"Tony, what exactly are we doing here?" Bruce asked as he chased the ghost down the stairs to his lab.
"There's not a lot of time to explain," Tony said as he hurried over to the west wall and came to a sharp halt in front of it. He brushed his hands over the vertical surface before putting his fingers to his temples, kneeding them aggressively. "Okay, okay, think," he muttered loudly under his breath, obviously skatter-brained. "You can remember why this is important." The ghost began smacking the sides of his head with his palms.
Bruce stood back and let him… cogitate (if you could call it that) a minute, before taking a step forward and interrupting. "Tony…"
The engineer put out a hand to silence him. "There's a panel here, I know it…" he mumbled before eying the wall again. "Tell JARVIS… tell JARVIS to deploy the Mach VI!" he had the revelation.
Dr. Banner lifted an eyebrow- he had no idea what a Mach VI was… a high-powered weapon, perhaps?- but he made the request nonetheless. "JARVIS, could you deploy the Mach VI?"
"My apologies, but that function no longer exists within my database," the AI said.
"Damn it!" Tony threw up his hands in exasperation. "There has to be some manual way to get it to open…"
"Get what open?" Bruce asked. It was just an unoccupied wall of the lab and nothing more. The other man had memory problems, but he'd really lost his marbles this time.
"The panel! The thing right here in front of me!" Tony gestured exasperatedly. He paused, frowning, and grabbed his own wrist. "The activation bracelet…" he realized, snapping his fingers. Bruce watched as the spirit dashed across the room to a workdesk. "Get your ass over here already, I can't open this myself," he said, swiping his fingers through the handle of the drawer to prove his point. The physicist opened it to find a narrow wristband made of titanium sitting in the bottom of the drawer; he picked it up and adjusted his glasses to observe it closer. "Put it on, you're gonna need it," Tony said.
Bruce slipped it on his left wrist, since he kept his watch on his right. "What exactly is this going to do to help?" he asked, intrigued by the device but he didn't see how it could do much against a dozen or so bilgesnipe from space.
"There should be a little switch on the side- flip it."
The doctor held his arm up to his face and squinted to see the miniscule button the spirit was talking about. "You mean this one?" he said as he depressed it with his thumb.
The west wall made a whir and Bruce jumped, looking up with wide eyes to watch the wall segment and unfold itself before them. It pulled back to reveal a suit of red and gold armor… not just armor, he quickly re-evaluated, but an entire articulated body-suit with a built-in high-tech propulsion system that was weaponized to boot. Lodged into the chestpiece was a glowing blue power-source.
"Aha!" Tony clapped his hands together and rushing forward. "What did I say?"
Okay, take back the lost marbles.
Ordinarily, Dr. Banner might have asked how Tony had known this was here, along with several follow-up questions. But instead he was drawn like a moth to light by the engineering marvel. "Tony, this is an incredible piece of machinery…" Bruce said, brushing his fingers over the metallic surface in awe. He was particularly mesmerized by the cylindrical insert in the center- a miniaturized reactor. He'd read news articles about this kind of technology, but nothing in-depth since it was a privately-owned advancement. Astounding!
The ghost engineer grinned at him and winked. "Just wait 'til you get a look at the inside."
The physicist gave a small start, looking at him uncertainly over the ridge of his spectacles. "You expect me to put this on?"
Tony shook his head, still smiling like a chesire cat. "Not at all. Hit the other button, the bigger one, in the center."
Bruce looked down at the band again and the pair of squares etched onto the mentioned button. He could only assume pressing it would put the unit into auto-pilot mode, or perhaps remote control. He depressed it. To his great surprise a web of red laser shot out and scanned him from top to bottom, which was when he realized just how wrong his assumption had been.
The doctor let out a yelp as the floor latched onto his feet, rendering him, for all intents and purposes, immobile. Mechanized arms shot out from the wall, dismantling the suit and beginning to encase him inside it, starting with his shins and moving up. He squirmed, but the run-sequence he had set in motion seemed perfectly capable of compensating for the movement. "Oh my God, Tony!"
"Did I mention it puts itself on? Yeah, so, no worries about ever having to put it on yourself," Tony gestured, leaning back on a hip as he just watched, smug as could be for his tricksy wordplay.
"Can you tell me just what the heck you expect me to do in this?" Dr. Banner demanded as the chest piece clicked around him and the abdominal shielding extended out to latch with the piece around his hips.
"Kick ass?" Tony suggested, shrugging with a smirk.
"I don't even know how to work th-" Bruce started to say before the helmet was jammed over his head and the faceplate dropped down over his face. An entire display lit up in front of his eyes, killing the words in his throat as read-outs and information blipped to life in the forms of graphs and projection charts- even he found it challenging to keep up with the stream of information being supplied inside the headgear. Beyond it he could see the lab and Tony smiling proudly up at him.
"Don't worry, Big Guy, I'll give you a hand," he assured, coming forward. That now familiar cool sensation filled Dr. Banner as Tony stepped into him again and grabbed a hold of his physical body. The ghost flexed his fingers for him.
"So I assume you know what you're doing then?" Bruce asked seriously.
"It'll come to me as we go," Tony responded, shrugging their combined shoulder.
The physicist choked. He got the feeling he was about to embark on the ride of his life completely unprepared. Tony lifted their arm and blasted a beam of energy at the wall. "Holy- what are you doing?" Bruce gawked at the now visible ocean-front beyond the crumbling hole.
"Don't worry, we'll fix it later," Tony assured and with that, he engaged the thrusters and shot them through the opening at break-neck speed.
Being the Hulk was one thing. Flying through the goddamn air at the speed of sound was another.
Dr. Banner was pretty damn sure hovering a thousand feet above the ground wasn't actually in any way necessary, but he'd been more focused on keeping his heart rate down than arguing with Tony at the present moment. It had been difficult enough to keep his breathing slow and even, but somehow, thank meditation, he had managed.
Tony meanwhile, had been searching the land beneath them. "I see the horny bastards. Good thing we didn't get here any later," the other man said.
Bruce eyed the screen as it keyed on the life-forms in the street and enlarged them for detail. It spat out estimated weights, heights, travelling velocities, impact forces, everything he could ever want to know and more. "Is there actually anything you need me to do?" he asked, quite aware his body was being used as little more than a puppet at the moment.
"Yeah, I need you to call out commands," the ghost responded. "I can't control everything manually, there's a fair amount that's voice-activated."
The physicist swallowed, but nodded, understanding the commitment. This wasn't his conventional method for helping people, but he guessed he didn't currently have much other choice. "Alright. You have a plan of attack?"
"Absolutely," Tony responded confidently. "Attack." He angled their body into a nosedive and shot them downward towards Malibu.
"A little warning next time!" Bruce gasped, eyes wide like saucers behind his glasses as the ground rushed up at them.
"Sorry!" the other scientist quickly apologized, simultaneously banking to bring them parallel to the earth only about thirty feet above it; Bruce's head spun as buildings and palm trees rushed by. "Okay, give me twenty-five percent output on the repulsor cannons," Tony said with determination. "I wanna see what these guys are made of."
"Twenty-five percent output to the repulsor cannons," he relayed to the suit; the hardware whirred and complied, charging up in the palms.
In no time they caught up to the bilgesnipe, and Tony extended both arms to fire a couple of bursts of energy at the one furthest in the rear. The creature reared up in fury, lifting onto its hindlegs and sweeping the air with its horns. It was only thanks to a pinpoint turn skyward on Tony's part that they didn't slam directly into the sharpened bones and get impaled. "Whoaaakay!" the spirit got out, "Not so good. New tactic. Uhhh…"
"We should probably try to get the rest's attention," Dr. Banner suggested as he got his bearings back. "Get them out of the streets where they're doing damage and out onto the hillside so we can take care of them in the clear." He may not be one for aerial maneuvers, but he did know a thing or two about damage-control and leading pursuing enemies around.
"That's a good idea, I like that idea; let's go with that idea," Tony quickly accessed and decided. "I should have a cluster of charges that'll give us the desired effect… drop 'em when I say when." He steered the suit and aligned it over the rampaging creatures, a safe distance above the deadly horns. He gauged their position. "Alriiight… aaand… when!" he shouted.
"Deploy charges," Bruce requested and several dozen miniature-sized pucks shot out from around his waist and plummeted into the horde of bilgesnipe. Upon contact with the ground the charges went off around the beasts' feet, startling them out of their stampede, roaring and bellowing as they tried to figure out what was responsible for the explosions that had scorched their toes.
"Hey-ohhh!" Tony descended them in front of the creatures, waving Bruce's arms and jeering. "Like that? Those were just the poppers! The real party is up the hill," he hooked his thumb. "You're all invited. I heard there's gonna be some serious fireworks!"
"I don't have to remind you that they can't hear you," Bruce stated flatly.
"I don't have to remind you that you are sooo not any fun," Tony shot back. The bilgesnipe roared and surged forward at them, and Tony took off once again, taking it relatively slow up the cliffs to ensure the monsters could keep up. "So I was thinking," the ghost said far too conversationally for being in the heat of battle, even if this was a temporary lull, "if the cannons are just going to piss them off, concentrated enough laser beam should be able to slice through them."
"You have something like that on here?" Bruce asked. A better question might have been what Tony didn't have on the suit, he realized only after he asked it.
"Yeah, but it eats up energy like nobody's business. We'll want to be sparing." He evaluated their current position on the hill. "Ready for a few more loop-de-loops, doc?"
Did he really have a choice one way or the other? "I haven't thrown up yet," the physicist replied sarcastically.
Tony chuckled. He swept them around and pointed his left fist at the lead beast. "Divert power to my laser pointer of death!"
"Full power to laser," Bruce commanded. A thin red vector shot out from the plating on the gauntlet; it cut a direct vertical plane through the alien, severing it in half. It was kind of gruesome, but undeniably effective. Tony pointed and shot twice more before the remaining bilgesnipe began to panic, seeing what had happened to their brethren. They skattered every which way, leaving the ghost unsure which to follow and take aim at. It was that brief pause in action that left them open to be flanked.
"Tony!" Bruce cried out in alarm, but he'd seen too late- one of the bilgesnipe took ahold of the suit by the leg with its teeth, slamming the both of them into the ground hard. Despite the protection the armor offered, it still drove the air out of Bruce's lungs, leaving him gasping to get it back. Thankfully, Tony was not phased, immediately throwing out both of Bruce's arms and blasting the creature point-blank in the face. It gave a dying scream from what was left of its head before falling over onto its side with a resounding thud.
The spirit picked them from the ground to stand. "You okay, Bruce?" he asked.
The physicist was about to open his mouth to tell Tony he'd suffered a lot worse in the past, when another of the brutes rammed into them from behind. It sent them sprawling, bouncing off the ground a good three times before tumbling to a halt, loose dirt clouding up around them. Okay,that was worse; Bruce gave a soft groan. Tony grit his teeth. "Now that was just uncalled for…" Despite the dull ache now coursing through him, the apparation picked his body up and swiveled on his feet, loosing his hand cannons into the creature that had hit them before it could collide with them a second time. It injured it, but didn't kill it, and he didn't get the chance to finish it off either. Another came from the side, lashing its tail at them; it knocked their combined legs out from under them, face-planting into the ground.
"We have to get back up into the air," Bruce grunted, tasting iron in his mouth and knowing it was blood.
"Working on it!" Tony responded, performing a quick barrel-roll just as a giant foot stomped down to crush them. He rolled back the other direction as another foot came down, getting on their back underneath the creature. "Detonators, detonators!" he exclaimed.
Bruce relayed the command and two small rockets shot out from either shoulder, lodging in the scales of the bilgesnipe's soft underbelly. Tony propelled them out from beneath it as fast as he could, but they still ended up caught in part of the resulting blast. They struck against an outcropping of rocks hard enough to leave a dent in the stone surface. Dr. Banner struggled to see straight, his head pounding. "Bruce?" he heard dully; Tony sounded far away, muddled. "Bruce, buddy, you still with me?" There was panic in his voice. "I need you!"
The internal screen was flashing in warning, showing bilgesnipe charging from ten and two o'clock. The physicist recovered from the verge of unconsciousness none too soon. The ghost latched onto his physical person and rocketed them up into the sky just before two of the beasts converged, slamming into the place where he had been slumped. He didn't stop until they were an absolutely guaranteed safe altitude above the berzerking creatures.
"You scared me down there, Bruce; I couldn't move us… I thought I lost you," Tony said, his voice slightly pinched.
His skull felt like it ought to be split in two. "You almost did," Dr. Banner admitted, strained. The screen updated to display a damage report. The structural integrity had been compromised in several locations and they were running on 54% power. He frowned. They'd only dealt with half of the monsters from space.
The sound of helicopter blades chopped through the air. The helmet display located and zoomed in on the source- an armada of black helicopters was approaching on the eastern horizon, and all of them bore the same S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. Bruce felt relief wash over him. "Well, about time," Tony mumbled. "What, did they stop for take-out on the way? Sheesh."
"If they did, they better at least share," the physicist grumbled, not too hurt to keep from adding to the bad jokes.
The engineer's ghost chuckled. "I think S.H.I.E.L.D. can be trusted to handle this from here. Let's get you back home." He oriented them towards the house on the shore, taking it slow through the air.
"Just as long as you get me out of this damn thing," Bruce mumbled. "I can't believe you used to fly around in this."
"Yep!" Tony responded with an air of confidence. "The one and only Iron Man!" He gave a long pause, seemingly stumbling upon an epiphany. "Oh my God. I'm Iron Man. I am Iron Man!" If anything the other man sounded even more elated than before. "I may have been a woman-hating jerk, but I saved lives goddamn it!"
Dr. Banner felt himself smile wearily. He was battered and bruised, but he was happy for the ghost. Finally, he knew who he was.
