A/n: it's a Christmas miracle; it took me less than a month to create a new chapter! *Literal angels come down singing praises like wow.*
And since it's Christmas (well, advent, but who isn't festive by then anyway? Not anyone I know, for sure *glares pointedly at Christmas song singing friend buttfaces*) you're all gonna give me the gift of many reviews? (Subtlety: check.)
Anyhow, have yourselves a merry little (not so) final battle!

Natasha looked up at the men surrounding them. Then she looked over at Clint. He was grinning as much as she was, bow already out, loaded, and pointed to someone further up.

"Must be a Tuesday." she joked, and took out her gun. Non-contact weapons were the way to go, if Tony's horror stories of people glowing from the heat they were producing, able to cut through metal with their bare hands, and men blowing up from a loss of control were to be believed.

"These guys are hard to kill." Tony warned, "Like, nothing short of a thousand-degree explosion where they are the bomb, kind of hard to kill." He too had his weapon ready, finger on the trigger of the gun - Natasha made a mental note to cover him; he clearly had little experience with the thing.

"Question." Snotlout raised his hand sarcastically, "Can they regrow a head?" He mimed chopping off said appendage with his hammer.

"Guess we're about to find out." Rhodey said, pointing with his gun at the closest person, one of the men Clint had seen previously, who was now charging towards them. The colonel shot him a few times, with little effect. The man jerked back with each hit, but was otherwise unimpeded.

"You know, I think we could probably use some backup." Tony said brightly.

"I thought we agreed not to bring the Hulk out?" Clint asked, letting an arrow loose that struck a woman in the chest. She smirked, and started pulling it out, then it exploded.

"Not that kind of backup." Tony said, as though it should've been obvious, then gave an impressed noise as the exploding arrow took out three of the guards instead of the intended one. "That kind of backup."

There was a momentary pause in the fight where everyone - AIM members included - turned around to gawp at the 'backup'.

"Is that..." Rhodey looked up, awed. "Are those..."

"Yup." Tony nodded proudly.

"Now that's a party." Clint grinned, elbowing Natasha. She rolled her eyes, then took out a few of the people who were still watching the skies with a few well-aimed headshots.

Their distraction was quite understandable. In the distance, becoming clearer every second, was an army of Iron Man armours. They weren't uniform, which was what made them so impressive. Even from a distance, it was easy to tell that they each had very distinctive designs, and, knowing Tony Stark, characteristics.

Natasha's gun shots jolted everyone back into action, and the group silently worked their way outwards, Clint, Natasha, Rhodey and Tony using their guns to take out targets further away, and the Vikings, having close-range weapons, taking off the heads (quite literally) of anyone who got too close.

"Cover me." Tony flicked his wrists out, and one of the suits sped up in his direction. Eret moved to Tony's side, chopping off someone's arm on the way and shuddering at the way there was no blood, only an unnatural glow as the limb started to reform.

"Hey JARVIS, get the suits to target anyone with an extremis heat signature." The suit assembled itself around Tony, and he blasted into a hovering position a few feet above the ground, using a spin-and-blast move to take out four people. "Right, I'm gonna find Pepper." he said, face plate moving into position as he blasted off.

Hiccup had, quite tactfully, not mentioned the new development of a fight breaking out to his dragon companion. He'd whispered it to Bruce, who had nodded, understanding, it seemed, the reasoning behind his silence.

Then, he'd got to work on a new tailfin. He wasn't letting Toothless see it - the dragon would surely convince him to go out into the battle if he did, and Hiccup was trying to actually obey orders, for once - which meant that progress was slow going.

There was also the small matter of having severely limited equipment. Limited as in he had hardly anything, and apparently no one had thought to bring equipment with them, so he was stuck with what was on the boat.

'I'm bored.' Toothless whined, tilting his head around to try and get a better look at what Hiccup was up to. 'What're you doing? I bet you're making a tailfin, and you're not gonna let me use it, 'cause you're a big meanie.'

'Being a meanie has nothing to do with it.' Hiccup sighed.

'So you are making a tailfin?' Toothless perked up considerably, and Hiccup cursed at his slip-up. 'That was just a guess! Is it nearly finished?'

'No.' Hiccup shook his head at the Night Fury's enthusiasm. 'So don't get too overexcited.'

'Is too!' Toothless argued, dragging the 'o' out. He'd managed to drag the offending fin out, and Hiccup realised that he was right, to some extent.

It was certainly closer to being finished than he'd imagined, and he now had all the pieces he needed. In perhaps ten minutes, he could have a functioning tail put together.

Knew this would happen. Hiccup sighed. 'Fine. We can go once I've finished it. But only for a bit!'

Toothless smirked, gave a celebratory cry, and started chasing his tail in circles.

"Sir? I have located Miss Potts."

Tony shook his head at JARVIS's unflappable formalness, kicking out as some idiot - he was allowed to call them an idiot, seeing as they'd thought that getting extremis-ed was a good idea - jumped off a crane and latched onto his leg. "About time." he muttered, following the screen's new instructions.

He reached her location, one of the many metal containment units floating around in the air, slightly distressed to find that it had recently caved in.

"Pepper?"

After a pause, he heard a faint "Tony?" from the rubble, and allowed himself to breathe again.

He bent down, and could see her, intact but trapped under a steel beam. "Don't worry, I'll get you out." he promised, looking for a beam to lift. Amongst the sparking wires and out of shape metal, it was hard to tell what moving each part would do. He tried lifting one at random, but Pepper's pained moan was a good indication that, whatever he was doing, he should stop.

"Sorry, sorry," he apologised quickly, setting the rubble back down. "just wait there, I'll get you out." he repeated, stepping back to get a better look at the problem.

An arm burst through the floor, grabbing him with such vigour that it dragged him down onto the floor.

"Wh-" Suddenly, Killian was coming up through a smouldering hole, arms glowing and hair tousled in a way that reminded Tony scarily of the old Killian, the weirdo he'd brushed off years ago without a second thought. "Oh."

This son of a -

Before Tony had the chance to get up, Killian was on him, hands still glowing and dangerously close to the suit. He was grinning madly, eyes wide with a spark of obsession that was truly terrifying.

"If you wanted to get on top of that badly, all you had to do was ask."

Not that Tony was going to let anyone know that.

Killian grinned instead of responding, and brought a finger to Tony's chest. "Ooh, is that hot in there?" he taunted, pressing the finger down slowly and sending a creeping heat into the armour that transitioned from pleasant to stifling at an alarming rate.

"You stuck? Feelin' a little stuck?"

Tony struggled to crane his neck to get a better view of Pepper. Oddly enough, she was no longer staring desperately at him, but looking off into another, seemingly random, space, recognition spreading across her features. It was enough to distract him from the now burning pain in his chest, and he was able to get up a bit more to see what she was staring at.

"Like a little turtle?" Killian continued, heard only as background noise.

Oh thank god. It was Hiccup, come to save him with uncanny timing. The Viking was staring at Tony now, clearly debating whether or not to jump in.

Tony shook his head slightly, the movement small enough that Killian would hopefully see it as jerking back in pain, and directed his eyes pointedly in Pepper's direction.

After a few quite violent eye movements on Tony's behalf, Hiccup got the message, and followed his gaze. Tony knew he'd found Pepper, and, if he could distract Killian for a little longer - he was doing quite a good job of it already, really - she'd be safe.

"Stuck in his little turtle suit?" It was clear that Killian was enjoying his moment of victory, perhaps a bit too much.

"Yeah, whatever." Tony said flippantly; Pepper was safe - he had seen Hiccup and Toothless leave just a few seconds ago, yet Killian still hadn't noticed this - he could afford to be sarcastic now. "That's nice and all, but maybe you shouldn't be gloating your evil plans before they've been hatched, eh?"

Killian growled at that, and heated up his hand, ready to plunge it into Tony's chest and kill him. It was a nice plan; shame Tony wasn't all that into letting it happen.

The arm of the suit was outfitted with a blade, just for moments like this. When Killian swung his arm down, Tony was ready, and the razor edge in between Killian and Tony was enough to chop the former's arm off.

"I'd love to stay, but I've gotta dash." Tony fired a quick shot to Killian's face, and ejected himself from the sparking suit.

Back with those who were busy trying to kill as many AIM members as possible (Hiccup insisted it wasn't a competition, having grown a sort of sixth sense about the Viking's competitive streak and being able to use the comms), things were going pretty well.

"That makes fifteen!" Snotlout grinned, swinging his hammer down and crushing someone else's head.

"Fifteen what?" Tuffnut, now sat on Barf's neck, asked. "Those guys get up after you kill them!"

"Nuh-uh!" Snotlout protested, "Hookfang takes 'em out after!"

Tuffnut shrugged, then laughed as his dragon filled someone with gas. The AIM member's fire power was used against them, and they exploded.

"Who's gonna get the President?" Rhodey asked. He raised a valid point; the man was still strung up, though it appeared that nobody was really paying attention to him anymore. "He's in my suit; I'm gonna need that."

When nobody volunteered, Fishlegs shrugged. "Meatlug can take you up." he offered, leaning the dragon in Rhodey's direction.

"Thanks." Rhodey said as he jumped up, using his new vantage point to shoot another few people - it still had no real effect, but it made him feel a bit better about the situation.

Meatlug set off at a steady pace over to the President, who was still strung up, left quite forgotten in the heat of the battle.

"Watch out!"

The shout, coming from Steve just a moment too late, managed to alert the two riders to the mad AIM member flying at them - in was an uncontrolled descent, so Fishlegs suspected that the star-spangled man with a plan was somewhat to blame for their sudden arrival - and not much else. The woman, there was enough time to see her clearly, but not enough to dodge, collided with the Gronkle at enough speed to knock Rhodey off.

The colonel began his own uncontrolled descent, and managed to land on a crate being lifted by one of the many cranes. "I'll make my own way from here." he told the Viking, who was just managing to keep his grip on his dragon.

Fishlegs nodded, and returned to the larger group for some more ass-kicking.

"Hold on Mr President. I'm coming to get you." Rhodey panted, hoping that his message had got through despite his breathlessness, and his shout had been loud enough to attract the President's attention inside the Iron Patriot armour.

The sound of pounding against metal alerted Rhodey to the presence of more AIM members, at the end of the walkway he was on but approaching at what was soon to be an alarming rate. Whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it quickly.

With a few more half-hearted words of comfort, said in the President's general direction but almost entirely for his own benefit, Rhodey grabbed the nearest rope and used it as a makeshift zip line and convenient route to the President, jumping off the edge and zipping down just before the man before him managed to get a grasp on his shirt. After a short trip down, he stopped on the edge of one of the crates, planning to use it as a stepping stone.

There were two more AIM members on the crate, both unarmed but clearly deadly, and wearing oddly militaristic clothing. Rhodey shot them, despite knowing that it would have little effect, and used the precious few seconds it bought him to come up with a plan.

Whatever plan he had been concocting never came into fruition, as the man and woman charged him, already recovered. The man reached him first, and Rhodey ducked away while shooting to avoid being sliced in two by the super-heated hands.

Instead of Rhodey being sliced, the chain connecting the crate to the crane lifted it ended up severed. Already on the edge, Rhodey dropped over at the unexpected turbulance and was left clinging on for dear life with one hand, and holdng up his gun with the other.

Well, he could work with it.

"Bye bye!" he said to the two approaching him - Tony wasn't the only one capable of snarky one-liners - and shot the other chain. The crate swung, leaving Rhodey as the only one on it since he already had a hold on it. The two AIM members screeched as they fell. In a wonderful feat of acrobatics - also known as the not-so-neat transfer from holding onto one piece of metal to another - Rhodey reached the President, and his suit.

Below him, the crate fell and smashed against the floor, creating another explosion to add to the heat - it was a good thing he hadn't brought a coat; he'd have melted already (and wasn't that an odd thing to be concentrating on in a life-or-death situation. Rhodey blamed Tony).

"Brace yourself!" he warned, repositioning the President's wrist and triggering a blast from the palm that severed yet another chain - everything was made of metal and Rhodey hated it for its conductivity - and sent both coloneland President swinging just out of the way of the ascending cloud of flame.

"You look great in that suit," Rhodey joked, coming easily out of a roll as he landed - thankfully the President had also made it across without injuries - "but I'm gonna have to take it off you."

"Where's Pepper?"

Tony startled and turned round, surprised to see that Killian had decided to sneak up on him and then not use the element of surprise to get a cheap shot in. Meh - his loss.

"Gone." he answered shortly, scouring the ground for any sign of the others because the floor was on fire, damn it, and he needed to know that it was fire that was working to their advantage, not killing them.

"Shame." Killian didn't exactly give the reaction Tony had expected; he hadn't risen to the gloat - though it was, admittedly, a bit of a distracted one - and had instead opted to continue sounding high and mighty. "I would've caught her."

Ah. So, Killian thought she was dead? Well, Tony wasn't about to correct him. Now, if Pepper actually was dead, that comment would've been very, very annoying. And a tad bit cruel, and he would've responded by charging.

Killian was probably expecting him to charge.

Well, Tony wasn't one to disappoint.

The two men rushed at each other. Killian went for a leap, fist raised and ready to collide. Unfortunately there wasn't anything for him to collide with, as Tony slid under him and carried on running. There was a suit ready and waiting on the other side, which Tony happily let form around him.

He turned back round, faceplate going down just in time to block one of Killian's punches, and started dodging Killian's blows.

After blocking a few hits with the help of JARVIS - and just when had an AI become better than him at fighting, anyway? - he managed to grab Killian's back - on his own volition, thank you very much - and shove him into the railing. The man - the Mandarin, actually - managed to shake Tony off, and their fists collided as they both went in for a punch at the same time.

Tony didn't think it was fair, that his fist ached with the rebound. He was wearing a metal suit, for god's sake.

Killian recovered faster, and rushed in for a bodily shove that sent Tony through the bars and onto a lower down platform. Killian looked down on him, preparing to jump down himself.

A soft click in his ear signified communications opening again.

Wow. What great timing.

"Where are you now, Tony?"

"Uh... a bunch of places. Kinda getting my ass handed to me over here, but it's cool. I'm cool. Cooler than this guy, anyway."

Hiccup rolled his eyes at the response. "Well, Pepper's with Bruce. Dropped her off a bit ago. And the President; Rhodey got him out."

There was a bit of a pause, and a few grunts, before Tony responded. "Okay. You still with Jolly Green?"

"No; Toothless was too excited." Hiccup rubbed the back of his neck. "You sure we can't help?"

"Yeah." Hiccup frowned, sceptical,as the sound of metal clunking together came through the com. "Seriously, I'll be fine."

Hiccup shrugged; he wouldn't be getting anything more out of the billionaire. "Well, okay." Just like that, communication ceased, and Hiccup's mind turned back to his own battle. He had found the rest of the Vikings and the Avengers, with little effort: all one had to do was follow the trail of destruction. A competition was in full swing, and Hiccup was too busy winning it to make anyone stop.

"Ha!" Hiccup fist-pumped as Toothless's blue plasma blast took out another person, then ducked behind a conveniently placed Night Fury wing as the resulting explosion backfired to send debris in flaming chunks of metal raining down on him. "How many's that now? Twenty?"

'Twenty five at least.' Toothless boasted smugly, sending a blast out into the air just because he could, and enjoying his alpha-power-enhanced fireworks as it collided with one of the Iron Man armours.

"You have an unfair advantage." Snotlout grumbled, now coming in third - Clint and Natasha had created a team, since they had no dragon power to help them, and were doing surprisingly well without one.

Hiccup shrugged, then turned his attention back to the oncoming AIM army for a moment. "Why are we trying to kill these guys, anyway?" he questioned as he did just that. "Well... I guess we can't tie them up..." he started answering his own question, still pointing for Toothless to blast away at the people surrounding them. "And I guess if they insist on fighting..."

"We might as well kick their asses!" Snotlout finished proudly, punctuating it with a fist pump and explosion of fire on Hookfang's behalf.

"Not exactly how I was gonna finish, but hey." Hiccup shrugged again. "Well, I got news from Tony."

"Yeah?" Steve looked up from where he was bashing someone over the head with his shield. He wasn't involved in the competition, instead opting to be 'an even bigger spoilsport than Haddock over there usually is' (Hiccup didn't agree with Snotlout's assessment of himself, but acknowledged that it summed up Steve quite nicely currently.

"He's fighting Killian. I think we're gonna be done in a few minutes here, if his fight goes well."

"Ah. Are you going off to help?"

"Tony said he didn't need any."

Steve gave Hiccup a look.

"...Fair point. See you guys later!"

Tony ejected himself from the suit just in time to avoid another flying punch, and landed in another suit lying in wait for him a few feet down. He'd known that having so many suits was going to come in handy some day. He jetted back up, slamming into Killian and bringing him a few levels upwards and why isn't he wearing a shirt?

Because of course, that was the main concern here.

Deciding that he didn't much care about Killian's latest decision to show off his tats, Tony went in for a punch.

Killian dodged it, returned it with one of his own. With a grunt, Tony threw another hit, that collided and sent Killian back into a bit of machinery.

Tony started charging up a blast, but Killian got in first and slid under him, somehow dragging him over the edge. If not for the fact that, hey, his suit could fly, Tony would've probably fallen and died.

Reassuring.

Tony threw himself back into the fight, using the jets under his feet to propel his knee forwards with considerable force right into Killian's chest. It was cathartic, really, and Tony went in for a few more propelled hits - one a backhand to the face, another slammed down into his back.

It wasn't until Tony went to kick him and was a bit too slow about it that Killian managed to even things out again. He grabbed the suit leg and prepared a molten hand, which Tony neatly dodged by ejecting his leg from the suit. Killian grabbed him up, and held him out over the edge.

"Well here we are, on the roof."

Tony ejected himself entirely from the suit, just in time. It was mercilessly sliced in half by one of Killian's freakishly hot hands, and left to drop down with Tony, sparking uselessly.

Killian stood and watched both suit and man fall, yet again preparing to jump down onto Tony. He didn't, instead looking upwards into the distance as he panted.

What's he - "Mark 42 inbound." JARVIS informed him.

The AI was right; the newest suit was visible now, flying a little off-kilter but still intact, and still - Tony hoped - battle ready. "Well, I'll be damned..." he muttered, "the prodigal son returns."

He rolled onto his knees and stretched an arm out backwards, ready to accept the suit and take Killian down.

It was unfortunate, therefore, that the suit's erratic flight pattern led it to crash into the edge of the metal platform. It fell apart, and dropped to the floor with a disappointing clang.

"Whatever." Tony brought his hand back, looking away from Killian's smirk.

"You really didn't deserve it, Tony."

Really? We're doing this now? Tony looked off into the distance questioningly, then turned his attention back to the - completely exasperating - man above him. "True." he conceded. "But neither do you."

Killian jumped down to grab him, and Tony directed the disassembled suit over in his direction. Killian struggled against the suit as it started forming around him, unable to escape or chop it up when he was touching the metal already.

The last Tony saw of Killian's expression was one of complete rage, before the faceplate covered it and the man was totally encased in the suit.

"Hey J? Do me a favour and blow mark 42." Tony turned around, silently cursing the fact that no one was around to see his totally awesome and badass no-shits-given walk away from the impending explosion.

And then he instantly retracted that curse as he pegged it out of there, no longer looking quite as cool as he ran aimlessly over to the edge of the platform.

"Hey Hiccup, could kinda use some of that backup right now..." Tony said, spotting a support beam and jumping onto it to slide to safety.

Behind him, the suit exploded, with the unfortunate side effect of collapsing the support and forcing the beam Tony was still using, damn it, to start falling downwards.

So much for that plan.

All that was left was to leap off the beam, and hope for the best.

"Gonna need a suit!" he yelled to JARVIS, opening out his arms and hoping that he didn't end up belly flopping the floor.

A blur of black came out of nowhere to tackle him, and Tony felt the scales uncomfortably rubbing against his skin before he realised consciously what had just happened.

"Oh thank -"

"Don't be thanking anyone yet!" Hiccup warned, looking back over his shoulder at the explosion. He reached out a hand to help Tony up, and the two turned their attention to the flight, rather than the inferno building up behind them.

"Fly us out of here!" Tony snapped, all too aware of the rate the fire was spreading at. Hiccup gestured backwards as a response, and Tony realised for the first time - though it had technically only taken him a few seconds, so the lack of observation wasn't really going to be mourned - that the makeshift prophetic tailfin was not only barely the right shape, but also on fire.

Great.

So, it was an uncontrolled landing that they had to go for, and Tony couldn't help but slightly resent the Night Fury's weight as it - he - rolled over Tony several times in their bouncing stutter to a stop.

At least the dragon didn't land on him, once they finally stopped, which was more than he could say for Hiccup.

Deciding that the Viking was probably able to withstand his own dragon's weight, Tony fought his way upright in order to attend to more pressing matters, like: was Killian really dead?

"Hey, guys." Tony pressed a hand to his ear, just to check that yes, the earpiece was still in, "That explosion there? Kinda my fault. A bit. Uh, if you could make your way over, bit of help wouldn't go amiss."

Because it wasn't a certainty that Killian was dead - persistent bastard as he was - and Tony was officially out of tricks.

It was a good thing that he called in backup, as Tony saw movement within the flames. Slowly but surely, Killian staggered out of the wreckage, covered in burns in various stages of healing over. His face was barely recognisable, completely glowing and half singed off.

Tony fell back into Toothless, who was up and glowing blue and growling at Killian. Either Killian hadn't noticed the dragon or he didn't care, because he continued stubling forwards, bringing up a glowing arm to point at Tony accusingly.

"I... am..."

Tony gasped as an axe came out of nowhere, lopping off Killian's head and cutting off the end of his sentence.

"Dead." Astrid, thrower of said axe, said, with a tone of finality.

"Now can I start thanking people?" Tony asked, turning back to the Viking who was still fighting his way out from under a Night Fury's protective wing.

"Go for it." Hiccup gestured out to the assembled Avengers and Vikings.

"You know what? Nah." Tony relaxed back against Toothless, patting the dragon appreciatively. "It was all us two. If they want all the thanks, they can go do most of the legwork themselves."

"Nice to know we're so appreciated." Steve snarked lightly, then patted Tony on the shoulder. "Well, what now?"

"Now?" Tony looked back at the dragon. He could see how Hiccup thought the Night Fury was so comfortable to sleep on. "Now, we nap."

Tony decided to get a head start on that idea, and collapsed back onto Toothless without another word.

And thus marks the tragic end of the Iron Man 3 section of our tour.
(Also hey would anyone be interested in an exciting and completely rubbish prize of more fanfic for being the hundredth reviewer?)