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The Forge	By : IndigoMiko Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Iron Man (all) > Iron Man (all) Views: 1688 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man, X-Men, Avengers, or any other Marvel verse property. I also don't make any money from writing this. All I do is wile away my free time kicking things around inside my head. It's a mess up there.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
Chapter 17: A Lack of Supervision
“I want to reach out and touch the sky. I want to touch the sun but I don’t need to fly.” Supernaut Black Sabbath
It was amazing what lots of money and a private plane could accomplish. Tony was on his way to New York by two that afternoon. It’d be eleven in the evening there when he landed. But he claimed it allowed him a night of surveillance without people really being aware he was in town.
Forge hadn’t argued with him. She also hadn’t waited more than fifteen minutes after his flight took off to call the number on the card Romanoff left.
Romanoff was not the only MIB to show up that evening though.
“I’m not letting you in the house,” Forge announced to the man with the eye patch channeling Blade. “She’s allowed,” she added gesturing to Romanoff.
“We can discuss this right here,” leather trench coat man answered amicable.
Forge didn’t want to buy his cookies. They were probably made with bullshit. She looked around at the high concrete walls of the sunken section of the driveway. “In the kill box. Sure. Lets.” That intentionally shitty part of her was coming out again.
“See you say things like that and it makes me curious. Where does a girl like you pick up military speak?” He folded his arms behind his back.
He was trying to be intimidating. It was kind of cute. “Wikipedia,” she snarked. It was extra adorable because he had lots of metal on him.
Mini Shaft turned to Romanoff and commented. “I see why she gets on with Stark so well.” Romanoff nodded.
“What do you want?” Forge barked a bit. “I have a time limit in which to do certain things or my weaponized back up will get twitchy.”
“Stark left you with a babysitter?” He jeered.
“Times a wasting,” Forge sang with a smile.
Goth pirate Roberts dropped his arms to his sides. “I wanted to meet you in person. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“That can’t be good,” she quipped.
“On the contrary, you’ve managed to impress one of my most astute agents,” Mini Shaft continued.
Forge nodded because yeah, Agent Pretty had made it clear she’d been pervin’ on her.
“Barton wouldn’t shut up about what you did at the Stark Expo.”
That made Forge freeze. Barton, as in crane guy, as in her greenhorn. Her eyes sharpened. “I owe that man a solid,” she declared.
It appeared she’d thrown off the dynamic duo as much as they’d knocked her off her game. Hot Topic eye patch tilted his head a bit. “Why is that?”
“He saved my life.” Forge was completely serious. She would be bits of roasted person right now if not for that guy hustling her on. “Can you tell him I said thank you?”
“Sure,” he agreed easily. Agent Pretty nodded her head.
The man with the one eye to rule them all was studying her with it. For variety, he made her feel like an interesting and possibly useful fungus instead of a bug. “I’m considering attaching Agent Romanoff to you until this business, Stark is no doubt sticking his fingers into in New York, is finished. What I want to know is what you plan to do with what she’s going to teach you.”
Forge raised an eyebrow because, duh. “Save the world.”
“Save the world,” he rolled the phrase around in his mouth like he was tasting it. “You want to elaborate on that?”
“Bullshit aside?” she offered, because she really did have a time limit before JARVIS got all defense happy. The man across from her nodded. “Any group that wants me, and wants me alive, is not looking to do humanitarian work. I know what people like them can do. If I can help get them gone then it’s a public service.”
The man in the monochrome dream coat made a considering face at her. “We may contact you in the future.” He announced before turning to walk away.
Forge couldn’t help herself. “Word of advice, a spoon full of sugar,” she said flippantly. Then more seriously, “Barton needs me, you call.”
She watched the back of Shaft! walk away and then turned to Agent Pretty. “I wasn’t kidding about weaponized back up. We need to get in the house now.” The red head followed her up and around to the front door. “I’ve got to ask. Why does Tony call you fake Natalie Rushman?”
……………………………….........................................................................
Tony spent the night setting up surveillance on the scrap yard in Washington Heights. He had JARVIS run facial recognition on the people running in and out of it. So far he’d pegged gang members from two different gangs, a drug runner, and various other shady people. None of the people going in and out had scrubbed backgrounds.
He returned to the hotel room and fell into bed around five in the morning. He woke up in time to take a meeting with Mr. Biel, the head of construction for the tower and then tour the expo. The day was tedious. The press was annoying. He missed Four.
When he was able to get back to his hotel room at six that evening he had a message from her with a video attached. Tony gave a little smirk and allowed himself to fantasize it was something dirty.
There was also a video message from JARVIS. The AI had very specific instructions, so Tony opened that one first.
He felt his teeth grit together when he saw that Nick Fury had wasted no time in approaching Four once she was alone. He did enjoy hearing her be snappy with him though. Tony filed away in his head that she felt she owed Barton and that she was invested in personally removing the current group from the table.
Revenge was something Tony could understand. Protecting yourself was something Tony could understand. He could even get feeling like because you could save people maybe you should. What he didn’t like, at all, was the fact that Four wanted to put herself in danger. He was smart enough to understand he was being a hypocrite.
To get his mind off that thought he clicked into the video she had sent him. It was titled ‘Eatin’ Lightning and Crappin’ Thunder.’ Tony couldn’t help but laugh.
The video was obviously shot by Dum-E. Four and Romanoff were out on the helipad and Romanoff was carrying an assault rifle. “What the fuck have they been doing?” Tony asked aloud.
“Ready Dum-E? Start tight then go wide.” Four commanded. She took a few steps back and commented, “That makes me sound like an amateur porn director.” Her eyes went wide and she gasped. Then she reached forward to stroke the robot making a sympathetic face. “Oh, poor Dum-E. The things you must have seen,” she murmured.
Romanoff grimaced. “Let’s not speculate about Stark’s sex life.” Tony started to chuckle.
Four made a face. “Right.” she agreed. She rolled her shoulders. Instead of the stands with target papers on them there was a single backstop way off in the distance by the cliff. “What are we calling this?”
“Resistance training?” Romanoff offered.
“Good one. Okay. So you fire at the rubber curtain until you start hitting and then we count how many bullets I can hold up.”
Romanoff leveled the weapon. “That’s the plan.”
Four jogged toward the camera and ducked behind the ballistics glass with Dum-E. “Okay. Give me a count down. Wait!” Four stopped them.
The agent turned to look at her in question.
“Are you sure no one is going to start wondering why there’s automatic gun fire coming from Tony Stark’s house?”
“Sure,” Romanoff assured. “It should be fine.” Tony wondered if the cops had shown up.
“Okay,” Four sang. “Give me a countdown.”
Romanoff counted down and then opened fire. After about a minute bullets started hitting the backstop in the distance. She unloaded the weapon and set it to the side. Only fifteen feet in front of her was a wall of bullets suspended in mid-air. “Clear,” she called.
A groan came from beside the camera before Four stepped out.
“Go ahead and drop them.” Romanoff said. “We’ll check the time in a second. I want to document you’re physical reactions.” The bullets suddenly pinged to the tarmac.
“Well I have a headache, but no nose bleed,” Four replied, stepping into the shot. She rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers.
“What gave you a nose bleed?” The agent asked.
“Awhile ago I had a run in with a group and one of the guys tossed a dump truck at me. I stopped it.” There were several beats of silence. Tony started at the video in disbelief.
“Seriously?” Romanoff asked.
“Mutants, we’re a violent bunch.” Four joked. “I can’t wait till Tony sees this. He’s going to be so pissed I did the cool stuff while he was gone.”
She was right.
Romanoff glanced at the bullets on the helipad. “You were able to hold off an assault rifle firing six hundred rounds per minute for almost a whole minute. The rounds traveled around five yards from the barrel however. Can you hold off single caliber shots closer to the gun?” She asked.
“It’s about reaction time.” Four explained. “Assault rifles fire quickly. By the time I have a hold of the first shot several more have fired. It’s like trying to hold water in your hands. I’m not sure about a single round. Mutants, when fighting other mutants, don’t normally use guns.”
“We’ll have to do some testing with auto and semi auto hand guns of different calibers.” Romanoff planned.
“I also have the choice of shielding instead of stopping,” Four pointed out.
Romanoff tilted her head. “How fast can you shield?”
“As fast as I can get the metal to me.” Four shrugged. “Shielding is one of the things I’ve done almost daily. It’s just moving metal through space.”
The two women fell into a contemplative silence before a whirr came from off camera. “Yeah, Dum-E were done. Go ahead a turn it off.”
Before the video cut he saw Four ask Romanoff, “Can I shoot that?”
Tony picked his phone up. It was about four in the afternoon in Malibu. He wondered if his house was still in one piece, or on the news. He was never leaving Four unsupervised again.
……………………………….........................................................................
In the three days Tony had been gone Four had continued to send him updates. They talked in the evenings and sometimes in the mornings. He still missed her though. They’d only slept together two nights before he left, but they’d been living together for over a month.
She seemed to be having a grand time working with Romanoff. Tony figured it was working with someone she knew wouldn’t blink at how devastating she could be with her powers. They tested how much metal needed to be in something for Four to stop it. How fast she could stop it. How easily she could redirect it. Romanoff had put her through the ringer and then done it again with physical fighting.
In the second video Four had ruefully admitted she may never be more than serviceable in real hand to hand combat, and that level certainly wouldn’t be achieved any time soon. Tony had obligingly reassured her with the fact that even after two years of being Iron Man he wasn’t that good.
The place in Washington Heights was a wash. Oh, it was an illegal weapons manufacturer, but not the one they were looking for. Tony forwarded all the information he’d dug up to SHIELD, the NYPD, and the FBI.
He had one more stop before he could head back to Malibu and Four. The second most likely place for the dart manufacturer to be was in Newark, New Jersey. He was headed there that night. If that turned out to be another dead end then he’d have to schedule a different trip down to Baltimore.
A few hours later he was down in Ironside at a nicely modern office block. This part of Newark had seen renovation and looked nothing like where you would find shady arms manufacturing. The minute JARVIS scanned the first people going into the building Tony knew he’d found it.
Business clad man A was Paul Ottinger who had a list of details that were all fake, but they connected him with the Expo. Business clad man B, who went in with him, had no identity. Tony got as close as he could to the car they had arrived in and shot a GPS tracker at it.
“Run the plate JARVIS,” he commanded.
“Accessing the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles. Plate number F twenty seven GXV. Registered owner is Paul Ottinger.” A license with picture flashed in the HUD. It matched man A.
Tony had JARVIS hack into the buildings security cameras and followed the footage of Ottinger and B through the hallways, into the elevator, and down into the basement. Their security system was something else. If he’d had anything less than JARVIS he never would have gotten through. In sub basement A he found what he was looking for.
Tony waited as Ottinger and B collected their shipment of various weapons in two briefcases and then left. He followed them out to the pier where they parked the car and got into a boat. When they headed into open water he had to let them go. It would have been obvious Iron Man was following them out there.
Frustrated with his inability to stick a tracker to the boat, he circled back to the building in Ironside. He might be able to hack into a satellite view later but he wanted something for his time tonight. Tony wanted the guy selling to them. That man had a background. He was a weak link and Tony just knew from looking at the man, he was a squealer.
He didn’t bother being nice about it either.
Iron Man crashed through three floors and snagged the man by the collar before they could even scramble their security. He tossed him against a crate containing the same plastic canister looking things Ottinger and B had left with.
“You sold these to someone I want to know the name of.”
The security force opened fire behind him and Tony had JARVIS target and take them out.
Squealer man, aka Henry Decario, aka a lot of aliases, gave a nervous smirk. “Hey man, I don’t know how it is where you do business, but we don’t give out client information.”
Tony moved to start threatening the guy, but a low electrical whine started.
Decario’s eyes went wide. “No! Hey, I haven’t said anything.” He glanced around in a panic. “I wouldn’t say anything.”
“JARVIS find out what that is.“ Reaching forward Tony once again grabbed the man by the collar. “Tell me,” he started but Decario cut across him.
“You got to get me out of here!” He demanded.
The whine intensified and Tony grabbed a hold of the man’s arm to do just that when there was a hollow whump and the world shut down.
“Sir,” JARVIS’ voice was cracking in and out. “You have approximately two minutes before the building reaches critical structural failure.”
Tony rolled his head. He was on his back underneath a pile of concrete. Decario was next to him pinned under a chunk of the same concrete on Tony. Both of them could tell Decario was dying.
“Xenix. They work for Xenix,” the man rasped. “Fuck them,” he coughed and went still.
The HUD flickered. “You are at fifteen percent power. Ninety seven seconds until structural failure.” JARVIS informed.
Fuck. The crazy assholes had blown up their own weapons manufacturer? Tony shifted, but the suit was pinned. “Remaining power to thrusters.”
After a bit of grinding and shoving he shot across the floor and impacted the remains of a wall. Tony grunted and felt something wet on his chin.
“Sixty five seconds to structural failure.”
“Find me a way out J,” Tony called. Several blocked passages flashed through the HUD.
“The elevator shaft is the clearest egress.”
“Yeah,” Tony watched the HUD flash a diagram of the mangled remains of the elevator car. He just had to clear that.
“Fifty three seconds until structural failure.”
Around him he could hear the steady crumbling of concrete and the squeal of bending metal. He didn’t have a lot of choices. Cueing up a small explosive charge he shot it at the elevator. It blew the car through the back wall of the shaft.
“The blast has further destabilized the remaining infrastructure. Eighteen seconds to critical failure.” JARVIS intoned.
Tony didn’t waste anymore time. He shot up through the elevator shaft, burst through the closed doors on what used to be the second story, and shot through the glass of a window. He was only a few stories above the crumbled mess when it seemed to fall in on itself further.
“Nine percent power,” JARVIS informed him.
Something in his back ached and he could feel a piece of metal digging into his thigh. Tony coughed. “Get me back to the hotel J.”
“Yes sir.”
- 16
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The Forge