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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
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Chapter 3: A Rock and a Hard Place
“Here I go again on my own. Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.” Here I Go Again by Whitesnake
“Sir, Col. Rhodes is requesting access to the lab.”
“Let him in JARVIS, and cut the tunes.” Tony didn’t bother to look up from the schematics he was working on. Rhodey had brought the suit he stole back so Tony could fix the shitty Hammer Tech on it. It laid on a worktop across from him with most of the crap torn off it, but Tony couldn’t help but tinker. If he was going to let Rhodey keep a suit, so the world could keep War Machine and Tony could keep his free time, why shouldn’t it be a bit better?
“How long have you been down here this time?” Rhodey asked as he entered the lab.
Tony spun on his stool, and squinted his eyes. “Uh, I have no idea. J?” It was a lie. Tony knew he’d been holed up in the lab since Pepper left him. Pepper, who had dated him exactly one month.
“You are approaching you’re fifty second hour, Sir.”
Rhodey dropped a bag of take out on the desk next to him.
“What is this?”
“Food, Tony.” Rhodey put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “You remember food right?”
Tony ruffled his hair. “I don’t remember putting in an order for,” he shuffled through the bag, opened a box and pulled out a French fry, “Whatever this is.” He popped the fry into his mouth and chewed. Not bad.
Rhodey had his ‘I’m worried about you,’ look on. Tony hated that look because it meant Rhodey was going to badger him about things like sleep, and hygiene. Tony did a sniff test and wrinkled his nose. Hmm, maybe Rhodey had a point about the hygiene. Another fry went into his mouth. He was hungry.
“Because you didn’t,” Rhodey sighed. “You need sleep, and a shower.” Yup, good old Rhodey. Right on cue.
Tony stood up and walked to the workbench. “Right, right.” He fiddled with the shoulder of the Mark III. “Hey,” he spun around, “so what did you find out about the tin man that destroyed those drones at the expo?” Diversion. He wondered if Rhodey would buy it.
The colonel rolled his eyes, but allowed it. “Intel thinks there was an enhanced involved. They thought she might have been affiliated with you based on the outfit.”
“Unaffiliated, and what is enhanced?”
Rhodey crossed his arms, but nodded. “Enhanced, mutant, whatever they call themselves.” He tried to grab a fry out of the container but Tony smacked his hand away and snagged a handful for himself. “I’ve never run across one in the field, but apparently metal manipulation is a known power for some of them.”
Rhodey frowned. Tony cocked his head. “What?”
“The brief on the guy the government knows about is not,” Rhodey paused searching, “good.”
“Was he the one at the expo?” Tony knew of course, but he wanted to know what the government told his friend.
Rhodey shook his head and sat on the corner of the desk. “No. No, the video feed never got a good look at her, but it wasn’t the guy who caused problems before.”
Tony knew that too. He’d erased some of the video footage. Crazy woman ripped the side off the Coney stand in full view of everyone. Not that Tony could talk. He announced himself to the world at a press conference. He was Tony Stark though. This woman didn’t have the resources to run from the government or lesser known but more powerful organizations. So Tony had done a little redacting. He owed her for awesome art, among other things.
“So, an unknown for now,” Rhodey concluded.
“Well, that’s comforting,” Tony murmured. Those fries really were pretty good. “An unknown metal mangling mutant woman running around, and me, Iron Man. Nice.” Not that Tony actually thought Four would hurt him. She’d had plenty of chances, and that seat thing really had been over the top. He was disappointed he didn’t get to see her sitting on it before she replaced it. He wondered if she still had it.
“Look. I don’t think that’s something you have to worry about right now. I’ll keep you updated.” Tony nodded his head. Rhodey was good like that. “What about a new assistant?”
At this, Tony knew his face flinched. He could read the look on Rhodey’s face. This conversation was going downhill fast.
He distracted himself entering a few commands into his fabrication program. “I’m working on it,” he evaded and tried not to grimace further when Rhodey sighed heavily.
“Look, I know Pepper..”
Tony was quick to cut him off. Pepper was currently she-who-must-not-be-named. “I’m working on it,” he repeated with force. “Things didn’t work out, not that she tried for long. Not a big deal. It happens.” Please move on from this. Please move on from this. He didn’t want to talk about this. There were things to design, and he was working on the Mark VII, and he didn’t want to talk about the catastrophe that was his and Pepper’s attempt at a relationship. Maybe he really was Captain Catastrophe. Four was right. It wasn’t bad ass.
“Fine. Fine.” Tony couldn’t see his friend from his position hunched in front of the computer, but he could hear that Rhodey was holding his hands in the air. “I’ll leave that alone for now, but you’re going to need a new assistant.”
“And I’ll get one. Someone’s going through applications now.” That someone was Pepper, but he wasn’t thinking about that.
Rhodey stood. “I’ve got to go. JARVIS try to remind him to at least take a shower.”
“Of course Col. Rhodes.”
“And Tony, about my car,” Rhodey started.
“Ah! Ah! I told you I’ve got that. I know someone. It’s good.”
Rhodey was shaking his head again, but also moving toward the stairs. “Alright. See you later.”
“Yup,” Tony quipped. Something he was working on sparked. Damn it.
“And shower!” Rhodey yelled back.
Tony dropped the screw driver he was holding and rubbed his face. Jesus. He blindly reached for another fry.
……………………………….....................................................................
Tony had been emailing Four, under the alias Mr. Phe as in Catastrophe, for about a month. It started with a request sent about Rhodey’s original car, a Cadillac CTS, that had an unfortunate death by exploding Hammer drones.
He’d held his knowledge back in the emails, baiting to see if she would take advantage of someone who seemed over their head. She didn’t. Instead all the feedback JARVIS had found online about her and her business seemed true. She didn’t gouge, she didn’t pad her timelines, and she didn’t prevaricate.
Her response email to the one he’d sent, including pictures of the mangled car, was polite but to the point. He’d snickered a bit at how nice she’d worded it, but it boiled down to “this is not a classic car. This is a new car. Buy a new one. Idiot.” That was when he’d sent the follow up email for the real job. The one he’d hoped could tempt her out to Malibu for a few months.
That time the response email back made him laugh out loud. It was the only good laugh he’d had recently, and it had happened less than a week before Pepper left him. Four had tried, sweet girl, to be nice, but he had a bit of a measure of her by then. So when she assured him she understood the little test email, he really heard her call him some unflattering nick name. When she politely told him there was no way she could travel to California for an extended time, he heard her saying she wasn’t going to be delivering herself to a serial killer.
The problem was not only was Tony used to getting his way, but he had genuinely good intentions this time, mostly. He needed a distraction and she was a shiny metal bending puzzle. Beyond that, SHIELD was sniffing around her and Tony didn’t trust them not to kidnap her and run tests.
Tony wasn’t stupid either. Georgia Maddix knew who he was the moment she’d picked him up off the ground. Instead of fawning, or selling his drunk ass out to the media (he‘d waited to see if she would before he sent the boots), she’d taken care of him kindly and without expectation. He could count the people to do that on one hand. Four, exactly.
It would have been over with the boots but the woman had to make art. He couldn’t even find it in himself to fire the security guard she’d bribed. Though Tony had the man moved to day shift, with a partner. He may have let it go again if the tricky woman hadn’t tried to hide from him when he went to find her. She’d even actively set up a perimeter watch at one point in his recon. The guy she picked had a hell of an aim too. He’d hit Tony on the head with a pebble twice. Of course Tony found out afterward the man had freakishly good aim for a reason.
But Georgia, her collective reactions we’re the worst thing you could do with someone like Tony. It just made him want to play. Of course he’d later been distracted by dying and the debacle with Vanko, but of course the woman drew his attention right back to her at the expo.
Metal manipulation. Tony’s mind boggled at the possibilities. His mind also cringed at the probabilities. Agent Bow boy had been there as fake Natalie Rushman’s back up. He only met Four because of Tony. The woman had been well and truly off the radar before that. Now, SHIELD knew her name, and her address, (though only the one for her shop was on file). They had her picture. It was only a matter of time and Four was blissfully unaware.
The government we’re looking for her now too. A teeny, tiny, well hidden, part of Tony felt responsible. It was his SHIELD evaluation, his expo that went to shit. All the woman had done was save civilians, take a little weight off his shoulders, and make sure Tony didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.
So Tony had made his mind up. He was going to warn the woman about the groups after her, maybe give her the option to start over. Of course he was going to do it his way, and his way involved feeding his curiosity. Now he just had to get the stubborn woman to California.
……………………………….........................................................................
It took another three weeks to convince her. Tony didn’t miss the way she suddenly started leaning toward the idea about a week before. He had a sinking feeling he knew what had changed. Whatever it was it lit a fire under the woman’s ass and emails passed between the two daily, haggling over details.
The sticking point however, was a face to face meeting. She refused to fly to California and spend two months working on the car of someone she hadn’t met in person. So Tony flew back to New York, and then had Happy drive him to the Brooklyn waterfront district. He knew he’d been rumbled the minute he walked in the door of her garage.
“Hello, Mr. Stark.” Georgia Maddix stood from a cluttered desk, with an NY firefighters calendar hung over it, at the side of the garage. Tony smirked at her a little. She was in grease covered jeans and an olive tank top with her dark blonde hair pulled up in a bun, and she didn’t look surprised to see him at all.
Tony took a moment to acknowledge this was a woman who could crush him from across the room. Yeah. He’d never been a careful person. He put his sunglasses up on his head and gave a nod. “Four.”
The next words out of her mouth caught him slightly wrong footed. “What do you know about SHIELD?
Iron Man narrowed his eyes and looked at her closer. She seemed stressed, so he picked his words carefully. “Top secret intelligence gathering and special op group loosely affiliated with the government. I consult with them, rarely. I’m not particularly with them.”
He thought of Natalie Rushman and how she had given him just that little shove off the cliff of his instability. He thought about Nick Fury giving him a treatment for Palladium poisoning after Tony had been suffering for months, thinking he was going to die for months. He thought about the bread crumb trail he’d had to hunt down, in the dark, blindfolded, to save his own life. “They don’t really play well with others.”
Georgia let out a bit of a shaky sigh and ran her hand over her hair. “No, they’d don’t.“ Her blue eyes narrowed. “You really want me to work on a car?”
Ah, Tony thought. Yeah. Bait and switch. He’d been there. “It’s for my friend’s birthday.” Tony shrugged his shoulders. “His last car got blown up.”
Four snorted, but grinned. Tony started to feel cautiously optimistic she wasn’t going to metal bend him out her front door. “I feel obligated to tell you that if I go with you, I may put you in a tough spot.”
“Oh, a hard place,” Tony leered. The no nonsense reply look of ‘I will smack you in the mouth,’ was one he’d seen before. Somehow with Georgia her face just said more. Like also, ‘with an I-beam.’
“I mean,” she drew the word out, “That SHIELD has made it clear they expect me to cooperate, with whatever they want, or voluntary will become involuntary. I don’t roll with groups like that. They can bite me. You consult, rarely, with them. They might get all shirty if I hide in your garage.” She paused and seemed to evaluate him again. “Will that even help?”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Shirty?”
Georgia rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Come on Captain Catastrophe, I’ve been serious for more than my quota today. I need to know you’re not going to ship me off to some shady government lab.” She was hiding behind being flippant, and Tony finally caught what was hidden in the stress. Four was scared. It made Tony dislike SHIELD just a little bit more.
“You’d be my employee, by contract. They’d be poaching. I don’t like that.” Four shifted a bit and Tony changed tracks. “You should come to the Expo with me. I have to tour it before I leave. We’ll stop and get some ridiculously amazing Chinese food on the way and then discuss business.” He turned toward the door and started walking.
“I can’t leave now,” she yelped.
Tony pivoted on his heel to face her. “Why not? You’re supposed to be all set to leave in the morning with Mr. Phe, provided you were convinced he wasn’t a serial killer. You can’t have left any projects that you’re desperately needed on to the last minute. It wouldn’t match your Yelp reviews.”
“Well no,” she admitted. “And by the way, Mr. Phe, lame alias. It took me about thirty minutes to figure out you weren‘t just any old creeper from California.”
Tony gave a cheeky grin. “I am exceptional.” He turned back to the door and resumed walking.
“Do you only hear the good parts of what people say to you?”
“Come on Four! Expo and Chinese. We can continue you complimenting me in the car.”
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The Forge