Tony Stark let the young man ramble on for several hours; he knew the pain of loss and the need to find a distraction.
"So the Bio-Fusion generator feeds through the Amp reactor, creating a sustainable energy source of five hundred million Megawatts with a peak use of one Gigawatt for combat use, but the cell would be depleted in a manner of minutes," Xander explained as he went over his suit's capabilities with the man responsible for it. "Primary weapon is an externally mounted Microwave cannon. The suit has been designed with a number of hard points for rapid weapons load out, depending on the mission objective."
Tony nodded at that, it made sense to use external weapons for versatility. Fortunately for him he had managed to find a powerful weapon that worked in most cases, and for everything else… there was War Machine. "How do you get around?" he asked as he noticed a lack of jet intakes on the armor.
"Mostly, I run." Xander admitted before shrugging at the older man "What? I was going to install a set of motorized roller-skates, but then I decided that would just look stupid." Xander said as the tech guru puffed up in wounded pride.
"I'll have you know those were cutting edge for their time," Tony defended before submitting under Xander's ridiculing stare. "Okay so they were stupid looking and hard as hell to use on anything other than a straight path thanks to a lack of traction… but they were still cutting edge."
Shrugging his shoulders, Xander turned back to the suit. "They say that if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid," He admitted before looking back at the man. "But then those didn't really work." He finished with a smirk before moving on. "Over here we have the hard point loads and prototype weapons systems," he announced.
Tony glared for a moment before following on with the tour. Looking around, he finally pointed to a collection of items sitting on a bright red shelving unit, "What are those?"
Xander looked at them and actually growled.
"Those are failed prototypes, the math seems to work out on them, but the actual results don't match up with the designs." He admitted before noticing the curious look and moving over to the shelves and picking up a device about the size of a soda can. "For example, this was the kraken, an enhanced capture system, using enhanced electromagnetic memory metals it would hit an object, deploy the webs and then only the metal on the ends would be attracted to the electromagnets back on the unit, wrapping around the target in seconds and immobilizing them, I wanted to sell it to police and bounty hunters for detaining criminals before they got close," Xander admitted.
Tony Stark nodded, it was a solid plan, and could logically be reduced to a forty millimeter size for grenade launchers and be affective for several hundred yards. "Why is it over here?" he asked.
Xander sighed and took the device over to a mannequin. "This is why," he growled before pushing the button and throwing it at the test dummy.
In moments the can had exploded into a web of lines that effectively cocooned the target, while Tony doubted the energy cell would last long on the magnets it would give the officer between fifteen and twenty seconds to get to them before the energy ran out.
"I don't see what the…" he trailed off as a creaking sound from the mannequin was quickly followed by the dummy collapsing and being crushed into a ball. "Ahhh… That would be, problematic."
"Yeah, the memory metal continues to retract, despite the target being immobilized, crushing the target. Something I understand the police frown on," Xander admitted before turning off the device and retracting the webbing before returning it to the shelf.
"While each of these 'Work' they don't work right, so I put them up here and return to them from time to time to try and work out the bugs."
"You have a lot," Tony said as he looked at the shelf in surprise, not that it had anything on him. Stark Industries had warehouses full of failed and rejected prototypes.
Shrugging his shoulders, Xander moved on. "Yeah, I don't sleep a whole lot anymore, bad dreams." Xander sent a knowing look at the legendary Iron Man.
"Yeah, Kid, I got that." Stark thought back on some of the things he had seen in his years behind the mask, most he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. Shaking his head, he looked around the warehouse again, "So all of this is made from scrap?"
Xander nodded and answered, "Yup, hardest part was the electrical, but you can find what you need lying around; gold from computers, silver from cutlery and platinum from old car engines." Xander shrugged, "Most of us don't have a world spanning, Mega Corporation to help build our armor or toys, after all."
"Hey, my first suit was made in a cave, with tech a lot worse than this." He defended before shrugging. "After that I decided, why handicap myself."
Nodding, Xander brushed some rubble off the couch and sat down. "True, but while all of this is great I got to ask. Am I going to be facing industrial espionage charges anytime soon?"
Thanking about it for a minute, Tony finally shook his head, "Not today Kid, you didn't have anything to do with the magic, so I'll let you slide. But keep your nose clean and try to stay under the radar. Take it from me, national media popularity brings a lot of unwanted attention."
The younger man groaned, "If I had known she was a freaking reporter, I would have thought twice about saving her." Xander explained as the armored form chuckled in understanding before dropping his mask back in place.
"No you wouldn't kid, you and I both know that." he jibed before launching himself out of the hole he had entered from.
Taking a deep breath, Xander let it out in a shudder before heading to the shielded part of the warehouse. Entering the back section, Xander nodded to Willow before checking on the advanced suit.
While not as advanced as the Stark Industries model, the gap was rapidly closing.
"Good, let's start thinking about the Mark three." He said as Willow turned her mind to the task at hand, at least it kept her from thinking about Kendra.
--
From a distance, the young man stared at the hole the metallic meddler had flown out of recently. His systems had detected the explosion and he had come over to investigate, because the fact that it had drawn the attention of one of the planet's do gooders meant that this could potentially complicate matters.
Rubbing his hand over his bald head, Warren Meer's both cursed and thanked that fateful Halloween night. While he had retained the perpetual baldness his costumed character had suffered with, the increased mental capacity was well worth it.
Moving off the roof, Warren thought back to the armored form before starting plans to resurrect his character's Battle Suit. While there was no Superman in this universe to interfere, he had no doubt the locals would trouble him no end.
--
Nick Fury grinned as the reports started to cross his desk concerning the "Watchers Council." While the council claimed to be ancient, the best reports his teams could come up with was a nineteen thirties group started by a con-man by the name of James Henry Travers.
It seemed to have started off easily enough as a con to get money out of the terrified politicians looking for a way to stop the Nazi funded supernatural attacks on the British Isle and had quickly spiraled into a massive operation dealing in paranormal research, smuggling, terrorism, kidnapping and extortion. Most of the current batch probably didn't even know about its history, being fed the same crock of shit the Slayer had been.
Chewing on his cigar, Nick Fury moved towards the video screen and started connecting to the British Home Office, he was pretty sure they would find this data very interesting.
--
Angel ran through the underground carefully, adjusting straps and shifting gear as he went. Dropping into a near silent roll, the two hundred and forty year old vampire launched a trio of small balls and smiled as the powerful little magnets attached, connected and stuck the balls to metal he had placed earlier before exploding.
He had been fortunate to find a collection of hand grenades in a local nest that he had adapted to his anti-armor needs.
Nodding in satisfaction at the destruction, Angel turned his attention to his other weapons. Picking up a small canister, he held it carefully before setting it to the side because the thought of testing a thermobaric grenade underground filled him with a shudder of fear.
He would try it out later tonight, much later.
--
Winifred Burkle looked at some of the equations the unconscious girl had brought with her and frowned. While at first everything seemed right, Fred had looked a bit closer and discovered a flaw in one of the numbers and that, of course, changed everything.
Pulling out a piece of charcoal, the Texas born genius started working to fix the numbers. If she managed to get it right, it would allow the machine to place someone just outside the local phase equation, allowing them to walk through walls.
That was assuming, of course, that she got the math right.
Behind her, she failed to see the dark skinned girl sit up and carefully hold her head while looking around.
--
(A/N) A bit different then I wanted… I wanted a big argument between Iron Man and Xander, but that just didn't work out so, there ya go.