I am Iron Man

02

"Mr. Stark? I have some bad news."

"Yeah Friday, what's up?"

"Sir, Mr. Jarvis has passed. I'm sorry."

"I have to go back to America for a while."

The Ancient One nodded. "I'm sorry, Tony. The doors of Kamar-Taj are always open to you. Though I think we both know you're past the point of needing to remain here just to study. You have things to do, and staying here much longer would drive you insane. And then, very shortly after, drive me insane."

"Hah. So, you want me out of your hair."

"While I still have hair for you to get out of, yes. Dear Friday is welcome to stay as much as she likes, however."

I rolled my eyes. "You're just enamored with the first ever true A.I. with its own soul."

"Of course I am. The first true success of merging magic and technology and you make life? And she's such an innocent soul? I want to see how she develops… and teach her a thing or two about magic myself."

"Admit it, you want to keep her around as a personal assistant."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean."

"I'll leave the laptop behind and show you how to set it up. Don't play with the Arc Reactor," I warned. "I'll get you guys set up with wireless electrical charging soon and then, once I've got a better handle on this, how about you and I work together with one to see what we can do?"

The woman smiled, a big, genuine smile of delight. "That sounds lovely. I haven't been this excited in a long time. Truly new research into magic has been few and far between, these long years."

"Alright, let me get packing."

A portal opened back to my quarters and a few gestures had my bag packed. The Ancient One followed me through and I walked her through setting up the satellite connection if she decided to move it. After that, I opened a portal back to my, that is, Tony's parents' mansion. It was about eleven hours behind, so I went from just after 8p.m. to 9a.m. with a single step.

"Sir?" A young, pretty blonde woman with an English accent asked. She was dressed in a simple white blouse and ankle length black skirt, wearing comfortable looking shoes. Amelia Langford, the replacement Jarvis had arranged before his retirement.

The old man hadn't been quite as overwhelmed by magic as I thought he would be. He did, however, enjoy calling me to act as his portal taxi now and then, or coming by Kamar-Taj to visit.

"Amelia. It's good to finally meet you in person. Tell me what happened."

"He passed during the night, sir. I found him this morning. I've already begun taking care of everything. Mr. Jarvis had arrangements in place for his passing."

"Thanks, Amelia." I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. I was surprised when, a moment later, she laid her hand on my shoulder.

"He left some things for you, sir."

"Alright. Let's see it."

She nodded and led me to a study. Sitting on top of a desk was a letter. Amelia passed it over and I opened it.

The part of me that was twenty-one years of this world's Tony Stark wept at the loss, and the words left behind by the man who had been closer than his own father in some ways.

The part of me that was just some guy sent here to do a job felt like he was intruding on the last tender moment between family. I felt sick.

"Amelia," I began, folding the letter up, and she stood just a little straighter. "The mountain home, it was finished?"

"Yes, sir. He wanted to keep it as a surprise for when you returned."

"Great. I think… it's time to leave this place behind. If you would make the arrangements?"

"I'll hire a local company to take care of it, Mr. Stark. If you would like, the mountain home is ready to move in to and we could return for the funeral."

"Yeah. Let's… just go. Is there anything you need here?"

"No, sir."

I nodded and we went back to the entry room I had portaled into. I gathered up my bag and opened a new portal to where I knew the mountain home was supposed to be built. It opened right in front of the house and we stepped through, two time zones west. Amelia produced the keys and we made our way inside.

The funeral came entirely too quickly, but once it was done I was left feeling a sense of… closure. The last chapter of this world's Tony Stark was closed, after laying Jarvis to rest. The ghost of the man who had killed himself in grief seemed to have passed by the following morning and I was free to live and focus on what was to come.

"What's my schedule look like, Friday?"

"Mr. Stane scheduled a meeting in the LA office for 11a.m. local. You have a meeting with the board at 11:30. The materials you ordered are scheduled to be delivered to the office this afternoon. After that, your schedule for the day is clear."

"Okay, give me a ten minute warning," I instructed as I headed to the lab. I had some work to do to get things up to snuff.

But this gives me a chance to make the intermediary steps better and skip several steps entirely.

I sat down in the lab and looked at the clear glass screens lining the walls. That was something I could do now. In fact…

"Alright, let's make a prototype..."

"Tony. Tell me you've got something for me."

"Yeah, Obi. I've got something alright. How's the company looking?"

"We're climbing our way out of the dip caused with the loss of your father. But Tony, we need a big win. What have you got?"

I hefted the briefcase in my hands. "I'll show you when I tell the board. We're about to change the world, Obi."

The man looked frustrated, but excited. "That sounds very promising. Fine. Tell me about this soul searching you've been doing. There's some rumors floating around in the papers that you've developed portal technology?"

"It's still in the development phase," I confirmed, and the man sucked in a breath. "I've got it working for personal use, but I need better equipment to make it work for commercial use. Which is something else I'm bringing to the board. A whole bunch of somethings. As for the trip, it helped me clear my head. It sounds cliche, but I've found myself. I'm a different Tony from the one who left."

We talked a while longer before a secretary came by to get us for the board meeting. I told him about Jarvis's passing and Obi gave his condolences. I asked how his family was doing. The usual small talk. Finally, we made our way into the conference room.

I sat my briefcase down at the head of the table. Cracking open the case, I looked around the room at the vultures gathered. Not to insult vultures… they at least perform a valuable service. I've got to look into buying them out through shell companies and proxies so I can get rid of them. I can't have people telling me what to do in my own company. Advisors, yes. People who can actually give orders? Fuck no. This company is a ship and I'm the captain now.

"Gentlemen. Ladies. I give you… the future." I reached into the briefcase and pulled out a newly created perfected arc reactor, before setting it on the table. This wasn't just any old arc reactor, however. It was set in a base station, which would provide wireless charging capabilities to anything with a compatible receiver.

"What is it, Stark?"

I turned a grin on the man who had asked. "A silver bullet. The thing that's going to kill the monster that is the fossil fuel industry. People, we're getting into Big Power. It's one of many new projects Stark Industries is going to be taking on. But let's focus on this one first. You're all aware of the arc reactor in the basement, powering the building." I looked around, getting nods of confirmation. "Well, this is that, but miniaturized and with a better fuel source. A source only I know how to synthesize. It'll produce an order of magnitude more power, and for longer, than that one. This one reactor could run the whole city block for fifty years. But this is a big one. I plan to make them smaller. Smaller and smaller. Until they're the size of a deck of playing cards and can power a home for twenty years. Or the buttons on your shirt and can power an electric car for a year."

That got some murmuring from the board, but I cut them off, pulling out a hologram projector from the suitcase—this one the project I had made this morning. It was bulky, being about the size of a laptop (of the current era), and it didn't have nearly the processing power I wanted… but it would do for now. I brought it out of sleep mode and it popped a hologram into the air—specifically, a presentation of the technology I was currently demonstrating.

"So, as you can see, this is a hologram projector. Nice, right? It's next on the list. For those of you who want to ask, no, this unit isn't battery powered, nor is it plugged in. It's powered completely wirelessly, by the arc reactor in the cradle there," I pointed to the reactor."

"Wait a moment," a woman in her fifties spoke up, one of only two on the board (not that Stark Industries had any sort of biased hiring practices, government mandated or not—they hired entirely on merit. Sadly, the people sitting here actually had earned their seats). "If I'm understanding this right, you're implying that we should branch out into," she paused, "two different industries, at minimum?"

"Three. Clean energy, transportation, and computing." I flicked a hand at the projection and it changed, showing a display of what Tony knew of as a modern chip—along with a roadmap for how to get there inside of a year if we did it right. One year. Not twenty, not ten, not five. One. Because I'd be taking a lot of shortcuts and skipping a lot of intermediary steps. But from there? Tony's brain-meats and knowledge were already providing ideas for even more advanced chips. Things that would have a geometric increase in processing power, simply by switching to 3D chip architecture. That, I put at about five years out. We'd need the better chips this would give us to make them, after all.

"Oh, right. I almost forgot to mention. We're going to be phasing out weapons production."

The immediate roar of noise nearly made me flinch. I held up my hands and, when they didn't shut up, I whistled sharply. "I said 'phasing out,' not 'stopping production.' And yes, I am aware of the loss of revenue from the government contracts. However, I've already run the numbers." I grabbed the remote for the projector and flipped through slides, before a hologram came up with projected numbers. "We'll make way more money retasking our weapons division into making other things than we will in making missiles and the like. We're not getting rid of it entirely. We're going to be adapting the new technology into new weapons, but on a much smaller scale. I want very limited runs of anything we make there, because I don't want them getting into enemy hands. Besides, if it's government contracts you want…"

I flipped the projector to a new image. An unmanned stealth aircraft with an arc reactor power plant, repulsors for flight, and loaded out with missiles. Basically, a re-designed Predator drone. "There. They'll pay us a lot of money for things like this. Drones. Aircraft. Faster than anything they've got right now. Stealth technology. I'm not shooting us in the foot here. I'm telling you that we're moving forward. We're advancing away from conventional weapons of warfare. Now, I'm going to start sending out emails later today. Forming new departments. Pulling people from old projects into them, to get this up to speed ASAP. I want our best and brightest focused on chip development first and foremost. Because I already have a vision for the future of this company. Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple… we're going to put them all out of business.

"Now, as far as this stuff goes, the best thing we can do is show it off at the next Stark Expo. I'll have some more toys made up by then to go with them, and hopefully we'll have production lines ready. But we go ahead and drop some leaks now. Manage hype. Maybe have someone take some pictures of a working hologram projector and give them to the media. I'll have a flying car done some time by the end of this month, so I can drive around in that and see what kind of reactions that stirs up. Stocks should rise enough to offset any dip when we start retasking our people from weapons dev and moving them around. Any questions?"

Everyone tried to shout their questions at once, but I pointed to Obadiah. "Obi. Go ahead."

"Tony… son, this is going to make a lot of enemies. For the company, yes, but also for you personally. I don't think people are going to take being told that you're obsoleting their entire business model just lying down. Hell, you're looking to kill the automotive industry here—"

"Fuck 'em. Adapt or die," I countered. "Besides. Ford, GM, and so on? Their production plants moved to China years ago. No, Obi. We're going to be opening plants right here in America. Giving Americans jobs. As much as we can. If I have to personally buy up every defunct steel mill myself to make the materials here, I'll do it. I want 'Made in the U.S.A.' stamped on every piece of everything we make. I want that to stop being a joke. When they start folding because they thought they were too big to fail and we proved them wrong, we'll snap up their workers. Their resources. I want us to start headhunting their best and brightest now, but I want to make sure there's a place for their blue collar workers right here at Stark Industries. Or Stark Automotive. What do you think? Kinda has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

"What about the oil industry? Chevron, Exxon—"

"Fuck them too. They can adapt. Even if we're moving off of gas, diesel, and jet fuel, there's still a need for petroleum products. Plastics, lubricants, fertilizer, and a thousand other products that can't just be done away with. They'll take a hit, yes. A big hit. And OPEC are going to be pissed. But when we can make our vehicles cheaper, more reliable, and cleaner… people are going to vote with their wallets. Everyone from your Joe Average consumer looking to buy a new family sedan, to trucking companies looking to expand their fleet, to every commercial and private airline looking to slash fuel and maintenance costs, all the way up to the government looking to save money."

I looked over the other eleven members of the board and grinned, before gesturing at the hologram projector. "There's too much money to just leave it on the table by not taking a few risks. I know the House of Saud and others are going to be interested. We'll increase our security. Install some new cyber security measures. Hire some very scary men and equip them with guns I'll make for them, and pay them a lot of money to make sure no one tries anything stupid. It'll be fine."

After that, I answered a few more questions, before gathering my things… then opening a portal. "Oh right," I turned and grinned at the stunned board members. "We might be doing something with this sometime soon. Later."

With that, I stepped through into my living room and closed the portal.

"Welcome home, Mr. Stark."

"Thank you, Amelia." I turned and sent the woman a smile as she came over and took my briefcase, then my suit jacket, while handing me a folded stack of clothes.

When I raised an eyebrow, she explained, "I thought you would be heading for the garage, so I prepared your 'garage clothes.' Also, I've made lunch, if you're hungry."

I sent the blonde woman a smile and took the offered change of clothes. "Thanks, Amy. You're great." Making my way towards the downstairs bathroom, I slipped inside and changed into the jeans, sneakers, and tee-shirt she'd brought me. Amelia collected my suit and folded it neatly. "So, I'm going to be pulling away from the day to day running of the company for a while and I could use a good PA. Think you can get together a list of ladies who might fit the bill? Preferably someone young, bright, and eager."

"Any other preferences, sir?" she asked, a knowing and amused look on her face. "Perhaps someone of 'exceptional taste?'"

"Someone tasty, yes," I grinned. "I'm thinking… red hair. Maybe a spicy attitude."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "I'll put in a few calls and see what I can find, Mr. Stark."

"Just Tony, Amy."

"Of course, Mr. Stark."

I shook my head. "Right. Lunch, then the garage. I've got some new toys to make."

The Ancient One looked up from her desk, an expression of exasperation on her face as I stepped through into her office. "Tony. I thought you were… busy."

"Out of your hair, you mean."

"Quite so."

I sent her a grin as I moved a long metal case through to our side of the portal using telekinesis, then closed it. "Actually, yeah, I've been pretty busy. In fact, I'd like you to look this over and tell me what you think."

"…Friday didn't mention any projects."

"I told her to keep this one under her hat. A surprise." Opening the case, I waved a hand and orange energy surrounded everything and the pieces began to assemble themselves. Magic was really convenient in day to day life. Catching the mechanism I wanted her to check out of the air, I passed it to her. "Go ahead. Although, you might want this," I reached into my pocket and pulled out a magnifying glass.

Taking the glass and the slab of metal, the (much) older woman sat back down and studied the steel. "Very intricate etchings. Very precise. Milled by machine, I take it?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Amazing. I believe I may have to look into adopting this approach in future projects," she murmured. "This is the portal spell, and many of the enchantments laid onto the sling rings. But…"

"But?" I grinned.

"The destination appears to be… fixed? To a… locator? No, a marker," she murmured. Looking up from it, she passed it to me and nodded as she stood and moved around the desk to the machine. "Show me."

I grinned and plugged the little steel slab into the base of the device. Standing back, I pulled out the remote for it and powered it on. A moment later, an orange portal snapped into place, bounded by the rings that made up the arms of the portal machine. On the other side stood Amelia, who waved. "It appears to have been a success, Mr. Stark."

"I'll be the judge of that," the Ancient One murmured, before holding out her hands and murmuring spells. I let her work and stepped through, to her consternation.

Grabbing an apple off the work table, along with a bottle of water, I moved back through. Biting into my apple, I watched and mentally checked off the list of spells she was going through. Spells I had already run through myself, no less than a hundred times each. Finally, she sighed and shook her head, a chuckle escaping her. "You've done it, Tony. Congratulations. The portal is stable and safe, and fueled entirely by your arc reactor—but you knew that already."

"I did, but it doesn't hurt to check. I dabble, but you're the expert in this field. I know science. You know magic. We'd work well together, you and I…"

The woman smiled. "Perhaps. Now, what do you intend to do with it?"

"Oh, I don't know. Kill the international shipping and travel industries? I think I'm going to build a hab."

"A what?"

"A space habitat. A place for people to safely work in space. I'm thinking one on the moon, one on Mars, in the Lagrange points. Link them all with small portals to each other and back to Earth. Build automated mining and refining tech and send it into the asteroid belt and portal finished products to Lagrange points, where I'll have people and machines make things."

"That all sounds very ambitious and altruistic," the woman smiled. "Now, what are you really putting there?"

"Space-based defenses against the walking purple nutsack and anyone else who doesn't belong here, along with fallback positions just in case someone gets cute and tries to nuke the Earth or something. Take us all out in one shot, you know? You want in? I could use some help getting mystical warding set up, and I imagine you the rest of your people wouldn't mind their own conclave up away from Earth, as a fallback position."

"Our people, Tony. You are one of us, now. Remember that," she said, reaching out and laying a hand on my shoulder. "And yes. That sounds good. Speak with Friday and we'll work something out."

"Hello, sexy."

"I'm not sure whether or not I should be offended, sir."

"How do you figure, Amy?"

"On the one hand, you're directing that comment at a suit of armor—"

"Power armor."

"Quite. On the other hand… you're directing that comment at a suit of power armor and not myself."

I sent her an amused look. "Amy. Are you jealous of my armor?"

"…A little bit," she admitted. "I'm not entirely sure whether I should feel slighted that you're looking at that machine with more lust in your eyes than you've ever shown me, or thankful at your entirely professional and respectful treatment so far. You do have a bit of a reputation."

"You're totally jelly," I snickered, leaning back in my chair. She sent me that very British unamused look. "So, you're saying I should make a pass every now and then. Maybe play a little grabass to let you know you're appreciated for the woman you are."

Amelia turned her nose up slightly. "The occasional pat on the bum would not be out of line, sir."

Laughing, I stood up and stretched, before reaching over and slipping my hand under her skirt and giving her ass a squeeze. It was small, firm, and round—very muscular and tight. I nodded and gave her a pat before moving towards the suit that had just finished being painted. "It's a very nice ass. Keep up the good work, Amy."

"Very well, Mr. Stark." Her heels clacked across the floor as she followed. "And what do you intend to do with this?"

"Well, I intend to take it on a test flight."

A full year. It took just over a year and change to get to the point where Stark Technologies (a subsidiary of Stark Industries) was producing chips that I would trust my life on in an Iron Man armor. I was going to wait a while on doing any big projects until I had that 3D chip architecture, but I figured I wasn't but a couple of years off from having the rest of the tech required to make nanites. Right now, I was busy doing intermediary upgrades on all of my tech to incorporate the new chips, along with pushing out designs for devices that used it for the company to sell.

Big projects, like the habitats, would wait a bit longer. I had already made the initial designs, but I wanted to be sure the tech was good before sending anything out. But now that I had these chips, and had advanced my new portal tech (and other magi-tech) a bit, I could build drones that could mine the asteroid belts and began laying the groundwork for everything.

I had a feeling, though. A feeling that things were going too well. After all, Downey wouldn't have brought me here just to be a stand-in. There had to be something. So, I'd had Friday looking—digging into every computer system she could get her upgraded digital/magical fingers into. There were few places Friday couldn't get into, and those were all either completely air-gapped or using hard copies only. I had built small, arc reactor powered satellites using stealth technology to hide them from most conventional detection and put them into orbit using portals. Friday had an entire server farm built using bleeding edge tech (as as close as I could get it at the moment) and was poring over high fidelity scans of a general list of targets I was aware should be a thing, either now or in the future.

When the other boot dropped, I hoped we would be prepared.

Which was why I hadn't put off making the first Iron Man armor any more. Good enough was better than nothing.

"Alright, let's test this beauty out."

Stepping onto the platform, I went through the sequence of having the armor placed onto my body by various robotic arms, already thinking about how I could improve things before getting to the nanite stage. It took a few minutes to get everything on and adjusted, but eventually, Friday reported that everything was ready to go.

"Awesome. Let's just… go through all the safety and preflight checks again, huh? Just to be safe."

"Sir, I've been through them twice."

"Well Friday, for my peace of mind, can we do it again?"

"…Very well, sir. Twice more. Just to ease your paranoia."

"It's not paranoia, Friday. It's warranted caution," I countered, gesturing at my helmet and rolling my eyes at Amelia, who sniggered. "And is that sass I detect?"

"No, Mr. Stark—"

"Tony, Friday. It's Tony."

"As you say, Mr. Stark."

"I swear, you two are conspiring against me," I grumbled.

"I'm afraid I don't seem to have a 'sass' unit. If I appear sassy in any way, that can probably be attributed to design flaws and failures on the part of my creator."

"More like successes. Sass me more in that sexy Irish accent."

"I'll 'ave yer mum," the AI muttered and I laughed. "Checks are finished sir. You're good to go."

I made a face before moving over to the clearly marked circle on the floor. Above, the door leading to the roof exit on the mountain opened, revealing a tunnel above going straight up. Amelia hummed quietly before her lips quirked up. "Could it be that you dislike flying, sir?"

"That's exactly it, Amy. I hate flying. Hate it with a passion," I admitted. "But…"

"But?"

"But. It's also… freedom, really. Alright, stand back. Friday, let's get this show on the road before I change my mind. Launch in five."

A countdown timer appeared in my HUD as Amelia backed away. When it hit zero, the suit began to rise up on repulsors, before quickly ascending up out of the mountain. Friday, thankfully, did most of the heavy lifting on the flying for now as she took us well away from the mountain home before ascending. Once we were high enough that I felt safe to take over, and Friday cleared us of any local air traffic, I began practicing. Climbing, diving, turns, rolls, insanely tight maneuvers that would warp an airframe but for Tony Stark the original had been just another day ending in 'Y' once he became Iron Man. I didn't have his experience, but I knew that all of the data I had said I was working well within both the suit's tolerances and those of the human body. I pulled a few too many G's, but never enough to hurt myself or black out—though I had Friday waiting just in case I did. I wasn't stupid or ignorant of the perils of high speed flight.

I made a circuit of the continental United States and stayed out until dark before heading home. Just to make sure I wasn't tracked, I dropped to ground level in the middle of nowhere, made sure I wasn't being followed, then portaled back to the garage. Amelia, having been made aware of my intent to return home, met me there.

"How was your flight, sir?"

"It was great, Amy. How about I take you up some time?"

"Oh, no," she shook her head. "No, thank you, sir. My place is here. Right here. On the ground."

I sent her a knowing look. "So, I'm not the only one afraid of flying."

Amelia shook her head. "It isn't the flying or the heights I'm afraid of, Mr. Stark. It's the sudden stop."

"Fair enough," I nodded as the machinery began to remove the armor. "If you change your mind—"

"I won't."

"Offer stands," I sent her a smile. "So, anything happen while I was out?"

"Mr. Stane requested a private meeting with you at Stark Automotive. The buyout of the remaining board members went through and you now own 100% of the company—through myself and other controlled assets. Major Rhodes called to see when you would be available to talk about some business regarding government contracts—and also some personal business. I believe he mentioned a strip club and something about your birthday."

"…Is it May already?"

"Next month, Mr. Stark," she clarified.

"Ahh. Awesome."

She raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound thrilled."

Chuckling, I shook my head. "I'm afraid my wild partying days are over and I might've forgotten to tell Rhodey. I mean, as fun as it'd be to pick up two, three, or however many women from whatever place he has in mind and bring them back to a hotel for some fun… Nah. I'll pass."

"I'll let Ms. Potts know."

"Don't you dare."

Yeah, my maid had found Pepper and hired her as my personal assistant. She wasn't like she was in the movies—she was even better.

"Shall I then, sir?"

"You either. Gonna have to make you a body just so you have a booty I can spank when you get all sassy."

"That would be sexual harassment, sir. And incest."

Amelia fought to keep a straight face as I followed her up to the kitchen. "Mistakes were made," I muttered, fighting off my own smile.