Been fussing with this one for a while. Lots of editing. Lots of rewriting. But here I am, finally! And it feels SOOOOOO good to update a story!
So happy reading! I hope you enjoy it! Love and big hugs to you all!
:D
Instantly the men's attention was drawn upwards towards Tony's direction, and they immediately started firing their weapons at him. He felt the pinging ricochets of some of their bullets, a few piercing the outer shell of his suit, meeting the interior Kevlar lining with a thud, which still produced enough of a sting on Tony's skin to create what he knew would be multiple welts later on. But he didn't care. He wanted them to keep firing, so that he could keep firing. So that he could destroy them. The fury mounting in his brain was all too much for him to maintain rational behavior any longer.
Kill them all to get to Rocco, was all he could think about. He wanted answers from the man. Then he wanted to give him a slow and painful death. In Tony's raging mind, he decided Rocco didn't deserve to live out the rest of his days in prison, as he'd said before. He now wanted this pathetic excuse for a human to be wiped off the map entirely.
"Stark! Dammit! Hold your fire! We're coming in for a landing!" Tony suddenly heard Maria exclaim into the comms system, suddenly bringing him out of his enraged state.
"Alright, fine!" he barked back. So he stopped the barrage and rolled to quickly jet away, seeing the quinjet in the air not far from him slow to a hover with its landing gear coming down. It lowered to the ground as the men that were firing at Tony had turned their aim to the jet, putting it under relentless attack. But the shots just ricocheted off the bullet-proof hull.
Just then, he saw the guns on the wings open up and spray a barrage of high caliber rounds, essentially knocking each of the gunmen down like bowling pins.
"Don't hit Rocco!" Tony yelled into his mic. "I need to get some answers from him!"
Soon the firing stopped, and Tony could see no signs that there were any more gunmen alive. Dammit!, he thought to himself. Did we screw this up? Is Rocco already among the body count?
But after a moment, Tony heard Natasha speak. "Looks like your man's inside, Stark, alive and well. You've got the all clear. Go get him. He's all yours," he heard her say.
"10-4, Natasha-li. Over and out," Tony replied, and he kicked on his jets to streak as fast as he could back down toward the storage building that contained the crates. Within seconds he was skimming the ground. So when he got close to the building, he kicked his feet up just outside of it, his boots hitting the ground with a hard metallic thud as he crouched to cushion the jar of his momentum, and then slowly he rose to stand once again, the sound of the servos in his suit adjusting to his movements being the only noise he now made. Tony stood rock solid for a moment, allowing the HUD to surveil his surroundings, and collect any pertinent data.
"J, scan for biological heat signatures inside," he commanded, his voice steely and calculating. He watched as the display became infrared. Inside the building, he could see one human-shaped heat signature, lit up in orange and red, and it appeared to be crouched down behind one of the remaining crates. Tony smirked triumphantly to himself. "Gotcha," he purred.
Then, he raised his right arm out in front of him. "Cutting torch," he commanded. Jarvis responded by uncovering the tip of the torch that Tony had installed into his right forearm's gauntlet, and Tony proceeded to cut out a large portion of the wall in front of him, crudely mimicking his own outline. When he was done, he gave it a hard, closed-fisted punch, battering the chunk of wall through to the inside of the building with a deafening blow, and thunderously rattling the rest of the structure in the process. The portion of wall had flown back a fair distance before skidding to a stop on the concrete floor, throwing sparks from underneath it until the friction of the cement against the metal made it lose its inertia.
"Oh, Rocco!" Tony hooted snidely, and he walked inside toward the cluster of crates near the rear. "No use in keeping the game going, Pal! We've got you surrounded! Any attempts to hide now will just make you look like the cowardly, underhanded, wanna-be gangster chump that you are!"
Tony heard scuffling in the direction of the crate that Rocco was hiding behind, and he instantly raised his repulsors, expecting Rocco to appear and open fire on him. But instead he heard the man speak from behind the crate.
"What I've got in this clip could kill anyone a thousand times, Stark, with a single shot to anywhere on the body. So you'd do best to keep your distance," Rocco warned.
Tony frowned, noticing that the crate Rocco had hid behind was open, and one of the cylinders had been pulled from it, its seal broken. His mind then clicked with a sudden realization. "You're not here to broker a deal on old weapons. You're peddling something brand spanking new, aren't you? And you've used Black Dragon to do it!" Tony deduced.
"Correct!" Rocco yelled back. "And destroying this supply, destroying me, won't end the release of it into the world that's happening right now, as we speak! So, I believe, Stark, that the game is still very much in play!"
Tony huffed. "You rat bastard," he growled, reflexively jerking his hands up in Rocco's direction again, ready to fire. "You know, for what I bet Dianna's paying you, you're sure sloppy. Do the words hospital security footage mean anything to you?" Tony hissed back.
Rocco spluttered and then started laughing loudly. "You think I answer only to some rich old bat?" he countered. "Keeping all my eggs in one basket, as they say?"
Tony nodded his head. "For the right price, you would," he argued. "Looks like she's handed you a lot of eggs. And a pretty decent sized basket with which to carry- or should I say transport- them?" Tony finished by saying, gesturing to the building surrounding them. "An old dock. How original. Only problem is that Stark Industries stopped making weapons a long time ago. And because they are getting more and more rare, the continued use of these crates has become instantly suspicious to law enforcement agencies around the world. So, you're going to have to find someone else's crates to use, as I am making quick work of destroying any and all munitions left in the world with my name on them." Tony felt the searing rage boil up inside him again, and his upper lip curling in a snarl inside his helmet. "But that isn't the whole reason why I'm here," he went on to say.
"Stark, take it easy. Keep him talking. We're coming in," he heard Maria warn, but Tony paid little attention.
"If you think for a second that I'm gonna let you just walk outta here after what you did to Pepper..." he bitterly sneered, as he thrust his hands forward, making the repulsors instantly glow their electric blue, their circuits igniting with their familiar click-rheeeet sound, indicating he could now fire at will. "Then you just screwed your last pooch, comrade."
He heard Rocco grunt, and he then saw the man suddenly stand up from behind the crate, instantly opening up on him with rapid fire. Tony immediately began to blast repulsor shots at Rocco, but he was almost instantly thwarted in his attempt to hit him, as a stray bullet from Rocco's gun struck one of the already weakened points in his armor from the previous gun fight outside, hitting him in the thigh.
"Ow! FUCK! J, what the hell was that?!" Tony barked. "How did he hit me?! I thought the Kevlar was still in tact!"
"These appear to be armor piercing bullets, Sir. But that isn't the worst of it. They're also laced with the black dragon venom, making the gun shot you've sustained to your right thigh become potentially, and quickly, lethal," Jarvis reported. "You require immediate medical attention."
Tony winced at the stinging pain radiating throughout his leg, and seemingly travelling now upwards at a rapid pace. His head began to spin, and his faltering equilibrium sent him collapsing to one knee, as his lungs began to feel like they were being squeezed. He raised his head to see where Rocco was, blinking to try to clear his blurring vision. He caught a quick glimpse of him as Rocco went to duck behind another crate, but Tony couldn't keep his focus long enough to attempt a shot. "Jay, what's happening to me," he choked out.
"Your being poisoned by the venom, Sir. Immediate medical intervention is vital for you to survive," Jarvis reminded him.
Tony's limbs were feeling almost completely deadened at this point, but he forced his rapidly numbing arm to raise, and was milliseconds away from firing at Rocco's last recalled location when Natasha suddenly appeared, intercepting Rocco, and batting the gun out of his hand with a swift kick, simultaneously twisting his arm behind his back, and pointing her 9 mm at his temple with her arm firmly wrapped around the man's neck, squeezing it. Hard. He began spluttering and choking, desperately trying to claw at her grasp.
Hearing the scuffle, Tony tried to take a deep breath as he disengaged the repulsors. "A...little forewarning that you were...swooping in behind me could've..."
he gasped, unable to get enough air. "...kept you from almost dying just now. Just saying," he retorted back breathlessly. But then his vision went completely dark, and he passed out, collapsing hard onto the concrete floor on his back.
"Stark?!" Natasha cried out, as she continued to restrain her friend's assailant. "Oh no," she murmured, when she realized Tony was unresponsive. She then kicked the back of Rocco's knees, forcing him to the ground. "Stark?! Can you hear me?! Say something!" she demanded.
Rocco wheezed in choked out laughter. "It's no use, now," he grunted triumphantly. "He's done for. One shot is fatal. Even to the great Iron Man."
"Funny. I don't remember giving you permission to speak!" Natasha growled, before furiously tightening her grip around Rocco's neck, putting him in a sleeper hold, and forcing him to pass out. He soon slumped in her arms, and she dumped his unconscious body on the floor before running over to where Tony lay, seemingly lifeless. She clicked the emergency release button on the side of his helmet, and with a faint hiss, the face plate retracted.
She gasped at the sight of Tony's pale skin, tinged a death-like purple in color. "No, no, no. Come on. Wake up," she commanded. But of course there was no response. "Come on, Stark. Wake up, damn it," she said again, but still got nothing in reply. She then huffed in frustration. "You're not dying, you hear me? Not if I have anything to do with it," she resolved. She jabbed her comms button on her suit, and barked "Widow to Quinjet, Stark's been hit. He's unresponsive. Immediate assistance required. I repeat, immediate assistance required!"
XxXxXxXxXx
Tony could hear what sounded like water all around him, as if he were submerged in the depths of the ocean. But his eyes were closed, so he couldn't confirm his surroundings.
Funny, I don't remember going to the beach, he thought to himself. He tried to place his last memory before he'd lost consciousness.
Fury called.
There was a mission.
Had to go to Russia.
The quinjet.
Did we crash into the ocean?
He thought harder for a moment, letting the fuzzy remnants of his memory form.
No, he soon concluded.
We made it.
The jet landed.
There was a gun fight.
Then there was...
Suddenly, he gasped, and opened his eyes. "Rocco!" he said out loud, but his voice reverberated out into the space surrounding him. His ear instantly tuned to listening for a returning echo, in order to gage the distance to any kind of border or barrier, only to find that there wasn't one.
He frowned, and his eyes flicked around to gather his bearings, but he soon understood that it wasn't the ocean that he was submerged in. Not at all. But much to his surprise, and vexation, this place felt all too familiar to him. Only it hadn't been in his subconscious that he'd visited it previously. It had been Pepper's. That was, until now.
Surrounding him was the dark ether that was the threshold of the conscious mind- the abyss between the real world and the subconscious, brought on only by what could be the toxin of the Black Dragon coursing through his body, he'd now come to realize.
"Well, shit," Tony grunted in frustration. "Now, what am I supposed to do?"