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Wakanda[October 2014]
–Tony Stark–
His eyes fluttered open as the mother of all headaches hit him. His eyes squinted as he tried to make sense of where he was and what the fuck had just happened for his head to throb so much.
Last he remembered….
His breath hitched as he shot upright, or at least tried to, as his memory finally caught up with the events.
"Relax, Mr.Stark. Please, calm down," A voice with a thick African accent asked him to calm down as something gently pressed down on his chest.
Calm? Calm?!
His struggles renewed as he tried to sit upright but apparently, the hand keeping him down was made up of steel because it did not budge at all.
His eyes finally adjusted to the bright light as he looked in the face of a Black Chick, with traditional garb and accessories who was looking at him with a stern gaze. He looked around and was so relieved to find everyone.
He saw Steve as he was up and talking with some other Black Chick before everyone. Of course, the Golden Boy was up before everyone. His metabolism must have woken him up much faster than everyone else, his system burning through whatever it was they put in them to put them under.
Np, FOCUS!
He looked at the hand keeping him down and at the woman. He raised his eyebrows as she removed her hand and then stepped back. IT was at that point, that he noticed the spear just hanging off her back as she then equipped it somehow, and then pointedly glared at him.
He slowly sat upright, his body not hurting or feeling sore at all but his mind still reeling from the events that happened.
Last he remembered, they were fighting in that HYDRA castle, against HYDRA soldiers armed with Chitauri tech capable of denting even his suit. Then, Jack disappeared from everything really, as they were forced to fight on their own, much more carefully than since the protection from Jack's barriers was gone.
Then, as if a scene straight from his nightmares, the entire landscape around them changed. The castle did not look like it was built to be lived in. It was a burned nightmare as all the Chitauri soldiers somehow disappeared, and so did every single line of defense of the castle. Not even the giant forcefield that protected the entire castle, the thing that stopped him from just breaching their perimeter and then cleaning the house from within.
Then Jack came back and a scene from a horror movie unfolded in front of him as the ground itself seemed to swallow the entire castle. He was so in shock at that happening that he all but fled the scene as Jack opened a portal straight to AVengers Tower, somewhere where the ground wasn't out to get him.
Then he remembered a flash of red hitting him before….nothing.
That's it.
"I assume you are done thinking with that small brain of yours?"
He looked up to see a snarky teenager talking to him. He smirked internally. Well, wherever this way, at least he could count on people being cocky and underestimating him at least.
"We don't have much time, it has been 20 minutes since Jack has left for South Africa. We need you and every help that we can gather. Your suit is right there," She pointed towards the side where a giant glass tube held his suit.
He squinted at the suit as he saw some additions that were clearly not there. Plus, what did she just say about Jack?
This was all just being dumped on him without any time to process it all.
"Yeah, it is quite an exoskeleton but you clearly have your own limitations. I have upgraded a few things for you. For example, the repulsor blasts now have an output equivalent to your UniBeam," Oh, he could hear the quotation marks amidst the snark and smugness of the girl.
Wait, what? "That's impossible. The circuitry is the limit here, not the Arc Reactor. I had to rewire the entire thing to create a separate line of contact for the Repulsors just to get the current output."
"Yeah, well, I would love to get in the nitty gritty with you but you guys need to hurry. Now," The girl said and then he flinched back as the scary Black woman beside him just accosted him up from the bed and then just injected something in him.
"The Fuck?!" he exclaimed as he stepped back, away from both of the clearly crazy people.
"Oh, quit whining. That will help flush all the chemicals in your system much faster since you don't have the enhanced metabolism of the Captain right there,"
Speaking of Captain, he turned around to see Steve running towards someone with a full uniform and also an unmarked shield of some sort, in quite an urgency.
"You should go, I have programmed the suit to regain connection with your AI once it leaves our borders,"
The next few minutes were a whirlwind of activity as he was freshened up, given clothing, and then thrust into his suit, which was completely inactive as far as he could tell. None of his manual gestures were working but he could see the Arc Reactor at full capacity.
Then, he was transported into a very futuristic looking jet and then taken out of the place. He couldn't actually see anything but judging by the things he had seen so far, he was either on another planet, with aliens or there was a hidden African society with technology centuries ahead of the world.
He didn't know which one was more shocking.
The jet then came to a stop and he was then unceremoniously carted off the plane and then left there as the jet took off and disappeared mid-way.
Great Stealth Tech, he thought to himself as the suit came back online, terabytes of data booting up as his suit finally made contact with Jarvis.
He sighed in relief as Jarvis' voice came through the speaker but before he could say anything, the suit just jumped out of the ground and created a sonic boom as he could see the repulsors burning at full capacity.
"Jarvis?! What is happening?" He asked, his anxiety rising as he was being thrust into another situation without any understanding.
At least this time, he could question the one responsible.
Instead of answering, a video feed opened up, showing a large red barrier of sorts that covered..Johannesburg from the looks of it?
"What is happening there, Jarvis?"
"Sir, approximately an hour ago, Dr.Banner was seen in the city of Johannesburg, in his enraged form," He winced as the footage of Banner just wreaking havoc in a city full of people. This was not going to paint a nice picture for Bruce, who was already troubled enough as is.
Well, that was not the Hulk they knew. At least, not from the data archives that Jarviss just accessed. For one, the gamma radiation coming off of the Hulk right now was five times as the previous highest recorded. Also, the mindless rage is absent this time.
And then…
Then there was nothing as he saw the footage of Jack arriving at the site like a shining green meteor and then a huge red sphere that popped up out of nowhere.
What the hell was that? "Jarvis?"
"The energy is the same as the one that was used on the attack on Avengers Tower, sir," Jarvis' words only fueled his determination to get there in time and help Jack. Whoever this red menace was, they were clearly powerful. Powerful enough to rattle even Jack and now that Jack had to fight the Hulk, who was apparently amped up significantly, the chances of Jack being defeated were very high.
"New Circuitry detected. Rerouting power. Repulsors: 300%" Jarvis' voice ended when he felt a sudden jerk inside his suit, which was supposed to be impossible with the inertia cancellation system he had created.
"J..Jarvis?"
"I judged the new circuitry work resilient enough to handle the load delivered to the repulsors," Jarvis helpfully reminded him as the clouds passed on his HUD at a dizzying pace. To not get motion sickness, which he didn't know he was susceptible to, he began looking at the data points of the so-called enhanced circuitry that Jarvis, and that teenage girl from earlier were talking about.
His eyes widened as he saw the amount of energy being channelled through the circuitry, almost to the point of overwhelming the repulsors in his suit as he rapidly pushed past his previous high speed records.
"Just what in the hell did she put into the suit?" He asked out loud as the numbers just kept on climbing, probably only limited by the sheer pressure that was being put on every part of the suit, which was supposed to be a concern for later on when the repulsors output finally caught up with the overall integrity of the chassis.
He resisted the urge to whoop in joy as the suit parted the clouds in a bid to reach his destination faster because of the energy readings that were coming from the red dome that had blanketed a large portion of the city.
The energy was an entirely different breed, matching the one that was partially recorded in Novi Grad, but at a totally different level.
This was, by all stretch of the imagination, just magic. The amount of scientific fields that would have to be outright invented to explain even a portion of what he had seen that day, and would no doubt be seeing today, would convince even someone like him to term it as just "magic" and call it a day.
Anyway, sufficiently advanced magic will be indistinguishable from magic for lower lifeforms.
He just called himself a lower life form, didn't he?
"From the scans, it would seem that a generous amount of Vibranium has been used to upgrade parts of the suit, MR. Stark," Jarvis' words made him blink as he realised what that snark girl was talking about earlier.
Vibranium? She gave him freaking Vibranium? And for what?
She mentioned Jack, was Jack some sort of hidden Head of some hidden organisation that no one had even heard of?
He did not know but now was not the time for that, he thought to himself as he finally caught up with the jet that housed Steve Rogers, as was shown on his HUD. He was also able to scan the Raptor because he was designated as friendly in their systems.
Jarvis was able to interface with their systems but only because of how advanced he was compared to most human minds out there. The sheer amount of complex code that was hitting his eyes was magnifique.
Finally, his eyes met the Dome that had covered Johannesburg, and according to Jarvis' scans, corroborated from..Wakanda?
Wakanda, that small poor country was where this Raptor and that Vibranium, and that advanced facility had come from?
A crisis for another time, he thought to himself as he read the scans taken from both Wakanda's much more advanced satellites and also his own personal satellites.
He consoled himself by telling himself that Wakanda was an entire nation, apparently centuries ahead of the normal countries, and he was but one man. But man, did it burn not having the most advanced tech on the planet.
It would seem another round of tinkering was at hand once he went back.
Finally, he crash landed in front of the dome, unable to see or sense what was going on inside but the tremors that could be felt underneath were clearly suggesting that an intense fight was happening inside.
He felt the Raptor dump Rogers before flying away and once it went into stealth mode, it disappeared from his systems as well. So much for Wakanda's help.
"Well, Captain, you are the captain here. any suggestions?" He asked Rogers even as multiple, no dozens of drones, piloted by Jarvis, FRIDAY, and some by himself were about to land on his location, shot out of orbital launch platforms.
Built and launched in absolute secrecy, lest they paint him as a warmonger to be feared, those were some of the best satellites the world could build, at least until he was reminded of the fact that he had just recently discovered some sort of hidden elitist society that either operated out of Wakanda, and its higher ups, or was Wakanda in its entirety.
"Well, we have no information other than what I saw on the way here. We were apparently brainwashed by some person whose powers are all red in nature. We attacked Jack under mind control but he subdued us and then brought us to Wakanda, where they treated us and now we are here."
"Bruce was not with us, then?" He asked Cap as two drones landed behind them with a thud, armed with the biggest repulsor cannons he could make and fit in the drones.
"No, he was taken by the attacker for some reason."
"Is it a she or a he?" He asked even as two other drones, mainly built for stealth and sensory work, arrived at the edges of the dome and began taking extensive scans.
"I would step away if I were you," He turned around to see Jarvis had remotely piloted the drones to float mid air and aim all its repulsors at the person who probably spoke those words.
It was a woman, dressed in red. Even her eyes were glowing red for Pete's sake. Seeing the red ensemble, coupled with the red theme of the attacker clued him into the identity of the person in front of him. Faced with someone who could do a lot of very dangerous things, he only had a single thing to say
"My God, that is a lot of Red!"
Word Count - 2367
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