I am Iron Man

[Tony Stark]

Starting off with a quest right away! Reposted here for clarity.

An Arbiter’s Plea
Quest Giver: Arbiter (Dependent on World Location)
• Quest Length: 1,000 words (300 Coin Reward)
• Quest Location: All worlds except Govermorne and Cevanti
• Quest Prerequisites: N/A
• Quest Description: Your character is going about their daily business when a strange sensation overcomes them, leaving them somewhere between nausea and elation. A thought that is not their own blooms from the very recesses of their brain, seemingly planted there long ago: the Arbiter of your world has chosen you, perhaps alongside others, as the one to aid them in their time of need. There is a great evil coming and it has already infected three other worlds. If this corruption is permitted to spread, it could spell the end of the Crossroads themselves.

• Repeatable? No

As the last spark of life left his body, Tony Stark’s final thoughts were about Pepper and Morgan. About how he’d not get to see his daughter grow up and everything that came with it. Her first day in school, the first fight with Pepper and him, her first high-school sweetheart, her first crashed car and whatever else. The world around him went dark, yet he felt a remainder of his consciousness there.

So what, can I expect to see a bearded old guy greeting me at the gates of Heaven any moment now? he thought. If there really was an afterlife he was probably screwed, never having been one to believe in the supernatural in spite of having met literal wizards and a supposed norse god. If there was someone up there they’d not be very pleased with him.

This whole dying thing took a long while by the way. Shouldn’t he have stopped thinking by now? He’d kinda hoped to stick to that idea of his final thoughts being about his family.

“You are not dead, Anthony Stark. There is still need of you.”

How did he still get taken by surprise? Seriously, after all the things that’d happened in the last five years, disembodied voices were way low on the list of things that could still surprise him.

“Uh, yeah, who exactly am I talking to?” he asked. Weird. He had no body yet he could speak. But his question did not go unanswered. An individual appeared out of the darkness, clad in heavy medieval plate armor that clinked lightly as he came walking closer. He looked a bit like a Templar Crusader, but his armor was way too decorated with junk that’d just get in his way in a fight. Really not historically accurate there, people. And he wore a smile on his face, but Tony could see it did not extend to his eyes.

“You are confused. That is understandable. There is much to be explained, Anthony Stark.”

“Right, how about you start by telling me when you started cosplaying, Nick? And what skincare product you use? You look at least ten years younger since I last saw you.”

The man’s smile faltered for only a moment, with a hint of confusion crawling across his face. Then he replied. “Hah. You jest, I see. But I am not Nicholas Fury: my parents named me Terrance.”

“You seem to know my name already, but just call me Tony, will you. What was that about needing me?”

“That’s right. You have contributed decisively to defeating a great threat to your universe, have you not? You are lauded as the great hero Iron Man back on your homeworld. That was why I chose to bring you here, to my world: to enlist your aid against-”

“Listen, Terry”, Tony interrupted him, “I’ve tried to retire twice from all the heroics. It’s already costed me my life, because I gave it to save my universe. And if I’d lived I’d have left all the hero stuff behind to focus on my family. So A, I didn’t get consulted if I’m okay with you bringing me back, and B, I’m not interested in saving a foreign world.”

Terrance did not break his smile. When Tony finished speaking, he waved his gloved hand and video clips appeared around him as if a dozen invisible screens were lighting up. They showed several images: an expanse of ruins, swarmed by robotic creatures. A sky, filled with birds of steel. Soldiers fighting and dying on the ground trying to stem the tide of incoming attackers. And far behind the lines, an enormous black mech observing the battle. Stark found something to look off about this last one, and eyed it closer. After a few seconds he realized it: the shadows and clouds looming behind the mech taken together had the shape of a face, too vague and foggy for any distinguishing features to be made out, watching over everything.

“This”, Terrance said, “is Cevanti, one of the worlds that the Fallen Arbiter Darkseid has targeted. Those who remain are valiantly fighting, but they cannot forever defend against the might of the planet turning against them. One world has already fallen, and others will follow if he is not stopped. That black mech you can see here… it is piloted by Ember Ramsey, an Arbiter like myself. A god who lords over a world, who can shape reality, breathe life into the dead and command a legion of millions to do its bidding, all with a mere thought.

Now let me ask you this, Anthony Stark… do you believe that one who has the power to corrupt an Arbiter as powerful as Ember or myself will be satisfied with eight worlds? Do you believe that he will not set his sights on the realities beyond? And do you believe that if I was able to open a way between dimensions with such ease to pull you through, that he will not be able to do the same?”

Tony crossed his arms. “Earth has its defenders.”

“That may be so.”

“And they’ve grown stronger and more numerous since Thanos, who may I add was the strongest being in the universe with the stones, was defeated.”

“They have.”

“So they have a good chance of winning if some new planetary overlord came along to take over Earth. Even without me.”

“They may have that.”

“And if I decide to help you against this Darkseid - terribly lame villain name, by the way - I’ll have no allies, no money and no knowledge of what I’m facing.”

“You are aware that I can read your thoughts, are you not?”

Tony raised his hands with his open palms forward. “Woah. Huge invasion of privacy there, Terry. Not cool. If this was Earth, my lawyers would want a word with you.”

Terrance’s smile did not falter. “You needn’t lay out your arguments. I know what you aim to bargain for, and I am willing to grant it in exchange for your aid.” He reached his hand out. “Can we come to an agreement?”

“Can’t guarantee that I’ll succeed. I don’t have a future-seeing wizard to make sure we win this time around.”

“No future is ever certain. All I ask that you try.”

Tony nodded and took the Arbiter’s hand into his, giving it a firm shake. “Then it’s a deal.”

The next moment, the world around him exploded into an overwhelming flood of light. Stark could see nothing but pure white all around him, and even when he closed his eyes it was so powerful that it went through his lids. But then the light slowly receded, and colours came back into his vision. He blinked trying to get the dizziness from his overwhelmed senses out of him, but he could do little other than to wait as white turned to light blue, with some specks of gray. It was a slightly clouded sky he was looking up to.

“Couldn’t have left me somewhere indoors, could he?” Tony asked aloud as he sat up and looked around. Funny. This place looked not unlike his lakeside cottage where he had spent his last years with Pepper and Morgan. Well, minus the lake, and minus all the techy stuff. On second look, this place looked pretty ruined. An abandoned farmhouse that looked like it’d been built by the Amish. And yet, there was a wisp of smoke coming through the shattered window.

He got to his feet, looking down at himself. Casual clothes like the ones he wore when he went out on a jog. Comfortable, good enough to keep him warm in the New York autumn climate, utilitarian. And his Arc Reactor was stuck to his clothes. But when he tapped it, it didn’t react. Probably broken, but he didn’t have the tech to fix it here.

“Anyone home?” he went to ask as he walked towards the house. A very familiar voice answered his call.

“Oh, Tony! You’ve finally decided to wake up!” There was a clang of a heavy metal object hitting wood, then Pepper Potts appeared in the doorway before him. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Where on earth are we? How’d we end up here? And do you know how to use a tinderbox? This place has no lighters.”

It was not the Pepper Potts that he’d known in the year before his death, not the woman he’d married. She looked like she had looked around 2013, 2014, when the whole Extremis situation had caused problems for her. Beautiful as ever. Wearing similarly comfortable clothes to himself, and her fingers dark with soot.

Nontheless, he decided to confirm. “Where’s Morgan?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Never mind.” So she couldn’t remember Morgan. Or to be more precise, this was not the widowed Pepper Stark that mourned his death - she was still on Earth, with Morgan. The one before him was Pepper Potts, his romantic partner and recently-appointed CEO of Stark Industries. An alternate self of her that had lived in 2014 and did not have all the ill memories of the War against Thanos.

It looked like Terry had kept his word.

Word Count: 1.536 / 1.000

 

[Tony Stark]

The vast majority of Pepper’s questions Tony had to answer with “I don’t know”: Where had they ended up? Was there any pocket of civilization nearby? How would they even get away from this place if there was no hint of intelligent life as far as the eye could see? But he could answer a few others, whilst helping Pepper with setting up the archaic cooking utensils. They were both starving, and fortunately the abandoned cottage had a few foodstuffs, stored in airtight jars, that they helped themselves to.

“How did we get here?” - We were summoned by a bootleg Nick Fury. Called himself Terrance. Great guy.

“Why did he summon us?” - He needs some help with some supervillain threatening the universe.

“But why did he summon me too? Aren’t you the superhero?” - I asked him to bring you along. I wouldn’t have lasted a week without my capable assistant.

“What about the ones back home? Aren’t they going to miss us?” - Well, I bit the dust before Terry summoned us so I’m in the clear. And he probably pulled some godly cloning trick so he wouldn’t have to make you disappear and mess up the timelines.

“What are you saying? That I’m not the real one?” Getting real philosophical there, Pepper. You’ve all the memories, looks and history of Pepper Potts, so why would you not be?

“How are you so sure he did that?” - Because the Pepper I left behind I entrusted several things to that she can only do on Earth. If Terrance whisked her away like me I would’ve objected. What year is it?

“2014, why?” - Because the Pepper I’m thinking of has almost ten years on that.

“So you’re from what, 2003 - 24? Is that why you look ten years older than I remember you?” - I don’t look old, do I look old? I’m feeling like I’m 30.

“And you behave like you’re 15. How do you use this damn thing?” - The tinderbox? Give it here, let me have a go.

“Here you- Wait, what are those burn marks on your hand?”

This last question made Tony hesitate because he hadn’t noticed them up until now, either. Five spots, one on each of his base knuckles, and a slightly larger one on the back of his hand, connected by burn mark lines. “... huh.” Then he looked at Pepper. “Battle scars”, he said dismissively. But Pepper grabbed his hand and turned it so that the marks were clearly visible in the sunlight.

“I don’t remember you getting burn marks like that. What happened?” she asked with that sharp, inquisitive tone that Tony had so gotten used to.

“You’d probably not believe me if I told you.”

“I’ve seen what kind of things S.H.I.E.L.D. deals with on a daily basis. I’ve become kind of jaded to the supernatural, Tony.”

“Fine. You’ve heard of the Tesseract, didn’t you? And that gem from Loki’s scepter that Vision had in his forehead. Turns out they were these things called Infinity Stones that could control the universe, and this alien fellow called Thanos wanted to use them. Fixing the universe, he called it. I ended up having to use the stones to kill him, but I guess we humans aren’t made to keep universe-bending pebbles attached to our hands.” He bent his fingers a bit. “That actually was what killed me. Great way of going out. I got to deliver a snazzy one-liner and everything before snapping my fing-”

“Tony.”

He mustered a smile. “Right. So these are the marks where the stones were at. One on each knuckle, and one on the back of my hand.” He traced a finger over his knuckles.

“Do they hurt?”

“Terribly”, Tony replied with a deadpan face. “But maybe if you kiss them they’ll get better.”

“Ugh, you’re impossible!” Pepper laughed and shoved his hand back against his chest, then picked up the tinderbox and handed it to him. “Right, then try not to add more burn scars while lighting a fire for us.”

A few minutes later they had a flickering flame started that Tony fed to grow it bigger, and Pepper heaved a big cast iron pot onto the stovetop. It took them an hour to put something edible together, but in their state of starvation neither particularly cared what it was as long as it kept them going. Neither of them commented on each other’s forgotten table manners as they scarfed down their veggie-mixture casserole.

“I saw a barn outside”, Tony said as he wiped his mouth, his meal finished. “Might have a tractor or something we can use to get out of here.”

“I’ll look inside the house and see if I can find a map or directions”, Pepper decided. “Not that I’ve the biggest hopes.”

“Terry wouldn’t dump us somewhere we can’t get away from. Maybe he’s testing us.”

As he walked over to the barn, he wondered about how they could pay back the people who lived here, for essentially breaking into their home, raiding their pantry and possibly stealing a vehicle. He didn’t have anything valuable on him like a watch or his wallet, if this place even valued american dollars. There was no guarantee that the place was even inhabited but he didn’t like to assume. “Maybe we can clean the place up a bit”, he thought to himself. There was the barn… with a padlock, huh? He looked around a bit, then picked up a long splint of wood and some metal scraps. Been a while since he last did this, but he’d had some fun picking locks in the past, he thought to himself as he inserted the two pieces and recalled his younger days. Little bit to the left, a little push here, a bit deeper, push the third pin in, now the fourth and… click-click. The padlock sprung open and came off, leaving the door open. Easy enough.

The barn’s inside was so dusty that Tony immediately had to take two steps back or he’d have inhaled the dust that his feet kicked up. Fortunately the gentle breeze of the area quickly cleared things out and he was able to step inside. Everything was covered with dust, indicating to him that nobody had been there in probably a year or so. Good thing those jars of food had been properly sealed.

Much more important was what was under that dust. He saw tools for gardening and farming, small silo-like structures, cables and tubes linking some curious machines together. Maybe farming implements but he couldn’t stick around to analyze them. He saw something much more useful.

When Pepper came out to the barn with a folded-up map in hand, she found Tony sitting on the ground outside, tightening a screw on a familiar-looking object. “Bicycles?” she asked incredulously. “Was there nothing motorized?”

“Nothing I could turn into a car in less than five days”, Tony answered as he pulled the wrench off the wheel he was just fixating and gave it a tentative spin. “But you’re in good shape, right? A little biking trip won’t hurt you.”

“We could be far away from any civilization for all you know.”

“Maybe. Not likely though… could you hold onto the handlebar for a sec? I need to align the wheel.” While he took the wrench to the bike part in question, he explained: “Farms are usually not that far from a city since all the harvest has to be transported there on the cheap. Could maybe make a case if this world had teleportation tech but with what we saw in the house I figured that they don’t.” He motioned towards the map in Pepper’s hand. “Am I right or am I right?”

Pepper sighed. “There’s apparently a city called ‘Arcadia’ about a hundred and fifty kilometers out. We can hopefully get ourselves situated from there.”

“Sounds good.”

“If I read the map correctly”, Pepper remarked.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “You hit your head before I woke up, Pepper? Dropped one of the big pans on it or something?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Then there’s no reason you of all people would read a map wrong. All that’s left now is to figure out how to pay these people.”

“I already got a solution. I left them a written message with my contact information.” She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. “I found I had this still.”

“You think they’ll have mobile phone tech around here?” Tony wondered.

“It’s the best I could think of. You got any better ideas?”

“Sort of.” He motioned towards the barn. “I left them a gift.”

Pepper raised an eyebrow but walked over. Her eyes went big as she saw the bluish white glow coming from an item the size of a tin can. She turned on her heel and stormed out. “You built them an Arc Reactor?!”

“What? I figured it’d be fair compensation. I mean, they’ve got their electricity needs sorted out for the next ten years, give or take. It’s not like anyone can dismantle and reverse-engineer it without the static electricity frying all the essential tech. Besides, I just used a Nickel ring. Easier to work with and I figured that you’d find what we needed in an hour or so.”

Pepper didn’t even question how Stark had been able to build an Arc Reactor in an hour and still have time to repair a pair of bicycles. She threw her hands up and walked back to the house to correct her letter to the house owners.

Twenty minutes later, they put the padlock back on the barn and climbed on the slightly old, but still very serviceable bicycles. Just like that one time they’d taken a cycling trip through the Netherlands, Stark thought to himself as he looked at the wide flat grassy plains around him. Except now they wouldn’t cycle from Amsterdam to Groningen for fun, but from some middle-of-nowhere farmhouse to Arcadia to save the world.