Hello all!
Well, I've finally had the inspiration to continue with this series. I had been trying to write the first chapter of Age of Ultron for the last couple of weeks but it just wasn't working for me. But yesterday, I finally felt like I could return to this series and continue writing it! I think writing Iron Man 3 in the space of 6 weeks took a lot out of me. I probably needed the creative break from this series completely. Eight weeks later, I finally feel I can make progress!
Chapter One of Age of Ultron is coming along quite well now. I've finally started the reactions to the movie after a few important conversations at the start, so progress should be made.
At the moment, because I will be going back to full working duties from next month (which includes late shifts and weekend work which I hadn't been doing in my current return to work), it will probably delay things a bit in my writing. Plus the UK seems to be going through the third wave of Covid-19 and there is no sign of shielding recommencing. Currently, I am on annual leave from work for a few weeks so I have a few weeks at home now. Age of Ultron probably won't start posting until September at the earliest. The last chapter of this story will be published on the 18th of July, so it is looking likely I will not post the next one until September though I haven't decided on a firm date for September yet. I may push it back to October as I am booked to go on holiday at the end of September and I won't have any internet connection so there would be a two-week break in postings if I started in September... but we'll see how much of Age of Ultron is written by the time I finish posting this story.
The final decision on Age of Ultron posting date will be made when the last chapter to IM3 is :)
Just wanted to keep you all updated :)
I hope you all enjoy this chapter!
Understanding the Real Hero: Iron Man 3
Eight
They'd taken the speedboat Trevor had mentioned. Tony and Rhodey are planning their next move. Tony calculated they were about 20 minutes from where Pepper was. Rhodey noted they also had to figure out this Vice President thing. Tony agreed and said that he was calling the Vice President right now from the stolen mobile Rhodey had taken from the guard earlier.
Steve frowned. "But if the Vice President is involved, do you want to alert him?"
Rhodey nodded, explaining the reasoning why. "Because we want him to do specific things, if he doesn't then we have the evidence to back up our claims he is a traitor and under the payroll of Killian."
"That… makes sense," agreed Steve. "Smart."
"If he's involved, he'll simply allow Air Force One to continue on its journey. What he doesn't realise, is that I am recording this conversation," grinned Tony mirthlessly. "He also believes Killian will succeed in taking the both of us out. He isn't worried about being discovered because he doesn't believe he will be."
Clint snorted. "That's remiss of him. He shouldn't be underestimating you."
Tony agreed. "Good thing he does. We actually believed the Vice President was another target but when we realised the President's plane hadn't been alerted, we knew he was involved in the plot to kill the President."
The Vice President is seen walking around the White House where a Christmas celebration is ongoing. He answers the call and welcomes Tony back to the land of the living. Tony informs him they believe he is about to be drawn into the Mandarin campaign and that they had to get the Vice President somewhere safe as soon as possible.
The Vice President tells Tony that he is about to eat honey-roast ham, surrounded by the Agency's finest whilst the President is on Air Force One with Colonel Rhodes. He thinks they are good there.
Rhodey intervenes and reveals himself, telling the Vice President that the Iron Patriot is being used as a Trojan horse and that there is a plan to take out the President somehow and they had to immediately alert that plane.
"Which he doesn't…" guessed Steve.
"Bingo," added Tony.
The Vice President says he is onto it and he will have security lock it down and if need be they can have F-22's in the air in thirty seconds. He thanks the Colonel for his information.
Rhodey and Tony end the call. A security aid asks the Vice President if everything is ok. He says it is and the Vice President walks over to a little girl who is sitting in a wheelchair. He kisses her on the head and tells her he loves her. As the camera pans down, they see the girl is missing a part of her leg.
"Oh…" Wanda's eyes widened as she saw the girl's missing lower leg. "That's why he's helping Killian because he wants Extremis to be used on her once it is stable?"
"He does," replied Rhodey. "We honestly believed he was supposed to be helping us. But he didn't cover his tracks too well. The fact he didn't alert the plane was a big give away. The surviving crew members confirmed this for us, which the Vice President reiterated when he was arrested a few hours later."
The President in the process of walking towards Air Force One. Iron Patriot lands behind the President. President Ellis salutes 'Colonel Rhodes' stating that he was glad he could make it and he felt safer already. The President boards the plane with Savin masquerading as Rhodey inside the Iron Patriot armour.
"The plane shouldn't have been allowed to leave," mooted Bucky. "They were flying right into Killian's hands."
On the speedboat, Rhodey says they had to make a decision: they either save the President or Pepper as they couldn't do both. JARVIS intervenes and says he has an update from Malibu and the cranes have finally arrived, and the cellar doors are being cleared as we speak.
Tony is charging the suit with a large battery on the speedboat. "And what about the suit I'm wearing?"
"The armour is now at 92%," confirmed JARVIS.
Tony noted that was going to have to do.
Sam threw Tony a crafty look. "You've got an idea which means you do not have to choose to rescue just one, right?"
Tony inclined his head, grinning. "Yes. Why do you think I built all those suits?"
"But you didn't have your suits anymore when Fury got in contact and asked you to help us hunt down HYDRA. You had to design and build a new suit…" remembered Steve, glancing at Tony with a curious expression on his face. "If you had built a lot and still had them, what happened between now and then with your suits?"
"Spoilers!" sang Tony. "You'll find out."
On Air Force One, Savin patrols the plane, notes the time and walks up to two security guards where he pushes them into a room, shutting them in, and burning the door handle on the plane to stop them from escaping.
"No one thought to check it was Rhodey inside the suit at all?" Wanda shook her head in disbelief.
"They assumed no one would be able to successfully infiltrate the suit and take my place," explained Rhodey.
"You know…" Tony began to muse, "I should have had your suit coded to your biometrics and mine so the only people who could use it would be you and me. I have that function in my suits unless I instruct it otherwise."
Arms folded across his chest, Rhodey nodded. "Better start on the War Machine redesign then." He smirked, enjoying Tony's reaction to his assumption that another suit was on the way.
Tony didn't have the heart to deny his best friend. After all, he had already been intending on upgrading Rhodey's suit.
He arrives in the President's briefing room. The Military aide asks him if everything is alright but Savin kills the aide. The other aides start shooting at him but Savin kills all the aides. A window is shot and air pressure begins to escape from the plane. Savin kills everyone in the room save from the President.
President Ellis tries to grab for a gun but Savin is quicker, grabbing him in a choke hold against the wall and revealing his true face to the President. "It is an honour Mr President." The President tells him if he is going to kill him, then to do it. However, Savin tells him that is not how the Mandarin works.
Steve struggled to say silent. "Can someone please kill this bloke?"
"Who? Henchmen or the Mandarin?" teased Tony.
"Preferably both if you can," growled Steve. He didn't like killing at the best time of times but he always recognised when it was necessary. The threat Extremis posed was one of those times when death was the only necessary option.
At the Air Force base, they have received reports that Air Force One has been compromised with internal shots and temperature spikes. An Officer asks for them to get a live image up, and they see Iron Patriot fly off and leave the plane. The Officer asks if that was Rhodes.
"At someone is finally asking the right questions," muttered Clint.
Savin is now dressed in an air crew uniform with a parachute strapped to his back. He hears noises from the rest of the crew who are trapped. He peers out the window, thinking he saw something. Then Iron Man's hand smashes the window and blasts Savin off his feet.
"Finally," growled Bucky. "You're finally giving that guy what he deserves."
Tony wasn't sure if he should be happy by the compliment or not.
Savin gets to his feet but is knocked off it again by Iron Man flying in behind him. Savin activates his Extremis as the suit pins him against the wall.
"The President! Now!" ordered Tony.
"He's not here," answers Savin before he attempts to burn through the suit's arms, causing electricity to spark and metal creaking within the body frame of the suit. Savin tells him to try the jet stream. He then activates a bomb which explodes on the door of the back cabin causing air pressure to rocket inside the plane and the rest of the crew members to go flying out to fall to their deaths.
"Anyone else find it a bit odd that he was burning through the suit arm and Tony wasn't reacting?" realised Sam, putting the question to the room at large.
Wanda was the first one to make the connection to Sam's query. "He's not in the suit, is he? He's controlling it elsewhere." She looked at Tony, waiting for him to answer her.
"I'm saying nothing," he revealed, though the twinkle in his eye suggested Wanda had guessed correctly.
Iron Man fights back against Savin, managing to overpower him before he blasts him through the chest with the main Arc Reactor power repulsor in his chest. Savin coughs, sinking to the floor, a massive hole in his chest.
"Walk away from that, you son of a bitch," Tony stated harshly.
"And that is one of the only ways to kill them," pointed out Rhodey. "Kill them in such a way Extremis cannot do anything for them."
"Taking out and burning the heart… Not easy for people to accomplish unless they are in a suit like Tony's," stated Steve.
"There are other ways to kill them," said Rhodey, "but it's harder. You have to really overwhelm them with heat for their body to be unable to utilise Extremis to their full potential. Technically, you're turning them into bombs, providing they are unable to control Extremis well if they heat up too quickly."
"That was the weak point with Extremis. Overwhelm it too much at once and you've got a human bomb at your disposal. Killian didn't care how many people he sacrificed to achieve his goals," explained Tony darkly.
Tony flies down the corridor and into the cabin where the explosion occurred to see the last Air Stewardess be pulled out into the air and fall towards the ground. Tony rockets after them. He asks JARVIS how many there were in the air and he informs him there are thirteen.
Sam winced. "You won't be able to save all of them."
Tony allowed a small grin to cross his face. Oh, Sam was going to be surprised by how he managed to save all of them.
"How many can I carry?" asks Tony.
"Four, sir."
"How can you choose which ones to save?" asked Wanda, a sad expression on her face. She, too, believed Tony had no choice but to allow some of the staff from the plane to fall to their deaths.
"Just because he can carry four, doesn't mean he cannot adapt his strategy to save all of them…" hinted Rhodey, his eyes twinkling. He, too, was enjoying the prospect of seeing their expressions when they saw exactly what Tony was going to do.
Tony flies towards the closest person, a woman, who he grabs. She still screams as she clutches onto him. Tony tells JARVIS to slow the suit down. "Relax! What's your name?" He scans her name tag. "Heather?"
Heather screams.
"Listen to me." Tony tries to calm her down. "See that guy? I'm gonna swing by, you're just gonna grab him. You got it?" Above them the plane explodes. Heather continues to scream as Tony rockets towards the next closest person. "I'll electrify your arm, you won't be able to open your hand. We can do this, Heather." She misses her colleague by a few inches but Tony rockets them closer again and she grabs him by the leg. "Easy, see? Eleven more to go." Tony calls out. "Remember that game called 'Barrel of Monkeys'? That's what we're going to do."
"Oh… I think I know what you're planning," admitted Natasha, leaning forward. "You may only be able to carry four but has JARVIS taken into account of the four you hold, holding onto the other people's hands? Would he have calculated that?"
"Surprisingly not," stated Vision. "JARVIS did not calculate for the novel approach Mr. Stark took to saving all of those people."
"Which is surprising since JARVIS was rather good at searching for alternatives," noted Bruce.
JARVIS reminds him they have 18,000 feet to go.
Clint cringed. "They're falling quite fast."
"He'll get them all," believed Bucky.
Tony continues to circle round, calculating each closest person to go to next. All of them reach out for the others as they fall, bringing them in one by one. Soon, he has managed to get all but one person, and with 200 feet to go they manage to grab him just in time as Tony soars over the water before he releases them into the water below, saving all of their lives.
"Wow," whistled Steve in admiration. "You did save them all. I had hoped you might. None of them deserved to die."
"A lot of people who do die, do not deserve it to happen to them at that specific time," said Sam quietly.
They all cheer at how lucky they had been for him to save them. Tony congratulates them. "Nice work, guys! Excellent. Good team effort all around. Go us! All right, JARVIS." Tony begins to turn around. "It's only half-done. We've still got to get Pepper…" He is cut off as the Iron Man suit flies into a truck and the suit scatters into pieces in the middle of the road.
Everyone flinched.
Wanda smiled, ecstatic her guess that he hadn't really been in the suit was correct. "I knew it!"
Tony winked at her. "Congratulations on predicting correctly, Wanda."
It is then revealed Tony had been controlling the suit from the boat. "That came out of nowhere," he lamented.
Rhodey opens the door to the small cabin where Tony had been controlling the suit from. He asks Tony to give him some good news. He tells him they all made it but he missed the President. Rhodey wonders if they couldn't save the President with the suit, how were they going to save Pepper with nothing.
Tony has an idea. "Say, JARVIS, is it that time?"
"The House Party Protocol, sir?"
"Correct," answers Tony.
Steve frowned. "House Party Protocol? Should we be worried one exists?"
"It's not what you think," answered Tony. "It's a protocol which is going to help save the President. Come on now, Steve, how long have you known me? You should know by now that my protocol names are not 'normal' and have a deeper meaning to them."
Suitably rebuffed, Steve nodded his head. "I should have considered it more before making as assumption. I'm sorry, Tony."
Tony waved a hand at him. He didn't require an apology, nor did he believe he needed one. He was just reminding Steve why he shouldn't pass judgement so easily on a name if you were unfamiliar with the creator's work.
Back at Tony's ruined mansion, in an area which is mostly cleared of rubble, a workman notices lights appear on the floor before it slowly begins to open up revealing a hidden compartment underneath. Below, the Arc Reactors of all the previous Iron Man suits Tony had ever created began to light up and then the suits fly up into the sky.
"Wow," whistled Sam, impressed. "I think I understand the house party protocol now."
"JARVIS is controlling all of them?" Thor queried.
Rhodey answered before Tony could, filling in the others on how unique JARVIS had been. "You'd be surprised how much JARVIS could do. JARVIS had the potential to keep on going, even when you think he was merely asleep. JARVIS was always doing something, whether you were aware of it or not." Glancing at Vision, a small smile crossed Rhodey's face. "Vision gained the best bits of JARVIS. He's still there, even if we cannot speak to him."
"So, why does Vision sound exactly like JARVIS? If Vision is made up of lots of different aspects, why has he picked up JARVIS''s voice?" asked Clint.
"I think I can answer that one, Mr. Barton," answered Vision. "It is quite a simple answer. JARVIS was the only part which had a voice and a personality. When I was born, I naturally took on JARVIS' manners and voice. Without JARVIS, I would not be who I am today."
Clint accepted Vision's explanation.
Someone injects Pepper with a solution before she wakes up, finding herself face-to-face with Killian. He smiles at her. "Hi."
Breathing heavily, Pepper answers him back. "You think he's gonna help you? He won't."
"Having you here is not just to motivate Tony Stark. It's… um… Well, it's actually more embarrassing than that. You're here as my, um…"
Pepper realises his implication. "Trophy."
Killian chuckles. "Mmm."
Pepper looks away.
Anger coursed through Tony, his hands clenching into fists over how Killian had wanted Pepper and why. Pepper would never have stood for being simply a trophy. Killian would never have won her. He'd been a fool to assume otherwise.
Bucky pulled a face. "I really, really, hate that guy. No one deserves to simply be a trophy to be used against others." It was a stark reminder of what HYDRA had once done to Bucky and how they had treated him.
Then Iron Patriot lands and walks in. Pepper watches intently from behind Killian as he greets the suit. The armour opens and President Ellis falls out. Pepper gasps in shock.
"Welcome aboard, Mr President."
The camera pans out and they are on a boat at a dock, close to an oil rig.
"Ever hear of an elephant graveyard? Well, two years ago, the elephant in the room was this ship." Killian leads the President to see the area they are on camera. The President realises this is the Roxxon Norco. Killian reminds him that she spilled a million gallons of crude oil off Pensacola, and thanks to the President, not one fat cat saw their day in court. The president asks what Killian wants from him.
"Oh, he wants the President to pay for that," noted Sam. "Revenge. Revenge for the rich people not being taken to court."
Killian is brutally honest with him. "Uh, nothing, sir. I just needed a reason to kill you that you would play well on TV. You see, I've moved on. I found myself a new political patron, and this time tomorrow, he'll have your job." Killian walks past the President. "String him up."
President Ellis struggles as one of Killian's henchmen grab him by the collar and drags him away.
"Eh… if Killian had moved on, he wouldn't be planning on doing this," pointed out Bucky. "He wouldn't be stringing him up either. It's clearly a sore point for him."
"There was another hint there too about a new political patron supporting him…" said Steve. "It's all coming to a head, isn't it?"
Rhodey and Tony exchanged a knowing glance and nodded solemnly.
To be continued...
Please let me know what you think!
I'm not sure there is much I can say about this chapter either. The team are getting on quite well together for the most part - currently - and, honestly, with the storm that will be Age of Ultron and Civil War, they are going to need this time to not argue or upset people. The next two movies are going to cause a LOT of problems for them, especially for some of the bonds that have already been repaired, and how Steve is viewed by the others in his team. It's going to be fun to write those two movies as I have a lot of plans for them both.
The next chapter will be posted on Sunday 11th July!
Until then,
the-writer1988