AN - Impure version of the MCU; it will be incorporating elements from the Prime Marvel Universe (known as Earth-616) into the MCU (known as Earth-199999). Will be playing a little loose with some of the feats for Worm as well, given the insanity that is the Marvel Universe.

Also - first attempt at writing in the Worm Universe, please be gentle. Very slight AU - Taylor does have a cellphone, but it's an old Nikola 6210 - but she still dislikes them, yet the convenience is just too useful.

Man of Iron - Arrival 1.0

The Battle of New York on Earth Yod marked a turning point in the history of Earth Bet; a tragedy in its own right that, in terms of the damage done and the death toll, was biblical. While it paled in comparison to what an Endbringer could bring - in many ways due to the extremely limited Cape presence at the battle itself, the damage and casualties thus rivaled some of the smaller attacks. In terms of Capes, there was only about twenty or so split between heroes and supervillains; notables included the newly formed Avengers under the Avenger Initiative by Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (SHIELD), the independent superhero teams known as the X-Men, an independent traveling supervillain team known as the Wrecking Crew, a local independent Superhero known as Spiderman, among others. However, with the sheer numbers of invaders, most of the heavy lifting was done by the United States Armed Forces as well as local law enforcement agencies.

The turning point in the battle was when the portal was closed and the events that followed on from that point caused major shakeups both on Earth Bet and Earth Yod…

Prologue of A Cape's Life, from Earth Bet to Earth Yod

The soon to be named Earth Yod

New York City, New York

The city burned, long fingers of dark smoke rising into a brilliant blue sky like jagged teeth of a great monster.

From the shimmering portal the loomed seven thousand feet above the fifteen hundred foot tall building known as Stark Tower came the invader - a stream of Skiffs of various sizes ranging from small two man affairs to much larger vehicles mounting heavy weapons descended upon the city to attack it. They weren't alone, huge creatures ranging from thirty to fifty meters in length were among them, launching pods and running amuck either between the buildings over above the island city proper to deploy more troops elsewhere in the city.

Fell weapons spat bolts of glittering blue-white fire that streaked forth at supersonic velocity to smash asphalt, concrete, brick, and other materials alike with equal ease sending sprays of semi-molten dust flying as matter decoupled violently. Other weapons, mostly types of explosives, were also used.

But this assault wasn't going unanswered.

In the streets of the great city, New York's Finest fought back - while their weapons weren't particularly effective, what made them terrifying to face was that they knew the city like the back of their hands. Areas that the aliens thought were secured would suddenly not be secure when members of the police would appear either on their flanks or behind them, having used either the subway tunnels or the various alleys to bypass the alien lines to attack the invaders and rescue civilians caught in the crossfire.

They weren't alone in fighting back.

Through the streets National Guard Humvees and other vehicles along with Guardsmen prowled, sweeping through the urban jungle with grim methodical efficiency as they returned fire with their own weapons at the aliens invading the city, sweeping Subway Stations and buildings clear of aliens and developing strong points.

While above in the overhead sky, engines screamed, sonic booms echoing over the city as dozens of glittering shapes, a mixture of F-22s, F-35s, F-15s, F-16s, and F/A-18s twisted and howled through the air as they engaged the Skiffs and Leviathans that were trying to bring them down with missiles and guns to great effect on the former and rather limited effect on the latter. While additional aircraft dove through fields of energy weapon fire to provide close air support to the defenders of the city.

These mundane forces formed the bulk of the defenders and while they were fighting furiously - they were outmatched. More invaders constantly streamed down to make the numbers that they lost, it was a near constant flow. Already, the United States Armed Forces was escalating their response, with the entirety of the Marine Division in Camp Lejeune mobilizing along with National Guard elements from the rest of the Northeast responding; it was clear that the New York and New Jersey Army National Guard wasn't going to be able win this fight alone.

But despite all of that, the mundane forces weren't alone for there were bonafide superheroes and villains in this bout. A glittering red and gold man shot through the skies, Iron Man closed rapidly on a point where National Guardsmen had requested support. As he approached he could see that yet another Leviathan had decided to descend out of the chaos that was tearing the clear blue skies apart and into Manhattan to further complicate things for the defenders.

He would deal with it and undoubtedly the dozens of Chichtauri that it was releasing after he helped out these Guardsmen who were taking an unholy beating in this battle. As he thought of that, another marker for a vehicle winked out along with half a squad of Guardsmen two blocks over. This was frankly getting worse by the second - but they were making slow if steady progress, they could win this if they could just figure out how to close that damn portal.

Until that occurred, they were frantically working on containment but spillover was still occurring, the battle expanding to include the five boroughs and New Jersey to some extent now despite their efforts to contain the battle.

Lining up on his target - the aliens spraying blue fire into the Guardsmen who were returning fire with everything they had, glowing red tracers pattering off armor constantly except in instances where bullets found either joints or seams in the armor or the ability for the armor to take hits was overwhelmed. There were roughly twelve Chitauri engaging three Guardsmen, Tony judged the distance and nodded, it would have to do; he slowed down to prevent the need for multiple runs against this target.

He brought his repulsors up, there was a whine and then the repulsors discharged - the weapons/thrusters in question were pulsed, laser-path guided, medium-density, plasma projectors. The setting he was using currently would be devastating to organics even ones wearing modern ballistic plates - with the plasma discharge capable of ripping through it like paper and then converting a decent portion of the body fluids in the target to steam, blasting it apart in a rather gruesome fashion.

Against the aliens he was currently fighting - this setting was sufficient to melt its way through the alloys employed by their armor - lose a fair bit of its killing power in the process - and then leave a fairly ghastly wound.

The first two aliens never knew what hit them, the beams melting and vaporizing through their armor with horrifying ease, they crumpled as they folded in half with craters the size of a dinner plate in their backs.

The next three died in the same way.

An alien turned, screeched out in alarm and raised its weapon. But before it could fire, a 40mm grenade struck it and the alien exploded at roughly chest level, gore and shattered armor flying in all directions as the alien ceased to exist from roughly the chest up.

A sustained burst from the M249 that the Guardsmen had managed to cut down another alien after hammering through its armor; the deformed bullets that made it through turning the creature into hamburger.

It was clear that the aliens had lost their cohesion, shattered in an instant by the appearance of Iron Man meaning they had let up the pressure on the Guardsmen which had allowed them to rally and hastily throw together a counter-attack.

Stabs of blue light and a sound like thunderbolts ripped through the air as one alien managed to return fire. Tony twisted, twirling through the bolts of fire and retaliating with a repulsor blast that hurled the now corpse to the ground, smoking badly.

Another alien corpse hit the ground as bullets ripped through it.

Two more Repulsor blasts and two more aliens joined it in death. The third alien turned to run, but a grenade landed at its feet and exploded, shredding its body in an instant.

"Sergeant Parker here, thanks for the aid, Mister Stark." The man in charge of the Guardsmen said, Tony had to fight back a sob, he sounded similar to one of the soldiers that had been killed in action when he had been kidnapped by the Ten Rings back in 2008. That…he shook the thought off, he could deal with the rough few days he was going to have after this later.

Half a block up, the Leviathan that had just decided to come down closer to street level crashed through a building, it had multiple tiers with a glass facade. The whole thing started to cave and crumple like a soda can as the immense beast ripped through it. Pop-ups appeared on Tony's HUD as he rocketed after the brute, warming up the laser on his left wrist. "Sergeant Parker, get your men inside now, building collapse in progress a half block up from your location!"

"Roger, we're getting undercover now!"

Iron Man shot past the disintegrating building which was caving in on itself, an immense could of dust and smoke rising as the building crumpled, glass shattering in a cavalcade of razor sharp fragments that tumbled to the street below as concrete sundered and steel shrieked in protest. He caught a glimpse of silver and red on his right as he streaked up the monster's left side.

Thor. Tony thought and he heard the wind howl through the sound proofing in his armor as the Asgardian clearly tried to do something to minimize the impact of the building disintegrating. Right now, he was worried about stopping this goddamned thing since Hulk was last seen stomping a group of a new type of alien that looked like a gorilla into paste in Columbus Circle. The fact that Hulk was over in Columbus Circle and seemed to be fighting something that was actually in his weight division and Thor was trying to minimize the building collapse, it meant that he was probably the only one who could take this monster down.

Flying parallel he fired the lasers in his wrist, the beams carved shallow furrows in the plating. He discharged them twice more at higher frequencies including UV - but the beams just weren't doing much!

Shit.

"Sir, we're going to drain our energy reserves before we get through that armor using lasers." Jarvis said and Tony resisted the urge to swear - this stupid thing was one of the most heavily armored behemoths he's ever seen.

"Jarvis, probability of full power repulsors penetrating?" Stark asked his loyal AI.

"Estimate two percent with a single shot - it's going to take multiple shots to penetrate and that's if they land in a half meter of each other." Jarvis replied and Tony again resisted the urge to swear, the Repulsors unlike the lasers actually had significant recoil, particularly at maximum power when the repulsors were driving out a blast with a concussive force equal to roughly 250-pounds of TNT.

Which meant that landing shots like that was an impossibility, the Unibeam might be able to get through but that would be considerably more difficult particularly considering the cycle up time of the Unibeam and the fact that being close to level of concussive force that had the equal of more than one ton of TNT wouldn't exactly be a fun time for him or any civilians as far as the shockwave was concerned and then there was debris to consider. So that made the Unibeam out of the question then.

Then an idea came to Tony as he hit the gas, pushing the armor past the Leviathan then snapping around so he was now flying parallel to it. "Jarvis, are you familiar with the story of Jonah?" he asked his AI in a cheery manner as he deployed his knee mounted skid plates.

"I wouldn't consider him a very good source of inspiration." the AI replied.

"Meh semantics." Tony said before pulling a snap turn and barreling towards the monster throat. What ensued was quite bumpy, a lot of grunting from the billionaire, and more than a few explosions followed by a very rough landing.

"Ow." Tony groaned as the immense creature, having been basically gutted, fell from the sky, crashing into another building and becoming partially embedded there. "Yep, he's not a particularly good inspiration." he said as he stood up, as he did so, he noticed a restaurant nearby, a Shawarma place; he was getting a little hungry, maybe after this was all said and done, himself and the Avengers could go to it and get some food?

Then he got shot.

An energy blast smashed into his chestplate, burning through the dispersive coatings meant to blunt energy weapon blasts like paper and melting through the outer layers of the multi-layered carbon-nanotube reinforced composite plating - the Titanium-Gold alloy sundering before the fury of the energy weapon, the energy having been diffused and weakened going through the first two layers, before spending itself on the molecularly aligned, fully crystalized ultra-high carbon steel alloy. That being said, kinetic energy was still transferred to the suit and therefore its wearer. Tony staggered back with a yell of surprise. Another energy blast caught him in the shoulder and nearly twisting him around, it did cause him to stagger backwards into something. He looked up and swore, Chitauri, at least twelve of them.

There was another flash of light - this one was absolutely blinding in its radiance as it took him clean in the head and threw him to the ground. "Gah!"

What to do? Get up, no, the aliens would just shoot him down again. Plus they were likely closing, coming to a standing or kneeling position would just take valuable time. Dammit, alright, this was going to be hairy.

The next forty-five seconds pass in a blur of chaos - he's taking more hits but dishing it out, there are moments of clarity that stand out.

Back handing a grenade that an alien threw at him back to its owner.

An energy blade carving a furrow in the flank of his armor and his retaliation in the form of a roundhouse kick that caves the alien's helmet and skull, dropping it to the ground with a sickening crunch.

A sustained burst from the laser scything down two aliens in an instant.

Energy pulse striking him in the stomach and throwing him to the ground.

That's when Director Nick Fury's voice came through his line, he sounded winded as if he had just ran a marathon through the bowels of the Helicarrier James Morita and was more than a little pissed at something. "Stark, you got a motherfucking F-35 equipped with a nuclear weapon headed straight for the city. If that motherfucking thing hits, it will wipe out Midtown."

FUCK! Stark thought angrily, as if fighting aliens weren't hard enough, he now had the lives of millions resting on his shoulders. No pressure, if he survived stopping this thing, he would have to verbally ream Fury about this.

"Jarvis" Tony began, but the AI was three steps ahead of him.

"All power has been directed to the thrusters, information on the missile and its warhead is being displayed on your HUD now sir."

The roar and following sonic boom from Iron Man's take-off shattered windows in a three block radius as Tony pushed his suit to its limits. The missile that was coming was a JSOW variant, the thing didn't have a tactical warhead nor did it have a turbofan engine. The model being used mounted a repulsor-tech engine, the relatively lower fuel consumption allowed for a smaller fuel tank to be used for a given range which meant it could carry more payload - the missile that was closing in mounted the same type of warhead that the Peacekeeper ICBM mounted. To make matters worse…it had contact fuzing.

Who was the dickhead that ordered a contact fuze nuclear bomb to be used on Manhattan?! You use contact fuzing on missile silo fields, not cities. Tony thought he knew that if this thing went off, the pressure wave and ensuing crater would be massive - much larger than what you would expect from such a missile due to the fact that the substrata of New York City was riddled with countless tunnels. This thing if it detonated could easily do a level of damage that was absolutely devastating.

Whoever had ordered this launch was doing so in a manner that would maximize collateral damage. A nuclear explosion would be bad for sure, but if it was an airburst it was unlikely that the subways would suffer catastrophic collapse. With a ground burst, the subways would likely collapse and if it was bad enough, probably flood a decent sized chunk of the city along with producing horrific levels of fallout.

As Tony blasted clear of the fracas he noted something, the aircraft in the sky weren't disengaging and fleeing. Which meant that this wasn't a strike authorized by the United States, but he knew that Fury would give them a heads up that a nuclear strike was inbound. But he had sounded out of breath when he had been informed of the missile.

It didn't take a genius to reach a fairly sickening conclusion, someone had completely by-passed the chain of command within SHIELD and ordered a nuclear strike that would kill millions of civilians and thousands of American servicemen. But who the hell was the bastard that would do this?

"Fury," Stark said in a harsh tone - this was likely a one way trip for him.

"I am here Stark." Fury replied.

"I am going to intercept this thing and throw it in the portal. I don't care if you don't have authorization, I want you to find this nuclear launch order and release it to the public along with names. Make the bastards who ordered this thing burn." Tony snarled, he was more than a little furious to say the least.

Fury's response was chilling. "With fucking pleasure Stark."

The missile was approaching The Narrows now, going nearly five hundred miles per hour, this was going to be tricky as hell all things considered; tricky but doable. As the missile raced over the suspension bridge he started angling for an intercept. One thing you must understand is that JSOWs are big, they are no joke in terms of size - being thirteen feet in length and weighing a half ton.

His armor could shift that mass, but he would have to overcome the thrust of the missile's own engines and fight the control system of the missile - along with hoping that safeties don't engage and blow the missile to pieces while he's holding onto it. Which meant that this was going to be fun in a quite painful way.

Shooting after the missile as it screamed past him, Tony pushed the armor battered as it was to its limits - he came up below it. The noise from the large scale repulsor tech engine was absolutely deafening, a mind numbing roar whose depth shook his bones. Tony gritted his teeth as he got a handhold on the missile and pressed his body against it.

He heard Natasha say something and he gave a response but he was too focused on making sure that the damn missile didn't initiate. Snarling and grunting he fired the thrusters on his belly and the missile climbed, it climbed, and climbed. The portal loomed above him and he raced straight into it - then he was in space.

This wasn't a problem actually, the Mark VII Armor was designed to be suborbit capable, which meant that it had a life support system that was fairly complex and the suit itself was designed to handle the rigors of space with the forces involved therein. All it took was just a few moments for the right trajectory to be achieved then he released the missile. It streaked through the void to the ship that had hundreds if not thousands of Leviathans and other things swarming around it. The missile flies like a javelin straight into the large alien spacecraft and the ensuing blast is tremendous acetic flash of light - there must have been some sort of weird interaction between Earth's magnetic field and portal because then some of his systems went dead as an EMP crashed over him and then he started to fall.

He knew they would reboot - but by the time they did, the portal would be closed and he would drift amongst the ethers. Still he tumbled down and then his vision went white.

Earth Bet

Protectorate Region Northeast, East-Northeast Division

Brockton Bay, Rhode Island

January 18th, 2011

Victoria Dallon, more commonly known as Glory Girl shivered slightly as she flew through the skies over Brockton Bay at three thousand feet. It was very cold up here given that it was the middle of January in the Northeast, at her altitude it was colder too than it was at the surface. Granted she only just had started her patrol and was moving at a little over a hundred miles per hour, but it still took a couple of minutes for the air resistance to warm her up.

Her patrol route today was going to take her over the bay proper towards the Market - she really didn't like patrolling. Mostly because villains had long figured out the patrol box system and when heroes would naturally be out. She knew that her mother was trying to convince the local District Director for more randomness in the patrol cycle or even unrestricted patrols. But well, it was known that the Director hated parahumans.

Though she knew that some circles referred to parahumans as something way more cruel…mutants. Simply because they had powers that could defy imagination, it made them in a sense different from normals in a way that they could never compete against. Some of the more unsavory people at Arcadia High had said those sorts of things behind her back. Naturally she had reported it to staff and faculty but there always seemed to be those assholes around despite everyone's efforts to stamp it out.

She sighed, the sound lost in the ripping wind. That being said she was grateful that she was going to Arcadia, she couldn't imagine the sort of treatment that a known Parahuman would get at Winslow - but given that shithole. She shuddered in disgust, Winslow was a shithole and she would have loved nothing more than to bring that school down because for all she knew there were health and safety violations.

A section of sky rippled, pulsed, seemed to invert upon itself, and spat something tumbling down head over heels that was red and gold towards the waters of the bay. What the hell? She thought, instinctively angling towards the falling thing.

It seemed to be an armor of some sort, not sure if powered or unpowered - but it was man shaped and likely occupied. She accelerated, pushing herself faster, she was very much on the slow side for an Alexandria Package, most of them could go transonic, a lucky few including Alexandria herself could go supersonic, she could only manage high subsonic.

Closer and closer the figure was getting to the water. Come on! Come on! She thought as she pushed herself harder to catch the man - which no longer seemed to be tumbling.

The man's boots and hands blazed with fire; okay a power armor with flight capability, pretty com- Oh shit!

The man had stabilized out and was climbing now, right at her. "WATCH OUT!" she screamed.

"WHAT THE?!" The figure said in a distinctly male voice, huh, no modulator then.

Then there was pain, she instinctively grabbed hold as the two of them collided. The world flipped over as they tumbled out of the sky, shades of gray, red, and gold flashed through her vision as she went head over heels. The motion was playing utter hell with her inner ears. I am going to be sick. She thought miserably before thankfully the tumbling came to an end.

She knew this because her back hit the water at an awkward angle, flat enough though that momentum transferred and the two of them skipped into the air. This happened again before she hit something a lot more abrasive than water, rock worn smooth by wave action.

Ow. Victoria thought after she came to a halt and managed to regain her wits, breathing deeply as she did so. Right, which limbs still functioned because she wasn't sure now. The fact that she was able to think straight told her that she probably didn't have a concussion, but she wasn't sure.

Neck? It seemed functional - but she wasn't about to try moving until she had it looked at by Amy.

Shoulders? One seemed fine, the other felt like it was bruised or cracked.

Elbows? Ouch. Judging by the pain she probably dislocated or even broke one or both of them.

Wrists? She couldn't tell due to the state of her elbows.

Hips? Bruised and battered to hell - it was extremely painful.

Legs? Right one wasn't functioning at all and her left was painful to move.

Great, Amy's going to give me absolute hell for this since I either broke a knee or my femur or just tore the hell out of my muscles in my right leg. Victoria thought before looking down at the figure she had rescued or well, crashed into trying to rescue.

He was wearing red and gold armor that was frankly beaten to shit, probably even before one took into account the water skipping they had gone through. In the center of the chest was a glowing blue-white circle of light. Whoever this was, they had likely fought a major battle before coming here, she was thinking that the man who flew this armor was likely a Tinker parahuman.

A thought came to her, that flash looked similar to a portal transition. A botched attempt at linking a portal from some other Earth to Earth Bet? Seemed reasonable all things considered. Shaking the line of thought off she then asked a question, her voice trembling slightly from pain. "You alright sir?"

"That wasn't the smoothest landing I've experienced. Where am I?" The man asked as he sat up and looked around. "This isn't New York, that skyline looks similar to Providence actually."

"You're in Brockton Bay, sir." Victoria said, wondering what the hell Providence was, hoping that whatever Earth the man came from, it wasn't too different - but given that she didn't know of any cities in the ENE Division of the Northeast Region with the name Providence, she wasn't very hopeful.

"Never heard of it."

Crap. Okay, let's focus on the Cape side of things then; but I hope to god they know what the Unwritten Rules are. Victoria thought before asking. "What's your name?"

The man looked at her with his helmet, the faceplate gold with a pair of glowing blue eyes, but she was given the feeling that the man was boggling at her. "Anthony Stark, please call me Tony."

Victoria would have facepalmed if her arms were functional. "I meant your Cape name." she said, intending it to be a growl, but it came out as a hoarse rasp.

"Cape name? Oh, you mean who I am in the armor? Iron Man." The man, Tony, and I guess you could say Iron Man, replied.

Before Victoria could answer, she heard the sound of running feet on the beach. "Glory Girl, are you alright?" a tall, rail thin girl with brown hair asked as she came running up to them.

"Been, been better." Victoria replied with a groan, her voice still hoarse.

Iron Man looked at the other teenager as he knelt in front of her. "She needs medical attention, I fear she might have hurt her back."

"Right and I guess I should call the local Protectorate and PRT too. Have them pick you up." The other girl said.

"I don't think he's from around here and I don't mean that he's not from Aleph." Victoria wheezed, yeah, it was getting pretty hard to breathe, she probably cracked or broke her ribs as well.

"I see, what's his cape name?"

"Iron Man." Victoria replied, wincing as the pain slowly built up.

The other girl nodded. "Iron Man, can you call emergency services, I'll call the Protectorate and we can sort things from there."

"Okay - I might need a trip to the hospital as well and Miss Glory Girl probably needs a good chiropractor." Iron Man replied.

"What happened?" the other girl asked.

"I tried to rescue him due to him falling out of the sky from a botched portal opening, but he regained control of his suit before I could catch him and due to the extremely short distance we then collided which resulted in both of us going for a wild ride." Victoria explained as the pain continued to increase and then sighed. "I definitely got a couple of broken bones, yeah, I need to go to the hospital."

"Thanks." the other girl said as she started dialing.

"What's your name, by the way?" Iron Man asked.

"Taylor, Taylor Hebert." the other girl, Taylor replied.

Victoria wondered why Iron Man had asked that, but then the other man tipped his head in acknowledgement. In the distance sirens wailed, both the electronic sirens used by Emergency Services and mechanical sirens used by the Parahuman Response Team. As the noise grew louder, all Victoria could think about was how this day had started off and how now she was looking at a stay in the hospital - and it wasn't even because of a fight but because of a botched rescue attempt.

She felt herself drifting off. Snap, snap, snap. The metallic noise of fingers snapping under her nose startled her. Why had that occurred? Then she heard Iron Man's voice yelling at Taylor.

"Shit! She's falling into Shock."

"I have an epipen!" Taylor cried out in alarm.

"Won't work, she's falling into neurological shock and epipens only work for anaphylactic shock! She must have suffered a severe neck or spinal injury in the crash. We're going to have to lift her legs to improve blood flow to her brain."

The screeching of the sirens was much louder now and then agony exploded through her legs as Iron Man and Taylor lifted her legs. Victoria wanted to scream, but instead she suddenly felt supremely dizzy as the world started to dim and the sounds like they were underwater. I am dying. She realized in horror, she didn't want to die, she was too young to die. Not like this, not because of some stupid botched rescue!

She heard Iron Man saying something as in her dim vision, a paramedic appeared and she felt something being put around her head and over her face - then cold air started forcing its way into her lungs. She felt something on one of her legs and then felt something be put around her neck and something else in one of her wrists.

Then she was in an ambulance, the last thing she heard as the doors slammed shut followed by hearing Iron Man's voice. "Better step on it docs, she needs an ER."