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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."