Hello~ I'm back! As I mentioned previously I had exams this past week, so I haven't had the time to update, but now I'm on summer break, so hopefully I'll be able to post more consistently. I'll be posting for Loki Returns either later today or tomorrow, for those of you who keep up with that story as well. Comment your thoughts!
~AirBrushed
The armor goes speeding through the clouds, briefly passing by the screen before going supersonic and breaking the sound barrier, leaving a thin trail of white behind it.
Clint whistles and shakes his head, "Damn that looks fun."
"Maybe if you ask nicely I'll let you borrow a suit sometime," Tony winks and leans back in his seat.
"Wait, really?" Clint lights up, looking like a kid on Halloween who was just handed a king sized candy bar.
"No," Natasha answers before the billionaire can, and shoot Clint a glare before he can argue.
In Gulmira (which, true to Yinsen's words, is really quite small), groups of men, women, and children run screaming for their lives as terrorists invade their village. In the distance, missiles (not unlike the ones from the Jericho test) can be seen flying into the mountains, the explosions shaking the ground and kicking up dust and dirt.
The villagers run with their hands above their heads in surrender as they're ushered out of their homes. One family is actually driven back inside by two men with guns, one of them kicking the door in and open firing into the house, effectively silencing their screams.
Steve flinches, setting his jaw and staring in horror at the actions of the men on screen.
An explosion rings from one house, smoke spewing out the entry way. People are shot, kicked, and shoved around the streets, even lined up to await either recruitment or execution.
"I do not understand; why are these men so intent on killing these villagers?" Thor asks, staring at the screen in disbelief. He has never seen anything like this on Midgard before.
"It's a different part of the world, Thor," Nick answers, shaking his head, "They crave power, and they use fear to get it; that's why they're called terrorists."
"Yeah," Tony scoffs, "fear, and my weapons."
"Friend Anthony," Thor turns to him, his voice booming like thunder, "Is this group still around?"
Tony shakes his head, placating the God only slightly, if the loosening grip on his hammer was anything to go by, "No, not that I know of. I check regularly, just to be sure, but there are other groups that are just as bad, if not worse, than the Ten Rings."
"What savages! I'd like to see them try to strike fear into the Son of Odin!" He's nearly growling at this point; hammer sparking with electricity as he stands from his seat, "Perhaps they'll change their minds once they taste the might of Mjolnir!"
Fury sighs and rubs his temples, clearly too old for this shit. "That's not how these things work. We can't always just march our way onto foreign soil, guns blazing, shooting down whatever motherfuckers we want to. So sit your ass down, and watch the damn movie, all of you, before you give me a damn stroke."
"Alright, alright, calm it Nicky, before you pop a vein," Tony pesters, just to get a rise out of the man.
"Stark, so help me God, I will shoot your ass-"
"Alright!" Steve shouts over them in his Captain America voice, silencing the room, "That's enough."
A familiar face enters the shot; the man who had first addressed Tony when he had woken up in the cave. He was shouting orders to his men, who were loading cases into their vehicles and rounding up families.
One family is pushed along as a whole, refusing to release one another. The father is hit especially hard in the back, sending them tumbling to the ground. When the leader sees the man, he shouts to his men, "That one there! Grab that dog! Put him with the others."
The father was immediately ripped away, ready to be lined up for execution with the other men while his children and his wife screamed. One of his sons broke away from his mother's grip and started running for his father, screaming for his Papa.
"Stay with your mom, kid," Clint urges, running his hands through his hair in concern for the child.
His father broke away from his captor's grip as well, rushing for his son and gripping him in a hug. He tries desperately to usher him away, back to the imagined safety of his mother's arms, but the boy is having none of it.
Bruce is almost as bad as Clint, if not worse, "Come on Tony, where's that impeccable timing of yours?"
Tony would be grinning knowingly if not for the scene in front of him. It still made his stomach twist in guilt, no matter how many lives he's saved since before Afghanistan.
He may be a genius, but even he can't bring back the dead.
The main spokesman walks up to the pair, obviously annoyed and outraged as he shouts, "What the hell is this?!" He reaches for the boy, ripping him out of his father's arms and throwing him to one of his lower henchmen. He and another man hold the father back, throwing him to the ground where it's easier to beat him.
The man's wife, now reunited with her both her children, screams for him, almost certainly begging them to stop their brutal kicking of her husband. The children join in, too, the boy from before shouting out as tears roll down his cheeks.
"Jesus," Steve whispers under his breath, "I… this is merciless. I don't know much longer I can watch this…"
Finally getting bored with it, the leader gives one final kick and gestures for his henchmen to get the father on his knees while he himself saunters away, "Shoot this dog! You're all incompetent."
The man's family continued to yell for him, his son screaming, "PAPA! PAPA!"
"Someone please cover his eyes," Natasha pleads and shakes her head, knowing all too well the traumatic affects it would have on such a young child to witness an execution. It's an unfortunate part of her work, or at least, it used to be.
Noticing her discomfort in one of the rare moments she allows herself to show such an emotion, Tony hesitates for only a moment before slinging an arm around her shoulders. She knows he's uncertain how she'll react, so she forces herself to relax as much as she can so he can't feel the tenseness in her shoulders.
She appreciates the gesture of comfort all the same.
The henchman is yelling now, too, only he's demanding that the father turns his head.
Just before he pulls the trigger, there's a gust of wind as a figure descends from the sky, landing on the hard ground with a metal 'clang,' one knee bent and hands back.
"YES!" Clint jumps up from his seat, only for Natasha to drag him back down. Still, he rubs his hands together in anticipation, "Fuck em' up, Iron Man!"
Tony snorts in laughter and high-fives the archer over Natasha's head, "That's the plan, Bird-Brain."
The flight stabilizers cut out, and the armor rises to its' full height, towering over the men who have turned to look. After the initial shock of their unexpected visitor, there are sounds of gunfire, but the bullets only ricochet off the gold titanium alloy.
Tony turns to face the "brave" shooter, winding up a punch in the action and slamming his metal-clad fist into the man's chest, sending him up and into a concrete wall with enough force to dent it.
"Ouch," Bruce winces, but he's grinning all the same, because while he may disapprove of violence, he's smart enough to recognize when one deserves it.
There are more shots, but Tony is quick (not to mention bullet-proof), and turns around to shoot a repulsor blast at the gunman, creating a body shaped hole in the wall in the process. He moves on to the next man, sending him back and away from harming the civilians.
He shoots another into their newfound stockpile of weaponry, sending the cases tumbling over.
"It's honestly horrible but this is even more entertaining than ultimate fighting," Clint grins, leaning forward in his seat as if it would improve the experience.
As the genius turns to aim his repulsors at the next group of men, he's forced to stop short when he realizes they now have the civilians in their grasp, using them as human shields and aiming guns to their heads.
They scream in terror, but nonetheless, Tony lowers his arms, waggling his fingers to shut down the blasts that never came.
Inside the helmet, the HUD differentiates the civilians from the terrorists so no innocents will get injured. A compartment over each one of the armor's shoulders opens up, firing a quick succession of bullets into the enemy's faces, effectively saving the villagers.
Steve grins and claps Tony on the shoulder, his eyes never leaving the screen as he watches his friend be the very thing Steve had accused him of not being; a hero.
The young boy breaks from his mother's hold once again, and rushes back to his father. They grab each other in a hug, the father muttering reassurances as his son gazes up at the metal figure in wonder.
Barton chuckles at the amazement in the child's eyes, "Man, that's gotta be blowing this kid's mind."
Inside one of the half destroyed homes, the leader peers out from the side of the wall, only to duck back behind it to frantically dial a number on a clunky old phone. He never gets to finish, though, as he's interrupted by a red-iron fist breaking through the concrete beside his head.
The hand grabs him, ripping him straight through the wall and tossing him onto the ground at the villagers' feet.
"That's gotta hurt like a motherfucker," Fury grins, nodding his head in satisfaction.
He starts up the repulsors again, rising a few feet into the air, "He's all yours," he says to the small gathering of people, before shooting up into the sky, leaving the villagers to glare angrily at the terrorist before them.
Back in the sky, Tony's HUD locates the Jericho missiles from another nearby raided village.
"Wait, no! I wanted to watch them beat the shit out of him!" Clint complains, sulking in his seat.
Natasha just ruffles his hair, her expression annoyed yet fond all at once, "Suck it up."
Tony is just starting to head in the Jericho's direction when he's hit by a projectile and shot out of the sky.
The source of the projectile is revealed to be a tank as he plummets to the earth in the background.
Out of the fresh crater in the ground, a metal hand reaches up, and Tony pulls himself to his feet with a robotic whirring sound. The paint job on the armor is now scratched and scorched in nearly every place, but overall the armor is seemingly intact.
"Huh," Bruce muses, "Pretty strong for such an early model."
Tony shrugs, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms behind his head, "What can I say? 'S what I do."
His feet hit the ground with two big thumps as he stands tall to face the tank. It fires another missile at him, but he merely side steps to avoid getting hit, and raises his arm to fire a missile of his own.
It hits the tank with a clunk, and he turns away, not all amused.
Behind him, the missile explodes in a great ball of fire and smoke as he's walking away.
"Okay," Clint sighs, "I'll add fuel to your ego just this once, because that was fucking bad ass."
Tony grins and holds up his hand for another high-five, to which Clint happily obliges.
The men hiding among the rubble begin to fire at him, but still the bullets do nothing to the well crafted suit as it rises once again into the air. Spotting the Jericho missiles from the birds-eye view, Tony aims a high powered repulsor blast at the weapon, effectively blowing it to pieces.
Raza and his men are shown driving along the mountain path just as the explosion spreads throughout the terrorist infested village, not to mention just as Iron Man shoots out through the smoke and into the air.