Chapter 6: It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's …
At least, that's what it sounded like. The firing of six photon laser guns at once was Tony's first explanation for the noise. Then he felt an outside breeze in his hair and the grit of pulverized glass on his cheek, and saw the shattered bay window.
Everyone – villains and captives alike – stared in shock. The vision that sailed through the empty space made even the team leader lower his gun.
"Stop right there, all of you!" it snarled. The silver woman floated smoothly before them, hovering on her thrusters, glinting in the sun like a morning star. "Release those two men immediately."
"Oh my God," Tony murmured. As relieved as he was to still be breathing, when he had intended Pepper to work things out with the kidnappers this was not what he had in mind.
Worse, Jim was on the same page. "Is that–?"
"Yup."
"The hell we will!" yelled Matrix Villain. "Fire!" And he and three of his men sprayed laser blasts at the suit, which dodged the shots gracefully. Two others grabbed Tony and Jim and pulled them away, apparently to deal with them later.
"No!" Tony shouted.
He fought hard but uselessly. The two thugs hustled him and Jim out one of the small glass doors. Before they knew it they were squeezed shoulder to shoulder on a little viewing veranda with their backs against the iron railing and the door clicked shut, trapping them outside the building. Tony ignored this latest annoyance. He only had eyes for what was happening inside and really, if something serious went down in the top floor rotunda, they were dead anyway. Two inches of glass and wrought iron wouldn't protect them worth a damn from that kind of firepower.
Pepper meanwhile shot one of her repulsors at the men, taking out the opposite window with a crash. She had intentionally missed by a mile – she was hoping to scare them.
It didn't quite work. "Knew you would try something like this, Stark!" Matrix Villain yelled as he threw off his trench coat and fired at Pepper again. "Sending your last-year tech after us? Pathetic! Look what we can do!"
And he and the rest of his crew shed their coats and rose up into the air, hovering in a V formation and aiming their weapons directly at Pepper and charging them up. They all had their safeties off. Thankfully Pepper had done the same with her external speakers, so no one heard her squeak in terror. Everybody saw her hare off through the broken window, however. That was pretty hard to miss. The villains took off in hot pursuit and they all shot upwards toward the pinnacle of the building, rising over the pyramid and up towards the lightning rod.
"What the hell?" Jim yelled to Tony over the noise. "They can fly?"
"They can fly," Tony said flatly. "Fuck."
The two of them watched helplessly, hair whipping in the wind, as the combined membership of WarGod chased Pepper around City Hall in a mad spiraling blur. They looked straight up at the steeple, craning their necks to get a better view, because Pepper had wisely taken the fight up and away. Her armor was very maneuverable and light, so she was doing very well at avoiding their attacks. Actually, it looked like she was toying with them.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
She wasn't. Inside the suit, it was panic time. Pepper was no soldier. She was no hero, she was certainly no superhero, and even though the possibility of fighting with armed goons had come up, she'd pushed it to the back of her mind. Until now, of course. Now it was front and center.
"Jarvis, help me! What the hell am I supposed to do now?" Jarvis calculated something as she dodged a fat laser blast from the left and thrust-vectored straight up to get out of the arena, if only for a moment.
"Miss Potts, I suggest you engage the repulsors as a weapon. Take a deep breath, turn around, and fire."
"Are you sure? What if I kill them?"
"Miss Potts, the hover suits they stole offer uncommon protection. Repulsors should be just thing to contain them."
"If you say s- Oh!" she shouted as the suit took a wallop from a photon rifle – her first battle bump – and she was knocked sideways with considerable force. Her side felt hot where she'd been hit. "Ow!"
The thrusters on her boots kicked in and righted her. And she turned angry eyes on her attackers. The HUD was lighting up like a firework show, and as she dodged the incoming blasts from their weapons her cameras shifted to a close-up of Tony and Jim on the veranda, Tony bloodied up, Jim exhausted, watching her with their mouths hanging open.
Her eyes narrowed, but she stayed still, as per Jarvis's advice, and let the thugs rush her, charging up her palm with a bright crackle of light. "Okay, here we go," she mumbled, engaging the targeting system and pining a bright dot on the leader of the pack. "Lock and load."
She fired off a mighty blast, nearly full power. Direct hit. It just knocked him back, though. He shook it off like a dog after a flea bath and went for her again.
She squeaked. And then she frantically focused her targeting system on any incoming thug, fired fast with her hands in opposite directions and reset at blinding speed for the next wave, because they were coming in from all angles. It was a wild air dance above City Hall, blasts from both sides firing everywhere, but she kept them at bay for a good two minutes as Tony and Jim, sensing hope, cheered her on from their perch on the veranda. They were screaming something supportive, if incomprehensible (it was coming through her mikes like "WAH-WOO!") and Tony was actually hopping up and down.
But then one guy decided to put his hover-drive in hyper-drive and got through her defenses. And then another made it, and another, and suddenly they were like ants, finding openings everywhere to crawl in and fire at close range. The tide had turned. Before she knew it she was being thrown about like a rag doll in a hurricane, unable to throw up anything to stop them. The blows and hits were raining down from all directions. She was covering her head and trying to protect herself from the thugs, who were having a field day.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
After a few minutes of this Tony swore creatively. He bowed his head in guilt and scrunched his eyes shut. "Oh, I can't look. What was I thinking, giving her that thing? If she survives this, I'll kill her."
"Tony, chill," Jim shot at him, eyes still on the sky.
"She's got zero combat experience, Rhodey. Zee, Row. If she dies, it's on me."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Is that all you've got?" the leader yelled at her, as he fired a parting shot right between her breasts, knocking her back a ways.
(Christine Everhart, wearing only Tony's discarded maroon silk shirt, feigns friendliness. "You must be the famous Pepper Potts.")
She cried out in the suit and forced herself to take off, just slowly enough that they could follow her but not necessarily get off a clear shot. "Jarvis, there has to be some way we can shut these guys down!" And suddenly, just as she dodged a laser blast, she had an idea. "Wait a minute! Was that press release from Intellitech correct?"
"Rephrase your query, Miss Potts. I do not understand."
Pepper blasted towards the US Bank building, luring the crew away from City Hall for a moment. "I mean, was Intellitech telling the truth about the suits being buggy?"
"The clinical trials confirm the bugs, Miss Potts."
"And are these suits identical in spec to those in the clinical trials?" she asked frantically, checking over her shoulder; the six men were gaining on her. "Uh oh."
"Based on my initial scan of your opponents, yes, they are. They have not been altered in any way."
(Pepper, completely dressed and not a hair out of place, fires back with a self-effacing, modest smile and a half-bow. "Indeed I am.")
"Okay. Well, then maybe I can recreate whatever caused the suits to fail in the initial trials," she said. "Jarvis, what interferes with this kind of neural interface?"
"According to Mr. Stark's latest research into this sort of thing, competing electrical signals seem to do the trick."
"I can discharge straight electricity, can't I?"
"Oh, yes indeed, Miss Potts."
A feral grin. "Excellent."
(Christine looks vaguely dismayed. "After all these years, Tony still has you picking up the dry cleaning.")
She stopped on a dime and flew back towards City Hall, trailing six thoroughly confused and annoyed bad guys. ("Hold still, damn it!" one of them shouted.) Game plan already in action, she hovered above the roof once more as they closed in on her. Meanwhile, she lined up her shot and lit them all up with her targeting system. Twelve big fat juicy bogies were surrounding her. She was planning on taking out six guys and six electrically powered guns with one blast.
"Aw, what's the matter? Giving up? Suit's not making it?" the leader taunted. "Well, as long as we're going to take your pretty ass out, you might as well give us a name. Who the hell are you?"
Pepper didn't answer him.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Tony, she's not dead!" Jim yelled excitedly.
That got Tony to peek up and he let out a relieved puff of air. Then he watched her charge up above City Hall, collecting electricity from the lightning rod (the arc was so bright he could see it against the afternoon sky) and channeling it into the suit. His one good eye went wide. He knew exactly what this particular maneuver meant. He only prayed that she would be fast enough to deal with the results.
(Pepper, unfazed, treats Everhart like the used-up lay she is and says softly and sweetly, "I do anything and everything Mr. Stark requires …")
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"You morons made a huge mistake messing with Tony Stark," Pepper informed them in a gravelly, electronically-enhanced purr. "And you can call me … the Silver Siren."
The suit was now hoarding enough electricity to power three ear-popping death metal concerts at once. Split twelve ways, it would definitely get the job done.
She fired.
(And she smiles. "Including occasionally taking out the trash. Will that be all?")
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The flash of the discharge was blinding. The shock wave came hard after it, and Tony and Jim watched as the six flying men were cut down like cane, shrieking for Jesus and losing their grip on their useless guns and probably peeing themselves, because Pepper had shorted out their suits (and their weapons) while they were hovering approximately four hundred feet in the air.
Five flailing bodies dropped like dead birds and plaster rained down from the pyramid top of City Hall, lightly coating Tony and Jim with dust. Tony nodded grimly. "Fearless Leader" seemed to have gotten a special parting gift from Pepper – a pressure pulse, if he wasn't mistaken – and he watched as the guy went rocketing by with a scream trailing out behind him. He sailed through the window of a nearby high-rise with a burst of glass and didn't come back to the party.
Tony figured the bastard was probably crawling around looking for his face in someone's destroyed board room, but he couldn't care less. He had other things on his mind. "The Silver Siren?" he complained to Jim over the wind. "Where does she think she is, 1943? That's a terrible name!"
Jim rolled his eyes.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The fight was definitely over. Pepper 1, Bad Guys 0.
Pepper did the honorable thing when her opponents fell. She swooped down and caught them, grabbing two guys by the seats of their pants (no time for dignity), and three others by their collars (they started gagging but she ignored them). Hauling five men put a little strain on the armor, but she did all right. "Smoke," she ordered from three hundred feet in the air. No way was anyone getting a picture of this new suit. Stark Industries had enough to handle after Tony had opened his fat mouth last year. Small vents opened up all around the suit, and smoke poured out, enveloping her in it. (The members of WarGod started coughing.)
When the rescue workers and the cops finally got close enough to the ambulances, they waved away the gritty air and ran towards six stunned men lying in a heap on the ground, all of them alive and reasonably unharmed. The cops arrested them, but even after they'd been cuffed, they kept raving about some silver robot woman.
"Yeah, yeah," said the seasoned cop holding open the door to the patrol car. "Hey, Indigo!" His partner, a younger man, looked up. "You wanna make sure we get these idiots a psych evaluation after processing?"
"Sure," said the second cop. "But we oughta – whoa!"
He shielded his face as something big screamed by right across the façade of the building. And a second later … "HELP!"
Startled, the cops (and most of the gathered crowd) looked up. The leader of the pack, nose bloodied, face puffing, arms flailing, was hanging above the hall's front steps. The back of his suit was neatly skewered on the flagpole. He was stuck like a pig.
"What the hell?" said the first cop.
But Pepper was already gone. With the spectators occupied with the police trying to get the last thug down from the flagpole, and the police occupied with clearing the scene, she took the opportunity to launch herself back up to the top of City Hall. An approaching news chopper thup-thup-thupped towards her but she didn't even pause in her ascent as she extended a palm and used up the last of her stored electricity in a tiny scrambling blast that gently fried its cameras. Unfortunately she fried something in the engine too, because the helicopter started wobbling.
"Oops." Only Jarvis heard her, thankfully.
The pilot mouthed something colorful and quickly veered off to the left to find a place to land; Pepper saw it touch down on the old Disney building, which was too far to get a good look at anything. The press was nicely distracted and the crowd below was trying to sort things out, so she was free to get what she came for.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Tony and Jim turned to her as she hovered up to them on the balcony.
"Hi guys," she said, with a touch of worry. She put one metal gauntlet on Jim's arm and cupped Tony's battered face with her other hand. "Are you two all right?"
Tony and Jim, wild-haired, ruffled and coated in dust, looked at each other and then back at her in wide-eyed silence. They'd just watched an executive assistant fight a battle in a super-suit, and she was asking them if they were okay?
The short answer to her question, by the way, was "No."
"I'd like to go home now, please," Tony said quietly.
"Me too," Jim added, with a concerned look at Tony.
Pepper smiled inside the suit. "Consider it done."
Still hovering in mid-air (there was no room to get on the balcony with them) she motioned for Tony to turn around. He put his back to her, and she snapped the chain on his handcuffs like dry spaghetti and fried the locks on the bracelets with a fingertip. They fell away. As she was taking care of Jim's restraints, Tony brought his wrists around front and rubbed the chaffed skin with shaking hands – with shaking everything, actually. It took him a second to figure out why. He was over-stimulated from the whole experience.
The realization came (naturally) just a smidge too late. Between the non-breakfast, the missed lunch, the kidnapping, the beating, and the lack of his usual armored protection against such things, his legs went out. He sank down onto the veranda on his hands and knees and hung his head breathlessly. The cement undulated under his palms.
"Tony! Jim, give him to me," Pepper commanded, and Jim hefted Tony up under his arms and handed him over. She cradled him against her chest. "You hang in, okay? I'm getting you out of here."
"'m all right," he protested.
"The hell you are," she scolded. "Jim, are you injured?"
"No, I'm okay."
"Good. So if I fly slowly, you can hang on back there?" Jim nodded. Pepper turned around in mid-air and arched her back so he could clamber on. He wrapped his arms securely around her metallic neck and got his knees up over her hips, and he set his face directly behind her head so she could take the wind for him. "Ready?"
"Yep. Let's roll before anybody else shows up."
"No kidding. Here we go. Hold tight, now."
She took it easy with them, heading for the coast at a fairly face-stinging clip but making sure Jim didn't slip an inch on her back. With Tony securely in her arms, she made a beeline for Malibu.