A/N: I really did intend to post this on the Fourth of July, just to be corny, but I never got around to it, so here it is. Most of it's just dialogue/build-up for the actual plot, and is entirely necessary. Please enjoy while I finish chapter 5. Thank you (:

Disclaimer: I don't own Iron Man or Independence Day.

"Took you long enough to break parole. I'm kind of disappointed in you. Especially when you ignored my call."

Nearly to the cross-walk, Justin froze.

This was worse than just happening to bump into his parole officer.

"Aren't you supposed to be locked up in your bat-cave or something?" He could practically hear his frown. "Oh, wait. You're the villain, now, right? Your disguise needs some work."

Justin turned, slow. "I'm not the conventional kind."

"Yeah, no kidding." Tony crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the patiently waiting-and probably sufficiently bribed-taxi. White-blue light glowed dimly through his grey t-shirt and Justin frowned at it. "What was your plan after you paid off a cabbie?"

"I have business I have to deal with," Justin shrugged, sticking his hands in his suit pockets.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"On Fourth of July weekend?"

Justin was starting to get nervous; Tony wouldn't be bothering him without a decent reason.

"Without armed escorts? Or the handcuffs?"

"I really do have business," Justin said flatly.

"I believe you." Tony shrugged right back at him, and grinned tightly. "Need a ride?"

"What's in it for you?"

"I can finally say I was an accomplice in a successful prison break-out." He spoke very seriously, as if it was, in fact, a cause close to his heart.

Justin shifted his backpack and weighed his options.

"Is that a yes?" He raised his eyebrows. "I'm kind of on a time-crunch, so..."

If he wasn't going to turn him in, this was as good an opportunity as anything. Justin sighed, and nodded.

"Great!" He sort of beamed, as if this was his actual plan all along, if not a bettered version of it, and hopped inside the cab. "Where're you headed? Are you hungry? I'm partial to Burger King, but I actually don't think I could eat a thing right now."

Justin glimpsed a glint of scarlet and gold folded neatly under the seat as he strapped in. He nodded warily toward cabbie.

Tony glanced at him, looking seriously amused. "Don't worry about him. He has a nice holiday bonus waiting for him."

Justin rolled his eyes. "Hammer Industries, then."

"Cool, cool. Me too." Tony nodded, and rapped on the glass, calling up to the cabbie, "Hammer Industries, in Alexandria, please."

"Oh, yeah?" Justin glanced at him out of the corner of his eye as he busied himself with digging his satellite phone out of his bag. "Look, I don't need a babysitter, I just needed a ride-"

"Yeah, that's not happening," Tony muttered, and before Justin could blink, he snatched the satellite phone right out of his hands.

"What-?"

Tony rolled down the window without pause and hurled it into a passing storm drain with annoying accuracy.

Justin stared, astounded.

Rolling the window up, Tony whirled toward him. "You can't use a satellite phone, idiot. Even encrypted ones. Do you even realize what's going on?"

"That depends," Justin hedged, not wanting to let on what he knew just yet, either. "All I know is that my technicians called me an hour ago about a problem that one of my satellites picked up. Do you know what's going on?"

He shook his head meaningfully. The cabbie couldn't hear that. "Look, Hammer. I'm not your biggest fan, but I need your lab. I was even going to help break you out but seem more than self-sufficient."

"Why my lab? Why not just ask your-your government friends? You're kind of screwing with my day, here."

"Somehow I don't think so," Tony glared knowingly. "Do you honestly think I want to need your help? You're the closest laboratory to Washington D.C. If you want your fifteen seconds of fame for saving the world, here's your chance. And for the love of everything, don't blow it."

Justin's stomach sank. He knew, and he was taking it seriously.

Tony rapped on the dirty pane again. "Go even faster and that five thousand will double on destination."

The cab lurched around a curve, significantly faster, and Justin's stomach flattened into his spine.

"Good to see you too, Tony."

10:50 a.m., July the 2nd,

Alexandria, Virginia (just outside of Washington D.C.)

"This just doesn't make any sense," Justin argued. He rubbed his face and took another pull from his third cup of bad coffee. "What would they want with Earth, anyway? It's Earth."

"Have you ever seen a single movie in your sorry lifetime? I think they want to suck our resources dry. But, I mean...maybe they're friendly. Of course, then, you'll get arrested for breaking parole without cause, and really have to go prison..."

Justin looked up from his computer. "What about the part where you aided and abetted me?"

Tony frowned thoughtfully. "I would just say you held me hostage. I know that cabbie sure as shit wouldn't argue."

Justin eyed Tony's steel cases were that were stacked neatly the corner of what, for all intents and purposes, was his mission control.

The room itself was impressive and windowless. It was filled to the brim with expensive computers and tech; the ceilings were high, the desks wide and terraced on the floor, and completed with a huge screen at the forefront. Jarvis, Tony's creepy AI, had taken over an entire row, and was busy running advanced security and encryption programs.

He kicked them.

"Uh, do you mind not messing with my stuff?" Tony snapped. "Look, Jarvis, just...remind him. Play that recording again, too."

The biggest screen flashed with the ominous trajectories and oscillating static filled the room. Justin ground his teeth. Tony was frowning like he was doing math in his head.

Justin glared tiredly up at him from where Tony was pacing on a balcony over-looking the room, and suddenly got mad. "You know what, who do you think you are, taking over my building?"

Tony, for the most part, ignored him. "Will you please just let me think? You're kind of pissing me off."

"I'm pissing you off? Look, man, you've been 'thinking' all damn night. It's morning already," he argued. "We don't have much time left. And please, turn that off."

"I know, and I wish your guys were faster at their jobs," Tony whined in the same tone Justin had just used. But he did turn off the static.

"They're almost done, I think." He spared a look at the closed door of the room his technicians had decided to occupy.

"I just don't understand what doesn't make sense to you. Haven't you, y'know, seen this coming?"

"Seen what coming? The impending extinction of human kind? Yeah, eventually. But not on damn Fourth of July weekend," Justin shot back.

"Well, when would you have picked?" Tony rolled his eyes.

Justin stood up and stretched. "I'm going to go get some more coffee." He looked up to see him pacing furiously some more. "You want some?"

"Bring that incarceration present I sent you. Is it still in your office?"

Justin slammed the door to the adjoining break-room. The coffee was stale, and he checked his watch while he drank.

10:52 a.m.

Well...it's not the worst time to be a little less than sober.

He yawned around his mug and took the elevator to his office.

Justin hadn't been here in so long that he honestly felt like he was snooping-it was dim inside, too, and pretty dusty. It clearly hadn't been touched since he had last time been in here, taking out personal belongings to bring with him to put in his home office.

The carpeted floors were paler than he remembered, but maybe that was because they hadn't been exposed to sunlight in so long they were starting to fade.

It didn't take him too long afterwards to locate the trash can he had shoved the scotch in, shortly before he was escorted off his own premises. It had been tucked under his desk. The bottle was also kind of dusty, but it hadn't been tampered with. He doubted Tony would have cared too much even if it had been.

Not bothering with glasses, not because he didn't have them but because they wouldn't use them, he made to leave, but paused.

Striding to the back, he impulsively pressed a button that would lighten the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows.

Justin frowned down at the bottle as the windows adjusted themselves. How much had he paid for this? He felt like Tony wouldn't have sent his least favorite competitor a bottle of the good stuff, unless he knew Justin would never drink it purely out of spite.

He squinted through his glasses a little (he couldn't quite read the label) but just as the room got brighter, a shadow fell back over the room.

"The heck?" Justin murmured, pressing the button again with his free hand.

It wasn't the windows.

Justin looked up.

Gunmetal grey smoke tinged liberally with gold fire was spreading across the sky in a straight, billowy line.

And spilling out of the smoke...

Tony had been right.

Flying out the of his office suite, he didn't waste time with the elevators, but took the stairs three at a time all the way back down to the control room.

"Hey, where's the booze?" Tony demanded lightly. He was pacing next to a bank of computers, obviously having gotten tired of the balcony. He squinted at him. "What is it?"

Justin turned and ran for the lobby.

"Hammer! Wait, hold on-" Tony jogged behind him, trying to catch up. His sneakers squealed on the clean white floors.

Reaching the lobby, Justin threw open the doors. Tony stumbled out behind him.

"What is your problem-oh."

"Where did they come from?" Justin wondered out-loud.

"Not far enough away from me," Tony muttered.

The ship looked like a city sitting on top of a compressed charcoal disc. Wide striations covered all sides of the thing, like claw marks, where others were clearly patterns. And in no time, doubtlessly, it was going to cover D.C. entirely.

"Mr. Hammer, sir? Mr. Stark?"

Andy had followed them outside, but to his credit, didn't appear to be too outwardly fazed.

"Yeah?"

Neither turned around, too focused on staring.

"You've got to come and see this."

An fuzzy infrared picture-probably one of the last successful ones taken from a satellite-was blown up on the big screen, alongside several muted news channels from other parts of the globe. They each depicted identical ships in different stages of descent, and every screen was variably staticky.

Andy addressed them both, but he looked right at Justin. "They're breaking up, Sir. Thirty-six different ships, targeting the most densely populated areas of the world. London, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles..."

"Width?" Tony asked, inwardly grateful to himself he had the foresight to secure his estate as best he could before he left.

"Fifteen kilometers respectively."

"So that would make the mothership itself a third the size of the moon," Justin mumbled to himself, looking up at the threatening magenta blob at the top of the screen. "That's just...fabulous."

"Well, that settles it," Tony declared softly, to himself. "Jarvis, hack into the mainframes of all the major cities affected by the ships and prepare emergency evacuation protocols. Or set off Earthquake warning systems. Whichever's more effective."

"Of course, Sir."

"What are you doing?" Justin demanded.

"Evacuating the cities. You can't honestly expect me to sit around and let them smoke out all our major hubs, do you?" Tony was incredulous.

"You're gonna cause a panic!" Justin shouted. He could already hear the alarms wailing outside.

"They're probably already panicking, Hammer!" Tony argued back. "Wouldn't you be?"

"I think I'm a little bit past that now, Tony, thanks!" Justin snarled.

"Look, they haven't asked us to take them to our leader yet, but I have a pretty good feeling that this isn't an interstellar peace-keeping mission."

Justin hesitated. "You think they're here to...wipe us out?"

"Well, I sure hope not," Tony muttered, and turned to face Andy. "How're you guys coming on figuring out why the satellites are messed up?"

"We're close," Andy promised. "We have a couple more hours' work to do, but you're going to have to sit tight."

Justin had just dozed off when they finished.

"Hammer, wake up!" Tony shoved him hard in his chair.

"What, what?" Justin mumbled, adjusting his glasses. "I'm awake, damn."

"We gotta go. Your scientists-and their families too, apparently-are heading down to your facility's basement. There's nothing else they can do for us."

He sat up. "Where are we going?"

"The White House," Tony grunted. He was moving his cases to the door.

"Are you nuts? They can't see me there. I'd be arrested on the spot. On top of that, they probably won't even let you in," he pointed out.

"You think they actually care right now if you broke parole? You'd be crazy not to. Everybody who hasn't already left-because of me, by the way-is leaving the city now." Tony shook his head. "Look, besides that, I know someone who can get us in, but I need to make a call first. I'm sorry, but I don't think your name carries a lot of weight anymore."

Justin glared. "Way to rub it in last-minute, Tony."

"Jarvis, call David Levinson."

"Who's that? I don't remember anybody in Whitmore's administration with that name," Justin accused.

"You're right, he's not. But he knows someone who is," Tony answered, shoving some papers in his hands. "What do you see?"

Justin scanned the papers. "Is this a-"

"Countdown clock?" Tony cut him off. "Yeah, we've got a little less than two hours. Your guys really know how to cut it close."

"I don't know why your stupid AI couldn't've done it," Justin challenged.

"Because he was busy keeping this place secure." Tony snapped. "Plus he was working on shutting down all of my satellites internally. When I built their software, I implanted a security system that I could activate if there was anybody using it illegally. If they were using any of them for distributing that embedded signal," he glanced at the pieces of paper in Justin's hands, "we've managed to cripple their chances at the very least."

"So, what, we're going to warn the President?"

"As far as I know, he didn't jump ship like some of his administration did. Have you got any better plans?"

"Not really," Justin admitted.

"Didn't think so," Tony mumbled. "Jarvis, what's the hold up?"

"I am working on patching through, Sir."

"Hurry it up, please." He turned to Justin again. "Do you have any company cars left in your garages here?"

"The government that we're about to go save impounded them," Justin replied crisply. "I watched them drive away with my Bentleys."

Tony swiped a hand down his face, like was attempting to physically prevent an apoplectic fit. Then he seemed to calm a little.

"Uh-"

"I'm not waiting on Jarvis to put us through to him, not here. We can't wait," Tony shook his head. "Jarvis, disconnect and try again, on the Suit system. Shut down security here, we don't need it. We're outta here."

"Very well, Sir."

With that, he removed Jarvis' flash-drive from one of the computer consoles and stuck it back in his jacket pocket.

Justin watched, horrified. "Are you leaving me here?"

Tony rolled his eyes deeply. "No. Did I literally not just say that we were both going to the White House?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You finally get your wish-"

"My wish?"

"I'm sorry-your life's dream. And after we save the world, I had better not see stolen technology on the market, either."

"What?"

"We're flying."

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