IRON MAN 28: RETURN FIRE
Part Three of an Iron Man FanFiction Saga
By Neil Allfather Nitz Kapit
With Thanks to Steve Sellers, Zach Couture, and R. Ratt

So, when we left off, Tony, you had been telling me about an earlier.....adventure....under your Iron Man identity, in which you had made a fatal error in the middle of battle, and were on the verge of death......

You don't need any sort of psychiatric knowledge to understand that I did, in fact, survive, right, Doctor Samson?

Just checking to make sure. For many people in my--OUR--field, death can be a temporary state.

And for the normal people caught in the crossfire?

Doctor Leonard Samson paused, resting his squared chin on his hand, to look directly into Tony Stark's eyes. Despite almost two weeks of sessions, the superhuman therapist had never been able to fully analyze what the look in Stark's eyes meant. There was this light, misty glaze of moisture across his eyeballs, heightening the red, bloodshot veins radiating out from the pupils. It was a glaze that looked unnatural; as if it had developed as a colony of bacteria over Stark's pupils. Perhaps Stark was just distressed, from the traumas he kept hinting at, but Samson saw something decidedly off-kilterabout his eyes.

He set aside his suspicions, however, to continue. So it is established that you are alive, and always have been. But something tells me the means in which you survived are unsettling you.....

Indeed.

When I awoke, I was far away from the coastal oil rigs which War Machine was terrorizing. Instead, I was on the other end of the country, safe at home in the Stark House infirmary. I was stretched out on a metal diagnostic table, with several bandages on my abdomen and a general feeling of soreness coursing through my battered, naked body. My armor was missing, and so was my memory; I was still somewhat delirious, and did not understand what had happened, only that I was naked and injured and didn't remember why.

As I winced at the first sight of light, I uttered a single word.....

Jocasta.

A monitor lowered downwards from the white-tiled ceiling to my level, out of hydraulic levers installed in the floors above. Good evening, Tony. I assume you wish to know the events that transpired during your unconsciousness.

That....can wait... I said, finding it difficult to speak through the pain. Where....is the armor?

The pixelated face on the screen paused for a second, then smiled at me. Your Armor has returned, and is stored safely within your lab. It has received minor damage to the abdominal guard plates, but nothing that is irreparable.
So....how did I get....back here?

Everything resolved itself according to program procedures, Tony.

I.....think I could use....more details.

As I asked this, Jocasta temporarily paused, and on the monitor screen, another window appeared overlapping her face. Upon the window, the CGI face I designed of Jim Rhodes appeared.

Tony, he said, You gotta teach ME how to do that....

I....don't follow.

The CGI face blinked, and another window appeared, a larger one overshadowing much of the left side of Jocasta's face. This window started to flicker, and then showed some footage.

The footage was taken by tiny, microscopic cameras inside the armor's helmet lens. It was somewhat blurry, as it was taken inside of a destroyed, burning oil rig. However, it still was clear enough to show a sufficient recap of the events I missed during my black out.

In the center of the window, a black figure with guns protruding from his person held a mirror-like surface to his chest; it reflected a strong light that was almost too much for my pupils to endure, and it shone right through the smoke surrounding the area. The camera view shook around, having difficulty focusing through the battle around it, but the focus remained clear enough.

Suddenly, the light stopped shining, the black figure dropped the mirror, and the camera view stabilized. The figure approached me as I was unconscious, and raised its arm, with a miniature chaingun extended right towards my face. However, in a manner of seconds, the camera view thrust upwards, and a chromed red hand grabbed the figure's gun and smashed it. The black figure staggered back, but his parry was intercepted by the back of the red metal hand smashing into his face. As he crouched, shaking his armored head in a daze, metal hands started to smash into him with unrelenting fury. At speeds faster than any human nervous system would allow for, fists flew, battering the black figure's face, chest, and abdomen; especially the abdomen. Finally, the ballet of beatings was ended with a round of repulsor fire, knocking the figure out of the burning rig, and over the ocean scarcely visible through the blitzkrieg. The camera view turned 180 degrees, and ended.

I followed back in the hotel you bought, like you told me to. So lemme get this straight.....you were UNCONSCIOUS while you did all that?

Yes, I replied, a smart grin sneaking its way through my discomfort. Standard Iron Man programming procedure. If unconscious, neutralize threat....and return to base.

Well, that much worked, he said, But what about our buddy Parnell? What happened to him?

Couldn't tell......

Then, both windows closed, and Jocasta's face on the desktop started to glow. She created a new window-- a map of Florida, with a glowing dot moving across the screen. Your armor, as per protocol, also attached a small tracer module to War Machine, so that you could follow him when you regained composure.

So..... I said, stretching out my legs and forcing myself up, That's what I plan to do.

A sharp pain in my stomach immediately hit me as I forced myself upward, all but blinding me. You received second-degree burns over the course of your battle, Tony. It will take weeks for them to heal, and until then, I suggest you take it easier.

However, I continued on, having gotten off of the table and to my feet, taking slow steps across the floor of the white room, and towards the clothing heaped upon a stool. This isn't....open for debate. A very deranged individual has gotten ahold of one of my inventions. I won't be able to rest until he's dealt with. Get me the armor.

Rhodey's CGI image maximized upon Jocasta's cheek, and shook its head. An' you realize that if you fight him in your state, even with your programming jazz, you may end up restin' forever.

In that case, I sputtered, crouching a bit as I walked out of the infirmary and into a special chamber Get me a side of pain-killers with that armor.

The monitor went blank, and retracted into the ceiling, as I left the room through an automatic, omnium-enforced gate. One room to the left, across the endless halls beneath my mansion, the armor was stored. The steps were still difficult, but I assumed myself that moving would no longer be so difficult in the armor.

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Neither Rhodey nor Jocasta thought that taking on Parnell directly was the best of ideas. And, judging from the occasional flash of pain in my abs, and the continuing warmth of abdominal plate of the armor ( which was odd, as the cooling units would normally bring the suit back to room temperature ), I could understand why. The sensations were especially painful, not just because I was injured, but because I brought those injuries upon myself, with my own arrogance.

The armor's long-range tracking had pinpointed Parnell's location to a small town on the offskirts of Tampa, curiously enough. All that was left for me to fly there and knock him down a few pegs; but, judging from the last battle, that would be difficult. I had advanced the armor's controls beyond my own control-- operating the armor was almost painfully difficult, and even simple things like manual flight required complex sequences of thought that caused headaches to even attempt. When I flew to the suburbs where War Machine was lurking, I started with an automatic flight course, but I ended up freezing in midair, as the mapping system only worked in two dimensions.

Because of this handicap, I was stuck impotently hovering fifty feet above a K-Mart, knowing that Parnell was somewhere in the area, but that he could easily be hidden amongst the pedestrian crowd. I started to think my way down, straining my lobes as the boot jets slowly died down, and leisurely reaching the pavement as the middle-class families around me wondered what a Fifth Avenue superhero was doing in a K-Mart Parking lot. I had already received a painful headache from doing so, and activating the sensors to try to home in on the impulses I was receiving. My brow knit tightly, and for a second, I closed my eyes, the stress shooting through my cerebellum.

That's when it hit me.....literally.

It was two high intensity, focused repulsor blasts. The armor cracked as I rocketed backwards, plowing through two mini-vans and onto my plated posterior. A tooth loosened in my mouth as I spat blood onto the inside of my mask, wincing as I saw War Machine flying out of the K-Mart, plowing straight through the automatic door without even waiting for the greeting. He flew somewhat erratically, and his armor was covered in dents and dings and char marks-- but he still came towards me. Parnell Jacobs may have been a deceitful weasel, but he was still a weasel that could fight, even through his injuries.

He'd receive worse, anyway.

Holding his arm out near my chest, while standing straight by virtue of his magnetized boots, Parnell had paused over the auto wreckage that cradled my body. His eye lenses flashed, and he started to speak as he started to unload specially designed, armor-piercing rounds. His bullets caused pains equivalent to a thousand bee stings as they dented and dinged the shell I wore, he started to carry on with his own speeches. I don't get you, Tin-Man, he laughed as the chainguns continued. Stark hires you to guard his ass and promote his stocks. I was kicking your ass last night, but then you beat me into hiding. You went from being a total wuss to a great fighter. And now, when you manage to find me, you walk right into my shots.

As I struggled to get to my feet, feeling itches and pains where itches and pains should not be felt, the chaingun on Parnell's gauntlet exhausted its supply of ammunition, and he threw out the clip. Reaching for another clip of specialty rounds attached to his belt, he said one final statement....

So which is it, Shellhead? Winner or wuss?

R-B15.

R-B15? What the f...!

Unfortunately for him, W-J15 was shorthand for a mneumonic programming code the helmet read for an automatic battle procedure; I just spoke it aloud for the dramatic effect people in my little hobby enjoy. The program would lock onto the target, and release many repeated punches; the same one that was keyed to function were I knocked unconscious. These punches would occur as fast as the armor could process, and with billions of bits running through the circuitry per second, fast was an understatement. Once more, Parnell was at my mercy, being beaten into submission, with ten punches rearranging his ribcage, followed by a sharp jab to an area he would be hard-pressed to put a cast on, and an uppercut which knocked his jaw around a bit. The program was supposed to run until the enemy was pacified enough for escape to be possible, and Parnell barely managed to stay conscious, feebly trying to hold back punches with his limbs, and only ending up with damaged wrists.

I hated having to let the armor take control, sit idly back while pre-written programs resolved everything; I felt like a puppet inside the armor, controlled by the micro-circuited strings. But I had little control over the suit otherwise, as manual procedures had gotten too difficult for me to control. I had to just sit back and have my body automatically moved by the armor's servos, while Parnell was caught in an onslaught of punches, kicks, and pulse bolts...

....pulse bolts? No, I hadn't programmed pulse bolts into W-J15: they were the most lethal of my weapons, meant for extreme situations only, and not trustworthy enough to use in automatic courses due to the concerns about accidentally killing somebody. But my gauntlets were firing several of them at Parnell, forcing his battered body into the air, and stripping away layers of his armor with each hit, as the K-Mart shoppers gathered around the area from a respectable distance. War Machine was being shot out of the air like a clay pigeon, except he was not shot once, but many times. Hovering by fire over a stretch of compact cars, the War Machine armor kept flashing blue as smoldering pieces of metal and silicon fell to the Earth. Despite this, Parnell did not utter a single word; he presumably just grinned through the pain. But I tried uttering several words. Words, thoughts, anything-- anything to stop the armor. I abhor killing, even towards bastards like Parnell, but that was precisely what I was doing. The armor totally disregarded all of my commands, and just kept firing.

It only stopped when Parnell was totally unprotected and naked.

On its own, through the same means as it started firing, the armor stopped firing, causing the unarmored, injured Parnell to fall to the ground. He was badly beaten, his dark flesh covered in bruises, and more than a few burn marks. Somehow, he defiantly crawled across the asphalt, reaching for one of the War Machine's guns. Through this, I stood still, as Parnell slumped down at my boots, impotently trying to grasp onto a damaged rocket launcher he could not operate.

As I looked down at defiantly damaged man, he started speaking, coughing up blood as he did so. I've ........seen this ......in all of the damn movies. You....hero types beat the crap...out of us.....and then --HACK-- then stop at the....the last minute....to show us...how you're so much....better. The whole....morally fulfil...fulfilling...crap....

I didn't listen closely to his dying words, because of other problems-- problems in the armor. On the HUD portrayed inside the lenses, several lines of code in green print ran down. I won't bore you with the exact words-- I write all my programs in S^, a language only I know-- but each line felt like a kick in the gut. I didn't know all of the exact terms--

--because I didn't WRITE them in.

Finally, after all these lines of deadly, deceptive S^, a red line ran across the lenses, stating in bold print, RUN .

Parnell, however, continued to cough out courageous words and vital fluids upon my feet. So.... you going to do....the same old crap...the good PR stuff....or are you.....actually gonna....do something?

Against my will, my arm raised, with energy crackling in the palm of my gauntlet. One second of it staying stationary, with electricity humming through the channels, and it lowered again, at breakneck speed.

It only left enough time for Parnell to utter an Oh, Sh .

 And what happened next, Samson asked. Did your armor kill him, against your will?

Worse, Tony Stark said, the anger in his voice blatantly obvious.

TO BE CONTINUED......