Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man. That would be tantamount to indentured servitude or prostitution, depending on what state you're in.

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Chapter 1 – Two bots enter, one bot leaves

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A soft, heavy warmth lay thick in the night air, undercut with a faint spice from the nearby sea as a gentle breeze ghosted through the city of Malibu, California. Combined with the faintly glimmering stars overhead and the delicate sound of lapping waves in the distance, it truly made for an idyllic evening.

Ignoring, of course, the numerous angry commuters on a certain road currently singing the song of their people as they blared their car horns, apparently expecting this to magically make the standstill traffic start moving again like startling a flock of pigeons.

They weren't having much success.

"Geez, what is going on up there?" a woman in one of the cars asked aloud.

"I don't know. Some kind of accident, I think," the man sitting behind the wheel answered, leaning forward to try and see around the cars in front of him.

Sighing, the woman stared out the window, trying to find some peace in the velvety black sky overhead. Suddenly, however, she let out a gasp.

"A shooting star!" she exclaimed in delight at spotting a moving, twinkling light far overhead.

"Oh yeah?" the man asked distractedly. "Try wishing us out of traffic. Cause nothing else seems to be working at all." He gave his car horn a couple more honks to test that. No effect. Well, other than the rude gesture the driver in front waved out his window.

Looking back out the window, the woman was confused at seeing no sign of the shooting star any longer. However, she was even more baffled when the flare of its trailing light reappeared, only much lower and closer than it was before, and this time veering about hectically.

She sat and stared as the light continued a staggering fall, blinking out, then reigniting closer and closer to the ground, each time tossing about more and more wildly.

With what almost sounded like a faint, shrill human scream, the light finally rocketed towards the roof of a nearby building at a speed and angle that practically shouted "out of control."

"What was that?" the man sitting next to her asked, still focused on the traffic.

"I don't know," the stunned woman answered, still staring out her window after the fallen light. "But I think that shooting star may have been defective."

"Hmm," he absently replied, honking his horn yet again.

On the rooftop, a piece of rubble was suddenly shifted aside to reveal a heavily battered and sparking red and gold suit of armor lying prone in a crater.

"You know, after much consideration, I have to admit that this probably won't be going into the books as my smoothest landing to date," Tony Stark, renowned genius, billionaire, playboy, and defective shooting star, said aloud, coughing and raising a gauntleted hand to rub his helmeted head in a remarkably effective gesture.

"Actually, sir, your landing record could make that an arguably valid claim," the smooth British voice of Jarvis countered. "However, at the very least, it certainly won't be taking the title of your worst landing yet, as the wreckage that is your home would testify."

"Well, aren't you sassy tonight," Tony bit back, climbing to his feet with a groan. "What, you think I should fly back up and retry the landing?" He shook his arm as the mangled gauntlet on his hand started sparking violently.

"If I might remind you, sir, you are currently running on two percent power, and given that the reactor powering the suit is also keeping you alive, I would not recommend attempting a better crash landing at this time," the VI in his battered suit pointed out, as annoyingly logical and responsible as ever.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it, nanny," Tony maturely bit back, disconnecting and removing the demolished gauntlet on his left hand. "Relax. I just gotta get out of this suit and manufacture another reactor to replace the one that … Stane … stole …" He trailed off as he answered Jarvis, distracted by something he saw on the roof.

Walking over, he bent down and picked up an odd bag tucked around the corner to the roof entrance. Curious, he opened it up, finding it filled with numerous strange devices he didn't recognize.

"What the hell?" he muttered.

All of a sudden, the rooftop shuddered with a monstrous impact. Dropping the bag, Tony spun around and saw something he really, really didn't want to see.

A hulking mass of gun-barrel gray metal slowly straightened, rising and rising until its towering, twelve-foot height was revealed.

"Did you think you got rid of me that easily?" the booming, mechanized voice of Obadiah Stane echoed out of the battered, frost-coated armor. He flexed one massive robotic arm, shattering the residual ice encasing it from their high-altitude encounter.

"Honestly? Kind of, yeah," Tony replied, his flippant tone masking his panic as he stared up into the glowing blue eyes of the Goliath-esque suit, suddenly feeling decidedly tiny.

Growling, the massive, armored Stane threw a colossal punch with an arm roughly the size of Tony's entire body, his own armored suit included.

Tony ducked low to avoid the strike, the servos in his suit emitting a quiet, high-pitched whir as they guided and enhanced his movements, even as trashed as they currently were. Unfortunately, when he raised his left arm in an attempt to counterattack with a repulsor blast, he remembered one remarkably inconvenient fact.

He had just removed that gauntlet.

Stane's second punch caught him square, the blow feeling more like being hit with a truck than a fist as it sent his armored form flying across the rooftop, his suit doing little to prevent what felt like an anvil-sized bruise from immediately spreading across his entire torso.

Shaking off the stars dancing across his vision, he clamored to his feet, launching himself back at Stane with a blast of three repulsors and a powerful, suit-enhanced punch of his own.

It had all the effect of smacking a brick wall with a wet paper towel.

Moving faster than something that size had any right to, Stane's arms snapped tight around Tony's armored form, catching him in a hulking bear hug as the powerful pistons in Stane's over-sized suit began ruthlessly crushing Tony's comparatively tiny form.

"It's over, Tony," Stane coldly informed him, tightening his grip with sound of crunching metal and a pained groan from Tony. "My suit is more advanced than yours in every way. Nothing you have can work on me."

"I wouldn't say that," Tony groaned, feeling his ribs creak under the crushing pressure. "You haven't even seen my secret weapon, yet."

"Secret weapon?" Stane asked in confusion, his grip accidentally loosening slightly.

"Yep!" Tony insisted.

"What secret weapon?" Stane demanded.

"I call it … a subpoena," Tony replied. "Cause I mean, really, can you say 'copyright infringement,' you big iron knockoff?"

With a mechanized snarl, Stane resumed crushing Tony with the suit built by reverse engineering one of Tony's own.

"Alright, let's try a different weapon," Tony panted, feeling like he was caught in a trash compactor. "Flares!"

With a whir, round disks extended from the hips of his suit before spinning and firing off blindingly bright flares in every direction … including into Stane's mask, and the optic sensors therein.

With a howl of pain, Stane dropped Tony and pressed his robotic arms to the face of his helmet in an instinctive attempt to soothe his injured eyes.

Tony wasted no time in limping to cover behind the roof access.

"Very clever, Tony," Stane complimented, turning this way and that to try and find him through the smoke.

You know, this would be a great time to have some backup, Tony groused to himself as he felt the limbs of his heavily damaged and malfunctioning suit spasm. Unfortunately, all the SHIELD agents who came to arrest Stane were down, and at this hour, there was no-one else in the building. Luckily, that included Pepper, since SHIELD had refused her demand to take her, a civilian, with them as they arrested Stane, much to her vocal displeasure. That meant she was safe, but since the only plan he could think of to stop Stane involved someone inside to overload the building's reactor and blast the roof, this was good news with a side of bad.

Well, I guess I'll just have to go with Plan B: Beat him like a bongo drum, he decided.

"One percent power, sir," Jarvis helpfully chose that moment to inform him.

"Perfect," Tony muttered, moving into position as Stane carefully peered around an air conditioning unit. However, before he could make his move, he found his attention grabbed by the bag he had spotted earlier.

It was gone.

Okay, seriously, what the hell?

Shaking his head, he forced his inherently curious mind to instead focus on the metal Goliath currently trying to hunt him down and kill him.

Bracing his footing, he launched himself at Stane's back, aiming for the back of his neck, and the undoubtedly important wires he could see running from his helmet into the torso of his suit.

Unfortunately, he must have taken too long to make his move. Stane began turning just as he made his jump, bringing him right into the metal giant's field of vision.

His leap was brought up short as a massive steel hand snapped shut around his torso. With a chuckle, Stane slammed him into the ground hard enough to crack the concrete.

"Nice try," Stane gloated in his booming, robotic voice before picking him up and slamming him back into the ground, widening the crater and making Tony feel like he had been caught between a rock wall and a speeding truck.

In other words, not that great.

Suddenly, though, his dazed vision caught sight of something over Stane's shoulder, something on an elevated part of the roof.

A small, dark shape, with a pair of large, gleaming emerald eyes staring right at him.

With a massive clang, his world was forcibly knocked out of focus as a colossal metal fist crashed into his helmet and torso, crumpling the metal of his suit and making Tony feel like he had just been shaken by a monstrous dog.

Over and over, Stane held him against the ground with one hand and pummeled him with the other, driving him deeper and deeper into his concrete crater with each blow, and stabbing Tony's slowly crumbling armor into his flesh underneath with every strike.

He forgot all about the alien-looking, brightly glowing eyes he saw. His world became nothing more than the massive metal fist repeatedly smashing into him, and the growing feeling of numbness spreading throughout his body with each bone-shattering blow.

Blinking his eyes, he noticed that the massive fist seemed to be getting blurrier and blurrier. In fact, the entire rooftop seemed to be getting darker and quieter.

Losing consciousness, he diagnosed in an oddly clear thought. Not good.

Suddenly, however, a wide beam of rippling blue light lit up Stane's suit like a spotlight.

Slowly blinking his eyes, Tony watched the blackness covering his vision painstakingly retreat as he forced his brain to start fully processing the world around him once more. His eyes clearer, he watched Stane's suit flicker with arcs of electricity everywhere the blue light hit, the man inside howling in pain as he was electrocuted and his suit spasmed uncontrollably.

Tony clumsily crawled backwards out of the man's loosening grip, staring slack-jawed as the wide blue beam faded away, and Stane's suit jerkily collapsed.

"Um … what?" he asked of no-one, exactly none of his trademark wit available as he tried to process what just happened. Looking over at where the beam seemed to come from, he saw a wide burn mark on the ground surrounding what looked like mangled pieces of slag.

Before he could investigate—or even check whether his legs were working, really—he heard an echoing groan come from the face-down metal giant in front of him.

Oh, are you freaking kidding me?

With slow, clumsy movements, Stane agonizingly began to rise.

"An EMP?" he asked as he reached his knees, his muffled voice no longer booming and modified by the suit's speakers. Instead, it sounded decidedly small and human as it echoed out from inside the metal suit, the blue lights that once filled the mask's eyes now cold and dark. "You've been holding out on me again, Tony. I had no idea you had figured out how to weaponize something like that so effectively. Why didn't you tell me?"

An EMP, Tony asked himself, his mind running back through what he saw. Is that what that was? A directed, controlled electromagnetic pulse?

It would certainly fit, but it definitely wasn't his tech … or that of anyone he knew.

"Too bad for you, though," Stane continued, finally reaching his feet in slow, awkward movements. "My suit isn't as digital as yours," he said as the top half of the suit lifted up to reveal the man inside. "Hydraulics," he pointed out in a clearer voice, nodding at the over-sized pistons running along the outside of his suit's joints. "You gotta love analog."

Stane started taking clumsy strides towards Tony's downed form, the awkwardness of his now less controlled movements in no way detracting from the obvious strength still behind them.

Strength Tony was starting to find himself envious of as he struggled to pick himself off the ground, only for the limbs of his ruined suit to spark and groan in what felt like a good visual representation of what his trashed body inside the suit felt like.

So, as he lay helpless on the ground watching death relentlessly approach, he decided to do what he always did when he was in a tight spot.

Talk.

"You know, I have to wonder what exactly you're trying to prove with the whole giant suit thing," he called out. "I mean, if I had gotten you one of those pumps for Christmas or something, would we not be in this situation? Is this whole thing on me?"

"You never shut up, do you?" Obadiah growled, reaching down to grab him once more. However, he only ended up bumping him awkwardly with his hand. Straightening, Stane stared at his arm, and the stubbornly immobile hand at the end of it, the delicate motors running the fingers apparently not as resistant to the strange EMP as his limbs were.

"Hands no good any more?" Tony cheekily asked. "You know, there's a joke there, but I'm too much of a gentleman to say anything quite that vulgar."

Snarling, Stane simply backhanded the prone Tony, his massive immobile hand functioning as an effective wrecking ball to send him flying across the rooftop.

"Bone fractures detected," Jarvis helpfully informed him.

Tony groaned. "Yeah, I had sensed that myself, funnily enough."

"Well, if my hands won't work, I guess I'll just have to settle for stomping you to death," Stane announced, slowly staggering towards Tony. "It seems fitting, given all the years I've spent ground under your heel."

"I feel like that's a bit of an exaggeration," he blithely argued out of sheer reflex as Stane stomped closer and closer towards his immobile form.

Before he could take a second step, though, a briefcase-sized object was hurled out of a patch of darkness, latching itself onto the back of Stane's suit with a metallic clang.

"What?" Stane asked in confusion, trying to turn around and see what was on his back. However, at that moment, the rooftop was flooded with a deep, bass-filled hum, and Stane suddenly had bigger concerns.

As the hum lowered in pitch and increased in volume, Stane found his armored form forced to its knees, its powerful hydraulics suddenly straining against the rapidly increasing weight of his suit.

"What … what is this?" Stane groaned, now on his hands and knees as his suit strained to keep from being pulled straight into the ground.

A fight it was losing as the hum increased in volume even further while dropping in pitch until it was so low that Tony felt his teeth vibrate in his skull.

As Stane's metal form was forced down even further, Tony caught sight of the rectangular device crookedly stuck to his back. It was glowing brightly with a ruby red light, and the air around it seemed to ripple and distort as it continued to somehow force the ungodly strong metal suit into the ground. Stane now looked like he was attempting a push-up as the stomach of the suit was ground into the concrete roof.

Gravity manipulation? Tony wondered in astonishment, watching as the air around Stane's entire suit gained the rippling effect while taking on the same ruby sheen of the device. Is that even possible?

Stane screamed in pain and effort, his suit clanging and groaning as every iota of its herculean strength was forced into straining against the force trying to squash it into a pancake against the concrete. The device on his back started sparking violently as its hum grew louder, and its crimson light turned blinding as it reached a fever pitch.

Out of nowhere, the air in front of Tony distorted like looking at a glitching TV, revealing a small, humanoid form, a controller in its hand. And just when it seemed that the device on Stane's suit would detonate, the tiny figure pushed a button.

The device's crimson light turned blue, and Stane was sent hurtling into the sky, the effects grinding him into the ground reversed, and his suit's colossal attempts to resist the extreme gravity suddenly helping to force him airborne.

Tony's overclocked mind was torn from Stane's howling, rapidly ascending form as the strange figure suddenly turned another device on him, sending lines of light passing back and forth over him from head to toe as it scanned him.

Instead of staring at the device, however, his attention was grabbed by the figure itself.

The reason it seemed to have alien-like glowing green eyes was quickly made apparent by the strange luminous goggles covering its eyes, below which was a triangular black mask covering the figure's nose and mouth, looking almost like a high-tech breathing mask, but without the round filters coming off the sides.

The rest of the figure's face was covered in shadow by the black hood it wore, which was connected to a black cloak-like shroud that joined together with strange devices and armor strapped over its form to give it a rather unique profile, albeit one that was somewhat clunky and asymmetrical. However, he didn't ask about the numerous, somewhat crude-looking devices he could see, but not identify, which was fairly remarkable, given Tony's affinity for tech. He also didn't ask who the figure was, or where it had come from. Nor did he ask about the clunky-looking device it was scanning him with, or why it was doing so. All of these would have been very pertinent, intelligent questions. What he instead found himself blurting out was decidedly neither.

"Oh, dear god, I'm being saved by a midget."

The extremely vertically challenged figure stopped its scanning to give him a flat stare, which was potent enough to be felt even through the figure's glowing green goggles. Rather than respond, however, the figure turned to look skyward, where Stane's silvery form was rapidly returning to earth from its very brief and extremely unwilling sojourn into the skies.

Turning back to the device in its hand, the figure began nervously fidgeting the fingers of its other hand as it waited for some response from the device.

"You know, all I wanted was a nice, easy job," the figure spoke for the first time, its muttering voice overlaid with a metallic twang from the mask. "But no. Instead, I get live-action Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots®. Lovely."

Just as they started catching the faint sounds of Stane's screams as he plummeted back towards the roof, the device gave an affirmative beep and ejected a small silver sphere covered in glowing lines.

Hastily snatching the sphere, the figure turned and hurled it towards a shadowy part of the roof before snapping its attention back to Tony.

"I'm guessing this is asking a lot, but if you can possibly manage it, I need you to be very still and very quiet for the next few minutes," the diminutive figure requested, its snarky tone clear even through its mechanically distorted voice.

Tony was about to respond to the vicious and completely unwarranted insinuation that he couldn't keep his mouth shut, but the figure simply turned and tossed a small rectangular device on the ground in front of him.

As Stane's massive, screaming form impacted the rooftop with a ground-shaking crash and a wave of dust, the small figure pressed another button on its eclectic outfit, and the device on the ground, which looked vaguely like a cassette player, briefly lit up the ground and air in front of it with more lines of light. As they faded away, they left what looked like a heat shimmer in the air in front of them. The figure glanced at a watch on its arm as the shimmer took full effect before turning back to watch the now slightly distorted view of Stane's enormous armored form lying on its back in a crater.

Groaning, Stane slowly flipped himself onto his hands and knees before climbing drunkenly to his feet. His once gleaming silver armor was now smashed and torn until it looked nearly as bad as Tony's, but that certainly wasn't going to be enough to make him stop.

"Alright, Tony," Obadiah panted, looking almost as bruised and bloody as his suit looked battle-scarred as he stared out from the open cockpit. "I was trying to be nice and make this quick, but now you've really pissed me off. So, I'm thinking I'll be taking my time in killing you now." His bloodshot, almost deranged eyes scanned the rooftop. "Unless you'd rather keep hiding. Then, I suppose I'll just have to have words with Pepper instead."

Tony felt a surge of rage flood his body at the man's words, but just as he was about to retort, the small figure turned back to him and aggressively pressed a finger to the mouth of its mask. It was then that Tony fully registered the man's words, and noticed how Stane's eyes passed sightlessly over their huddled forms. Instead of seeing them, Stane saw only an unbroken stretch of roof, not noticing in his anger the imperfect seams at the edge of the projection covering them, or the lack of a visible crater where Tony should have been.

Their hiding spot was further protected once the short figure huddled next to Tony pressed another button, giving the metal giant something else to focus on.

"Stane!"

At the sound of Tony's voice, Stane spun around to spot Tony's battered, armored form striding out of the shadows on the other side of the roof.

His eyes bulging, Tony the First stared at the clone standing there with its arms spread, clearly challenging Stane to come and get him.

Stane was all too happy to oblige, breaking into a lumbering run as he charged the immobile figure.

Tony wanted to yell at the handsome bastard to get out of the way, but his brain was officially being overloaded by everything that was happening, rendering him incapable of speech. Instead, he watched helplessly as the metal behemoth barreled towards Tony 2.0.

Just as Stane reached the shadowy section of the roof Tony Junior was standing in, however, he suddenly tripped and fell with a loud metallic twang, followed by the sound of cable whipping against metal.

"Now what?" Stane demanded as he flipped himself over, only to see the legs of his suit wrapped in black metal cord. As he watched, the cable tightened until it was digging furrows into the metal of his legs, and with the hands of his suit shot, he couldn't grab it to pull it off.

"Did I say you were pissing me off before, Tony?" Stane asked in a growl. "I was wrong. Now you're pissing me off!" Turning himself back onto his stomach and lifting himself to his knees, he turned and swiped at the Not-Tony standing in front of him. As he did, the hooded figure next to the real Tony took off in a sprint towards Stane, not waiting to see what it likely knew was coming.

Stane, by contrast, most certainly did not expect what happened. Rather than crashing into Tony's armored form, there was only the sound of a small metal clang as his massive arm passed mostly unhindered through Tony's form, with the exception of a small metal ball it smacked inside what would have been his chest.

The holographic projection of Tony flickered and vanished as the now damaged, fitfully glowing metal sphere was sent hurtling across the rooftop.

Stane stared silently at the sphere, but he was brought back to earth by a small impact on the back of his suit as the short figure leaped onto his kneeling form and grabbed on to the flipped-back helmet.

Of course, Stane couldn't see what had just latched on to the back of his suit, so he assumed it was Tony.

Snarling, Stane began scrabbling at the back of his suit in an attempt to knock him off, the immobile hands barely making the massive flailing arms less of a threat as they swiped through the air with all the force of swinging steel girders.

The hooded figure clung tightly to the back of the helmet as it was essentially treated to a round of high-stakes bull riding from the thrashing metal giant underneath it. However, just as one metal arm came uncomfortably close to its clinging form, it managed to attach one more device to the giant suit with a metal click.

As Stane continued thrashing, the figure willingly let itself be bucked off and sent sprawling to the ground. Before Stane realized this, however, the figure triggered the device now clinging to the back of the man's helmet.

With a high-pitched whine, the fumbling metal arm reaching over the suit's shoulder was jerked towards the device and held unyieldingly against Stane's own helmet, essentially catching him in a one-armed headlock.

Directed magnetic connection, Tony interpreted, noting how even the suit's colossal strength was unable to tear the metal arm free from the device. Turning, he stared at the short figure climbing to its feet and brushing off its outfit.

Stane finally caught sight of the figure as well, stopping his attempts to tear his arm free as he took in the sight of the stranger. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded in surprised confusion, unknowingly echoing Tony's own thoughts.

"Who, me?" the figure asked in its metallic voice. "Oh, nobody. I was just hoping for some directions. You wouldn't happen to know how to get to Alpine Drive, by any chance, would you?"

Apparently, the flippant response was enough to make Stane no longer care who the figure was as he cocked back his left arm to backhand the stranger. However, just as the massive arm started speeding towards it, the figure flung a fist-sized sphere at it.

Their forms were suddenly shrouded with a flash of light and a cloud of silver dust, but as it cleared, Tony wasn't sure who was more astounded, him or Stane.

The entire left arm of the man's suit was simply gone, the shoulder of the armor extending out maybe half a foot before ending in an almost polished-smooth edge. The clouds of silver dust blowing away in the night breeze suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

"Cool, right?" the figure asked, sounding excited. "Molecular disintegration. Crazy useful."

Stane simply stared open-mouthed at the missing limb of his powerful suit, but even as shock faded from his eyes and rage took its place, there wasn't much he could do. His suit's left arm was simply gone, the right was stuck uselessly cocked back over his shoulder, and he couldn't even rise from his knees due to the strange black metal cords binding his legs.

In short, Stane was completely immobilized.

The figure glanced at its watch once again, and as if on cue, the device on the ground in front of Tony sparked and died, the haze hanging in the air fading away.

"So, what do you think?" the figure asked Tony in its metallic voice, Stane's wide-eyed gaze settling on Tony's revealed form across the roof.

"Execution: not bad," Tony assessed. "But your retorts need work. I mean, really, 'I'm just looking for directions'? Terrible. Absolutely terrible."

"Oh, you're one to talk," the short figure responded indignantly, ignoring Stane's seething, straining form behind him. "What about earlier when you just started going on about pumps out of nowhere? What was that about?"

Tony stared at the masked figure, astonished at the naivety behind its confusion. However, he suddenly found his attention drawn back to the figure's shortness, and what little he could make out about its actual voice underneath the mechanic distortion of its mask.

There's no way …, the stunned thought echoed in his mind.

"Anyway, what I meant was, do you have this from here?" the figure continued, Tony's astonished ears now catching hints of a disturbingly youthful voice under the metallic distortion, barely noticing that the figure was gesturing towards the helplessly bound Stane behind it. "Because frankly, I kinda want to be pretty much anywhere but here at the moment." Distantly, Tony registered the sound of sirens coming closer, the police finally responding to his little tussle with Stane on the highway in front of the building, apparently.

Tony never had a chance to respond, though. The rooftop was suddenly filled with the sound of groaning, straining metal. Turning around, the figure stared in confusion at Stane's sweating, glaring form before jerking its head back in shock.

"No!" it cried, too late. With a squeal of shearing metal, Stane succeeded in tearing his helmet free of his suit, slamming it into the masked figure with a nauseatingly loud series of cracks.

Tony stared in horror as the small figure was sent rag-dolling across the roof, rolling bonelessly to a stop next to the glass roof of the reactor chamber.

The sound of repeated metal clanging reached him as if echoing through a long tunnel as he stared at the motionless figure. Feeling light-headed from horrified shock, he turned towards the source of the sound in time to watch Stane smash the helmet attached to his arm into the cords wrapped around his suit's legs one last time.

He found his attention drawn to oddly small details as he stared at Stane. The legs of his armor were mangled and dented from being repeatedly smashed by the massive helmet still attached to his arm, but the black metal cords wrapping them were also flattened and torn. In their damaged state, they were unable to fight against the powerful pistons of the suit's legs, and they were torn free as Stane climbed to his feet. As if they were elastic rather than metal, the cords snapped down until they were only a fraction of their previous length.

As Stane started moving, he also noticed that his legs still weren't fully functional. His dented, mangled right leg now seemed to be less mobile than the left, giving the metal giant a lopsided, limping stride that resulted in his one remaining arm dragging his helmet against the ground.

Turning back to the downed figure, and struggling to resist the urge to vomit from his horror at what was happening, Tony was astonished to see movement.

"Stane, stop!" he yelled in a panic at realizing that Stane was headed to the figure, and what he undoubtedly planned to do when he reached it.

"What? Suddenly you're a pacifist now?" Stane asked in a mocking tone as he reached the twitching figure.

"IT'S A KID!" Tony desperately shouted.

That brought Stane up short. "It's a what?" Looking down at the now spasming figure, he lightly kicked it. Even the relatively gentle blow was enough to send the figure skidding a few feet, what looked like a notebook sliding out of its tattered, blood-soaked robes in the process, but it also succeeded in flipping the figure onto its back.

"I'll be damned," Stane muttered.

The figure's mask and half of its weird outfit had been torn off, and even through the blood caking its features, a few things were made painfully clear.

The figure was male, with messy, now blood-matted black hair. His almost blindly staring eyes were an emerald green that put to shame even the luminous goggles he used to wear.

And he was young.

"Christ, this kid hasn't even hit puberty yet, has he?" Stane remarked as he stared at the broken, bloody kid, who was now spasming even more heavily as he agonizingly turned his head, apparently searching for something desperately. "What a shame."

Tony stared at the man in horror at the cold, pitiless tone. "Stane, you can't!"

Stane turned and looked at him condescendingly. "Soft," he judged. "Your father would have been ashamed."

Tony began struggling futilely in his broken, immobilizing armor, screaming at himself for not designing a way out of the suit without his assembly system back home.

Shaking his head in mocking disappointment, Stane turned back to the kid lying at his feet. Curious, he watched the boy reach towards his fallen notebook, his spasms worsening. Almost idly, Stane lifted one massive metal foot and stepped on the boy.

"NOOOOO!" Tony screamed as the boy wordlessly wailed in agony. However, even then, he still didn't look up at Stane. Coughing blood, he continued to reach one scrabbling hand towards the notebook, desperation etched in every movement, even as the rest of his body started descending into an outright seizure.

However, Tony's helpless, terrified gaze was drawn away from the boy's pained motions. Instead, he found himself staring in confusion at the pebbles that suddenly started rising into the air around him … and the boy's other hand, which was slowly turning into a small, whirling cloud of black dust.

In an act of pure cruelty, just as the fingers of the boy's desperately reaching hand finally brushed against the notebook, Stane swept his wrecking-ball-like arm down, knocking the book across the rooftop, and far out of reach.

"No," the boy whispered in despair, staring after the book.

Irritated at being ignored, Stane applied more pressure to his leg, causing the boy to scream in pain before finally looking up at the man killing him.

"You shouldn't have done that," the panting boy whispered, an ominous tone to his words as his seizures suddenly stopped dead.

This was underscored by the larger cloud of rubble rising inexplicably into the air around him, and the now violently swirling cloud of black dust where his other arm used to be.

Stane noticed none of this. "And you shouldn't have left the playground and involved yourself in affairs that don't concern you," he informed the boy, raising his massive arm into the air. "Any last words?"

Tony stared in speechless horror at the man about to kill a kid, but the bloody face of the boy on the ground lacked any hint of fear. In its place, there was only tired acceptance.

"Run," he answered the man.

Rolling his eyes, Stane started to bring his mechanical arm crashing down, and in that moment, everything went wrong.

As if in slow motion, Tony watched the boy's form blur and distort. He watched rubble all over the roof, some larger than a person, suddenly fly into the sky. And in a moment that terrified Tony to his core, he watched the boy's emerald eyes turn a solid, gleaming white.

Stane's massive arm crashed into the rooftop, nothing but a cloud of violently swirling, ink-like black dust where the boy once was.

"What the– …" Stane muttered in confusion before being slammed onto his back without anything touching him. He groaned in pain from his landing, but as his eyes opened once more, all anger faded from them, leaving only pure, unadulterated fear.

The mass of swirling black dust thrashed and grew … and grew … and grew. Inhuman, rage-filled snarls and growls and screeches echoed out from the writhing dark shape, its twitching shifts and spins as disturbingly illogical as they were inescapably alien. Its massive, amorphous body was lit with coruscating rivers of venomous green light that cast a sickly shade to Stane's ghost white face below as its monstrous form blotted out the moon overhead, but all of that paled in comparison to the almost primal terror inspired by one feature above all others.

Its shining, feral white eyes.

"Ah, hell," Stane muttered, recognizing his fate.

With a bone-rattling roar, the creature launched itself at Stane. Its jittery, lightning-quick movements belied its enormous size as it rammed into the comparatively minuscule Stane with all the force of a train. Its fluidly shifting shape narrowed into one long column of pure enraged force as it drove his armored form into one long trench across the concrete roof before exploding outwards in all directions, covering the sky above them like solid cloud cover. With a snap, its extended form drove back together, crashing into Stane's helpless form from all directions, and ramming him with car-sized masses of concrete and steel in the process.

Like a rabid dog, it lifted Stane's massive bulk into the sky, slamming it back into different parts of the roof over and over again in an inhumanly unrestrained display of pure rage and violence. It screeched as its spinning, thrashing form tore through concrete and steel like papier-mâché, sending clouds of rubble floating into the air, where they hung in an oddly tranquil counterpart to its violently writhing dark mass.

Pieces of Stane's suit soon joined those floating clouds of rubble orbiting the green-glowing creature, his hyper-durable armor no match for the unbridled rage and power of the massive, ink-like being.

All the while, Tony lay there, unable to respond to or even understand what he was seeing as he watched the boy-turned-creature tear into Stane in nothing less than pure, animalistic savagery.

With another self-chorusing roar, the amorphous being snapped into a column reaching far, far into the sky in yet another display of its utterly alien, unpredictable behavior, dragging what was left of Stane's armored form thousands of feet into the air in little more than a heartbeat.

For a moment, and for the first time since appearing, the creature remained virtually motionless. The glowing cords of venomous green light threaded throughout its massive black form slowly weaved in and out of and around each other, and the dust-like particles composing its body continued to flow like an almost placid river pouring upwards, but its inhuman bulk remained still, reaching towards the sky and holding Stane aloft like a beast holding its claw above its prey, a breath away from striking.

With a silence more horrifying than any roar, it moved, dragging Stane out of the sky and driving him through the glass roof of the reactor chamber in a blur of motion that only ended when they both smashed into the massive arc reactor below.

A new sound joined the cacophony of destruction as they breached the containment shields of the sapphire blue reactor:

A bone-shaking hum of staggering amounts of energy energy suddenly being released.

The creature's silence was abruptly broken as the demolished reactor detonated in a massive explosion of blue light, flooding the dust-like creature's body with tremendous volumes of energy unique to the one-of-a-kind arc reactor, and the result was something the creature had never experienced.

As the building around it was shaken and demolished by the explosion, and the shrieking creature continued to be saturated with the brilliant, sapphire energy, the dust-like matter making up its body started to be drawn together like iron filings to a magnet. Massive sections of concrete and steel were torn free of the room below to whip through the air like a tempest around the creature as it lashed out in rage and pain, but the change was relentless. No matter how it flailed and thrashed, no matter how it shrieked and cried, its massive amorphous form was slowly forced to coalesce.

With one final blast of energy from the destroyed reactor, the room fell silent. The only sound was that of rubble occasionally falling free from the ceiling to land with an echoing crack on the floor below.

Inside the crater that once housed a massive arc reactor, a young boy slowly blinked as he stared at the glittering black sky visible through the former skylight. Turning his head, he lifting a trembling hand in front of his face. He wasn't surprised by the lack of blood on his skin, or the absence of his former injuries, just as he wasn't caught off guard by his trashed clothing and equipment that was restored to just as it was before he transformed.

What he was astonished by was the fact that he had just been forcibly returned to his human form.

"Huh," he eloquently responded to this unheard-of turn of events before collapsing unconscious, the sound of sirens echoing in his ears.

Meanwhile, the shell-shocked but ever-witty Tony Stark still lying trapped in his mangled suit on what was left of the rooftop had just a bit more to say.

"What the fuck?"

"I second that question, sir," the glitching voice of Jarvis quietly agreed, sounding more astonished and disturbed than he thought possible in a VI.

Tony felt about a hundred as he sat in his lab later that night. The events on the rooftop had been followed by an absolute flurry of activity, from police and SHIELD questionings to frantic Pepper ramblings to medical treatment.

The latter was especially fun.

"Arc reactor manufacturing complete, sir," Jarvis informed him.

At that, Tony looked down at the cables running out of his chest connecting him to a car battery. With a wry snort, he noted how he had been brought full circle, remembering the first time he had woken up in that cave to learn that he was no longer truly whole, and never would be again.

Of course, the magnet in my chest is the least of the scars that place left me, he reflected as he started attaching the new reactor to the baseplate in his chest, more than a little difficult to manage one-handed, what with his left arm now in a cast.

He found himself thinking about Yinsen, the doctor who had saved his life, twice: first, when he put the magnet in his chest, and second, when he had given his life to help him escape.

He gave a humorless chuckle. It was funny. One would think that the infamous weapons designer Tony Stark would have been inured to death. But not quite. Before that day in the desert when he was caught in the blast that would change his life forever, he had never actually seen soldiers killed in person. And that day in the cave when he made his bid for freedom … that was the first time he saw a friend, someone he cared about, die.

That moment Yinsen died in his arms, and spoke the words that would echo in his ears forever … that was the moment Iron Man was truly born. Not the day he designed the first suit, not the day he inserted the reactor into his chest, but that moment.

'Don't waste your life.'

"I'm trying, Yinsen," he muttered, looking over at the mangled helmet of his suit on his desk. "I'm really trying."

The helmet was currently sitting on an advanced copy of tomorrow's newspaper, which was all about the events on the highway and the roof.

"'Who is the Iron Man?'" he read from its headline. "Catchy name, but horribly inaccurate. It's a gold-titanium alloy, not iron."

"Well, once you inform them of this, I'm sure the presses will leap to rename you 'Gold-Titanium Alloy Man'," Jarvis commented, forcing a smile from Tony.

Of course, as he turned to look at something on the other side of the room, his smile faded, and he inexplicably found himself thinking back to something else Yinsen had said to him.

'And you, Stark? Do you have a family?'

'… No.'

'No?' He could still see the small, strange smile on the man's face. 'So, you're a man who has everything … and nothing.'

He didn't know why those words were ringing in his ears as he stared at the sleeping form of the strange boy who had leaped to his rescue on the roof, but after a moment, he started shaking his head violently.

"Damn, I must be tired," he realized, shaking off the weirdly melancholy, introspective mood and returning to his typical snarky self.

"Well, it is after three in the morning," Jarvis pointed out.

"Tell it to the Worker's Union, Jarvis, because you and I are going to be pulling an all-nighter," Tony announced.

"I've tried. They won't take my calls any more," Jarvis complained.

Tony chuckled before nodding at the kid. "Alright, what can you tell me about this weirdo?"

"Male, Caucasian, possibly British, based on what I could make out of his voice and speaking patterns through the filter of his mask," Jarvis listed.

"Age?" Tony asked.

"Unclear," Jarvis responded. "Based on his height and weight, I would estimate his age at somewhere between eleven and thirteen. I'm afraid I can't be more specific without data regarding where he falls compared to the average height and weight of his age group, especially since my sensors seem to be malfunctioning when they scan him."

"Malfunctioning?" Tony asked in surprise.

"Yes, sir. His body seems to be generating some sort of energy field that I can't quite identify. It is interfering with my attempts to scan him."

"Well, the mysteries just keep piling up, don't they?" Tony replied. He walked over to a table covered in several of the kid's strange devices that he could recover from the roof. "What can you tell me about his tech?"

"Non-functional," Jarvis announced.

"Yeah, I know they're non-functional now, Sherlock. They're damaged," Tony responded. "But what can you tell me about how they worked before they were damaged?"

"You misunderstand, sir," Jarvis answered. "Based on my scans, these devices never would have been functional, even before they were damaged."

Tony blinked at the response. "You care to explain that? Because I watched several of these devices in action myself. In fact, so did you. You have the recordings."

"I do. At least, those that weren't corrupted and unusable, which was most of them." Jarvis said. "But of those that worked, I find them … confusing. According to my scans, these devices all miss something that would be essential for them to function as demonstrated, or indeed at all. If not for my recordings, I would insist that they were all decoys or defective. As it is … I have no answer, sir."

Tony frowned and picked up the clunky handheld device the kid had used to scan his image to create that impressive 3D hologram. The device seemed undamaged, but when he pushed the buttons, nothing happened. Looking more closely at its design, though, he also started seeing a possible reason for the inelegant design he had originally noted in the kid's tech. The whole thing was made of connected segments designed to be removed and replaced, it looked like.

Studying the devices on the table, he saw a similar design in all of them as well. It was as if whoever built them expected them to malfunction and need constant repairs or replacement parts, and so designed them with this in mind. And this certainly fit with how often he saw the kid's devices spark and overload on the roof.

Turning to the sleeping kid, the pieces started to fall together.

"Jarvis."

"Yes, sir?"

"Did our systems register any kind of security breach at the research facility before the fight with Stane on the roof?"

"I have no record of any such breach, sir," Jarvis answered.

However, Tony wasn't convinced he was off the mark. "And what about in the area? Any other reported security breaches in tech companies across the state? Or perhaps missing itinerary?"

"Searching," Jarvis informed him. Meanwhile, Tony stared down at the devices on the table, and the designs that clearly emphasized easy repairs over style and elegance.

Ignoring what a horrendous sin this was in the ever-stylish Tony's eyes, this meant that the kid would need materials, and lots of them, to make all the replacement parts he apparently expected to need. His suspicions also fit with some of what the kid said and did, such as how he mentioned something about hoping for "an easy job" at Stark labs that night, and how he seemed eager to leave once the police started to arrive outside. Hell, it even explained what the kid was doing on the roof in the first place.

"Search concluded, sir," Jarvis informed him. "I have reported break-ins and thefts from several such companies, including Hammer Industries." Tony let out a snort of laughter at that idiot being robbed. "However, these seem to be just the tip of the iceberg, sir."

"How so?" Tony asked, intrigued.

"According to federal databases, investigators believe these thefts to be the work of one individual, whom they have linked to countless other such high-level burglaries across the country. The first recorded burglary associated with this individual occurred over four years ago, and there is suspicion that this was not the actual first such crime, just the first linked to them."

Tony let out a long, low whistle. "Okay, I definitely need more details on this!" He hopped onto his desk and helped himself to a bag of blueberries.

"As you wish, sir," Jarvis replied. "This individual does not seem to target only technology companies. A number of banks are included on the list as well, among others. However, they have no hard data on the culprit. There are no photos, no DNA traces, no witnesses, and no security recordings."

"How are they linking them all to the same person, then?" Tony asked, munching on another handful of blueberries like popcorn.

"The crimes all share certain similarities," Jarvis explained. "For one thing, the culprit does not seem to use traditional tools or avenues of entry. For another, security systems are bypassed or shut down in ways that investigators find difficult or outright impossible to explain. And finally, the culprit is somehow able to escape with sometimes staggeringly large volumes of money or materials without ever being seen carrying them out, or with any apparent explanation as to how they are physically moved in the first place. With the more high-profile heists, such as of particularly advanced technology, the culprit has somehow been able to make their way through some of the most advanced security systems in the world, many of which are reportedly impenetrable, again without reasonable explanations as to how, and without ever being photographed, witnessed, or successfully recorded in any way, apparently capable of neutralizing or avoiding even hidden cameras without difficulty."

Tony paused in his munching to look at the table of devices. "Let me guess … with the banks and such, some of the vault doors were simply gone, just a pile of metal dust left on the ground," he suggested, remembering the grenade the kid used to disintegrate the arm of Stane's suit. "Other times, security systems suffered unexplained shorts and equipment failure that would roughly match the symptoms of EMP overload."

"For some of them, yes," Jarvis answered. "However, for the latter, while investigators have theorized about the culprit's use of EMP, they have remained unable to reconcile this with how only some systems are shorted out in this way while nearby systems and other electronics in the area remain completely unaffected, despite the fact that an EMP should fry all electronics in a certain radius not unlike a bomb blast."

Tony nodded at that, though he also remembered that the kid had apparently found a way to direct an EMP blast, what with the strange blue beam he had fired at Stane's suit to fry its electronics, and how this effect had not extended to his own suit despite being directly underneath Stane at the time.

"As for the former," Jarvis continued, "some physical obstacles have been disintegrated much as you described, though again without any explanation as to how this is accomplished that investigators have been able to find. However, the culprit's methods seem to shift and evolve with every heist, and so this tactic has not been used every time. In fact, some of the latest crimes associated with this individual have left such obstacles apparently untouched, leaving investigators completely at a loss to explain how the culprit has entered vaults and secured facilities without any apparent physical entry points."

That certainly caught Tony's attention.

"Combined with the figure's notorious ability to avoid being photographed or recorded, and the overall lack of any information on the culprit's identity, this has led investigators to fashion their own codename for this individual."

"And that is?" Tony asked in interest.

"The Spectre, sir," Jarvis answered.

"Huh," Tony responded, noting how the name also seemed to fit another quality of the kid. "By the way, any reports of unexplained disturbances, rampaging death and destruction, or weird glowy ghost cloud things in the areas when these heists went down?"

"A few, sir," Jarvis answered after a moment. "I can find scattered reports of such disturbances reaching back over four years, and yes, they often appear in the same city or state as suspected Spectre crimes. However, they have also decreased in frequency as time has passed. I can find only one or two potential occurrences within the last year."

"And have any investigators linked this to their little 'Spectre'?" Tony asked.

"They have not, sir. In fact, most officials seem to be under the distinct impression that these disturbances are the actions of Dr. Bruce Banner in his mutated state, despite conflicting reports placing him in other countries."

Tony snorted. "I guess one terrifying rage monster looks much like another when buildings are being torn apart like gingerbread houses."

"Well, I'm sure that the army, and General Thaddeus Ross in particular, would be most grateful for you clearing up this matter for them," Jarvis pointed out.

"Oh, I have no doubt," Tony agreed. "But for now, let's just keep blaming tonight's 'atmospheric disturbance' on the reactor overloading. I'm sure the army will already be on my back as it is from them trying to get my suit. I don't need them haranguing me about my guest, too."

"Your guest, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Absolutely!" Tony responded. "What else would you call a master criminal sleeping in my workshop?"

"A subject of a citizen's arrest, perhaps?" Jarvis suggested.

"After robbing Justin Hammer? Not on your life!" Tony countered with a smirk. "And besides, we're apparently the first to see the true face of the 'infamous' Spectre. We should be honored."

"Second," a quiet voice corrected.

Turning, Tony spotted the kid sitting up on his cot. "Do you have my journal?" the kid asked immediately, heading off what Tony was about to say.

Nodding, Tony grabbed the notebook off the table. "You have some pretty impressive designs in here," he complimented, having flipped through the book earlier. "In fact, I didn't even understand some of them."

"Well, people's minds often go as they reach old age, so don't worry. You're not alone," the preteen countered with a small smile as he reached out to take the notebook.

"Now, you see, that's a much better retort than the ones you were throwing around on the roof," Tony informed him. "Course, it still needs work. I mean, implying that I seem old? These things tend to work better when the stay within the realm of believability."

The kid looked up from his sketching to raise an eyebrow at him. "Looks like someone has been to Egypt."

Tony was confused. "Why do you say that?"

A grin ghosted across the kid's face. "Because you seem to have taken de' Nile back home with you."

Tony gave him a flat stare, feeling almost physical pain from the pun.

"Are you sure you won't reconsider the citizen's arrest option, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Thinking about it," Tony replied noncommittally as he watched the kid continue writing in his design notebook. After a moment, the kid finished, closing the book and setting down the pen with a sigh, tension visibly bleeding from his shoulders. Tony was curious, but didn't ask.

"You alright?" Tony asked instead.

"Yeah," he replied quietly.

"Good. So, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, do you care to explain about the whole 'I turn into a giant cloud of doom' thing you got going on?" Tony bluntly asked.

The kid snorted at the candid question. "There's not much more to tell than what you saw. It happens, and I can't really control myself when it does. I don't know why it started, or how to stop it completely. I just try and get by as best I can."

Tony stared at him. "That's it? That's all you got?"

"Pretty much," the kid answered with a shrug. "It seems to be triggered by intense emotions, especially anger or fear, and it has something to do with the weird energy field I generate, which your helper friend noticed. Other than that, I got nothing."

"So, you were awake for all that?" Tony asked in amusement.

"Most of it," the kid replied. "It seemed a good idea to try and figure out what you knew about me and what you were planning to do before I got up and just tried to walk out the front door."

"Clever," Tony complimented. "But I'm still a little hung up on the fact that at any moment, you can just go 'Poof!' and turn into a glowing death cloud."

"It's not like it just happens spontaneously," the kid argued, an amusedly indignant look on his face. "And besides, I've figured out a few ways to keep it in check." He glanced at the table filled with his surviving tech, and he clutched the notebook even tighter.

"Well, that answers all of my concerns. What a load off," Tony replied dryly.

"Glad to hear it," the kid replied, deliberately missing the man's sarcastic tone. "So, now that your concerns have been put to rest, it's time for a question of my own: What was that energy source I crashed into at the end of the fight?"

Tony was curious at his question. "That was an arc reactor. First of its kind. Designed by my father. Why?"

"It had a weird reaction with my other form," the kid said, apparently deep in thought. "In fact, I'm starting to wish I had … um, 'visited' … that lab before this. That energy source may have some answers for how I can finally get a leash on this thing."

"Are you implying you would have tried to steal that several-ton arc reactor?" Tony asked in amusement. "Because I would have loved to see that particular attempt."

"Oh, there would have been no 'attempt,'" the kid playfully argued. "I would have succeeded, and you wouldn't have seen anything."

"Is that so?" Tony asked with a challenging glimmer in his eye. "Well, now I'm tempted to rebuild it just to call you on that. But it might be easier just to tell you about my miniaturized version of the arc reactor."

"You miniaturized that thing?" the kid asked in clear interest.

Tony tapped the glowing circle visible through his shirt.

"Of course," the kid replied, eyeing the miniaturized reactor with extreme interest before looking at Tony in concern. "Um, hypothetical situation, but if you were to, say, suddenly find that you had misplaced that, it wouldn't, you know, kill you, would it?"

"Oh, no, of course not," Tony answered casually. "I'd just enter cardiac arrest, which would make me very cranky. The lack of blood flow to my brain and other vital organs would definitely kill me, though."

"Damn," the kid muttered half under his breath, which made Tony chuckle. However, as he looked at the kid, he found himself really thinking through his situation. He was obviously brilliant, as evidenced by the incredible tech he had developed, and at his age, no less. He was also clearly desperate. Unlike Tony, he had no resources to bring his designs into fruition. He had to steal funds and materials just to build them, unlike him, who just ordered a few hundred of whatever he might need and never even noticed the price. This was apparently enough to already land the kid on federal wanted lists at an age where he should have been worried about stupid kid crap. Instead, he had government agents trying to track him down and put him in prison.

And on top of all that, the kid had some insane affliction that could turn him into that rampaging dust creature from the roof if he wasn't careful.

Honestly, the more he thought about the kid, the more he felt similar he felt they were. The kid seemed like he was completely cut off from the rest of the world. After all, with a mind like his, it's not as if he'd be able to just go to a playground and eat crayons or mess with Play-Doh or whatever other kids his age did. On top of that, there was his … "career," which doubtless meant he constantly had to move and keep to himself to avoid getting picked up by the cops. Add in the constant threat of his transformation …

Tony could sympathize. Sure, he had it easier, what with his family's wealth and resources, and he didn't have to worry about turning into a killer dust bunny, but he had always felt alone. All his life, he had been cut off from the rest of the world, whether because of his mind, his family name intimidating everyone else, or frankly, just his abrasive personality. His close social circle consisted of pretty much just Pepper, Rhodey, and Jarvis.

'So, you're a man who has everything … and nothing.'

He almost jumped at hearing Yinsen's voice in his head again. It was so clear, it was as if the man was sitting right next to him. He shook his head, trying to chalk it up to just another random thought brought about by his earlier musings.

And yet … he couldn't deny the truth in those words. He looked at the kid more consideringly.

"I'll tell you what, though," Tony said suddenly, getting the kid's attention. "You answer a few questions, and I'll let you—under my close supervision—study arc reactor energy and what it can do for your dusty little problem."

"Really?" the kid asked in excitement before suspicion clouded his features. "What kind of questions?"

"Oh, just little things," Tony assured him. "You know, who the hell are you, where did you come from, how did you start developing tech like this, how did you manage to become such a notorious thief … just minor things like that."

The kid gave a wry half smile. "That's a pretty long conversation, you know."

"Hey, it's already, what, four in the morning? It's not as if there's much point going to sleep now." Tony pointed out, settling onto his desk more comfortably. "Thrill me."

"Alright, you asked for it," the kid answered with a laugh.

Author's note: Whoo! Second story! As a general note about this story, though this story will be based on the MCU, don't expect all events and timelines to match up perfectly with their MCU counterpart. Some movie events will occur in different orders than they were originally portrayed, and some I will be completely scrapping and rewriting myself (*coughDarkWorldcough*).

I will be staying somewhat loosely within the realm of the MCU (at least, to a certain extent), as dealing with the entire extended Marvel Universe is frankly a terrifying concept in terms of just how much is there. So don't expect much in the way of characters like the X-Men or mutants appearing, as any story I write about them will be primarily about them, whereas this story is primarily about the Avengers. That said, I also won't be restricting myself solely to what has appeared in the movies. Basically, while the foundation of this story is an altered MCU, expect a certain amount of flexibility (and at times, a great deal of flexibility).

Also, if there are characters you'd like to see in the final pairing, please drop a line in the comments :) I already have my own plans and ideas for some of them, but I'm curious what you all think, especially since I'm still on the fence about certain characters.

Other than that, thanks for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you next time!