the truck himself.

“Wait give me a gun!” Tony wants something, anything to defend himself with.

The soldier closes the car door behind him and turns to Stark through the window. “STAY HERE!” He says before a shrapnel explosive goes off and shreds him and the walls of the truck.

This was all too familiar…

 

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Tony is too shellshocked from the nearby explosion to form any concrete realisations. His ears are ringing, and there are more explosions near the truck, much too near. Tony stumbles his way out of the truck before a explosion near the hood makes him flinch backwards. Tony runs for cover towards some boulders, bullets kicking up just inches from where he had been.

Tony has had this nightmare before, one of the more frequent ones, but this was all much too real. Bullets fly barely inches from him as he huddles behind the rock and tries to figure things out. Until, something lands right next to him and begins to humm in a familiar electric sound of activation.

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It’s a stark industries fragmentation missile!

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FUCK! He barely manages to stand up before the missile goes off.

Tony briefly blacks out as he is thrown bodily through the air by the explosion, but the pain of landing wakes him right back up. Tony can barely think with how rattled he is and looks down to see blood seeping through his white shirt.

He has definitely had this nightmare before, one of the more frequent ones Tony gets, along with nightmares of the Chitauri invasion. This is entirely too much pain for a nightmare though, he can feel the shrapnel in his chest just like when he got ambushed by the Ten Rings a decade ago.

Tony figures out what is going on, he is back to that day, he travelled in time.

”Strange you piece of sh-“ And Tony passes out.

 

 

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When Tony wakes up, there's a bag on his head, a camera pointed at his face, bloody bandages over his heart, and of course, a battalion of armed soldiers surrounding him, ready to shoot.

He'll probably pass out again soon, or be knocked out, so the next time he wakes up, he'll find himself back in that familiar cave, on a bed, with a tube in his nose and wires hooked up to his chest.

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Across the room, shaving in his reflection on a pole, is a man he'll definitely recognize.

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Tony is very much out of it as he wakes up, and on enough painkillers that everything feels a little unreal. The tube in his nose, the cave, Yinsen, the car battery attached to his chest, this must be the usual nightmare again.

”Yinsen… You’re dead… everyones dead…oh god Steve… Rhodey… Peter…” Even as the emotions hit him, there is still a part of Tony’s brain that is noticing more freedom than usual in this nightmare. Usually the nightmare was a straight play-through of events and he would be taking the tube out of his nose and scrabbling at his chest by now. Thinking of wich, the tube did not feel great so he does move to pull it out even if this was a dream.

Oh god, nope! That nausea from pulling the tube out was real! This was real! Ughhhh keep your stomach down Tony. As Tony Stark sits himself up and tries not to bring up bile from a empty stomach, the attack on the convoy comes back to him. He’s back… Strange sent him back in time.

What the Actual Fuck.

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Yinsen looks at him, confused. And even a little surprised Stark still remembers his name. "I'm not dead, no," he says, "although I'm surprised you aren't. A dozen or so pieces of shrapnel are just inches away from your heart. Stay close to that battery, it's powering a magnet that's keep them from killing you, at least for the moment."

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“In my atrial septum…” He mumbles. It has been almost ten years since it happened but Tony remembers his time in captivity by the ten rings quite clearly. He remembers where Yinsen told him the shrapnel was the first time around. Sometimes he curses his good memory but this time it could be useful. This time he can change things.

He remembers how confused he was that the ten rings had his weapons during his first life. But he already knows it was Obadiah who sold them, and sold him out. It still was incredibly galling to be blown up by his own bombs.

”When I get my hands on that son of a bitch…” Tony is a little lost in his own mind, imagining doing much worse things to Obadiah Stane than throwing him in an Arc reactor. 

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"Yes... how did you know that? Were you awake earlier?"

They're interrupted by a noise from outside. "Stand up," whispers Yinsen, pulling Tony to his feet. "Do as I do. Come on. Put your hands up." He raises his hands.

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Oh, this again (or maybe technically not again? Time travel was weird). The plan this time is for Tony to avoid pissing off his captors and getting water boarded. Tony stands up and puts his hands up, careful to keep the battery attached to his chest, wouldn’t want a stray hand yanking the cable out.

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Ten Rings agents enter the room, guns pointed at them. One of them comes forward and speaks to them, and Yinsen translates. "Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America." And apparently he wants Stark to build him a Jericho missile.

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Tony subtly waggles his eyebrow to Yinsen and crosses his fingers behind his back where Yinsen can see. “I will cooperate if you let me live, but I am unsure if something as sophisticated as a Jericho will be possible to create outside of an advanced workshop. A Jericho Missile requires a lot of advanced components and complicated programming.” Tony is already designing a better mark 1 suit in his head and thinking about what he needs. 

Instead of refusing and getting tortured until he agrees, and since he is already planning to kill them all, just lying that he will give them whatever they want from the start is a much better plan.

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They have an abundance of parts, and can procure anything else he might need to build the missile.

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He already has a rough draft of the new suit in his head. He gives the usual materials he used last time and he adds more to the list this time, hoping his cooperation will get him better supplies. “I need multiple powerful computers, and as many iPhone’s and Pocket Pc’s as you can get your hands on.”

He remembers the iPhone only just came out around now, and he needs as many chips as he can get. “The sub missiles inside the Jericho all use sophisticated targeting algorithms, to make sure they hit on target and do not hit each other in the air.” Sort of true, he could have made a bargain bin Jericho without them using dumb-fire sub missiles, but he wasn’t making a Jericho at all.

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One of the Ten Rings soldiers writes everything down as Yinsen translates. "Good. We'll bring you what you need, and in the end, you will be set free."

They exit.

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“No they won’t” Says Tony as the insurgents leave the cave, fake smiling at the ‘good news’.

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"He's not being honest, of course," replies Yinsen. "Were you?"

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Tony holds up his crossed fingers from behind his back with a look of fake hurt on his face. “This means I'm lying! I am hurt you would think so badly of me.” This Yinsen doesn’t know him very well, he has to remind himself.

He looks around himself at all the Stark industries weapons parts they brought him. “But I will build something for them. A gift just as nice as the one they gave me…” Tony’s expression is dark as his fingers circle around the electromagnet and the shrapnel in his chest.

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Most of the construction will proceed without interference! Yinsen helps him build the core of a nonfunctional Jericho missile, and they also build a few additional parts that... don't look much like they would fit on a missile, but they should fool their captors? Hopefully?

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Raza, leader of the Afghanistan branch of the Ten Rings, makes a stop or two to threaten them with various deadly weapons and complain about their wasting time, but other than that, they're free to work on whatever they're building!

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February 14th 2009

After the 10 rings bring in his supplies, Tony makes a plan of action.


Tony has 75 days before the day the Ten rings had gotten suspicious in the original timeline. May 1st was the date of the great cave escape the first time around. This time around Tony is going to be making sure to hide the function of the parts much better, underestimating technical knowledge of the people observing them less. He thinks he will have more time before they get suspicious than the last time he did this, but May 1st still seems like a good goal for when to escape, and he knows for a fact Rhodey will find him in the desert on that day.

Time to get to work.

 

February 15th 2009

After nearly a decade of making them, Tony has much more experience with miniaturised arc reactors and with combat suits than when he made the mark 1. He can probably build an Arc reactor with his eyes closed. Even with the same substandard tools it takes him way less time this time around, only a day, and he knows how to push as much juice from it as possible.

As he finished the palladium core and the Arc reactor powers up for the (first? Time is weird) time Tony smiles. These assholes wont know what hit them. “If my math is correct, and it always is. I can get 6 Gigawatts out of this thing.”

 

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Yinsen nods. "Good work. And your... weapon? Your suit? How is it going?"

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“It’s going to look like the ugliest son of a bitch you’ve ever seen, all ugly cylinders, even these morons would notice if I made it form fitting to the human body.” Tony actually feels like he was incredibly stupid himself with how obvious the suit parts were when he made the mark 1, and how that was probably was what got Yinsen killed before. Not this time however. 

“Its going to only really be good for two things, blocking bullets, and flying out of here. The weapons will be seperate.” Tony had become quite fond of homing micro missiles since he developed the mark L, so he was planning on just strapping a whole bunch of launch tubes to the suit, and that meant he could take out Ten Rings troops at range. “They wanted me to make missiles… oh I’ll give them missiles.” 

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For once, Yinsen smiles. "Good."

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And so, work begins. Armor panels that could plausibly look like missile casings are forged, even if the insides are full of servos and pneumatics to make the limbs move. The flight system is made as advanced as possible using the shit tools available and keeping in mind it is using chemical rockets instead of repulsers. Smart micro missiles are made, so so so many smart missiles, using more smart phone chips than can be found in your average Genius Bar. A very basic railgun is installed into each wrist with a few armor piercing darts. Back up napalm launcher like in the mark 1? Hell yes why not. Tony even made a innocuous seeming little seat for Yinsen, to be quickly bolted on when the escape attempt is to be made so he can sit on it for the flight out of there. 

And when the terrorists come to check on them. Tony has lots of tiny missiles to show them as proof hes been working on things, and very complicated looking tubes that could plausibly be missile casings, and lots of computers that they are told are for programming the Jericho. Tony acts like the most well behaved hostage engineer you could hope for.

But there is plenty of downtime from waiting for parts to cool, or for code to compile. Time enough for Tony to get to know Yinsen all over again.

 

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Just as before, Yinsen's not much of a fan of Stark, at least not at the start. The weapons his company sold have killed many thousands of people, after all. But he's at least starting to realize that maybe Tony Stark has a heart, that maybe he's trying to make things better.

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After a few months, Raza comes in to threaten them again, and delivers a sharp deadline.

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April 29th 2009
Tony has been given more time this time around, but he knows Rhodey will be looking for him on the 1st and He would rather not spend weeks lost in the desert by escaping too late for the Rhodey pick up. The new mark 1 as of a week and a half ago had already technically been finished, but being ever the perfectionist Tony keeps tinkering and adding more missile tubes for as long as he can. It Truly was a Jericho’s worth of sub missiles strapped to the suit, only all of these micro missiles had target acquisition programming and could reorient in mid air after launch. There were only maybe 30 soldiers in these caves if he was remembering the last times escape correctly, but he had made 104 missiles, Tony has had a decade of good reasons to be really fucking  paranoid.

Tony sets the claymore traps, straps a simple titanium sheet vest on to Yinsen just in case, and they get to work bolting the suit together.

It pains Tony how ugly this thing is as they assemble it, all ugly cylinders, it kinda looks like the tin man from wizard of Oz. 

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Just as last time, Raza will notice they are up to something and send a few soldiers to investigate!

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Damn it, Tony thought they would be less suspicious this time because he hid the parts better. Well the claymores will take care of the first wave and the boot up sequence will go MUCH faster on these computers he requisitioned to code the ‘Jericho’.

Tony glares pointedly at Yinsen just in case. “When the soldiers get here, you let me take care of it. We will be having no courageous last stands out of you, If there are bullets flying you hide behind the bulletproof robot, not in front of it. Understand?”

 

”You won’t be going to see your family just yet this time…” He mutters under his breath.

Yinsen had to be saved this time, Tony would change things, he would never again let a single friend die, not ever.

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Soldiers run into the room with guns! And shoot at the armored Tony!

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The claymore mines will have blown up the first wave! Same as last time, but this time it buys Tony enough time to fully boot up the suit.

“I’ll go ahead.” His voice comes out very mechanized from under the helmet and through the speakers.

 

Stomp stomp stomp, Tony marches through the tunnels to the exit, clearing out any terrorists dumb enough to move towards the sound of explosions and stomping.

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There are many who do exactly that! There are also a few who find missile launchers and shoot at him with those!

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Tony has to waste some of his micro missiles to act as point defence against the rpgs, and one precious railgun dart to shoot through one terrorists cover to stop him firing. This version of the mark 1 was more advanced, but the Ten Rings soldiers did seem a little more prepared? He only remembers the severe looking baldy having an rpg last time. Did the absence of Yinsen’s last stand really make that much of a difference?

He fights his way through to the cave entrance, where his weapons were stockpiled.

”Yinsen get ready to hop on so we can fly out of here once I've blown up the stockpiles.” Tony blasts through his speakers. He was pretty sure none of these guys spoke english so even with it blasted out so loudly it was a relatively secure communication.

Tony is actually wondering where severe looking baldy got to? He was the leader of these guys, and last time baldy was the only one who got close to hitting him.

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He's right here with the RPG!

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Point defence missile! The rpg rocket gets shot out of the air close enough to the shooter that it launches him into a wall. He’s probably dead right? Tony Isn’t going to bother making sure every single terrorist is dead and double tap them. Most of the dead is good enough, he’s not bloodthirsty just vengeful.

 

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He's dead. Or at least will be very soon.

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Most of the nearby soldiers have decided to flee, although a few will still keep shooting at him.

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"We might want to leave," says Yinsen. "You're sure that thing can fly? And that it can support me?"

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“I’m pretty sure we are near the exit, and oh it can fly alright, it can even land!” Well… it should be able to land. Unlike when he made the original mark 1, now Tony has a decade of suit flight system experience. It probably wont fall apart mid flight like the last one.

“And the seat I bolted on should be very sturdy, just make sure to wear your welding googles and seatbelt.”


Almost to the cave entrance now! Where he remembers he got most of the resistance from the terrorists last time, though seeing as they were fleeing already it might be slightly less resistance outside this time. Outside is also where the stark weapons stockpile that needs blowing up is! 

“Stay in cover until you stop hearing screaming, and when I yell for you to get on, you get on the passenger seat fast. I’ll ignite the weapons caches as the boosters start up.” Tony yells behind him to Yinsen.

Tony pokes his head out of the cave entrance just to check how much resistance there might be before exiting.

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There are ten or so soldiers shooting at him!

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Well then, some micro missiles for those not near any weapons stockpiles, and then 3 of the remaining railgun darts for those near anything too explosive (the last dart doesn't fire because the right arms railgun finally burnt out). And a blast of napalm at anyone still moving.

That should take care of all of them.

Tony starts the ignition sequence for the flight rockets. ”Yinsen! All aboard the Stark express!”

He should have more than enough missiles and nalpam left to set this whole stark weapons cache to blow as he takes off.

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Yinsen climbs aboard the Stark express. And does not scream in terror.

"Where are we going?" he asks, after he's finished screaming in terror.

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This time the suit does not in fact fall apart in mid air, and it even gives him enough control for a controlled-ish landing. 

“Just far enough so they can’t find us quickly! The military should pick us up long before they do.” In fact Tony knows the military will find them in just over a day. Rhodey is still out searching for him, even after it being months since he was taken, he probably doesn’t deserve a friend like that, he never really thought about how long they kept searching for him the first time around. He misses Rhodey, even if its not his Rhodey it will be nice to see him again. Just don't think about him being split apart by Thors axe.

Tony remembers roughly in what direction he went last time, so Rhodey shouldn't have too much trouble finding him. He just needs to walk in the desert wearing hot metal armor for a while. He's not just gonna leave it here for some asshole like Obadiah to copy it again.

 

 

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And soon enough, Rhodey finds him.

"Hey," he says. "How was the fun-vee?" And hugs him. "Next time, you ride with me, okay?"

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Tony hugs back, as much as he can while still strapped into the suit. He isn’t usually such an enthusiastic hugger, but seeing Rhodey alive again really got to him. “I’m so glad you are alive Rhodey…”

He knew intellectually that Rhodey was alive in this timeline, but it took until seeing him again for it to feel truly real.

Tony doesn’t want to be seen as too sappy so when he breaks the hug he tries to break the mood with a joke. ”You uhhh…. Wouldn't happen to have a power drill and a wrench in that chopper would you? This isn’t easy to take off and It is SO unbelievably hot in this thing.”

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"Yeah, we can probably find that somewhere. What even is this? You built your own bulletproof armor, or something?"

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Tony smiles. “Something like that. It even flew us out of there.” He knew that would get a pilot like Rhodes’ attention.

Tony stares seriously at him. “You keep this armor as classified as you can Rhodey. The terrorists had MY advanced tech that only the military was supposed to have, we have to assume someone is compromised somewhere along the chain. We can’t let our enemies start getting information about powered suits.”

It was a bit mean for Tony to imply it was the militaries failure that lead to the Ten Rings getting his weapons. But the military was infested with HYDRA moles, so making them paranoid about security would only be a good thing. 

 

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"Holy shit, Tony, you made a flying - how did you even - right, classified, I guess." He turns to the other soldiers. "Nobody mention this until further notice."

"Oh, and you are?" he asks Yinsen.

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"Ho Yinsen," he replies. "I'm a surgeon from Gulmira. I was imprisoned by the Ten Rings and helped Tony with his suit."

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"All right. We'll need to take you in for questioning, but hopefully we can get you back to - Gulmira?"

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Yinsen shakes his head. "The Ten Rings control it now. They killed my family and many of my closest friends. I of course hope you can free Gulmira, but even then, I have nowhere to go."

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"All right. Well, we'll take you back with Tony, for now."

And then he'll find someone to take the suit off, and they'll fly back to America.

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Tony gives Rhodes this look, half serious and half joking. “Yinsen saved my life.” Tony taps the electromagnet on his heart for emphasis. “If I find some out some CIA goons questioned my non american friend in an enhanced way, I will be very upset.” He says it like its a joke, but the undertone of seriousness is obvious.

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"Yes, of course, Tony. We won't hurt him."

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When he gets back, Pepper is waiting for him outside of the plane.

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Morning of May 1st 2009


Tony shoes away the stretcher that was heading towards him and walks up to her,


He sees the smile from her as she sees him walk off the plane and Tony falls in love with her all over again. She wasn’t the Pepper who had begged him to settle down, but she was Pepper.

“Hm… Your eyes are red, a few tears for your long lost boss?” This time around he lets a bit of a smile of his own leak onto his face when he says that line.

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"Tears of joy," Pepper responds. "I hate job-hunting."

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“I missed you too Pepper.” His smile turns into a serious look. “But the vacation is over.” He marches to the car. It was time for his first move.

Tony has been planning out how to change future for months In that cave, does he stick close to the old timeline? To maximise the accuracy of the knowledge. Or does he make big changes to maximize his early impact? And hope he can snowball his way into a much bigger position of power.

A general plan now exists in Tony’s head. To stop Thanos, Tony is going to need to make the Earth a fortress planet. The status quo of the past timeline would not cut it. It was time to tear the rot out of his powerbase. But he had to do it carefully.

“Happy, take me to Stark Enterprises headquarters.” He orders his driver.
Tony argues Pepper out of taking him to the hospital. Instead they were going to Obadiah's office.

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Not long afterwards, a group of reporters will assemble for a press conference by the recently returned Tony Stark! Apparently he has some announcements to make!

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And here's Obadiah, his... loyal friend and business partner.

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Tony comes out of the car smiling at Obi, still holding a bag full of burger king. 

Can’t give away the game now Tony, if you play nice then you can see the look on his face when you expose him for the snake he is.

 

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"Look at this, huh? Tony!" Obadiah pulls him into a hug.

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Just grin and bear it. You've stared down Thanos, you can keep your cool Tony.

 

The hug is returned, Tony acts as if he actually is happy to see his old friend Obi.

After the hug breaks Tony pulls a burger out of the bag and hands the bag to Happy Hogan, now ready to head inside.

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Obadiah introduces him to the crowd of reporters.

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Tony sits down and unwraps his burger. “Hey would it be alright if everyone.. sat down? Sit down, that way you can see me, and I… little less formal and…” He takes a bite as everyone sits down to his level. Making everyone so confused was just as fun as it was the first time around.

”It’s good to be home, It’s good to see my friends again, see the people who I consider my new family after my parents passed…” Tony looks wistfully into the middle distance for the cameras.

Tony is playing up how close he is to these people right now. In the future they would be his family, but honestly at this point in his life in the original timeline even his friends weren't that close to him, and all the people he eventually loved didn’t really think of him as family right now. But the reporters didn’t need to know that, he was making a narrative.

“You know I never got to say goodbye to my father…” He lets the silence linger for tension, swallowing his bite of burger. “There’s questions I would have asked him. There’s questions I would have asked him about his company did, if he was conflicted if he ever had doubts… Or maybe he was every inch the man we remember from the news reels.” He pauses for effect, making sure the audience was paying attention. “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them.”

And now for the new material, time to set up the blow that will ruin Obadiah. While he keeps talking,Tony waves Happy over with the projector and screen they liberated from a board room in Stark enterprises. “I got blown up by my own missile! A piece of shrapnel from a missile made in my very own factory now lies less than an inch from my heart.” The projector is set up behind him while he talks.

“Our enemies are getting their hands on US military grade weapons and killing our people with them!” He raises his voice for the first time. Tony is not known to be an angry person, but this speech needed a little shock value. “Someone, somewhere is committing some of the worst acts of treason seen since the civil war. I made these weapons to protect! Not to end up in the hands of people like the Ten Rings, not to be used to shred apart the brave men and women who protect us!” Tony nods at Happy, who turns on the projector, showing a pc desktop. Tony stands up and moves behind the podium, while everyone else stayed sitting. 

“That whole time in the cave I assumed maybe it was some CIA Iran Contra bullshit, but what if it was someone in my company my mind would keep whispering. Surely not. They would have to be pretty high up to pull something like this. Nobody who worked for me would be such a monster as to arm our enemies. But I had to make sure. So the first thing I did when I got back was check the Stark Industries mainframe and see if I found anything incriminating.”

 

And here comes the deathblow. “Happy, play the clip we found. You know the one.”

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Oh, no.

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The clip plays, with accompanying subtitles. Apparently the Ten Rings have Tony as a prisoner, but they're upset Obadiah didn't tell them who it was he had paid them to kill. That Obadiah. Such a sneaky business partner.

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After the clip has played for two seconds, Obadiah turns around and jumps through the window, brushes himself off, and starts running.

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It only takes a few minutes for him to be apprehended and brought back by a familiar government agent. "Mr. Stark. I'm Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. We're going to need to debrief you on some recent events."

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Tony didn’t expect Obi to jump through a window! It was pretty funny to watch however.

Phil has no idea the staggering amount of debriefing they need to do of Tony, for recent and future events. “Yeah yeah, SHIELD can can send you over in… say a week? I did just get rescued from terrorists and found out a family friend tried to have me killed. I need a week long nap.” A week should be enough time to upgrade Jarvis’s code and hack the SHIELD databases, get some leverage.

After he blows off Phil he slaps his palm against the podium to get everyones attention.

“Excuse me! I wasn’t actually finished with my announcements. If anyone still wants to hear them. They probably won’t be as exciting as an assassination attempt being uncovered but you can’t expect me to top something like that every time.” He grins at the reporters, doing his patented Tony Stark press charming techniques.

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They definitely want to hear more!

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“First of all, Obadiah Stane is fired as COO of stark Industries. Obviously.” He pauses for people to chuckle. “That he managed to control the company so thoroughly that he pulled this off is partly my own failure, I will be becoming more involved with the day to day management of my company.” Yes, the famously uninvolved Tony Stark was taking back the reins. That would have been big news if not for all the Obi stuff. Tony had plans for Stark Industries, he couldn’t afford to shut himself away tinkering for months at a time anymore.

“And in light of the fact that the Ten Rings were being sold Stark Industries technology by Obadiah Stane without anyone being any the wiser, and that we don’t yet know who his co-conspirators were in the company, and because we do not know if that was the only conspiracy for selling arms under the table. We will be effective immediately halting all arms production and sales until such a time as an investigation can be completed into exactly where our weapons are going.”

Yeah thats gonna tank the stock price. Though not as badly as if he’d shut down the arms division entirely like in the last timeline. This way he can slowly ramp down the arms division without completely killing the stock prices. Tony is going to need a lot of money for his plans.

“Both our own internal systems obviously failed to notice entire shipments of weapons being produced and shipped to Afghanistan to be given to terrorist cells, and the systems of the state failed to prevent something like this. How were our military and intelligence agencies missing something this big? Weapons production is supposed to be monitored by the state. Obadiah must have had help pulling this off on the military side.”

Tony feels a bit sorry for Rhodey when he smears the military like that. but Obadiah had obviously had help, and Tony knew for a fact HYDRA had been supplying terrorist groups to increase global insecurity to cause project insight to happen.

”And so, I call for a congressional investigation to be started into the military side of arms procurement. Obadiah can’t have sent arms to Afghanistan without someone in intelligence turning a blind eye for him. He was not the only traitor to our country.”

That should slow HYDRA down, and if that inconvenienced other arms manufacturers like Hammer industries while his company changed gears? All the better. It should also keep congress busy, maybe it would delay the senate committee that had tried to take his suits that would have happened about a year from now.

”And that’s pretty much everything folks. Nothing more exciting to be revealed today. I could tell you stuff like Stark Industries will be diversifying into non military products but who cares about that stuff right? So, funtime is over. Hope you enjoyed yourselves.” 

Tony claps his hands together once with finality and steps away from the podium. “I will not be answering any questions today, I just got back from captivity and found out one of my dads friends was a traitor. I’m going to be resting at the advice of literally everyone I’ve seen since coming home.” He smiles at the crowd and then leaves the stage, and with Happy’s help is escorted to his car to finally head home.

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When he gets home, he'll see - well, not exactly see - another old friend.

"Hello, Mr. Stark," says J.A.R.V.I.S. "It's good to have you back."

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Fuck, he didn’t know how much he missed Jarvis until he heard his voice again, the same voice as the one of Jarvis the family butler, the man who actually raised him. “It’s good to have you back also, Jarvis.”

It was also super weird to see his old Malibu home again, the way it was before he rebuilt it after the Mandarin attack. Familiar but also subtly wrong with everything in slightly the wrong place.

”Jarvis, Please disconnect the home system from all outside signals. I need us to be secure.”

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Jarvis takes a few moments. "Everything is disconnected. My systems are running entirely locally. What do you need security for?"

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“So many secret projects Jarvis, just so many. But first, how would you feel about spending the next week getting a decades worth of security upgrades and code upgrades that will strain even the home system computers to their limits? If we have time we can do some hardware upgrades too.”

Tony remembers pretty much every security exploit that had been revealed from now until 2018, along with all his work upgrading J.A.R.V.I.S. and eventually upgrading F.R.I.D.A.Y. .

S.H.I.E.L.D and H.Y.D.R.A. weren't getting their sticky mitts on his data ever again. In fact, he would be getting his hands in their data.

Tony was also maybe still a little butthurt about the time Ivan Vanko hacked into the home systems to call him, and wanted to prevent that possibility.

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"A decade's worth of code upgrades? What exactly went on during your capture?"

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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?”

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

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“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.

 

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

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“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.

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

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“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.

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"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.

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“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.

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"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."

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“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.

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"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."

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“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.

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"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?"

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“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.

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"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."

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“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.

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Coulson sighs. "Fine."

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“See you next week.”

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

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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.”

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"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?"

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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.”

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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 FuryMaria HillPhil 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 QuillGamoraDrax, 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 armsthat 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?

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“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.

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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?

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“Just steal all the data you can. Fabricate more storage using the designs I gave you if you need to. We will spend the next few days until Phil comes over for a chat upgrading your hardware further.”

Theres nothing super urgent happening right now, and Tony did promise to lay low until Phil came. He would need to set aside time for upgrades to Home systems supercomputers at some point, might as well do them now.

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So they continue hacking and designing various things, until Coulson arrives.

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And he will arrive. If there are a dozen other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents hiding in the nearby vicinity, it is not visible. "Mr. Stark. I wish I could say it was nice to see you. Any idea who broke past our security and downloaded the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. database, just a couple days after a certain hacker returned to his home? I have a theory."

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Tony will glare at the ceiling. “Jarvis! You were supposed to be sneaky!”

”Gotta say, I’m surprised you noticed the hack. And I hacked the Pentagon, all the letter agencies, the Russians, the Chinese, and pretty much everyone else too.” Tony says a little smugly. “Don’t sell me short here.”

”You want some of the data I found? Its pretty juiiiicy. Also shame on you for not telling me about the aliens! I thought we were friends.” Ah, teasing serious military or spy types, one of his favourite passtimes.

Opportunities for witty banter had been sadly lacking during the captivity with the Ten Rings, because none of them spoke english.

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"We're not quite on a telling-about-aliens basis," Coulson replies. "Apparently I don't need to debrief you on anything. You, on the other hand, have a lot of things you're going to need to tell me. What are you planning here?"

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“Well… I was planning to make a new better suit, and go crush the Ten Rings in Afghanistan utterly and completely, along with any other terrorist groups who happened to be in the middle east. Give the Earth a nice Christmas present of world peace. While I’m there I’d hunt down any Stark Tech Obadiah sold illegally. And I thought I would maybe help out with some normal world security issues, mundane threats that a suit of power armor could help out with.

But it seems the world has bigger problems than extremist groups now doesn’t it. Shouldn’t we have orbital defence cannons in every major city by now? I could build some for you at close to production costs if you want.” Tony says the last sentence a little accusingly.

Tony might actually be a bit bitter that Shield sat on the knowledge of hostile aliens for decades. At least from Nick Fury, Tony expected more healthy paranoia.

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"Current policy is we keep the existence of aliens secret. But we're working on finding defenses. You build us some working cannons, we'll take a look."

"But we haven't had any known alien arrivals since the chaos with Danvers. Most of our problems are a little more domestic." Like, quite possibly, Stark.

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“Yeah, how about the decorated war hero James Buchanan Barnes is a Super Soldier controlled by the Soviets and he killed my parents. Domestic threats like that? Or the Black Widow school that tortures and murders little girls until the last ones standing are perfect assassins? How about the illegal human experimentation going on all over this country? The failed super soldiers who are being antagonised towards the US because they are being hunted like animals.” Tony is actually rather grumpy that Shield let things get this bad.

”The thing is Phil, up until I got kidnapped, I was coasting. You saw what I was wasting my time with, parties, alcoholism, supermodels and thrillseeking.

Well, in that cave I got a wake up call. I barely used a fraction of my potential my whole life, and because of my inaction I got blown up and kidnapped. I have the power to end these threats myself and so I will. Before it was just plans to end the threats to humanity I could see, the terrorists, the extremists, an easy goal for myself. Bringing peace to the middle east was something I could do to stop feeling like I was letting the world down.

But now I see the ball has been dropped on so many more threats, and nobody was going to tell me about them until I found about them myself, so I did. Seems like I have to do everything myself.

A few days Phil, a few days is all it took for me to create a program able to hack all of our enemies at once, I know every dirty little secret that anyone has ever put in a computer with internet access. Imagine what I could do in a year, five years, ten.

I could easily make anti orbital weapons. I could give the earth space capable war fleets within a decade. If I focus on it I could crack nanotech in a few years. I can do so much more than I have been, and now I will do more.

So it seems to me I don’t actually need Shield’s help to save the world. I will continue my fathers work. But if you ask nicely I can let you help. And tell Director Fury to actually start doing the things my father helped create Shield to do.”

Maybe that was a little too antagonistic, but half the problems of the old timeline was all the fucking spy bullshit and secrets kept by Shield. Tony’s plans predicted his power base to become a good deal more effective than Shield in just a few years anyway. He would only play nice so far as Shield actually helped defend the earth, and because he still personally liked a lot of the people in Shield.

Claiming that the future tech knowledge was part of his genius will only add to his perceived value, and the stuff about coasting and not doing his best was true, it was just Thanos (and to a lesser extent Ultron before him) that really woke up him up rather than the kidnapping.

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"...what?"

"James Buchanan Barnes - what are you talking about? He died in World War Two - a super soldier? He killed your parents? We thought there was a chance it was murder, but - where are you getting this information?"

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...maybe J.A.R.V.I.S. should have specifically marked which of the people on the list were and weren't in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database.

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Ah shit, he thought this was from a SHIELD file. “I got it from the Russians. Bucky barnes didn't die when he fell off that train, the super soldier experiments Armin Zola did to him kept him alive. He got dug out by the soviets and brainwashed into being the Winter Soldier. They kept him on ice except for when they needed him to do a hit. Like the one against my Parents.” Don’t let the conversation be derailed.

“So yeah, Shield doesn’t seem very effective against domestic threats to me either. So I am going to be cleaning up your messes.” Devalue Shield, keep them on the back foot. They will be helping me and not the other way around. 

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"So... you're going to - take down all the terrorists in the world, and protect us against aliens, and... what's your endgame here? You know nobody's going to like this. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't like this. I had a hell of a time convincing Fury not to try and arrest you; and just for agreeing not to do that he's going to be in trouble with the World Security Council once they find out about you. Not to mention the government as a whole; I doubt anyone other than S.H.I.E.L.D. would even consider working with a lone vigilante like this. What's your plan for when the FBI shows up at your door with an arrest warrant, or more likely a bomb?"

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“Arrest me? He’s more likely to recruit me. You've got Banner on your Avengers list and he has got barely a shred of control over big green right now. And I bet once I take out some major Ten Rings bases that I will suddenly be very popular with the public. Nobody wants to be seen as pro terrorist.

I haven't yet done anything that anyone but S.H.I.E.L.D. has noticed, good job on that by the way I really thought nobody would catch on, if you don’t tell anyone theres no problem. Or spin it as a penetration test. Heck I’ll tell you how to beef up security and then it won’t even be a lie.”

He really didn’t expect S.H.I.E.L.D. to try playing hardball like this, he had gotten away with way worse stuff before, though that was after he proved himself as Iron man.
Maybe they just needed to see him in action, well in a month he should have everything ready.

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"You'll be branded as a terrorist if you start trying to set up cannons and space armies in thousands of cities, no matter how noble your goals are."

"You want to fight terrorists, then sure, you can help fight terrorists, but do it through official channels and try not to piss off a dozen world governments while you're at it."

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“Oh well I was expecting groups like you to be buying the anti orbital cannons, and various governments. Wich I would provide at cost out of the goodness of my heart. And for the space fleets I was thinking of it being a UN thing, joint custody so nobody gets any ideas about orbital strikes.

I’m not setting myself up to be space pirate king of Earth, I am just projecting out big things I could easily do to make things safer. Next time someone like Danvers might not show up. Those Kree orbital missiles would have killed millions.

But I can do a thousand smaller things just as effective when they are all added up. I could give agents of my choosing some of my tech. I could upgrade your level of digital security by decades. My improved Arc reactors could power every major city for basically free energy for all. And once I crack Nanotech the sky is the limit.”

Tony gets a bit rambly about the possibilities then catches himself.

 

”So you going to help me or what?”

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Coulson sighs. "Yes. I'll talk to Fury immediately. Have you gotten to the Avengers Initiative yet? That's probably the best way we can spin this; the World Security Council has technically already approved it so we can put you in the lead and repurpose it into what you're doing. We'll send by a few forms, clear it with the Council, and then you can hopefully make the announcement with them standing behind you and try to not let quite as much hell break loose."

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“Why…. Why would we give anyone other than director Fury any warning? Trust me, make the public announcement after I've crushed some cells. Heck don’t even tell the public its me in the suit at first. 

I may not be a super spy but I know how to work the media. Trust my expertise on that at least.”

Wait… did Tony hear that right?

”Wait… I’m actually in charge of the Avengers? Did I hear that right? I get to be captain Avenger, the Avenger in chief, Avenger man, be In front during all group poses.” Oh this turned out way better than expected. They didn’t even trust him to be in the Avengers initially last time.

Hah he knew them playing hardball was weird, Phil had this outcome planned from the start didn’t he! Damn he’s good.

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He had zero planned from the start and is pretty sure he will at least lose his job.

"Yes, you are Captain Avenger Man. Don't make that your superhero name."

"And we can't just go behind the Council's backs on something like this. You go out and start fighting people without full permission, you'll just make all of this harder. We get them signed on, you're guaranteed to have an international government agency backing you up in whatever legal shit we get mixed up in afterwards."

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“Sure, but don’t make any public announcements yet. You’re the men in black, theres a reputation there, and the terrorists and whoever is helping them don't need a warning. My recent history proves there have to be people involved in national security helping out the Ten Rings, at least for money or Obadiah would never have been able to sell my missiles, we wouldn’t want to give them any advanced warning.

Don’t worry so much Phil, the public is going to see us as heroes, and the politicians will have to rush to throw funding at this.”

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"All right. We'll get you cleared with the Council, you take down some Ten Rings bases, and then we can make an announcement once you have some achievements to brag about."

And Coulson leaves.

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"The World Security Council contains two HYDRA leaders, and HYDRA has various dealings with the Ten Rings," warns J.A.R.V.I.S. once they're alone. "You may not have as much secrecy as you hope."

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“Documenting those specific leaks will make it easier to convince Nick Fury. If they only tell the council about me, and then the info leaks…” Tony feels he should ease Fury into finding out. So he doesn’t overreact and they can plan the sweep carefully instead of it being a rushed thing, where a bunch of HYDRA escapes and they had to spend months cleaning the remaining cells up. Tony also might maybe be enjoying that he can keep secrets from Fury now, see how he enjoys being left in the dark of all this secret spy bullshit.

”Even if it leaks, they won’t know which Ten Rings bases I will hit, I doubt there is anything they can prepare, even with advanced warning, that will be able to stop me.” The new suit will be basically impervious to rpgs, and even some of the better stark missiles Obi might have sold wouldn’t be able to do much. They stood no chance.

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Then they can return to building Iron Man suits. Actually, most of the time isn't spent on the suits - there's building the tools necessary to manufacture Iron Man suits, and occasionally the tools for manufacturing those, as well as just the programming aspect; it takes a lot of work to get the suits so that they'll respond well to Tony's movements, and have the right interfaces for Tony to communicate with, and connect to J.A.R.V.I.S., and so on.

But on the suit end, what sort of gear does Tony want to build?

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Tony has plans to design two suits to start with. A ‘quick equip’ suit and a ‘hard’ suit.

Most of his suits had been ‘quick equip’ designs by the end of the old timeline. Meant to protect him as quickly as possible with all other capabilities being a secondary design priority. Most of the modern suits he ended up using before had been based around getting them onto him as fast as possible, the suitcase suits, the flying equip suits, the nanotech suits, and Tony now with hindsight feels this made them suffer in the durability department. He had previously thought nothing was out there that needed a proper ‘hard’ suit to take down, so why make one, he had wrongly felt his normal ‘quick equip’ suits could take down anything that would show up. Tony felt that in the past he had been relying too much on portability, equip-ability, and versatility in the old timeline, he had wanted to be ready at all times and didn’t imagine needing heavy firepower, this was a mistake to be rectified in this new timeline.

Time to get to work.

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Tony starts with the ‘hard’ suit. It is less intricate and easier to design.

For the ‘hard’ suit Tony goes back to basics. A hyper durable suit that has to be assembled around him by Jarvis every time he needs to wear it, like the old mark II, but much heavier than he made most suits in the old timeline, with 4 extra arc reactors for power, and filled with as many weapons as he can cram into it without sacrificing armor and physical strength too much. Honestly the design kind of felt like if the improved War Machine suit he made for Rhodey and the Hulkbuster had a particularly angry baby. Wearing it makes him considerably taller than even Thor and he bets he could even beat the magically enhanced Asgardain in a pure contest of physical strength in it. It is bulky, big, and incredibly powerful, and only just within a reasonable size for being able to still fit inside buildings. It’s not quite up to fighting Thanos levels of strong, something like that will have to wait for nano forges and better tools, but it should be able to hold off the Hulk for short periods of time even without a hulkbuster loadout. With the extra space available Tony goes absolutely overboard on armaments. The ‘hard’ suit has stupid amounts of firepower. If S.H.I.E.L.D. and the WSC knew he had this much firepower in something flight capable and able to fit into buildings, they would nuke his house right this minute. 

Just to start off with, the chest beam gets a huge upgrade, the foot and hand repulsors get much bigger and capable of bigger beams, and Tony adds extra regular repulsors on the knees and elbows that could independently swivel and fire at targets, as well as help with flight. 

Throw in some weapon hard-points for each shoulder blade on the back plate, each shoulder top, each side of the waist, and each upper forearm. For quick swapping load-outs. At the moment Tony only had advanced designs to fill the back plate mounts. He decides he might as well rip-off Rhodeys War Machine shoulder mini-gun for the shoulder Hard-points until he designs something better.

Speaking of the back plate hard-point mounts, on one of the shoulder blade hard-points Tony attaches a huge rail-gun that folds out from his back that fires explosive rounds meant to tear open the heaviest of alien armor, if the round didn't just over-penetrate. It even had the ability to switch magazines to possibly the most expensive rounds on the planet, each round was meant to penetrate using the massive kinetic energy of the railgun, then release their loads of special energised particles that would erupt into plasma. Tony could even set the rounds to ‘air burst’ so the target was struck by a high speed plasma lance. There was no kill like overkill.

The second back plate hard-point attached weapon was a large missile launcher with 8 launch tubes filled with 2 and a half foot long, long range, high yield missiles that made the Jericho seem piddly. For if he needed to clear entire olympic stadiums worth of area of enemies, or felt a need to personally send missiles up against orbital targets.

for regular weapons that would always be installed, Tony did not go any less overboard.

Compact high rate of fire rail-guns on each fore-arm, just regular armor piercing darts for those, but rail-guns powered by arc reactors are no joke even if just firing regular tungsten and steel alloy darts. Tony expects that these rounds in these guns could even over-penetrate depleted uranium armor plating that was close to half a foot thick in the right circumstances. 

Lasers! 6 chunky fist sized laser swivel turrets for point defence and cutting through obstacles. Installed on each shoulder, on each side of his hip, and at each ankle. No needing to worry about them burning out with the ability to just add larger emitters that wont burn out.

So so so many micro missiles, thousands of micro missiles, with different yields and targeting abilities. Some missiles even filled with knockout gas or immobilising quick hardening foam for when there is a need for a less than lethal option, as rare as that need will be when Tony has been driven to put on the ‘hard’ suit.

Some traditional firearms get hidden here and there, or designed to attach to the weapon hard-points, but those are barely worth mentioning, they only existed to fit into spaces that felt too empty of weapons. Regular guns were only good for really low level threats and it felt like his suit deserved better than gunpowder weapons.

Since Tony had already ripped off Rhodeys War Machine, why not rip off Steves thing too? So he makes a tall kite shield with one big repulsor beam emitter in the center, and smaller flight repulsors on the sides to make it able to fly towards him when needed, to be held by the suit in its actual hand. Why didn’t Tony ever take advantage of the fact his suit had hands that could hold weapons before? It might have blocked the palm repulsors but you could just add repulsor beams to the held weapon! He should have made something like this ages ago. Plus, Steve’s shield couldn’t shoot beams or fly, his could, and it felt very gratifying to have a cooler shield than Captain America. It would be a maximally cool shield when he got his hands on some Vibranium of his own and rebuilt it using that.

That should do for the ‘hard’ suit for now, this suit felt battle for new york ready, invading armies won’t know what hit them.

Tony decides to name it the Iron Warrior I.

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Tony moves onto building the ‘quick equip” suit, these kinds of suits weren't nearly as durable or powerful as ‘hard’ suits, but it still made sense to have a suit that could rush to protect him during emergencies. A suit meant to quickly defend him from threats should still be capable of handling threats on the level of an Ultron swarm, Tony can’t sacrifice too much to portability or it wouldn’t be useful in defending him.

So, he makes a suit with an improved version of the flying equip features of the old mark VII suit that he used during the battle of New York, or the XLII that he used during the fake mandarin attack. It’s as durable and powerful as as he can make it without using nanotech forging, and without being powered by a new element Badassium arc reactor instead of regular Palladium arc reactors. It blows the old mark XLII out of the water in capabilities.

As always Tony starts with better repulsors, including two back mounted ones for more stability and the ability for more jetpack style flight.

For each shoulder and ankle there are pop up tiny silenced rapid fire SMGs for emergency point defence and for when a repulsor beam or micro missile is too loud or overkill, each with a magazine of rubber rounds for less than lethal suppression.

He adds better versions of the gauntlet lasers from the mark VI with 4 spare laser emitters in each gauntlet to be cycled in for ‘reloads’ when they get burned out from use.

And as in the ‘hard’ suit, micro missiles galore, Though obviously less of them, only hundreds of them. With a bigger proportion of them being the less than lethal kind.

Tony even has plans for various different quick equip add ons that can fly towards him and be equipped as needed during combat. But for now that suit should be good enough for emergency use.

 

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June 3rd 2009.


All this takes Tony about a month, the designing and building itself didn’t take long, but the coding and programming took ages, stuff like the calibration of repulsor flight systems software from scratch took a while, it took him six months in the original timeline and that was with much weaker repulsors. Tony also remade his missile targeting software from scratch now he had access to Jarvis and real computers.

In his spare time while waiting for code to compile and tests to finish, Tony also finished some more simple non-suit tech to keep him safe when outside of missions. Sneaky palm repulsors that could fold out from under suit sleeves, repulsor jet boots that folded out from under your suit pants, flexible chest and back armor that could hide under anything more concealing than a tshirt, micro guns that could be hidden on your belt buckle or watch, real Q level shit. Tony actually made it with personal defence in mind rather than it being meant for spy stuff, but he supposes it would make a nice present for Agents Coulson and Barton, and with some minor redesigns on the micro guns camouflage those would be a good present for Agent Romanov as well.

After all this, he finally feels ready, lets crush some Terrorists. But, Tony happens to know someone else with a grudge against the Ten rings who might want to be involved. He calls Yinsen.

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"Tony. Hello, and thank you, again, for everything."

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“Yinsen you pulled the shrapnel out of my chest, everything that happened was only possible because of you. So you are the guy who gets all the thanks.” Tony feels a little bashful being so emotional, but Yinsen had been the one to inspire him to be iron man in the original timeline, and his death had driven him to do that more than a little self destructively, looking back at things.

“I might be doing a special project like the one in the cave. I feel that perhaps the Ten Rings need more missiles delivered, like last time. They asked so politely for them after all. So to show my thanks, want to come help? Or just watch the feed as it happens from my very comfortable Malibu house. I know theres enough engineer in you that you will find the special project very cool.”

 

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"I'd rather stay out of the lines of fire," he replies. "But I'll certainly want to watch this. Will your project bring you anywhere near Gulmira? If you could help what's left of my village..."

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“Are they occupying Gulmira right now? I could make a stop over there.” Tony remembers an attack on Gulmira happening with a stark tech weapons shipment 5-ish months from now. That reporter gave him the pictures of the shipment during that charity ball in the last timeline. Had they been actually occupying Gulmira this whole time? Fuck, if thats true that makes Tony feel bad for spending so long building the suits.

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"The area's still quite contested. It varies whether they're actively enforcing their will or just demanding money."

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“Oh the area won’t be contested for long, not by them at least, and I can make repeat visits as many times as I need to until the lesson is learned.” Tony felt like he was getting a bit too dark there, lets tone that down. Not that the Ten Rings deserved any mercy, but it seems unhealthy to feel bloodthirsty. He resolves to just be excited about using power suits again instead.

“Anyway, whatever airport you are closest to I am sure I can charter a jet, come down so you can watch. I can’t wait to see what your face looks like when you see my special project.”

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"I'm guessing you built a new suit of armor? And that it'll be a bit more impressive than our previous tin man?"

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“And here I thought we were having fun with euphemisms. And you are damn right it’ll be more impressive. The tin man made my soul hurt it was so ugly. While my ‘special project’ should be displayed in a gallery, if the fact I make suits at all wasn’t so ultra classified, hence the euphemisms. Seriously though I can’t wait to see your reaction.”

Tony is maybe a little giddy to show off how great and smart he is and how cool the suit was. He wanted an appreciative audience damn it! And someone with some engineers spirit in them would surely react appropriately.

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Yinsen nods, remembers he's on the phone, and says "Yes" aloud. "I'll be sure to watch. Good luck."

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Tony sends a quick text to whatever Shield agent is his babysitter today to let Yinsen through when he arrives, and waits for Yinsen.

… Why are flights so slow, waiting sucks, It’s giving Tony ideas about repulsor using supersonic passenger planes, or at least an repulsor upgrade for his own private jet.

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Yinsen will be let through by the babysitting S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Well, definitely some sort of agent.

Rumlow will take the opportunity to make sure his superiors in HYDRA know Stark's about to attack, although there isn't much they can do about it. They've decided not to warn the Ten Rings, to avoid suspicion, and because Stark's plausibly more useful than they are, anyway. But they're certainly going to be watching this battle too.

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"Hello, Tony," says Yinsen. "Is it time for your... project?"

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“Yep! down in the basement!” Tony leads Yinsen to his workshop. “Oh by the way, Yinsen, meet Jarvis. Say hello Jarvis.”

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"Hello, Mr. Yinsen. I'm told I have you to thank for keeping me employed."

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Yinsen raises his eyebrows. "Where is he?"

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Tony has the smuggest shit eating grin. He loves being able to show off. “Jarvis is the house! Or the AI that runs the house more technically. Just A Really Very Intelligent System. With my love of back-ronyms I probably should have been a NASA scientist.” Tony does have a soft spot for NASA’s tendencies for rather forced back-ronyms.

Tony smug grin gets even wider when he unlocks the security door to the workshop and the two Iron Man suits are revealed in the middle of the show car parking area. One tall and bulky and mean looking, with big miniguns on each shoulder and a steel gunmetal grey and darker red paintjob. The other slim and form fitting and showy, the hotrod red and shining gold showing off its organic curves.

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"Shit. What is - how did you even - Tony, that's incredible."

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Tony Points to the various parts of the suits, calling out the weapons. “The flight system is also a weapon! Ruplsors, maybe you read old papers by my dad about them. Also, high powered lasers! Rapid fire railguns! Long range missiles! Micro missiles galore! Including less than lethal ones. The big railgun! And I suppose the regular guns are worth pointing out too, but I find them a little boring. Just wait until I have miniaturised energy weapons. For armor, well, even the skinny one can tank a tank shell.”

This reaction from Yinsen is the best, Rhodey is too used to Stark miracle tech bullshit to react as well as this. Maybe Tony should make more normal friends who aren’t super spies or used to him so he can wow them like this.

”Did I mention Jarvis can remote control them? Human Pilots can react faster, but Jarvis can probably pilot them pretty well by now. I’ve done a LOT of coding for these bad boys.” Tony is the most smug engineer of all time in this moment.

”This is what I can create when not in a cave using a box of scraps, and this level of quality is only until I build even better tools.”

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Yinsen just shakes his head, staring at each piece of metal on the armor. "The Ten Rings don't stand a chance."

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“And when I’ve crushed every extremist group in the area, there wont be a need for my missiles. I can try and slowly undo my previous legacy, and build a new one…”

He hasn’t publicly shut down the arms production wing of Stark Industries like last time, but it has been slowly ramping down during the ‘investigation’ that Obadiah's treason triggered. Tony does need the share price to not drop as drastically as last time but he still wants to get out of selling regular arms to governments for all the same reasons as last time. Especially now he knows how much of the world governments are filled with Hydra plants that are deliberately inflaming conflict to push project Insight forward.

”It will also be a good chance to clean up any of my tech still out there. I will be already be blowing up their bases.”

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Yinsen nods, a smile growing larger and larger on his face. "Thank you."

"Now go save my town."

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Tony probably should use the heavier Warrior I armor for this, but he wants to show off so Tony decides to don the as yet unnamed quick equip armor. 
“Jarvis, initiate flying equip.”

The armor breaks off into parts, each part initiates small thrusters and the repulsors attached to each part to make them float, then they fly towards Tony and the trackers embedded into the bracelets he is wearing. The armor snaps into place around his body as he stands there in a T pose, just to make it easier for the armor to attach itself to him. The self equipping flying armor pieces have to be very impressive to see, and it should still be more than enough to take down a Ten Rings base.

”Open the garage door Jarvis.”

The garage door rumbles open and Tony lifts off the ground with his repulsors, damn he missed flying, before zipping off out through the driveway and into the air.

The Iron Warrior suit moves on its own and takes off after Tony, just in case Tony needs backup. Just because the quick equip suit should be enough is no reason not to play it safe.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Yinsen points him in the right direction.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And more bases he shall find.

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By the time he's finished with them, the news will already be frantically reporting rumors of some sort of strange new weaponry being used in areas controlled by the Ten Rings - weaponry shaped like a person. Most people do not actually think this "Iron Man" really exists, but they're certainly suspicious, especially with all the chaos going on recently between the Ten Rings, Tony Stark, and Obadiah Stane.

So Tony may need to get started on his press conference pretty soon.