INTRODUCTION -

This is my attempt at a rational-fic, which means to me "a story where characters do things that are the most intelligent choices they have available that they can think of." No one makes a stupid mistake just because the plot wouldn't work if they didn't make that particular stupid mistake. The protagonist has a plan and follows it. The antagonists have a logic to what they are doing, it's not just "for the evilz."

I thought Riri Williams got off to a good start as a new character. Brian Michael Bendis was doing pretty well at giving representation to one of the rarest minorities; brilliant kids, the ones that are in the top 1% of intelligence. He got the mix of social isolation and awkwardness, the focus on where they feel most in control and the sheer boredom of everyday life. (I wasn't a prodigy by a long shot. But I have known a few very well.)

Part of Riri's background is growing up with trauma. As a child she saw her best friend and her father die as a result of a drive-by shooting nearby. A 15 year old dealing with the pressures of a genius intelligence and significant trauma and loss had a lot of story potential. I was looking forward to seeing where it was going. A fictional 15 year old African American girl from Chicago could have been this decade's Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne.

Then things started getting stupid after Bendis quit the character. Plots started requiring foolish mistakes from characters that were OUT of character. The dialog started being in social-media speak, the motivations were all over the place. So I'm taking a hard turn around issue INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #11 on the continuity. Wish me luck.

Chapter one. Part One

A Thursday in April, 9:15 AM

"I can't believe it's The Wrecking Crew. Four monster brawlers and I'm going in solo it looks like? For a so called child prodigy, I wind up in a lot of stupid situations…" Riri Williams muttered to herself.

"Things never change, bestie," replied the Neuro-Autonomous Technical Assistant & Laboratory Intelligence Entity, AKA NATALIE, her recently developed power armor AI. Her suit's AI had unexpectedly turned out with a personality that was more based on her memories of her dead childhood friend Natalie Washington. Riri had been TRYING to base the AI on her own brain patterns but… something had gone wrong/right. It was based on her memories of her friend instead. She was getting used to her engineering being full of unexpected quirks.

Riri had a sudden thought. "Ok, you got any ideas for how to go into this? You've seen me do a couple of these "let's punch each other in silly costumes'' things, studied a few videos of my first few attempts. What am I not doing?"

The AI gave a fast three soft beeps, indicating a data search was happening. "Remember Charlene Mathis? Loud, trash talking, crazy as hell so no one would mess with her? Try that. Roll into it trying to look ten times more dangerous than you are. Freak 'em out, get yourself a reputation. A Spider-man, Wolverine mind screw move. Act like you KNOW you can win." NATALIE paused "Best I got now."

"So less nervous babble word-vomit and more confidence? Worth a shot…" Riri admitted.

"And I've been listening to the back and forth on police, emergency and SHIELD channels. This is way worse than a jewelry store heist. This is a massacre in progress. You sure about this?"

Riri decided to start practicing fake confidence. "I needed a life challenge for myself. I chose to be like Tony Stark. It's too late to switch to being like Octavia Butler or Mozart. I'm kinda committed to inventing ways to stop dangerous people. "

Riri had been testing her latest modifications on her exoskeleton armor that morning, doing a test flight around the Great Lakes. She was happy with the moderate boost in flight speed, not as happy with the maneuverability and downright disappointed in the onboard medical scanning system.

She had tinkered with some NASA medical equipment designs but they still felt suboptimal. She had mastered AI, mechanical and electrical engineering, but was still a beginner at medicine and biochemistry for example. A child prodigy polymath with a "super-genius" intelligence at 15 can only study so many things at one time. She had to find a few lab partners some day to fill in the gaps in her education.

She was flying towards Milwaukee, Wisconsin after her on board computer system picked up an alert on a SHIELD communications band. They were calling for any available superheroes and no one else was showing up. "This looks like a job for… me'" Riri said with a grin. "NATALIE give me a summary of the situation on right channel and tap into SHIELD coms on left channel. Let's find out what's going on." One of many advantages of being a super-genius polymath was her ability to listen to one information in each ear and read simultaneously and make sense of it all. Now if only she could read in Braille with her feet, she speculated.

Her AI paused to put the dozens of news sources it monitored constantly into a clear narrative. The Wrecking Crew had been destroying buildings and killing people across Milwaukee that morning seemingly at random, being driven place to place in armored trucks. Local heroes The Great Lakes Avengers had tried to intervene with their usual bad luck. But they had bought SHIELD enough time.

SHIELD arrived at the conflict just as Mr. Immortal had been brought down. Flatman and Big Bertha were already being treated by paramedics on the scene, both unconscious. Good Boy and Doorman hadn't been spotted. SHIELD was doing the best possible but they were under equipped and underpowered.

Simultaneously Riri listened to the real time radio traffic with the SHIELD team on site.

"Where the hell is back up, central control?!" the commanding officer on the scene shouted. "We only have three Mandroid units in this district and they're not enough! We need SPB backup, Avengers, Freedom Force, whoever is available! We pinned them down into a stand-off but we can't keep them in place forever."

Central Command replied, "I'm sorry Turner, you'll have to contain them for 20 or 30 minutes. Field teams are tied up all over our district. It's looking like coordinated actions by… someone. As always, every SPB individual and group on our backup llist is doing some stupid "SUPER SPECIAL SECRET CRISIS" idiocy. I'll send someone from another conflict zone when possible. Pin the Crew down as long as you can."

"May as well say hi…" Riri thought aloud and cleared her throat. "Cut into their conversation please NATALIE… Excuse me, this is Ironheart, SHIELD auxiliary passcode XNK5YVUTXUEDATWY. I'm close, how can I help?"

"Code checks out Assistant Director Kramer," a new voice interjected.

"Good to hear you, Ironheart, got anyone else with you?" Kramer replied quickly.

"Afraid not. All four of the Crew are still upright?"

"Special Agent Turner here, Ironheart. All four are still standing. We've disabled one getaway truck, the other is parked over a gas main so no bazookas for THAT one. We're on West Hadley Street just south of Union Cemetery. Need us to send up a few flares to find us?"

"Got it," NATALIE said, putting a trajectory to the standoff up on Riri's display.

"Send up a few flares, almost there!" Riri felt her usual pre-combat butterflies in her stomach as she pondered information on The Wrecking Crew. Four professional thugs and murderers, heavy hitters with a reputation for being stupid one-on-one but very good at teamwork and coordinated attacks. The Wrecker, Dirk… something or other was a class 40 strength according to the FBI SPB wanted posters she had read. The Wrecker had a "magic crowbar" as a weapon, which sounded goofy yet dangerous to Riri.

The second most dangerous to her mind was Dr. Elliot Franklin, also known as Thunderball. He met The Wrecker in prison when he had been imprisoned for some robberies done to pay for some independent research in banned Gamma ray experiments. Franklin had been rather condescendingly called "the Black Bruce Banner" in the press because of his genius level intellect and his expertise in the field of gamma radiation. His career mistake was inventing a miniature gamma-ray bomb, something that Dr. Robert Bruce Banner (better known as The Hulk) was unable to do. It got him banned from legitimate research because what sane research lab wants to be associated with a hand grenade that could destroy cities? He also had a goofy yet dangerous magic weapon, a giant steel ball on a four foot chain. But his strength was only class ten, thank the Universe.

The other two were Piledriver and Bulldozer, also class 10 strength but no goofy or dangerous magic weapons. All four were incredibly durable in the "can be shot and they barely feel it, have survived Thor level punches" sort of way. And the four of them had a body count in the mid-hundreds. Casual killers who had once slaughtered everyone in a Calgary bar because someone spilled a drink on one of them. So holding back against them was a bad idea. This was definitely not an "easy mode" game.

She sighed. "There's no kill like overkill," as she had heard someone say in the recent Hydra war.

As she rocketed towards the SHIELD smoke flares the very rough beginnings of a plan began to emerge. "OK, this should be interesting. Just remember to leave out the most dangerous parts when I tell mom about it. And hope there's no news cameras around to make a liar out of me."

As she landed next to the SHIELD command van on the street barricade, she and NATALIE both spotted the WDJT-TV news van with a few camera people around. "Aw damn it…" Riri said.

NATALIE replied, "Well NOW we gotta win. The world is watching.