Machine of War

Malibu, California

The skies were dark and gloomy, giving the city of Malibu a sullen atmosphere. It was one of the few days were rain drenched the normally sunny California shoreline. Fitting, given that Tony Stark's memorial service was today. As a whole, no one thought Tony would be too pleased with that.

The man was always all smiles and grins all the time. It raining on his funeral day was just the exact opposite of what should have been. Then again, one could have made an ironclad case that she shouldn't have even needed a memorial service, since he shouldn't have been dead.

That couldn't have been helped, no matter how much Pepper begged and pleaded with any and every god that existed. It was a ritual almost every night that after she finished cooking Tony the dinner for when he returned, she'd pray that he was still alive and would come back to her. So far, after two weeks and hundreds of dollars of wasted food, it hadn't been answered.

But like a naïve little child, Pepper kept trying. And like a parent who couldn't find the heart to tell her the truth, Rhodey didn't try to stop her. He had learned a long time ago that it was always best to let her deal with these kind of things on her own. Her way of dealing with this was cooking dinner every night, no matter how utterly exhausted she was, and praying.

That worked for her.

It didn't for Rhodey. He had his own way of dealing with his friends' demise. Instead of pots and pans, he dealt in repulsor rays and .50 caliber bullets. Instead on kneeling, he bashed faces in. He finally saw why vigilantism was so popular nowadays; it was very therapeutic. With each facial bone that gave way to War Machine's fist, a little bit of the sadness and guilt built up in his heart was assuaged.

Guilt was the overwhelming emotion he had been feeling the last several days. He had the armor with him. He could have, should have gone to help Tony. He shouldn't have sent Carol to pilot for the team. She technically wasn't even the most qualified. There were at least three other pilots who were more experienced than she was. But he let his feelings do the thinking and sent a woman with her entire life ahead of her to her eventual death.

Happy tried to tell him that it wasn't his fault, that there was no way he could have seen it coming. He countered with it not mattering. He was her commanding officer. Whether he foresaw something like this happening or not was of no consequence. Once it started, he should have pulled her out immediately, and reassigned her to something safer. He even seriously considered it, but let her talk him out of it. The excitement in her voice about beating up terrorists was too much to say no too.

He normally wasn't that big a softie.

Hindsight was always twenty/twenty.

"It starts in five minutes. You alright to do this, Colonel?"

Pepper had chosen him to give Tony's eulogy, stating that it was what Tony would have wanted. It wasn't nearly as hard as someone not familiar with him would like to think. There wasn't even a need to pull out the embarrassing stories to fill it out. "As ready as I'll ever be," he answered.

He, along with Pepper and Happy, was sitting in the very front of the church, so he had to turn around to see the full turnout. It was packed. The building that was dubbed by many as a super church was the largest in the state, and was still filled to capacity. Light chatter drowned out the creaking from the oak pews.

Tony wasn't a religious person by any stretch, but Pepper thought that the ostentatious house of God would be exactly where the billionaire genius would want his memory to be celebrated. And he would want it to be celebrated, not mourned. In fact, Rhodey was certain that Tony would be offended if anyone actually cried at his funeral, while somehow being offended if no one cried. He was complex and confusing like that.

He spared a glance at Pepper before scanning his soon-to-be audience. The strawberry redhead looked stunning in her simple black dress, he thought appropriate to notice. Her eyes remained glued onto the portrait of Tony on the stage in between two large bouquets of flowers. Her lithe body shook with silent sobs every so often, but no tears ran down her face. That was good, he supposed. At least she appeared to have a handle on herself so far.

So far.

He only hoped that he could keep a handle on himself while giving his eulogy. There was nothing worse than trying to be stoic and calm, only to break down crying in front of literally thousands of people.

"Good luck," Happy offered when he stood and straightened out hid jacket. Like every time like this, he was in his official Air Force formal uniform. Every medal and pin was shined to perfection, especially the two that he earned while saving lives with Tony.

"Thanks." With a deep sigh, he pulled out a set of cue cards from his coat pocket and headed to the platform. Dozens of official press statements given in front of a few dozen reporters was nothing to prepare of him for this. As soon as he looked up from adjusting the platform on the stage, he felt the anxious stares of thousands of people bear down on him at once. Crap... You can do this.

He took another breath, and then looked up into the crowd. "Uh, welcome. This is quite a crowd we have today. I'm sure Tony's small ego would be flattered and humbled that everyone came out today just for him." The small joke gain a wave of soft laughter from the audience. Just enough to kill the fluttering butterflies in his stomach. "But seriously, Tony would be happy with this crowd today. Not just because you're all here to remember his name and his legacy, but because you all genuinely want to remember him for the man he was, not the man the media and the world wanted to make him out to be. If there was one thing he believed in, it was that a man's name, his reputation, was his most prized possession. It's the one thing that people down the line are going to remember, good or bad.

"Well, that may lead you to ask yourself, 'Why did he act the way he did, then?'. The Tony the public saw was radically different from the Tony that I saw, or the Avengers saw, more especially from the Tony Stark that Ms. Potts fell in love with. His trust was hard to gain, so he built up mask after mask to disguise his true self from those he didn't trust. I remember when I first met him at a demonstration he did for the Air Force. He was just a twenty-one year old punk from the Hamptons who was way too young to be as cocky and full of himself as he was. I mean, this was next level arrogance.

"I was his liaison to Stark Industries and I just… I just hated the guy. But after some time, and once the mask of arrogant selfishness was dropped when I was around, I got to see the real Tony. The guy who went above and beyond to make sure that his friend had any and everything he needed. The guy who masked acts of kindness under the guise of selfishness. The guy who always strove to make sure you had a smile on your face when you were feeling down.

"I was thinking about that and the first thing that jumped out at me was right before his demonstration in Afghanistan. We were supposed to leave a certain time to get to the military base on time, but he was running late. Like two hours late." Rhodey could see the reason for his being so late sitting in the audience, with a sorrowful frown. "Anyway, when he eventually arrived, all loud and flamboyant and very Tony Stark, he blew by me, said 'Waiting on you, buddy,' as if it were me that was hours late. We spent the flight kicking back saki and enjoying a striptease from the stewardesses."

Again, another round of soft laughter rolled through the audience. It gave him a chance to check his cards. They hadn't been touched since he began. He had deviated from his main points from the get go. Literally nothing on the cards had actually been said. Rhodey wasn't sure if it was symbolic or not, since Tony never stuck to the cards.

He spoke for fifteen more minutes, recounting story after story from their past, with such vivid detail, right down to the dialogue, that one could rightly assume that they all happened just hours before.

He was the picture of calmness throughout it all. It was a point of emphasis for him to make sure he kept his shit together while up on stage, lest he look like a blubbering fool and embarrass not only himself, but also Pepper and Happy. He sighed shakily, a bad sign considering his conclusion was incoming. "When I… look at my life now, it feels incomplete. Tony was the type that you couldn't help but get accustomed to being around. Now that he's gone, there's this… void that just can't be filled, no matter who or what you slot in."

Again, he sighed. He was starting to lose a grip on himself. "Before I step away, I want each and every one of you to think about what you would say to Tony if you could see him one last time. Me, I'd say thank you. Thanks for being the selfish jerk that you were. Thanks for being the most seemingly reluctantly kind person in the world. Thanks for convincing me to be your best friend, through the good times and the bad times. Thanks for making all those bad times bearable." Rhodey tried to finish strong, but was too choked up. A single tear rolled down his cheek. "Thanks for being my brother. Rest in peace, buddy."

As Rhodey made his way back his seat, he could have sworn that he saw someone that wasn't supposed to be there. Instead of doing a double take and draw unwanted attention, he just sat down. Besides, with the day being what it was and there being so many people, he could have just imagined it.

"You did a wonderful job, Rhodey," Pepper said in what proved to be the first words she had uttered the entire day. Happy nodded his agreement.

"Thanks, guys."

After a beautifully sung hymn from the church choir, the service ended. Rhodey, Pepper and Happy brushed their way through the crowd, stopping every so often to receive condolences from the audience. They didn't mean much. They were nice words to hear, and were undoubtedly genuine in thought, but they were just words. The givers were going to return to their lives and eventually find the normalcy they had the day before.

They, on the other hand, would never see normalcy again; only something closely resembling it.

Rhodey shook his head and lead Pepper toward the red Porsche waiting for them in the parking lot. The brim if her black hat obscured her face from his higher vantage point, but he could tell that she was emotionally drained. The sooner she, and he, reached a bed of some sort and got some sleep, the better.

"Well done, Rhodes. Really."

That voice. Rhodey's eyes grew to saucers as he felt himself whipping around. Gene Khan, the Mandarin, was walking down the steps toward them. Rhodey felt his jaw tighten as the dapper Chinese man made his way toward them. True to his word given back during the Battle of Munich, he was wearing a white Armani suit with a midnight black shirt and white tie.

For a while, Gene just stood there, eying them with a tentative frown. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Pepper's hand striking him across the face with a resounding smack. "How dare you show your face here!" she snarled as he rubbed his reddening cheek. Rhodey smirked, but slowly interposed himself between the two. "If I had a gun, I'd shoot you."

Gene sighed and slipped his hand, adorned with those damned rings, into his pocket. "Is it not legal in this state to attend a funeral? I'd think it would be, regardless of the past."

"The past," Rhodey repeated, appalled, "You act like it happened twenty years ago."

He just shrugged in a noncommittal fashion. "Listen, it's not like I wanted him to die. I wanted Tony to live. It actually hurt having to stand there and watch my friend be shot. But, he was too dangerous to be kept alive. And you should be flattered that he went first. Zemo feared him the most."

"You stood there and watched him die!" Hot tears ran down Pepper's red cheeks. Thunder rolled overhead as the rain picked up into a steady down pour. "You're a monster. You stood there and did nothing while that other monster shot your 'friend' in the head. If you were a friend, a real one, you would have stepped in and stopped it. But you didn't, because with Tony dead, you can finally have what you want. Isn't that right? Big man on campus. You and your friends rule the world." She spit in his direction. "I hate you. With every fiber in my body, I hate you. You'd better pray to whatever god you worship that I don't catch you without those rings, because if I do, I'll show you just how deep this hate runs." Small droplets to blood flowed between her white knuckles, her palms had been pierced by her fingernails from clenching her fists so tightly. Her breathing hitched from struggling to hold back the sobs threatening to wrack through her body.

Much to the surprise of Rhodey, Gene frowned sadly. "I'm sorry you feel that way." With that, he brushed past them and walked to his own car, where his driver was waiting for him. He said something to him in Chinese before getting in the back seat.

"Did he… did he just apologize?" Happy said in disbelief.

"Please," Rhodey scoffed, "he apologized for her hating him, not anything else. Typical sociopath."

Pepper just sighed and rubbed her face. "Let's just go." She sounded exhausted, even more than she looked just five minutes ago. "I'm taking a vacation," she said as if just then coming to the decision. "Think I'll head back home for a few weeks."

Rhodey smiled and held the door open for her. "Good. Then I can finally head back to work."

"You should take one too. Two funerals in two weeks can take a lot out of anyone."

"I'm fine," he responded as he climbed into the passenger's side. The fifteen minute long trip back to the Malibu mansion was spent trying to convince him that he wasn't fine and that he needed to get away for a few days at least. While he agreed that kicking back on a beach somewhere sounded nice in theory, it would do little to actually put him at ease.

Rhodey sighed and unbuckled his seatbelt when they pulled into the mansion's driveway. "Guys, I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine. I just need to get my hands on an…" He stalled when a black car with dark tinted windows pulled into the driveway behind them. Discreetly, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out the glock that was hidden inside. Quickly, he turned and flashed a look at Happy, who nodded.

"C'mon, Pep, let's get inside," he said. Pepper caught sight of the gun and gasped softly.

"Get inside, I'll handle this." The colonel steeled himself for a confrontation, only to slump his shoulders when Coulson climbed out of the car, arms raised in surrender. "Agent Coulson," he announced while tossing the unloaded gun on the seat. "What brings you here?"

Coulson smiled wryly and lowered his arms. "Moral support. May I?"

Rhodey sighed again and cocked his head toward the mansion. Before he could turn away, he caught sight of someone else climbing out of the driver's side. Black leather jacket and an eye patch. There weren't too many people who could pull that look off. "Director Fury. How can I help you?"

"You can help by hearing me out, for one."

Well, the guy didn't waste time with formalities. "Was wondering how long it'd be before you looked me up."

Fury approached him carefully. The man had an air of authority and mystery around him that was hard to ignore. No wonder Tony didn't trust him as far as he could throw him. "Then you know why I'm here?"

"I do. I'd hate for you to waste your time and breathe, so I'll just say no now and save you the trouble."

He turned to walk inside. "So, you'd be willing to stand idly by while the Masters of Evil enslave the entire planet?"

Rhodey stopped and turned back around. A small smirk played across his lips. "So, jumping from reasoning to guilt tripping. Smart, I suppose."

"Not guilting. Trying to make you realize just what's at stake. Zemo is on the fast track to world domination. We need a response team, and that team needs as many experienced members as possible. Your work with Stark as War Machine makes you ideal, Colonel."

Rhodey pressed his lips into a thin line. While what Fury said made sense, he wasn't too keen on being shot in the face if captured. "Tony bragged about the Avengers being 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes', and looked what happened. There's nothing stopping the same from happening to this new team you're cobbling together."

That gave Fury pause for a few moments. "Are you afraid to die, Colonel?" he finally replied with.

That wasn't the response Rhodey was expecting, and his faltering expression said as much. "No. I'm afraid of failure. Of this magnitude, with this many lives on the line. If this team fails, like the Avengers failed, there's nothing and no one to stop Zemo from living as a king."

"I wouldn't count on that. I have two more aces in the hole in case this goes south. The point is that it shouldn't come to that. And it won't. The people I have in mind are different, and that's the point."

He raised an eyebrow and watched him pull a black video file from his car. "What do you mean by that?"

"This." He handed it to him. The file displayed full dossiers on the final candidates New Avengers Initiative, including him as War Machine and Spider-Man, who had a green highlight around his name. They were… impressive in their own ways. Very much so. He wondered briefly why he had never heard of some of them or why most hadn't been considered for the original Avengers. "I see. But I still don't understand."

"The Masters have been constructed with the original team in mind. They countered them about as perfectly as you can. This new team is different in that their skillsets are different than their predecessors. The Masters shouldn't be able to match up with quite a few of them." Rhodey could guess at which ones he was speaking about.

"I understand." Everything sounded like he knew what he was doing. Which was to say that if it all went the way it was supposed to, then they should have succeeded. Rhodey knew the problem with assuming that everything would go according to plan, and he assumed that Fury did as well. "I'll have to do something eventually." True, he hadn't been approached by Zemo as of yet, but he had heard rumblings that others had, and it was only a matter of time before the madman attacked the US with his superpowered attack dogs. Before he could elaborate, Coulson came rushing out the front door.

"Sir, we have a situation in Washington. It's Zemo."

Rhodey felt his face pale. "Agents in route?" Fury inquired.

"Morse, Barnes and Wilson are fifteen minutes out. You'll want to hear what he has to say."

Fury and Rhodey shared a glance before heading inside. Thoughts of Tony being used as a puppet in Washington instantly sprang to mind. He had followed the repair of the damage caused. Somehow, he thought that that day was going to pale in comparison.


A/N: Just to point out, I'm going with a twist of the Mandarin from Iron Man: Armored Adventures. I think the dynamic between that Gene and Tony and the gang was more interesting. Plus, I thought Mandarin could use an update.