Ryuko sat on the floor glaring at Tony who sat a few feet away from her, Mako sat in between the two of them talking about how cool the two of them were even though neither of them was listening to her, Tony scratched the back of his neck and thought of the words he wanted to say, "so I guess you're mad."
"Mad? I'm fucking pissed! Why didn't you tell me who you were?"
"Because I'm still getting used to the whole telling people who I am thing, and to be honest I'm not used to people having that kind of reaction to me saving them, I didn't know you were going to try and deck me the next time you saw me," Tony looks at Ryuko's glaring face before giving a surrendering sigh, "listen I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but I'm sure we have bigger fish to fry, like the fact that the two of us are most likely at the top of the schools hit list, and I need to repair the damage my armor sustained during my fight with Satsuki."
"Wait you fought Satsuki!?" Ryuko exclaimed in surprise, "when did this happen?"
"Oh right after you passed out, you should have seen it, Satsuki was all slash, and tony was all 'I don't want to fight you,' and you were unconscious," mako states as she begins retelling the tale of Tony's short fight with Satsuki.
Ryuko looks at mako then to tony, "did you win?"
Tony sighs, "honestly I ran, while I'm sure I could win or at least end the fight in a stalemate, I don't want to fight her, she's got skills akin to that of a superhuman, and her blade cut clean through my shields and armor," Tony looks at the black bag that is his armor, "I'd need to do a complete overall to my armor before I would feel comfortable confronting her again, but I don't have the equipment to do that right now."
Ryuko gives an exasperated sigh as she lets herself fall back so she's laying on the floor, "great so I'm not any closer to getting my answers."
Tony sits thinking about what his next move should be when an idea crosses his mind, he pulls out his digital pod and asks a simple question, "Friday are outgoing communications monitored this far from the main school building?"
"Scans show little to no frequency monitoring this far from the main school," came the short reply.
"Wait who is that?" Ryuko asks visibly confused.
"That's just Friday, she's an AI that helps run my suit as well as do other smaller tasks, but that's not important right now, Friday call the armory status: urgent," tony says giving a short explanation of his AI companion.
A few moments later small hologram projects from the digital pod revealing Rhodey and pepper both looking slightly disheveled and tired Rhodey is the first one to speak, "the heck Tony it's 4 in the morning what was so important you needed to send us an urgent call this early in the morning?"
"Yeah you're not in trouble are you?" Came Pepper's annoyed question, "and if you aren't you will be for waking me this early."
"Sorry about that time difference you know, and yeah I'm in a bit of a pickle, listen I need you guys to send the mobile armory to this location," Tony says as he types in coordinates to a mostly open area outside of the city.
"Tony who are you talking to?" Ryuko asks as she unceremoniously shoves her head into view of the digital pod, "these some of your American friends?"
"Ryuko stop don't, get out of the way," Tony says trying to move her back to the side, "yes they're my two closest friends now move this is important."
"Ooh, American friends of Tony," Mako says before violently shoving both Ryuko and Tony out of the way and breaking into horribly accented Engrish, "Herro American friends!"
"MAKO!" both Tony and Ryuko both shout at her from off-screen before tony pushes his way back into view, "sorry about that, did you get the coordinations?"
Rhodey shakes his head clearing it, "it's too early for this. yeah, I got it, mobile armory on its way now."
"Thanks, guys I'll keep in touch."
"You do that, but Tony."
"Yeah, Rhodey?"
"Try to remember the time zones next time," and with that Rhodey ends the call.
Tony sighs as he slumps back, "alright my mobile armory should be on its way."
"Wait mobile armory what's that a bunch of guns and shit?" Ryuko asks.
"Kinda, a couple of months ago I realized that there may be situations where I couldn't return home to fix or change my armor, so I started designing a mobile armory, only finished it around a week ago as things kept popping up, it has two spare suits, replacement parts and even enough material to build a new suit if needed," tony says as a holographic clock begins displaying from his digital pod showing a count down, "looks like it should be here in about thirty minutes."
Ryuko slouches a bit, "so what do we do in the mean time?"
Mako looks between them, "well that's obvious," she says causing both both Tony and Ryuko look at her confused before she continues, "we eat dinner," as she says that she grabs the paper door between the living area and the dining/kitchen area showing the rest of her family already stuffing their faces with what appeared to be croquettes, "mom always makes a lot so there should be enough for everybody," she say before darting to a seat at the small table and rapidly grabbing multiple croquettes and adding them to her plate.
Tony and Ryuko look at each other and Tony shrugs standing up before making his way to the table and kneeling down next to Mako's younger brother and grabbing his chopsticks and grabbing a few of the croquettes from the large wok in the center of the table only to stop when he noticed the random bits sticking out of them, "so what exactly are in these?"
Mako's mother speaks up, "that's a secret."
Mako quickly speaks up with her mouth full, "mom's mystery croquettes are the best, we don't know what's in 'em but they taste great."
Tony looks at Ryuko who was sitting next to mako and was likewise looking cautiously at the croquettes before he looks back to his own, "welp, here goes," he sticks the fried food into his mouth and bites down... and it wasn't too bad, quite good in fact, "huh not bad," and with that they all ate and talked, Tony talking with Mako's father about medical practices and equipment, even mentioning that his armor was originally designed for medical purposes, "I could see about getting my father to give you some funds for better equipment," Tony says as he looks around seeing the state of the small home/medical center.
"You'd do that?" Mr. Mankanshoku asked raising an eyebrow.
"Why not? you're a doctor and from what you said you have a problem helping people, and I'm just going to guess that it isn't that way because you are unskilled, judging by your equipment," Tony says with a smirk, "you want to help people but with the tools you have you aren't going to be able to," he sighs, "now I'm not saying we're going to get you top of the line equipment, but just what you need to, you know actually make a difference."
Mr. Mankanshoku grins widely, "you know you're not so bad Tony, a real grade A in my book."
"Whatever I can do to help," Tony says with a smile before turning to his digital pod as an alarm goes off signaling that the mobile armory had arrived, "armory has landed well I'm going to head out," he says standing up and grabbing his banged armor and heading for the door.
"Tony wait I want to come with you," Ryuko says also standing up.
"No, you lost a lot of blood today and need rest," Tony says holding his hand out to stop her, "some other time ok, trust me you see it sooner or later."
Ryuko looked like she was going to argue but then she looked Tony in the eye and gave a heavy sigh, "fine, but next time I'm coming with."
Tony smile and nods, "next time," he looks to everyone else, "take care guys," he says clipping the straps of his bag together causing the backpack to unfold into his armor, with a final wave he steps outside and flies off towards the location of his mobile armory.
Tony arrives at the mobile armory relatively quickly as he touches down nearby and walks over to it. The equipment in question was the size of a large shack and was colored a gunmetal grey it had thrusters designed for moving it from one location to the other and on the exterior there were three armor pods two that held held spare armors and one for the armor he would be wearing at the time. Walking over to the hatch it quickly opens for him as he uses extremis to open the door, the armory was designed so that only he, Rhodey, or Pepper could enter by ether him using extremis or the armory IDing ether his Iron man armor or Rhodey's and Pepper's war machine or rescue armors. looking around the interior he smirks as he sees the workbench and materials taking off his armor and walking over he immediately got to work on repairing his mark II armor, "Friday I want you to run a back analysis of that data that we have on the alien fabric, I want to know the best way to counter it," Tony sighs as he looks at that right forearm of his MK II the metal had been cut as though it had been made of cardboard if it hadn't been for his energy shielding he would probably be down an arm, he takes a break from the repairs and leans back in the chair he was sitting in, "maybe I should try out the new suit, Friday how did the performance simulations of the MK III go?"
"Sir the MK III simulations showed a 85% increase performance from the MK II," came Friday's automated voice from a speaker.
Tony nods, he had decided to run the simulations of the new armor based on a few IRL test runs he had done with in in the middle of Nevada the test drives went mostly without a hitch only needing to tweak a few things here and there, "alright keep it on standby for remote deployment," he had designed the MK III to be a full kit upgrade of the MK II be it from energy output to defense, he had even worked in a way for it to be better synced with his extremis. Tony rubs his face and got back to work, it was probably getting late but no matter repairs came before sleep.
Meanwhile
Satsuki looked out across Honnouji Academy city from her seat atop the school's large tower, right after she had given the captain of the tennis club her two star goku uniform Inumuta had informed her of the strange object heading towards the city and as a response she had made her way to the large windowed room that overlooked the city just in time to see what at the distance appeared to be a small shuttle of some kind make landfall around 10 miles outside of the city's edge within the barren wasteland that surrounded it, several moments later she watches as a second object takes flight from the no star slums and heads towards the object, now she sat looking at the small flickering light that came from the object, "what are you up to Stark, and what will you be bringing to the table next?"
Heyo been a while, as you can see this story isn't dead, however I'm kinda giving up on trying to keep any sort of good timing on updates, this isn't due to a lack of interest in my stories, or lack care for my readers as both the stories and all of you readers mean a lot to me, it's more because I know my limitations. I am a habitual procrastinator and as much as I would like to be able to post at least a single chapter at least one of my stories every month, I know for a fact that will never happen, so that is why I am saying this, I will keep writing but expect there to be hiatuses lasting at least several months between chapters, I care for all of you who are have enjoyed and will hopefully keep enjoying my work.
as always comment, critique, and tell me what I can do better.
stay Swifty my friends,
Z-Man out