A/N - The Sickness Gods descended on me with a ravenous furore but thankfully, I have fended them off now so I can get back to the glorious grind of writing!
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I might still be a little off from the meds but I AM A PUNK ROCKER, YES I AM!
Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #107
LA, Earth[April 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
He grinned as he saw the news. Apparently, tomorrow night was the night that Tony was not invited to his own gala, and was told by Stane that he was fired from the company. It also meant that tonight was also the night Jarvis would be coloring all of the suit parts in hot rod red and gold colours.
But he was slightly confused, because the maiden flight test should have been done before then, but the group of satellites he had tasked for the express purpose of tracking everything that came out of Stark's house did not register anything.
He was floating, out in the ocean, in the dark, cloaked under stealth spells, just surveilling Tony's house. Man, it was a nice house. Too much glass for his taste though. Then again, he had the safety angle in his mind whenever he looked at a house, and the Mandarin's attack on Tony's house came to mind. The man had a veritable army of suits in his house and yet, he could not defend it from a couple of helicopters and some missiles.
He needed a break from the restoration work on his ship, of which he was learning a lot of. Apparently, the battery in that thing was a solid state battery, made over a century ago, and it still worked. He had taken that thing out to test its properties standalone, and maybe pull Bruce for it but the man was clearly busy with his own research.
The battery was now draining itself, powering a magical loop where electricity was taken and converted to sunlight, allowing the residents of the Red Hearth to get ample natural light, even when they were dozens of levels underground.
The thing about magical loops was that they could be reversed. That particular enchantment was specifically to convert solar energy into electricity. A flipped character within the enchantment now meant that it was now consuming electricity to create sunlight. Once the battery was drained, he had a number of tests to run on it.
But all of that was for later. For now, he was right here, on Earth, in LA, smelling the sea air, waiting for Tony to make a move. He was close, so close that he could see the house as well as the piano from the glass wall that Tony had facing the sea.
Man, that wall irked him to no end. It's not like the man did not invest money into it. That glass was probably bulletproof. It's just that bulletproof did not mean missile-proof. Maybe the great Mr.Stark could learn a thing or two from the Mysterio when it came to house security.
The garage type entrance that went straight down into Tony's lab was something he kept a constant eye on because that was–
He immediately flew forward as the road began glowing suddenly, and then he smiled as Tony flew out of it, sleek armour coated in silver, flying straight out of the house into an arc. The suit flew into the harbour, its silver glinting under the moonlight. Despite seeing stuff objectively much cooler than the suit, he smiled as he gently flew forward, intent on following the man.
The man, clearly enjoying himself, did a fly by of the beach, then flew back towards the house and then, shot straight up.
Time to Shine, he thought to himself, as he followed suit, still using Cloaking spells and low power Air Doors to push himself up, not reaching nearly the same velocity as Tony but he did not need speed right now.
Tony would come falling down on his own soon enough anyway. All he needed to do was remain hidden otherwise who knows how many repulsor blasts he would get to his face before Tony calmed down, not that they would do anything to him since this was season 1 Iron Man with no Uni-Beam and the puny ass first gen Arc Reactor. Plus, this suit was a prototype so no small cache of deadly missiles or ultra accurate guns installed.
He felt the air thin and the temperature drop as ice began gathering on Tony's silver suit, further making it shine under the moonlight. The suit's repulsors began sputtering out as, predictably, Tony's wish to surpass the world record made his suit shut down mid air and made him flail about, screaming in panic.
Damn, the video was clear but the audio was not, he thought to himself as he put away the camera he brought for this special occasion. After all, trolling Tony Stark, the most trollable existence, was another achievement in and of itself.
The suit tumbled mid air, changing orientation as air buffeted it all around. He spotted the flaps that Tony would need to pull to get the ice off his suit. Well, he could not let the man have that close of a call that he did in canon, otherwise who knows if Tony would get a chance to build the second suit or become a splatter on the roads.
So, no longer needing to hide himself, he uncloaked himself and flew close to Tony's flailing form. This close he could see the man try to speak to Jarvis but the suit's systems were completely down. He was falling straight down, along with Tony as two arms got out of his back and grabbed onto the torso and legs of the suit, stopping the suit from turning on itself.
Tony spoke, confused, since the faceplate was facing the other direction. Then, he cleared some of the ice with a third hand before opening the deadstick flaps that restarted the suit. Within seconds, the repulsors were active as he let go of the man. Then, he found himself on the other end of the repulsor tech being armed and aimed at him.
Can't say that he did not expect that.
____xx____
Triskelion
–Nick Fury–
"Tell me what you see here, Barton," He asked the lead agent assigned to this particular mystery of theirs, as they watched footage of the day Tony Stark was rescued and escorted to a US Military base in Afghanistan.
"I see…new abilities," Barton remarked dryly and he resisted the urge to glare at the man. It was true. The amount of new information that had been gathered from this single interaction was vast, beyond what they thought the Orange Man to be capable of.
There were hundreds of pictures taken, footage of every single second of the man's interaction with the armed forces, recorded and analysed by their people. Mysterio, he called himself.
"This ups the threat rating immensely. I don't think anything short of a surprise attack with the cavalry would have any chance of capturing him."
He nodded at that, looking out into the distance before sliding the files forward. "I want you to track him down. People like him don't pop out of nowhere. There's also the matter of Banner being with him. See if you can find anyone with exotic abilities in the market. Chances are, we'll find him. Surveillance only. DO NOT ENGAGE."
"Yes, sir." Barton left the room with the files and he sighed, leaning back into his chair, wondering what exactly the man was doing. He said that he wanted to rescue Stark but could not find him, which he had a hard time believing because the man could somehow find Banner in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, in Canada.
Even taking into account the mountains and the caves of Afghanistan, the man should have been able to find Stark in the months that he had been captured and forced to make weapons. Apparently, Stark blew up the place that had captured him and later surveillance confirmed that.
Vindictive lot, the Starks were.
Now he just had to worry about someone who could take sustained fire of high calibre bullets, fly at speeds surpassing most fighter jets on the planet, conjure energy constructs for multiple purposes, and do all of this while having the ability to quite literally disappear from anything that could track them.
A year from now, when he would see Tony do the exact same things with his suits, he would get that much closer to losing his mind.
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