Well, let's keep this show on the road.


Nick Fury made his expected midnight meeting after the fiasco of Tony 'coming out' as Iron Man.

Tony blew him off. He wanted nothing to do with SHIELD, at least not while Hydra was still around and kicking. Besides, while he'd never condone Cap's blind rejection of all authority, he could see where avoiding accountability from a suspect source made sense. It was ironic, really. When they first met, Tony had been the wild child and Steve was all yes-sir, whatever-you-say-sir. Then life and catastrophe had twisted them until Captain America trusted no one but himself and Iron Man was desperate for some degree of oversight.

He had plans for the Captain, too. Plans that involved he stayed far, FAR away from the twisted caricature that had become of the organization Peggy Carter and Howard Stark had started.

Now, assuming the butterfly effect didn't bite him in the ass, he had six months until the start of the Stark Expo and Whiplash and Hammer started making trouble.

Tony could do an awful lot in six months. Especially with a JARVIS that was everywhere.

Time to put that future knowledge to good use. And if it made him the world's first trillionaire, that would just give him more resources to help save half of all life.

Tony spent a good month just roughing out schematics of 2018-level devices he could pass off as 'genius breakthroughs' and giving them to his R&D division to go nuts with. Among them were a smartphone, electric car, 5G networks, 3D printers, and a number of 'ideas' that would pan out into major apps. Tony took no prisoners, refusing to feel guilty for 'stealing' years of work from others before they did them. Within a year, Stark International would be patented owners of the equivalent of Uber, Airbnb, coin, Candy Crush, and a social media app he dubbed IronMeet.

Whatever he couldn't remember off the top of his head, he had JARVIS supplement with computer-generated design. All he had to do was explain the gist and JARVIS would have a workable prototype to give to R&D within a few days. That was the beauty of silicon-based intelligence: once it had the intricacy of humanity, it was already millions of times faster and stronger. The guys and gals in the basement at SI acted like it was Mardi Gras. As far as they were concerned, Tony Stark getting out of the weapons game and applying his genius to other pursuits was the best thing EVER.

Tony officially had Pepper replace Stane as Chief Operations Officer. It was the promotion she deserved. She'd been running the company throughout his thirties for the most part, so the workload really wasn't that much a shift for her. Tony, meanwhile, wasn't going to fuck off from responsibility and stayed on as CEO. The promotion led to them spending less personal time together, but Tony figured that was for the best. Whatever they could have been, it just wasn't meant to be this time around.

Unfortunately, that meant they both needed a new personal assistant. Tony kept an eagle eye out to make sure SHIELD/Hydra didn't make it into the candidate pool. Pepper ended up with a lovely woman named Bambi Arbogast. Tony, just to be different and to increase public awareness of A.I. rights, made a robotic shell loosely based on the Iron Man Suit for JARVIS. The steel-grey humanoid drone made the cover of WIRED magazine.

Tony navigated the political minefield of Iron Man and the military with grace and decidedly less sarcasm than last time. There were committee meetings and once even a call to the president (not yet Ellis). In the end, they were appeased for the time being with a promise for Tony to not act without reporting it to Rhodey, who became the official liaison between the Armed Forces and Iron Man. In time, when Senator Stern (a la Hydra) started to push, Tony had plans to appease the D.O.D. with Iron Legion drones, a mass-produced body armor version of the suit, and most importantly the War Machine.

The Stark Expo was set to start running in April of the next year, with Starkium Arc Reactors set to be the stars of the show. Iron Man would be little more than a gimmick for the opening ceremony. Tony was set to take the energy industry to the cleaners. A Reactor the size of a room could produce enough power for a whole city, while ones the size of batteries could fuel a house for a lifetime. With clean nuclear no longer a pipe dream, Tony was set to take on Big Coal, Big Gas, and every solar startup and win.

Stark International was going to power the planet within a decade.

He braced himself for potential assassination attempts. Rich people were never happy to see their money vanish.

JARVIS kept the Iron Mind facility running to schedule. Next-gen fabricators were set up with enough mechanical arms and drones to render human presence obsolete. An Arc Reactor the size of the dinosaur back at Headquarters was set to be installed, capable of dozens of terawatts of energy production. Once the energy and production line was settled, it was just a matter of running out enough servers to fill the 100,000 square feet of temperature-controlled space. From there, it was only a question of time until the next breakthrough to repeat the process. Once JARVIS managed to reproduce the reconfigurable nanotech that was bleeding-edge in Tony's original time, replacing the servers would become much faster and less wasteful. The facility would be slowly expanded with nanotech and the drones through the subterraneous space.

By even the most conservative estimates, JARVIS would be at the level of yottaFLOPS by 2018, not even accounting for the quantum coprocessors he predicted possible by then. The program that had started as a humble natural language UI would be able to do more thinking in one second than the whole of human civilization in a year. The kinds of technical marvels he could produce at that point would boggle even Tony's staggering intellect.

Hopefully among them would be weapons that could hold off a Titan armed with Infinity Stones.

In another bid to expand Tony and JARVIS hold, Tony teamed up with Elon Musk and got the SpaceX constellation of microsatellites on the fast track. While Tony was introducing limitless electricity to every corner of the world, the other billionaire would be bringing high-bandwidth internet.

And all that was underway before the New Year. Christmas was a homey affair with just Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and Yinsen. The bots and JARVIS were colorful decorations and comedy.

Tony kicked off 2009 by hunting down Ulysses Klaue in the Iron Man suit and confiscating all his stolen Vibranium. He shamelessly tucked away some for his own personal use (never knew what might be needed to save the world) but went through official channels to gift the rest back to the Wakandan government. He got an official letter of thanks from King T'Chaka himself… and a hack on his private servers that would have gone unnoticed if Tony hadn't taught JARVIS to be as paranoid as he was.

Well, now he could piggyback off Wakanda code. Tony got quite a lot from the counter-hack before the secretive Vibranium-based presence withdrew from the digital battlefield.

The months blurred in a daze of business meetings, projects, and Iron Man strikes. Tony, or rather Iron Man, got named Time's Person of the Year. Before Tony knew it, it was time to put on a tux, suit up, and jump out of a plane over Flushing, New York.


There were fireworks in the night sky. A teeming crowd stood in a pavilion, many cheering and waving signs declaring support for Iron Man. AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" played on the sound system, the chords and beats riling the crowd up further. A dozen absurdly beautiful women were dressed in vaguely Iron Man-themed uniforms, executing a flawless dance routine on stage. With a roar of repulsors and jet boots, Iron Man descended through the oculus and landed in a three-point crouch on the stage. He stood and waved as the platform he was on began to spin. Mechanical arms came out detached the armor from him, piece by piece, until Tony Stark was there, smiling and looking splendid in Armani. "It is good to be back!" he called.

Let it not be said that Tony didn't know how to make an entrance.

When the noise settled down, Tony began his speech. "I'm not saying the world is enjoying it's longest period of uninterrupted peace in years because of me. I'm not saying that from the ashes of captivity never has a greater phoenix metaphor been personified in human history. I'm not saying that Uncle Sam can kick back on a lawn chair, sipping on an iced tea, because I haven't met anyone who's dumb enough to go toe to toe with me on my best day!" With each sentence, he got a greater response from the crowd.

"Please! It's not about me," Tony called. "It's not about you. It's not even about us. It's about legacy, about what we choose to leave behind for future generations. And that is why for the next year, and for the first time since 1974, the brightest men and women from nations and corporations the world over will pool their resources, share their collective vision, to leave behind a brighter future. It's not about us!"

"Therefore what I'm saying, if I am saying anything, is welcome back to the Stark Expo!"

Tony smiled and left the stage while the film of his dad played in the background. He'd given up on hating him a long time ago. Maybe he was the great man that Steve and Nick Fury insisted he was, but all Tony ever saw was the shitty father. Their opinions couldn't change years of remembered talks, scoldings, and lessons. Not that it really mattered. The past was past. Howard probably did the best he could, for a son he only ever saw as 'his greatest creation'. What mattered was what Tony made of it. And he was done with making a negative mess out of the whole thing.

He'd be WAY better with his own kids one day, though. Even if he had to end up having JARVIS clone him because no woman could keep up with him.

Tony and Happy made their way to the car, running into the lovely Marshal along the way. For all that she was forcing him to go to a Senate meeting, Tony had to admire her easy wit and no-nonsense concise attitude. From there, it was a drive through the night to Washington D.C. to show up on Capitol Hill at 9 am.

The meeting went predictably, at least if you knew Tony. Stern tried to pull his bull about the Iron Man being 'owed' somehow to the United States government, they got the clown that was Hammer to give his spiel about swords and shields, called in Rhodey to try and twist his report into a call to arms, and it ended with Tony embarrassing them into giving him more time.

A flight to Malibu later, and Tony was safely ensconced in the comfort of his workshop.

"So, JARVIS, how are we for the next week?" Tony wasn't planning on missing out on opportunity. Both Banner's 'incident' with the Abomination in Harlem and Thor's 'visit' to New Mexico were set to happen at the same time as his fight for survival and face-off with Ivan Vanko would have taken place.

"Operations 'Other Guy' and 'Point Break' are prepped and ready, Sir," JARVIS answered. "And might I add how refreshing it is to see you in a video with your clothing on, Sir." A window of YouTube showing the Senate Armed Forces Committee meeting popped up in a hologram.

Tony chuckled as he noticed the view count was already in the ten millions. The wonders of viral celebrity. "They'll be really surprised come my birthday." Tony had already asked Rhodey if he'd be okay with his own suit. He'd had the Air Force man keep it to himself. He wanted to see the looks on his superiors' faces when War Machine dropped into the air base with a dozen Iron Legionnaires behind him. There'd be contracts to sign, of course, but a moment like that deserved to be recorded.

Tony turned his attention to the two projects he had set up for his future fellow Avengers. Banner would be tracked and picked up by a suit after he fled from the city, where he'd be transported to an ultra-secure cabin/bunker in the Canadian wilderness Tony had built himself to keep it secret. His science bro would have nobody for miles around, and an airtight satellite feed to talk shop with Tony. Yes, it was a prison by another name, but one Tony felt confidant his Jekyll-esque friend would willingly accept. Bruce would have a safe space to live and work, and Tony would get a pal other than JARVIS that could keep up with his shop talk. Thor, on the other hand, well Tony had much less altruistic intentions with him. He could only console himself that it would help everyone in the long run. He had managed to produce insect-sized drones outfitted with the best sensors Tony could squeeze into them. They'd collect biometric data and if possible even DNA samples from the Asgardian prince both before and after he reclaimed Mjolnir. The Iron Mites also had instructions to do the same for Lady Sif and the Warriors Three.

Tony had never settled for not knowing. And the secrets of the Asgardian genome could change the world. Tony would never have taken risks like this before, if he hadn't seen the doom of his old world in person. Figuring out what made Asgardians functionally gods compared to fragile human beings was the first step in fixing the problem.

Tony wasn't going to do anything crazy like create a virus that would make everyone on Earth super. But he wasn't below doing what he could to make himself a god. The only reason he trusted himself with that kind of power is because he Did. Not. Want. It. He was perfectly fine being an ordinary man in a tin can surrounded by aliens and magic and comic-book science… until that ordinary man became the one thing standing between Thanos and his goal.

Well, not the ONLY thing. But the only one prepared to do what was necessary.

A dark, doubtful part of Tony worried that he was no better than Thanos. Then he reminded himself it didn't matter. So long as Thanos lost, that was a victory. Tony would deal with the consequences of his long, twisting highway to hell in pursuit of that afterwards. It would be a privilege to deal with the fallout, because that meant there was something around to deal with.

Anyway, yeah. Blood of the Aesir would be up for analysis within the next few days. And the Hulk too, though he wouldn't tell Banner. Add that to his plans to analyze Cap and the Winter Soldiers with a stabilized Extremis he'd half-remembered and had Jarvis fill in, and Tony was set to do a VARIETY of ill-advised experimentation on himself.

Good thing he had JARVIS to look out for him.


The trip to Monaco had been planned months in advance. It was a high-society get-together, a chance to eat astonishingly priced food and rub shoulders with other elites while young men raced in the name of speed and glory. Only Tony was aware of the attack Vanko planned. Much as it pained him, he had to allow it. Iron Man couldn't just blast a random man in the crowd. The guy had to make it obvious he was a Bad Guy before a hero could come charging in.

In any case, hopefully Hammer would be 'impressed' and bust Vanko out of prison again. Tony was looking forward to nailing the smarmy sumbitch for that. Hammer would do jail time, Vanko would get transferred to a bribery-proof prison, and the attack on the Expo would be averted.

Natalie Rushman from Legal had yet to make an appearance. SHIELD already knew about the new reactors from the Expo, so no need to supervise the declining health of the superhero with palladium poisoning. Guess Nick Fury was deciding to trust Tony for the moment. Or at least not treat him with active distrust.

Tony, Pepper, and Happy flew in on the jet together, just like old times. Bambi hadn't been brought along for this simple outing and the JARVIS-bot had flown ahead already to make arrangements. Heaven forbid Tony go anywhere without his robotic butler.

The Grand Prix began with a bang, Tony watching like a hawk the television for the moment something went wrong. Like clockwork, there arrived Whiplash, striding out onto the track to wreak mayhem.

"Happy? Football!" Tony called out. The bodyguard, on command, handed over the small, portable version of the armor. Tony suited up right in that room and blasted out one of the floor-length windows.

The fight didn't last long. Tony tried to pick Vanko off from a distance with repulsor blasts, but the man deflected them with his whips. After a little back and forth, Tony waited for one of Vanko's lashes to leave him open. Then he rocketed in with a sucker punch that could have pierced concrete if Tony hadn't dialed it back at the last minute. Vanko went down after a few more hits, seemingly impervious to pain, but down he went. Tony grabbed the improvised Arc Reactor the Russian had made and crushed it in his mechanical fist.

Tony didn't bother with visiting the man in prison. He knew what he was going to say. Instead, Tony called for a press conference. Why he hadn't done that in the last timeline for some damage control, he couldn't understand.

"The man behind the attack has been identified as Ivan Vanko. Vanko is the son of Anton Vanko, a Soviet scientist who worked with my father briefly before being deported after treasonous acts. I can only speculate that Ivan Vanko sought to somehow redeem his father's legacy by attempting to tarnish my own, drawing me into a fight he had no hope of winning. I want to emphasize to the public that there is no need to worry about future assaults of this nature. Ivan Vanko used an Arc Reactor assembled from outdated blueprints. The current and next generation of Arc Reactors are as secure as humanly possible."

Of course, Tony's words fell a little flat when his company's whole pavilion at the Expo was dedicated to the Arc Reactor, offering services to come and disconnect visitor's homes from the grid. Tony was selling the damn things now, from private consumers all the way to nations like India. Someone, somewhere, would get their hands on one and try to do something bad with it. But they'd have a hard time weaponizing a glorified battery, and Tony trusted that any Whiplash wannabes drooling over the video that very moment would find it extremely difficult to construct their own energy weapon. Tony's words comforted the public that a new race of supervillains wasn't coming over the hill to take on their lone (for the moment) superhero.

Vanko 'died' in a prison accident, as expected. Tony savored the look of blind panic when Hammer stepped off his private jet to find Tony alongside law enforcement. Turns out transporting a fugitive across international lines was a BIG no-no. Vanko actually snarled when he saw Stark again, spitting and cussing at him in Russian as he was dragged away in handcuffs. Hammer was still sputtering, trying one lame excuse after another on deaf ears.

The next few days passed quietly, apart from naysayers like Stern raving that the attack in Monaco was proof that the Iron Man suit couldn't be trusted with him alone. Seriously, could they be any more obvious? Tony geared up for his birthday party, thankfully not literally like last time.

There was music, food, drink, and a house full of people Tony couldn't name. Copies of the JARVIS-bot served as waiters and bartenders, which Tony personally found hilarious on many levels. Each guest would walk home with a goodie bag including a new SI phone and laptop, which naturally were years ahead of anything currently on the market. What no one knew or needed to know was that they were specially configured to act as nodes for JARVIS in his ever-expanding grid. With every tech with a chip Tony sold from now on, his A.I. would get just that much smarter. And he'd make money doing it. And people's lives would improve, because his tech was just that awesome and came equipped with a variety of perks and services Tony had painstakingly set up. It was a win-win-win.

Eventually it got late, and Tony decided to make his big announcement.

"Hey, everyone. I'd like to thank you for coming here tonight and drinking all of my booze," Tony began, to laughs from the crowd. "You know, birthdays are fun, usually because it's the one day of the year where it's okay to be selfish. Yay, you were born, you lasted another year, let's make today all about you. But as you get old, well, older," Tony corrected, to chuckles. "You get a little perspective. And it's true what they say, the best gifts are the ones you give away. I've done a lot of good as Iron Man, but I've made a lot of people in the good old military-industrial complex nervous. They're scared because I'm the only one, and they're not in control of me. Because I am a citizen of the United States and I have freedom, damnit!" Cheers. "But, it's a bit unfair of me to keep such an awesome toy all to myself. So, I started wondering how I could throw them a bone in a way that wouldn't make me feel like a total sell-out. And that's when it hit me. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor tonight to introduce you to my friend, my brother from another mother, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, or as he will now be known… War Machine!"

Rhodey walked out, in a suit that was the gunmetal-grey color scheme he'd preferred in the future. Tony, true to his 'no weapons' stance, hadn't retrofitted the suit with anything other than emergency repulsors. The Air Force could stick on all the guns and whistles they wanted when Rhodey reported in. Tony had made sure to make the suit as safe as possible, with more security than even his own current model. He did NOT want Rhodey to suffer as a paraplegic again.

The people went crazy. Two Iron Mans were better than one, as far as most people were concerned. Tony was sure there'd be raging fan-wars at some point over the two of them, if the future was any indication, but for the moment he just savored the nice feeling in his gut. His buddy got to be a hero too, the military should get off his back, and everyone could be happy. At least until the next alien invasion, which should, should still be set for 2012.

That gave Tony three years to somehow convince SHIELD to let him get at the Tesseract, defrost the good Captain and get him firmly on Tony's side, do totally ethical genetic experiments on his own blood to see if he could make himself non-squishy, and JARVIS to kick off his own intelligence explosion and usher in cool stuff like nanobots.

Throw it all together, and Tony was hopeful that the Battle of New York would never happen, because Tony would kick the hell out Loki's ass as soon as the jumped up god showed up.