Welcome to the part of my autobiography where life becomes actually interesting! (Which means I will describe it in fuller detail now)
It all started with my 37-year-old self, being my normal self: I was advertising my weapons. I decided to change things up: I went all the way to an outpost in Afghanistan to show them what JERICHO could really do.
I now found myself riding back from the demonstration. In typical me style, I had shot the weapons off, but not before giving a speech:
'They say the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully, disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire, once. That's how dad did it. That's how America does it. And its worked out pretty well so far. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee you, the bad guys won't even want to come out of their caves.' I gestured with my hand, and the weapon was shot into the sky, splitting halfway to the mountains, into more than a dozen tiny bombs.
'For your consideration, the Jericho.' I stated, spreading my arms wide as behind me, the mountains exploded into a million pieces. All in all, a very good demonstration, if you ask me.
I was now seated once again in a car, Rhodey was in another, once I had told him he could go into that one: the one I was going in was the fun bus, and he would ruin that with his calm tenure.
Rhodey had changed significantly over the years: where once he was a fun guy like me, he was now a boring guy, like Pepper, but worse. At least, those were my thoughts. Now I realise he just had some character development a bit earlier in his life than I did. Hats of to you Rhodey, you beat at something for once!
Of course, my fun car, soon turned into a chaos car - hey, I was involved: no surprises there right?! I was taking a selfie with the nervous recruit who was sitting next to me, when lo and behold, someone pulled off an explosion matching my vibe. (Peter told me to say that, I don't know what a vibe is, please, someone has to tell me whether I said something stupid or not)
The car in our convoy that was in front of us, exploded into a million pieces. Ringing filled everyone's ears as the woman in front of me started shouting commands.
'What's going on?!' I demanded to know, but no answer came as people ran from the car, their guns in their hands. I was ordered to stay down as the two in the front left. The lady fell immediately: she had been shot. The other guy didn't last 5 seconds.
Jimmy, the one who had been ordered to stay with me and had wanted a selfie, cursed loudly, flinging the door open.
'Woah, woah, woah! Jimmy wait!' I cried out, he just turned:
'Stay down!' he commanded. Before I could tell him why I had told him to wait: it was too late. The machine gun I had spotted had already seeped him with bullets. Bullet holes were all around me in the car. Miraculously, I wasn't hit.
Everywhere I looked, I saw convoy cars exploding, soldiers falling, soldiers never getting up again. I had to get out the car: it was a metal death trap. I stumbled out and quickly dodged as a low level grenade flung itself at me.
I ran through the wrecks of the car, flames bursting up all around. Bodies of fallen soldiers peppering the ground. I avoided another explosion by ducking behind a boulder. I grabbed my cell phone, and started dialling the one number I could always rely on: Pepper.
Before I could type in the last digit, a crash sounded as a bomb landed only a meter next to me, my name literally engraved on its shell. Ironic right? A bomb with my name on it.
With a cry I quickly backed up, stumbling over the boulder I had been hiding behind, but I was too late: the bomb with my name on it exploded.
The shock sent me flying back by at least a meter or two as pain seared through my body. I groggily blinked open my eyes as I felt a warm liquid spreading across my chest: blood. My white shirt began to stain as I ripped it open, undoing all the buttons. I was bleeding. There was shrapnel embedded in my chest. My eyes fluttered as darkness crept into my line of vision, then nothing.
A page break, brought to you by a joke from Spiderman himself: Did you know that Black Widow was not the first female superhero? Iron Man actually was, because he's Fe -Male.
Do you know what it's like to have surgery, with no anaesthesia? I do. They did it. On me. I was only aware of what was going on for a few seconds at a time. I mostly just remember the body-devouring pain. The ever present looming darkness, that kept sweeping me away. The light that kept pulling me back.
I saw brief flashes of what happened. There were surgical knives, lots of them. There was shrapnel pinched between tweezers. There was something being placed in my chest. Then, finally, like they couldn't have done that from the get-go, there was a cloth with chloroform pressed to my face.
The next time I woke up, I was strapped to a chair, in front of a camera. Around me were Afghani men with burkas. Pepper mentions that they are actually called masks, and that saying that they were burkas, is disrespectful. I respectfully, disagree.
There were speaking in Afghani, at least I figured: I had no clue which language they spoke in Afghanistan so I opted for Afghani. I still do not know if that is a language or not, but I am too lazy at the moment to look it up.
A simple summary of what I heard them say: 'habaskubahibudabu. Yigiban nodizibin aprawoweh. djunumeh haware fuh vasahkhia. ortmahahim sai haduna hakature. deken hauf. jencuten djenzi shami stil. bira hanjuburin. disgantuburhohe! '
That's what it sounded like, phonetically, I'm pretty sure, even to people who speak Afghani or something, it will not make sense. It's not like I ever claimed to know Afghani anyway, now, did I?
After this very pleasant experience, I was promptly dumped into a room to pass out again.
I woke up again, with a very uncomfortable line in my nose. Smarter people might have left it in: after all: it was there for a purpose, wasn't it? I wasn't one of those smarter people. I slowly pulled it out, groaning all the time as I did so, bile rising in my throat. I pushed it down and glanced to the side, where there was a small table. On the table was some water.
I clawed at it, trying to reach it, but found that I couldn't, something was holding me back, I tugged harder until a voice stopped me:
'I wouldn't do that if I were you.' A calm man spoke. I looked back at what was holding me. Was that a car battery? Wait, there were wires attached to the car battery. The wires, they ran into my bandages. Fear gripped me as I patted on my chest. Something hard met my fingers. I ripped at the bandages, groaning at the exertion, then gasped. Embedded in my chest, was a machine. I was working off of a machine. My life, was messed up.