shatterverse | (no subject)

[Pre-shatterverse - warning for spoilers for Iron Man]

It starts in the sky, several hundred feet up. There's a light and a bang, and something appears.

It's metal (though not actually iron), and roughly man-sized (and -shaped), and its colouring is a bright mixture of gold (an alloy, actually) and red (hot rod). It's also falling.

And shouting. "JARVIS–!"

As it tumbles towards the Earth various rockets and stabilizers fire and misfire, with pfft! pfft! sounds like fireworks going off. They do very little – something's been knocked about, jumbled. Internal systems are scrambling to pick up navigational landmarks, satellite signals, air traffic transmissions, anything that would give a clue as to where here is and how far down is down. But there's nothing to pick up. It's like the whole world's gone radio-silent.

Locked in an uncontrolled spin, something within the metal man shouts, "Stabilize, damn it, stabilize!" It throws its arms up to fire palm-mounted boosters: coupled with flaring back-mounted spoilers, these halt the spin, but not the fall. Which means that the metal man now has a really good view of the ground that is rushing up to meet his face.

This is going to hurt.

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The look he gives her is skeptical.

"Technically I can, but why the hell would I want to?"

"Last fortress of humanity. Plus, all us out-of-worlders seem to end up there. No one blink twice at ya."

"I kinda like it when people blink twice at me. Well –" he gives her a smirk, "– depends on who's doing the blinking.

"But, if you insist..."

She smiles back and, yes, it's flirty. She's Josh.

"Okay." She steps away from him, her wings appear and then she leaps into the air, easily spiralling up into the sky.

Oh, so that's it, then?

If Josh wants a race, she's got a race.

Tony brings his feet together. Internal systems, powered by his chest-mounted miniature arc reactor, flicker to readiness as he brings the helmet down once more.

Then it's a simple matter of thrust.

Oh yeah.

He can fly.

He gets a whooop! of joy, and Josh speeds off.

Logically, no one with a bird's wings should be able to go that fast. Not without diving.

Luckily, Josh tends to ignore logic.

Tony's down with his string theory – if this place is pulling people in from different universes, they could be places with different basic laws of physics. Of course that doesn't explain why both her wings and his suit function here. He'll have to work on that one.

Meanwhile, he's just going to enjoy having a proper challenge.

Kicking up the speed a bit, he brings himself to match the girl's pace, and calls over, "You never told me your name!"

Laughing,

"Neither did you!"

"Well how could I tell you your name if I don't know it?"

He could be grinning under the mask. With the voice distortion, it's hard to tell.

But after a moment, he adds, "Tony Stark."

"Call me Josh."

A brief pause of thought, and she goes faster. Lets how fast you can go, Mister Tony Stark.

(not to mention, flying over ocean is boring)

"Okay then, Jo– hey!"

Fortunately, Tony can go much faster.

Like breaking-the-sound-barrier faster. Which explains the tremendous boom.