It's not an Iron Man suit.
Of course it isn't – it would be the height of egotism to think that a society as advanced as the UGC would have to resort to steal tech from Earth – but it's also not not an Iron Man suit, and the paradox makes Tony's head hurt in a way that paradoxes rarely do unless they involve magic.
Much as it pains him to admit, the overall design of the soldier's armor is more streamlined than even the Mark L's: the fittings clearly present only for show, and while it doesn't have a visible energy source, there are glowing blue lines embedded in the metal, pulsing like veins. The entire faceplate is one angular-heart-shaped visor that hides the face of the man underneath the reflective surface, and whatever is keeping him afloat is not emitting any light or sound like Tony's repulsors do.
"Well," he starts in a tone he hopes comes across more petulant than startled, and ignores the stink eye Fury gives him in turn, as if silently willing the inventor to behave. "Mine is shinier."
It's a weak attempt to hide his bewilderment, he knows, but to be fair, Tony's statement is true. The grey of the soldier's armor is matte, the subtle texture making the gloss of the visor even more pronounced.
"That it certainly is," Ranina agrees easily with a slight chuckle, and some of the tension dissipates from the room with the sound. Tony bets she has a beautiful laugh.
"So you use these…" Clarke leaves the sentence open, and Ranina doesn't hesitate to take on the mantle.
"We call them personal vessels." Tony sort of hopes their naming implies things about their firepower, and sort of hopes it doesn't. "We've been using such body armor for protection for centuries, of course…" Centuries. Of course. "But wars are generally fought with battle ships. Like most domains, our offensive powers used to be centralized in our ships, and since our fleet hasn't met any competitors in a while, we had little reason to utilize body armor for offense."
"An unforgivable oversight on our part," Zefironn adds with a smirk, and his tone implies he's directly quoting someone Tony would likely either run away from screaming, or marry on the spot.
Possibly both.
"Indeed," Ranina smiles fondly, and her furtive gaze lands on Tony again. "But then we heard about the Man of Iron, taking out an entire Command Center with a single blast from a suit—"
"That was the missile, not Iron Man," Tony is quick to interject, because as much as he would love to have the firepower of a nuke, he doubts he could take out an entire ship with a single blast, not even with his newly discovered nanotech. The arc reactor has an impressive output, but it's still a controlled stream of energy, not an unmitigated explosive force. To put such power into a single suit…
"Yes, well," the alien woman tilts her head in amusement, raising an eyebrow at Tony. "We didn't know this back then."
She motions for the soldier before anyone could reply, and the man raises a hand, fingers curving slightly as they form a cup around thin air.
A second later the room watches in fascination as five thin threads of blue energy shoot out from his fingertips, coming together in a tiny orb just above his palm. The sphere quickly grows into the size of a marble, the glowing blue field thinning until Tony can see the rapidly swirling black material underneath.
He distinctly hears as someone places the obvious question, but Tony doesn't need an answer because the black material is so completely opaque it looks like it's swallowing light, and it's not a material at all and Tony can feel his own heartbeat in his throat as Ranina looks at him like she knows that he knows and he realizes that… he does.
"I believe your scientists would call it a black hole."
Tony comes alarmingly close to calling pineapple.
…
"What did she tell you?" Fury demands the moment the Grilian ship is out of sight, disappearing into the atmosphere as the Avengers slowly trickle out of the Compound and join them on the wet grass. Looks like it rained a bit while they were inside.
Tony doesn't know how to answer, because while Ranina's parting words were reassuring, they were also a bit… personal, and he doesn't know if he could pass them down to the whole entourage without betraying her tiny show of trust.
"You look worried, Mr. Stark," she says to the inventor as the two of them fall in step on their way to the ship, the rest of the group in a heated discussion about future plans just a few feet ahead.
"Well, it's not every day the Mad Titan is coming for your planet, I think a little worry is perfectly warranted in—"
"No," Ranina interrupts, "I mean, you are worried about us."
Tony makes a decision. He gulps and turns towards the woman, not even bothering to hide the nervousness he feels – honestly seems like the better part of valor when faced with the possibility of making an enemy of the Communia's caliber.
"We can be awful people," he blurts out somewhat desperately, and the confusion on Ranina's face prompts him to continue, the words falling off his lips thick and fast. "That black hole you created in there, that could easily destroy our entire planet—"
"And your moon," the woman tries for levity, but Tony is on a roll because he needs to fix this before they leave, he needs to make sure these people won't turn on Earth, he needs to make her understand but he doesn't have the words and his voice is faltering because he's never been the one not having the words and holy mother of Newton is it terrifying.
"And our moon," he allows, "and we will do something to make you angry, you'll see, we're really good at that, it's kind of a hobby at this point really, and maybe it won't happen today or even tomorrow but it will happen eventually because—because we can be awful people,and we have no defense against something like singularity—"
"May I call you Anthony?"
That throws the billionaire off and he pauses, blinking away the tears he hasn't realized were gathering in his eyes. He doesn't even try to school his features into something more dignified than the sheer panic he's feeling – he will happily trade his dignity in for some sort of promise from the UGC that ensures they won't use their 'personal vessels' against Earth, no matter how badly humanity fucks this whole alliance thing up, as he just knows they will, why won't anyone else see that—
"Tony, please." He's only a little ashamed of the shaky quality of his voice.
"Alright. Call me Ranina then," she offers with a nod, "we don't use honorifics in most of our languages, and I admit it's a bit strange to hear my name in such form."
Her gentle smile slowly transforms into a frown when her attempt at putting the man at ease doesn't seem to work as well as she hoped, and she takes a step towards Tony, looking up at him with eyes so dark he can't discern the pupil from the iris, not even from up this close.
They remind him of the inky orb in the soldier's hand.
"Tony," her voice is earnest, and Tony finds himself holding his breath as he peers down at the petite woman. "The Communia has more than six hundred independent domains within its borders that are not eligible for a membership yet. Many of them score lower on the advancement scales than Terra."
Okay, so they are not a completely lost cause in the galactic evolutional race, but that's not exactly what Tony meant, and he needs to make sure—
"Do you really think your people will be the first to try and take advantage of their newfound position?"
Oh. Tony… has to admit he did not think about that.
How… strange. Maybe Pepper's right and he should sleep more.
"One particularly determined planet has threatened us with mass suicides if we didn't establish trade routes to their cities. Young domains are willing to go to great lengths if they think the potential reward is worth it. Threats, attacks, accusations, sacrifices of their own people… we've seen it all."
Ranina's smile is sad, like she's genuinely mourning the people who were lost to their own insanity, and Tony doesn't need to ask whether they ever gave in to such threats. You can't save someone who is holding their own life hostage.
"I can't promise you that our people will never get into an argument with yours, but we value human life above everything else, Tony," she says with a quiet resolve, and Tony knows she means both of them when she says 'human', and the relief that single word brings makes him feel weak in the knees. "We are not your enemy, and at the risk of sounding patronizing… you don't have the means to become ours."
Tony doesn't hug the woman as he finally allows himself a small smile, but he's man enough to admit that he comes embarrassingly close.
"Okay," he exhales on the hint of a chuckle, "we can do patronizing."
"Tony?"
Rhodey sounds concerned as he lays a hand on his shoulder, and Tony scrambles to compose a version of his conversation with Ranina that doesn't sound like 'yeah, feel free to hiss and claw at them, they still won't send us a tiny black hole for Christmas'.
They all saw the same thing in that meeting room that Tony did, and he remembers the faces when they realized just what exactly they were looking at, but while Tony does want to reassure them, he also doesn't want to give them the get out of jail free card which Ranina practically handed to him by the whole 'you're a young race and we don't kill children' speech. Not with the World Security Council's tendency to… exploit all available options, and while the UN has shown an admirable amount of integrity since they took over the management of the Avengers…
They are still people, and people are fallible. No need to push them towards the hill they will inevitably choose to die on anyway.
"She was just asking me about Iron Man. See if there were any similarities with their armor."
Fury looks to Natasha – his walking lie detector – for confirmation immediately, and the blatant display of mistrust irks Tony to no end. Not because they don't trust him now – Tony is lying after all – but because this had been the standard treatment for Tony Stark for years, even though he used to be all but ready to lay his life down on a word from any of these people. Stupid.
Romanoff looks at the inventor and Tony allows all his tells to surface in a petulant fit of rage: nose wrinkling, jaw tense, fingers tapping an impatient rhythm against his leg as he looks the woman in the eyes defiantly, and he's just about to work in a twitch under his left eye when the blonde surprises him by giving a tiny nod to Fury.
Oh great. The Black Widow's skillset is either slipping dangerously, or she will want to call in a favor for covering for Tony sometime later.
Thankfully Fury accepts Romanoff's assessment and they head back into the Compound, starting a whole new meeting that lasts well into the early morning hours. Most of the Avengers have long left when the UN members finally sign off from their virtual platform, and when Fury ushers Rogers and Romanoff out of the room with the not-so-subtle intention of a private talk, it's only Clarke, Ross, and Rhodey left at the table along with Tony.
"So," Clarke starts after suppressing a yawn, giving her eyes the well-deserved rub Tony knows she's been dying to perform for at least the last three hours. She chose not to wear make-up, lest the colors carry some sort of meaning for their guests, and she seems incredibly grateful for that decision to her past self right about now. "Just how fucked do you reckon we are?"
The swearing, while not her usual style, is quite understandable after the day they've just had, but what throws Tony a bit is that the question is addressed to him.
"You've been here the whole time, same as me," amused, Tony raises an eyebrow in slight challenge, and Clarke doesn't disappoint.
"Your talk with Ranina seemed… intense," she offers, not even pretending to believe his previous bullshit about idle chit-chat of body armor. "I'm not asking for details, just your assessment. I know what the Schwarzschild radius is." And isn't the woman full of pleasant surprises. "They could chew us up and spit us out without so much as a warning. So, how fucked do you think we are?"
Tony finds all three of the remaining attendants looking at him with unmasked curiosity and so much hope it nearly hurts, and realizes they are willing to take him at his word, no questions asked. The blind faith is… a refreshing experience.
He lets out a long sigh, and decides that if there are three people in this whole mess who deserve the reassurance, they are Emanuela, Kenny, and his Rhodey Bear.
"Surprisingly non-fucked."
He pauses to gather his thoughts, but a quick glance at the clock shows its well past five a.m. and they are all exhausted and not idiots so he decides to skip the embellishment.
"It's not Iron Man. It's not the Avengers, or the military, or SHIELD, or any other organization we can come up with before Thanos gets here. It's the UGC."
He looks at Clarke, willing her to believe his words at least half as much as he believes them right now.
"They are our endgame now."
…
Tony oversees the construction work in the Compound personally, and makes avoiding the Avengers into an art form in the process, with the combined help of FRIDAY and Rhodey.
They clear a few dozen acres right across the main building, which might be a tad bit more than what the UGC has asked for, but Tony won't let two hundred people be crammed into the size they specified, not when space is something the Compound has in abundance. The water pipes they are currently laying down could probably service a smaller city, but if water pipes are the only thing Tony can provide them with in exchange for humanity's continuous survival, then he will damn well provide the best water pipes Earth has to offer.
Communication with the UGC has become much more frequent since they sent their delegation off with a UN-approved StarkPad last week: it takes the aliens all of half an hour to figure out signal forwarding and setting up separate channels for themselves, and reactions on Earth vary among relief, worry, and annoyance when the next batch of data they receive contains a full rundown on both the UGC's population and its military, completed with charts and statistics.
Relief, because it's hard to imagine anyone winning against sixteen million active soldiers equipped with black hole creating vessels; worry, because it's hard to imagine anyone winning against half a million active soldiers equipped with black hole creating vessels; and annoyance, because their tiny blue planet has apparently been deemed so utterly harmless that military customs and anatomical knowledge on species living within the Communia is now apparently information of no consequence.
SHIELD must feel particularly butthurt over that last one, Tony imagines.
The inventor himself is overjoyed with the detailed charts on the no less than seven hundred and twenty-six 'human species' right down to their DNA sequences, and spends two days with no breaks just browsing the data before he comes across a familiar depiction of a man and a woman with long limbs and blue lines running along their skin.
In retrospect, his first message to Ranina is born more out of poor impulse control than necessity, but he doesn't have time to panic before his 'You have OPEN NEURAL PATHWAYS on the surface of your SKIN?' is met with an equally unprofessional 'Don't knock it until you've tried it', which somehow ends with Tony mumbling "issues with idioms my ass", and snickering himself to sleep not ten minutes later.
That first exchange doesn't exactly set the tone for his brief interactions with the woman, but Tony still finds that sleep comes just a little bit easier the following days.
All in all, the world is looking surprisingly non-bleak a week after the summit from Tony's perspective – so non-bleak that not even the fact that he's starting to feel actually hopeful about their collective future manages to tip him off before things take a gut wrenchingly sudden left turn.
"Hi Tony."
Rogers is not an unexpected visitor at the work site – Tony knows that Barton spotted him from the roof the moment he stepped out of the car. He was hoping to talk to Rhodey before the news made it to the rest of the Avengers, but he's not going to pass up an interaction with the supersoldier when it can kill him two birds with one stone. Platypus will understand.
"Rogers," he doesn't look up from his StarkPad where he reviews the latest updates the construction workers have made to his plans, and hurries to cut off the invitation to game night, movie night, or whatever team building event that Rogers has no doubt came to personally deliver.
"I'm moving back into the Compound."
It hasn't been an easy decision. Moving his workshop will be a hassle, and the furthest he will be able to get away from his old team will be the empty living quarters on the opposite side of the building, but Tony feels he'd be doing Earth a great disservice if he left the Communia Forces alone with people who tend to… skew their own impression of reality, when it doesn't seem to fit their truth.
Sure, his feelings about his personal safety among said people will have to be put on the back burner, but it's just a year. He can do a year.
And besides, the Tower is just a short flight away if he ever needs to sleep somewhere without worrying about… not waking up.
Yeah. Tony can do a year.
"Oh," Rogers sounds just as delighted as Tony imagined he would be. "That's grea—"
"Not because of the Avengers."
Tony itches to break the silence that follows, but he wants to let the man come to his own conclusion, and Rogers doesn't disappoint.
"It's because of the soldiers, isn't it? You want to… keep an eye on them."
Tony hums something that could be taken as an acknowledgement, and doesn't correct the Captain. Better let him think it's the Grilians' effect on the Earthlings he's concerned about, and not the other way around.
"I can understand that," Rogers says, and Tony hears him shuffling his feet slightly. "I'm… I'm really glad you'll be here Tony, no matter the reason."
God, the man sounds so earnest that Tony can't not believe him, and isn't that the worst part?
Rogers has made certain things rather clear in his brilliantly crafter non-apology letter.
One: while he's sorry for the way things ended, he doesn't regret what he's done (hopefully one day you can understand), and two: it's not forgiveness he wants – it's a clean slate (locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't).
The man shatters Tony's sternum with ridiculous ease, and he thinks he can get a full tabula rasa if he's just polite and yielding and patient enough. He seems to think that not rocking the boat will eventually lead them back to how they used to be before Siberia, and Tony…
Tony just doesn't have the energy left to explain why standing idly as a teammate is being choked by another teammate is not a good place to be going back to. Coming to terms with that realization was taxing enough when he was doing it all by himself – he doesn't think he has it in himself to push someone else all the way there, not with said person kicking and screaming through the whole ordeal.
"Tony, I was thinking… maybe we could—"
Tony is actually thankful for the alarm that blares to life across the Compound in that moment – he's so relieved to have escaped the conversation that it takes him exactly three seconds to recognize the meaning of the sound.
"Suit up, Iron Man," is all Rogers offers before he takes off in a run towards the main building, and Tony has no intention of following the man's order – not with Iron Man being a backup only option for the Avengers – until FRIDAY catches his attention by speaking through his watch.
"Boss, there is a situation above Greenwich Village that you should see."
Greenwich Village. The Wizard.
Shit.
Tony is the first on site – well, third, if he counts the Wizard and his Sidekick – arriving just in time for two figures being… beamed down onto the street that the giant hovering ship casually destroyed with its propulsion alone.
"Hear me, and rejoice. You are about to die at the hands of the children of Thanos."
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
This isn't supposed to be happening yet. They should still have time – an entire year, Tony thinks somewhat hysterically – before this is supposed to happen. They should have time for the UGC soldiers to set up base at the Compound, time for Tony to perfect his control over his nanotech, and definitely more than enough time to come up with a backup plan in case Quill highballed his predictions by a few months, but not by an entire goddamn year—
"Be thankful…"
The nearest UGC settlement is thirty-five minutes away. Warp tech would get them here in under four, but the initial acceleration and the deceleration after exiting the warp bubble still takes time – time that Tony is unsure if they have right now.
"…that your meaningless lives…"
A lot can happen in thirty-five minutes.
"We need to send a distress signal," Tony says into the comm line, only to be immediately shot down by Fury's voice.
"No. Our sensors are not picking up any other living beings on that ship."
Yes, because that's how they measure danger after witnessing the artificial creation of honest to god singularity. By number of living beings.
"And what, two people can't be invading a planet now? Have you seen what the UGC vessels can do?"
"…are now contributed to the balance—"
"It's just two of them Tony. We can deal with this." Steve sounds so confident that Tony wants to believe him nearly as much as he wants to punch him in his perfect fucking teeth. "We've dealt with worse."
Famous last words, Tony thinks bitterly, before lifting his faceplate and walking all over Squidward's villain monologue.
"I'm sorry, Earth is closed today…"
…
Not only can they not deal with them, they also have not, in fact, dealt with worse.
Five minutes into the fight and the Wizards are unconscious, the Hulk refuses to come out and play, and the Avengers are all in various states of incapacitated, with Lang being the worst after Squidward stops him from going hyper-sized by tearing the helmet off his head mid-transformation.
Tony doesn't think bleeding from your eyeballs is a typical side-effect of using the Ant-Man suit.
The saddest part is, they had a chance. Tony saw so many near misses during those five minutes that could have ended up with the Avengers being victorious – only for the aliens to shoot every single one of those opportunities to hell, often with a simple flick of a wrist.
Wilson is the first to go down, which is a damn shame, considering he is their only aerial support besides Tony, with War Machine still not cleared for active duty and Vision somewhere in Asia on some soul searching quest or another.
The Sidekick Wizard very nearly gets the verbally challenged alien with a portal, but Barton chooses that moment to fall to his would-be-death from a building when Squidward sends Tony crashing through its support beams, and the portal is quickly redirected to catch the archer.
Wanda shows up in all her red tinted glory, and the inventor experiences a nauseating moment of relief – something he never thought he'd associate with the woman – until she makes the mistake of going after the bigger perceived threat, only for her powers to be brushed off by the telekinetic as if they were literal mist.
"Your powers are inconsequential compared to mine," says Mewtwo, and Rogers ends up having to unwrap Maximoff from a billboard before she stops breathing altogether.
Squidward proves to be pretty much untouchable, the Mark L seems to be the only contender capable of withstanding blows from the angry giant, and Tony quickly finds himself in the unenviable position of being the last man standing.
"FRI, where's the Spider-kid?" he asks in a breathless voice as he fends off an attack from Giant Angry, while trying to simultaneously keep Mewtwo from dragging the Wizard off to La La Land with frequent repulsor blasts aimed his way.
He won't be able to keep engaging the both of them for much longer.
"At a safe distance to your left, Boss. Unconscious but breathing."
Good. Breathing is good, and considering their enemies, unconscious is not necessarily bad either. God knows the kid shouldn't be here in the first place.
"Fury," he opens the comm line again, using the best authoritative voice he can manage while he concentrates on generating a repulsor cannon to prevent Mewtwo from reaching the Wizard, whom Tony carted away into the sewers as a last ditch effort at protecting the Time Stone.
"Rogers is back on his feet—"
Well, fuck that.
"Seriously? Do we all need to start bleeding from our eyeballs before we admit defeat? Call the UGC!" the inventor practically screams into the line, only to be met with the calm voice of a man who's clearly not looking at the same scene Tony does.
"Their ship can be taken out with a—"
He doesn't hear the rest of that sentence, because FRIDAY makes the executive decision of taking him at his word and opens a new line, dialing Ranina.
Tony will have to buy FRIDAY her very own human for Christmas, if he survives this.
"The police might have a few choice words about that, Boss," his girl offers before the line connects to the UGC diplomat.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Stark?"
Tony wheezes in reply to Ranina's question, taking a moment to being slammed into the ground before his brain is ready to supply the words.
"Wha… what happened to Tony?"
Okay, not the right words perhaps, but Tony's just glad he can still speak at all. Not all of them are in possession of that luxury at this point.
Ranina, bless her, doesn't need more than his tone to recognize the situation, reading the room with terrific accuracy from that one sentence alone.
"Is this a distress call?"
"Well, there's distress involved, lots and lots of distress, so much distress you wouldn't—"
"A nearby ship has been redirected your way," Ranina switches to the sort of cold professionalism Tony would envy, had he the brain cells to spare for such frivolities. Controlling nanotech with your mind is hard. "Four minutes. Can you hold on for that long?"
He sighs and thanks whatever deities normal people believe in that his suit makes him immune to electrocution. Answering Ranina would be much more difficult right this second otherwise.
"Don't have much of a choice, do I?"
Mewtwo makes a racket a few streets away when he finally finds the Wizard, blasting him upwards through the concrete of the road and directing his unconscious form towards the ship.
Four minutes. Alright then. Tony can do four minutes.
He summons his Zero cannons, and in a fit of inspiration he switches up the ammo of liquid nitrogen to nanites, figuring that if the alien's telekinetic powers would work on them, Tony would long be a bloody smear on the side of some random building.
Then he opens fire at Strange's flying form, effectively sealing him up in nanites.
He feels just as surprised as their enemies appear to be when the cocoon falls to the ground a few feet away from them, and refuses to lift back up on Mewtwo's silent command.
"You," said alien turns to Tony, and proceeds to bury him in a small portion of Central Park in an impressive fit of rage. Parks and Rec will love the new decor, Tony bets. "Give me the Stonekeeper."
"Such a one track mind with you, baby face – and hey, where do you iron your face by the way, because I would file a complai—"
His mindless rambling is interrupted by Romanoff's unexpected cry in his ear, and Tony feels a teeny-tiny bit of vindication at someone finally sounding at least half as scared as he feels.
"Tony, watch out for Strange!"
The hammer enthusiast behemoth has apparently started on the impromptu cocoon while he was busy with their telekinetic friend, and Natasha's words evoke the petrifying realization that Tony needs to keep both aliens occupied when he can barely hold his own against one, and he is completely, utterly, frighteningly alone.
Whoever of the Avengers is left standing has no chance of rejoining the fight, not in protective gear that might as well be made of paper considering the strength of their opponents, and Tony should have hooked his Legionaries up to reactors days ago, he could be having eighty suits flying to their rescue right now if only he wasn't so stupid—
"Ebony Maw," comes an utterly bored, feminine voice from somewhere above Tony's shoulder, and when both Mewtwo and Giant Angry turn towards the newcomer, Tony realizes this is his chance. He can't keep engaging both of them, but if he could at least temporarily incapacitate the larger one…
"You are trespassing on the territory of the Unitary Galactic—"
Tony charges at Giant Angry with full speed, engaging his foot clamps the moment he manages to pin the creature down, and spends a good minute restlessly pummeling the alien into a crater with the suit's battering rams.
Giant Angry doesn't lose consciousness, but he doesn't get up immediately either.
"…Communia."
He turns around to see five people looking at him with varying degrees of surprise, four of them decked out in black uniforms, the woman with the unimpressed tone wearing a white jacket and—
Oh.
Has it really been four minutes already?
…
Mewtwo and his big bro don't get to have a hearing. One of the soldiers points two fingers at the latter, a thin strand of blue shooting out of the fingertips of his only half-formed gauntlet, and the giant simply… disappears. Along with literally everything else that happens to exist in a twelve feet radius, ground included.
The woman in white – off-white, Tony notes upon closer inspection – spares the soldier a mildly scolding glare, then proceeds to make short work of the telekinetic in a similar fashion.
"Please remain calm," is the last thing Ebony Maw has the misfortune of hearing in his life, and the utterly bone chilling, detached quality of that sentence will haunt Tony's dreams for weeks to come, if he has to make a wild guess.
The woman causes absolutely no property damage.
Ranina is just stepping off her ship when Tony lands at the Compound, having led the Communia soldiers back after medevac took care of the injured on site and the giant alien ship has been safely expelled from their atmosphere. The Spider-kid was already up and about by the time the paramedics arrived, and it looked like Maximoff was in the process of regaining consciousness too, last Tony saw.
Lang… did not look so hot when he was carted off. Tony's already pinged Dr. Cho and set FRIDAY on updating him about the man's condition.
"Why didn't you call us sooner?" Ranina aims the question at Tony, but while the words are disapproving, her expression betrays the worry underneath.
He doesn't have a chance to answer before Fury appears with a wild looking Ross in tow, and Tony barely has time to brace himself before Rhodey throws himself onto the inventor, encasing him in a bone crushing hug.
"We thought we had it under control—" Fury starts in a placating tone, and yeah, no. That's not happening. Tony's anger flares at the sheer idiocy they have committed by not calling in the attack sooner, when it has been made very clear that they have free protection against everything related to Thanos – up to and including his goddamn stupid children.
"We didn't wanna be seen weaker than we already are in the eyes of people who can wipe the floor with us, not when the alternative was losing only a few human lives and a time altering stone to the murderous space Titan who already has twoof those pesky things anyway," Tony fires off, ignoring Fury's indignant objections as he looks Ranina straight in the eyes. "That's why we didn't call you sooner."
His righteous tirade is cut somewhat short by the confused expression that Ranina shares with Lady Execution, the latter stepping forward and inserting herself into the conversation.
"Thanos is already in possession of two Infinity Stones?"
Shocked silence follows the question.
Tony, as usual, is the first to recover, which… may or may not be for the best, considering the rant that leaves his mouth next.
"Uh. Didn't we mention that? Why didn't we mention that? Did we think you knew? How come you didn't know? Quill knew."
Lady Execution looks deeply unimpressed, and Tony wishes he didn't know what the color of her stupid jacket means in terms of firepower and rank. Why one of the three – three, in their entire army – off-white vessels was casually chilling so close to Earth at the time of the attack, Tony isn't sure he wants to know.
He really needs to stop treating the UGC data charts as bedtime stories.
"The only information we have on Thanos comes from the survivors of some external domains whose population he halved," Ranina takes the lead of the conversation back, though that doesn't stop Lady Execution from staring at Tony with that unnervingly dead expression. "None of their descriptions mentioned anything resembling an Infinity Stone, so far."
Huh. Grief stricken people not paying attention to their attacker's choices in jewelry. Imagine that.
"Does that… change things?" Ross sounds so adorably naïve to Tony's ears that he almost laughs, then feels immediately ashamed of his own reaction because Ross is not the enemy – nobody here is the enemy, but apparently his brain has yet to re-acquaintance itself with that concept amidst all the slowly dissipating adrenaline.
"A little," Ranina dismisses the man's concerns with a graceful wave of her hand, like two artifacts with infinite power and the potential to warp reality is of no concern to someone like her. "But I'm sure we can come up with a way to handle that."
The conversation doesn't stop, but FRIDAY catches his attention by sending a tiny vibration through his watch: Helen has just arrived to the hospital, both Wizards have been cleared by the paramedics, and Tony realizes Rhodey's arm has never left his shoulders and they just came dangerously close to losing even before Thanos arrived and his knees are getting wobbly and they very nearly lost.
The next time he opens his eyes he's sitting on the ground in what he recognizes as a windowless conference room in the Compound, with Rhodey's collar pushed into his left eye and a strong hand drawing lazy circles on his back.
They sit there for a long time.
…
Ross, Pepper and his Sourpatch seem way too enthused with the idea of Tony developing a universal translator – suspiciously enthused, really, with how fiercely they push the topic every time they catch Tony during the following days, but he… chooses not to question it.
He also chooses not to question why one of them seems to magically turn up at the door of his freshly relocated workshop every few hours, always equipped with food and a nearly believable excuse of SI, Avengers, or UGC related business.
If Tony chooses to spend four days straight on developing a prototype and resolutely not addressing the fact that Pepper and Kenny don't even live in the Compound, it's not because his hands start shaking every time he hears Lang's voice echo through the corridors, joking and laughing like Tony hasn't almost killed him by listening to Fury and Rogers instead of calling the UGC at the first sight of—
"Boss, the rendering is done. Which language should we upload first?"
Tony shakes his head and blinks a few times to clear his vision.
"Why choose just the one when you spent a day decrypting every language on the UGC Know-It-All? Upload all of them."
Storage space is not an issue after all, and the translator doesn't even need to be implanted – Tony has to shave only a tiny spot over his right ear for a comfortable fit. It should be barely noticeable under the hair, unless someone is looking for it.
He doesn't hesitate in attaching the small coin sized disc to its designated place, although he has to admit he has some doubts about its effectiveness. Four days were not enough time to figure out how to push new knowledge into someone's brain without having to worry about physical damage, but it was enough time for him to develop a system that will stimulate already existing neural pathways. The device – which he nicknamed RANINA as retaliation to the woman's earlier reaction – will not allow him to speak a new language, but it should allow him to understand.
Ranina's been the epitome of professionalism in their text messages since she went back to RC 4706 – the closest UGC domain they have yet to come up with a proper name for – right up to the point where Tony told her about his new pet project, to which she replied with two dozen cry-laughing smileys and a picture of Jimmy Fallon captioned "GOOD LUCK WITH THAT".
They really shouldn't have let the aliens touch the internet.
To: Ranina
Yes, well, and you're short for your race.
From: Ranina
Is being called short considered an insult on Terra?
To: Ranina
…Yes?
From: Ranina
What a harsh environment that must be for someone of your stature.
To: Necessary Evil
Well played, Smurfette. Well played.
Tony kind of wishes SHIELD's bugs were still good enough to catch some of their messaging – some poor intern would be having kittens over reporting that to Fury.
"Alright FRI, hit me with some…" Tony rattles around his brain for a language he likely wouldn't understand a single word of, and comes up with: "uh, Estonian?"
"Kas ma tellin õhtusöögiks Tai toitu?"
Tony doesn't recognize the words by their sound, but he gets the sudden mental image of him and Pepper sitting on the couch with two decent portions of Pad Thai on their laps, and he remembers calling a pizzeria at night, and dinners from his childhood, and opening the door to a delivery boy, and watching himself in the mirror, and at least twenty dishes frequently made by his mother all at once.
He allows himself a slight grin.
"Nah, baby girl. I feel like Chinese today."
…
The building is magnificent.
It's more glass than walls and it's forty-seven floors tall and Tony loves every glorious inch of it wholeheartedly, and they bring it in a box.
The ship the soldiers arrive with is significantly larger than the ones they used for their previous visits, though still not as imposing as the one that Mewtwo parked above New York just two weeks ago. It's shape and surface reminds Tony of the razor clams he used to collect when Jarvis and Anna took him to the beach as a kid, and a quick sneak-peak inside as Zefironn leads the soldiers down the ramp makes it clear that this is not a cargo ship, if the wide rows of seats and a total lack of anything else in its belly is any indication.
Tony watches from the main building's terrace as the soldiers investigate the site that was prepped for them, Ross showing them around the pipes and Clarke bombarding Ranina and the orange skinned giant – Hestaf – with offers of help, should they need a few hands at setting up their barracks.
The sheer diversity of the group makes for quite the sight: Tony spots no less than seven people with tails of various colors and sizes, two with extra ears, at least twenty with horns, and one person covered from head to toe in soft looking pink fur he will definitely bury his hands in at some point today, even if it will cost him an arm.
Only about a quarter of them could pass for a baseline human in both features and coloring, and FRIDAY's readings inform him that around thirty percent of them are women. Their uniforms range from black to smoke grey - with the majority in the former – topping off with Lady Execution sporting her humble 'Fraction Commander' ensemble.
A fraction of little more than five million soldiers. No biggie.
They don't linger for long before they politely refuse both the UN's and the Avengers' help, and carry a moderately sized box into the middle of their designated space, then close the ramp of the ship and set to work.
The first things the box yields appear to be tiny versions of walls and glass panels, each barely the size of a keychain, and Tony sees both Ross and Clarke jump when the first panel expands, easily covering the size of a basketball court in polished marble.
The Pym Particles are clearly not lost on these people, and Tony may or may not squeal just a little when the first sliding door is put into place with less than ten seconds of active effort.
It's quick work from then on, and Tony spends the whole day sitting in the sunlight and watching in awe as the soldiers lift and push and weld walls and doors and bathtubs into place with nanites and lasers and things he cannot even begin to identify, and it's beautiful.
It's like watching a LEGO Hilton being built by flying ants, he muses idly.
His RANINA – the Really Augmented Non-Invasive Neural Adapter – seems to work wonders too, and once Tony's brain gets used to the stream of images the soldier's distant chattering evokes, he start picking up bits and pieces of conversation, getting more and more accurate each time a word is repeated and put into context.
"…don't abandon/escape/leave that, it will slip/crawl/freeze outside/away…"
"…stand around full/whole sun/day/today…"
"…very green but it has/owns some allure/face/beauty…"
"…leave that outside for today, we have to switch/replace it to the green one tomorrow…"
FRIDAY tells him he's exposed to a mixture of at least five languages throughout the day, so the fact that he cannot hear a single word he can't immediately place by the time the top floor is being sealed off makes for one unusually happy Tony Stark.
"A bit of a stretch to call them barracks with that size, don't you think?"
Well, happy Tony Stark doesn't usually last longer than a few hours at a time anyway, so he's not particularly surprised when Romanoff poops on his private party by sneaking past the door he very clearly remembers locking after himself.
He makes a noise of agreement as the woman leans on the railing just a bit closer to him than what Tony would find comfortable, because despite the blatant disregard of his 'I don't want to talk to you' vibes, Romanoff is not wrong.
Each floor seemed to have been divided into six living quarters, all equipped with their own facilities, and easily rivaling Tony's current accommodations both in comfort and size. He spotted a lot of glossy finishes and chrome linings – the aliens decidedly build with style, and he can't help but approve, seeing how he absolutely adores shiny things.
His next SI building will come with a few unexpected changes in its design, that's for sure.
"How have you been, Tony?"
And here they go.
"Let's not pretend you're here because you want to hear about my wellbeing," he replies without inflection, not taking his eyes off the shiny new building towering over the Compound.
"I do," she gives a small pause to see if her words would get a reaction, then heaves a disappointed sigh when they don't. "Last week was…"
"Eventful?" he offers when she trails off again, in a vain attempt at rushing through the conversation.
"Terrifying."
Tony turns his head in surprise. The woman is looking at him with searching eyes, but he can't tell whether the distress etched onto her features is real or just a façade. He's not sure if he's looking at Natalie Rushman, or Natasha Romanoff.
Hell, he's not even sure he knows who Natasha Romanoff is.
"We couldn't even touch them, Tony. Steve's shield didn't even make a dent. The way you fought…" she trails off into a minute of meaningful silence, then reaches into her pocket and fishes out a StarkPhone. "Look. You're still trending."
She shows him footage from last week: Iron Man being thrown through buildings, taking hits from an alien several times his size, and then getting up without as much as a scratch only to plummet Giant Angry into the ground with strength that even Tony has to admit looks quite impressive from his current vantage point. Commenters beyond the video are still cheering him on, as if it's a live feed.
It takes Tony an embarrassingly long minute to realize that his eyes are not even on the screen.
"Where did you get that?"
"Get what?" Natasha, bless her, looks genuinely confused.
"The phone. It's not standard issue." Obviously. His commercial line doesn't project holograms – he has yet to figure out a way to mass produce that technology at an affordable price. "Where did you steal it from?"
"I did not steal it," she retorts, all righteous indignation.
"Really, you know, that's funny because the only way to—"
"I didn't come here to fight with you, Tony," she attempts to nip the fight in the bud by discarding the accusation altogether, and Tony sees a bit red around the edges because god, he hates the ease she still dismisses him with – it makes him feel hollow and small and like he's not even there. Like his words are worthless. "I'm not your enemy. You need to stop treating me like one."
"Okay, first of all, I don't need to do anything, especially not things you tell me to do, and second of all, there are lots of degrees between enemy and friend—"
"I'm sorry," she blurts abruptly, schooling her expression to convey an appropriate level of guilt, and Tony wants so very badly to buy into that apology, but then she makes an aborted motion of reaching out for his arm and continues: "I'm sorry for leaving."
The inventor heaves a frustrated sigh. Natasha's betrayal might have hurt even worse than that of Rogers'. She agreed with Tony about the necessity of the Accords: she said they couldn't keep shifting the blame for casualties and property damage forever, she said she believed in accountability, and yet…
She abandoned their cause without a second thought when she felt like the fight was rapidly coming down to Captain America versus Tony Stark.
Tony never even stood a chance.
"That apology is a farce and we both know it." Of course they do – it's meant to be one, after all. Any reply that isn't outright forgiveness is meant to push him back into his inescapable role of being 'difficult' and 'immature' and an asshole in general, and Tony is sick of being treated like he's fucking defective.
He turns back towards Hilton Alien, clenching his teeth in an attempt to stop more words from escaping. They would be coated in bitterness and hurt and he doesn't want to give Romanoff the satisfaction of hearing them.
The spy doesn't acknowledge his last statement, but then again, he doesn't expect her to – doing so would imply he said something worthy of acknowledgement, and they can't have that.
"I'm glad you're okay," she offers instead, and Tony wonders where this conversation is headed exactly. "Scott was very… touch-and-go, for a while there."
Yeah, and Tony is not touching that one with a ten foot pole.
They lapse into a lengthy silence, and he's just considering letting Romanoff win by walking away first when Lady Executioner flies through the window of what presumably is her own suite now, and starts fiddling with something near the top of the tower. Tony finds it irritatingly fascinating that they don't need to summon their full armor in order to make use if its functions. He really needs to start looking into flying without fully formed gauntlets.
"I talked to her a bit earlier," Romanoff breaks the quiet with an uncharacteristically hesitant voice, pointing towards Lady Execution's general whereabouts with her chin. "She seems to be very impressed with your suit."
Tony feels a biting chill crawl up his spine.
"Is she now."
"Well," Natasha goes on with a light smirk meant to put him at ease, ignoring the minefield she's just stepped onto. "To quote her, she's impressed that nanotech even exists at a planet inhabited by such primitive life forms," she finishes with a chuckle.
Tony's mind is suddenly jumping through hoops, and he feels bile rise in his throat when he comes to a conclusion. He straightens up to look at the woman.
"You want a suit." Romanoff doesn't react, keeping eye contact without as much as a flinch, and Tony's blood boils. "Get lost."
"We could have supported you—"
"Now, Romanoff."
"The UGC supplies vessels for every soldier, and they seem to be—"
Tony takes a step back from the railing.
"Listen to reason, Tony," her tone is kind as she touches his arm, and Tony idly wonders how well she will take to being thrown up on in a few seconds, if she doesn't get out of his face. "We couldn't even get close to those guys without risking a broken neck. Nobody's asking you to weaponize us, but a protective layer of nanites—"
"We're done here," he tries once again to step back while doing his best to sound confident, but his voice is shaky and there's not enough air on this terrace, who even designed this place to contain so little air when he can't—
"You could prevent another Scott—"
No. No no no—
"Mr. Stark?"
Ross appears at the door with his expression being the picture of innocence, takes in the tense lines of both Tony's and Romanoff's body language, and immediately starts backing out.
"Uh, sorry, I just brought you some paperwork about the changes made to the Compound, but I… um, I will just come back later—"
Romanoff saves Tony from the indignation of begging Ross to stay, and he hates the small mercy almost as much as he hates her right now.
"No need Mr. Ross, I was just leaving," she graces Kenny with her trademark Black Widow smile, then turns back to the inventor to deliver her parting words. "Think about it, Tony."
"I won't."
But god, he already does, doesn't he. 'You could prevent another Scott…'
"You had some papers for me to sign?" Tony extends a hand after a minute of unfocused staring, ready to be handed pretty much anything because he has never been so grateful for paperwork in his life, and Ross has definitely earned a pass on the 'no handing stuff to the billionaire' rule. Just this once.
"What?" Kenny sounds confused, prompting Tony to look at the dossier in his hands. "Oh, these? No, this is just…" he trails off, and Tony can see him contemplate lying. He knows the man won't go through with it probably sooner than Ross does. "Okay, so… FRIDAY suggested checking out the view from the terrace." He pauses to clear his throat. "Urgently. These are just budget reports."
Not the picture of innocence, after all. Also, Tony doesn't deserve FRIDAY.
"They will want me to make 'protective' suits, won't they. Now that the UGC serves as a grand example for their arguments."
He doesn't know why he bothers asking for confirmation. He already knows the answer.
"There are… talks," Ross replies, and the man sounds so uncomfortable that Tony immediately wants to give him an excuse to leave, but he is also selfish and he wants someone else to say it out loud, someone other than Romanoff, just once. Maybe it will sound better, coming from someone like Kenny.
"Would you?"
Ross hesitates but he doesn't pretend to misunderstand the question.
"It will be pretty much my job to convince you, you realize," he says with a heavy dose of preemptive regret in his voice.
Tony catches the man's gaze, infusing his next words with as much gravity as his shoulders are being weighted down with.
"Would you?"
Ross is silent for a long while. Well, a few minutes in reality, more likely, but it seems like a very long time for Tony.
"I… saw the footage from Saturday," the liaison says tentatively, and Tony remembers that Ross only arrived to the Compound by the time things were mostly wrapped up in Greenwich Village. "What your new suit can do is…" he trails off again, then takes a deep breath and surprises Tony with the steely certainty of his tone. "No. No, I wouldn't."
Huh. Not quite the answer he was expecting.
Still, somehow that… doesn't seem to help.
"Safest hands are our own, was it?" the inventor asks no one in particular, ignoring Ross' worried gaze as he breaks into laughter.
God, he's such a hypocrite.