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[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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~~Oh Tony, your ego is positively galactic.~~

"No. Near as anybody can figure, the flashbangs just started happening around August. They don't hit Kansas, for some obscure reason I haven't been able to figure out, and if anybody started them up on purpose they're probably dead by now."

"Flashbangs. What kind of – I mean, there are about a hundred different kinds of weapon currently in common circulation that might cause that kind of effect alone, and that's common circulation, not the ones you can find more underhandedly –"

He needs to know the answer to: Did I do this too?

"You need to be more specific."

"It doesn't get more specific. Remember how you got here? Loud noise, bright light? They happen randomly, everywhere. Bringing in people, buildings, vehicles, goddamn rocks on occasion. Anything you can think of, from anywhere-- alternate worlds, all of 'em."

"That's how I got here? I figured I'd just been fired upon by an F-22."

He turns in place, taking in more of the wreckage.

"So what destroyed the city?"

"Coastal city, dude. Check the tentacle marks. The oceans are crawling with nasties-- kraken mostly, a couple other things I can't identify."

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. You'll have to excuse me, I'm not in the habit of checking for tentacle marks."

It's hard to tell if he's being sarcastic. To be honest he's too distracted to put the proper effort into it. Then, suddenly –

"Oh, shit, the lab!"

He blasts off at top speed up the coast once more.

Aaaaaaaand off she goes, forward-shifting too quickly to talk along the way, waiting for him to stop again so she can explain that his lab is almost certainly not there.

[ooc: It would be kind of hilarious to flashbang the lab in just after they arrive... *grins*]

Stark Industries may be there, it might not. But that place is not the one that's on Tony's mind right now.

He takes to the coast, his shadow far below flickering over highways, beaches, ocean waves. The speed he's going it's no time at all to get to Malibu, and then it's just a matter of following the coastline.

He doesn't slow until – there.

Is that his mansion?

Is it actually intact?

Is it?

Sky tags along beside him, blurred almost beyond recognition. She'd be panting if she had lungs.

"What's up? Something here from home?"

Tony draws to a stop, some ways away, high above the ocean.

"It's..."

He hesitates. It's something he doesn't do very often.

"My house. I think. But we replaced the windows on the south wall two years ago, and those looks like they haven't been changed. So maybe it's-- I should look inside."

It takes him a second longer to fully convince himself, and then he starts forwards again.

At the exact moment the flashbangs return.

"...aw, shit."

Dinosaurs.

Lots of them.

Like, ten.

Big stompy dinosaurs.

Hell if Sky knows what to call them; she was never into all that nerdy human stuff.

But those ones have great big long necks to balance their great big long tails, and there's one with a big blunt head and tiny wiggly arms that even she recognizes as a T-rex*, and they appear to be fighting it out in what was, a moment ago, Tony Stark's house.

And is now a pile of rubble and roaring dinosaur.

*Sorry, Sky. It's actually one'a these (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcharodontosaurus).

"MY HOUSE!"

Tony stops short, then starts, then flies around a bit, circling the mansion.

"Dinosaurs! What the hell! A gang of dinosaurs just showed up on my – are they – OY! I HAVE SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF COMPUTER AND DESIGN EQUIPMENT IN THERE, NOT TO MENTION THE CARS AND THE COLLECTION OF JACKSON POLLACKS AND – AND THE PIANO! DID I MENTION THE PIANO? AND WHO'S GONNA PAY ME BACK, DINOSAURS? YOU? NO! YOU HAVE TINY ARMS AND NO BANK ACCOUNTS!"

The Carcharodontosauri, however, are not listening.

~~And when her narration is finished giggling madly to itself...~~

Sky is just going to be... staring.

Man, this guy can rant impressively.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, go the dinosaurs.

High above, Tony's shoulders slump, at least as much as the suit allows. In a much less shouty fashion, he says, "This is going to be trouble."

There's an impressively musical crash as something steps on his piano. Sky winces.

"Yeah. Uh. Sorry about your house, man."

"Thanks. But it's not the house that's the issue. I had a lab in my basement."

He turns towards her.

"Everything I've ever made to do with this suit was in that lab."

"Shiiiiit... no, wait, maybe not shit."

She holds up a hand as though thinking it over, then turns in the direction of Kansas and points, very accurately, at the Cooper household.

"Okay, there's this kid over there maybe twenty years old, curly red hair, he's been raiding abandoned military bases for a month or two-- usually Air Force. Don't know what he's building but I'd bet money he's got the biggest stockpile of high-end tech on the continent, if people still used money. Given the situation, I'm pretty sure he'll let you borrow." Shrug. "Best I can do. Maybe give you a shot at rebuilding your lab. He'll be easy to find; there's this little village springing up around somebody's old farmhouse. They've got an orchard, a hospital, a damn cargo liner buried in a field with half a castle plopped on the end... all right smack in the middle of Kansas, dead centre of the safe zone."

She thinks this over for a moment, then adds, "And if your house flashes in again I'll give you a shout. I think I got a good enough look at it to know it if I see it again. That cool with you?"

Tony takes a deep breath, which echoes around, Darth Vader-style.

"Yeah. Sure. Okay."

Below, a Carcharodontosaurus is piddling on Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, which, Tony thinks, was worth over one hundred and fifty million dollars until about ten seconds ago.

"It's not like I have much of a choice."

"Sorry, man. Seriously."

Hey, any mortal with her blessing deserves her sympathy too, dammit.

"If you need anything, light a fire for me. Air spirits eat smoke; I'll be by eventually."

And having a buddy who can see everything everywhere on the planet is probably hella useful. Not that she's mentioned she can do that, but it's been implied, hasn't it? Yeah.

"Will do."

Under normal circumstances, the comment about eating smoke would have roused Tony's curiosity. But these are not normal circumstances. These circumstances are so far from normal circumstances that a very powerful high-resolution x-ray imaging telescope based in a high elliptical orbit around the Earth would still have difficulty spotting them.

Tony turns, and points, more or less, in the direction she'd been pointing earlier. "That way?"

"Maybe a tick to the left. Dead centre of Kansas, like I said."

She gets that distant look on her face again, and adds, "He's outside by the pond (http://community.livejournal.com/shatterverse/134144.html) right now."

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