Discimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don’t worry, I am pletely sober).

  Stark Residence, LA [One week after The Invasion of New York]

  –Tony Stark–

  “Jarvis, open up the sensor reports, will you?” He munched on some blueberries as he entered his basement which was now vastly bigger and deeper thaime when…Jack…came to visit.

  “Certainly, sir,” Jarvis’ voice said through the overhead speakers as the basement b’s door lit up, revealing the most advanced b he had ever built, behind closed doors. It grade over the st one, in every single way. After all, he had built this one keeping Ja mind.

  Jack Sullivan, The Green Guardian of New York.

  The thought of Jack filled him with just deep sorrow at this point. It had been a week sihey had won the Invasion of New York, or at least that's what they were told, repeatedly. “Huh,” He so himself, thinking of the sheer arrogance of that statement.

  They sure as hell didn’t win the Invasion. To be ho, thinking of the losses, nobody won that invasion. Nor the CHitauri, not Loki, not SHIELD, not the Avengers, aainly not…Jack.

  He could still remember it clear as day, the white-hot fsh e that suffused his entire body, temporarily making him fet the bone-deep fatigue, as Jarvis delivered the news followed by a very ical report from Romanoff.

  All he could think of back then was to get ba his suit and charge straight to Fury, figure out who had ordered the Nuke, and kill him painfully.

  That rage remained with him as he watched the footage of Jack being skewered straight through with the sceptre from Romanoff’s suit. But thee words of assurances from Fury, no word had e for the perpetrator. The pilot who uhe nuke allegedly itted suicide before he could be interrogated.

  Typical, he thought to himself as he once agaihrough the different sensor readings of the rooftop wheesseract mae exploded, taking Jack’s body with it.

  It had been three days of bing through heaps of data to figure out what exactly happened on that roof because the data on Romanoff’s suit was all busted up because the sensors were incapable of handling that muergy at such a close distance. Holy, it was a minor miracle that Romanoff didn’t suffer from third-degree burns from being cooked in the suit. Jarvis’ quick as really saved her life.

  Speaking of that, “Jarvis?” He looked up from the reports.

  “Yes, sir?” The voice of his ever-loyal butler cum servant cum best buddy came through the ceiling speakers that he had installed in every room in his home.

  “Why didn't you inform me when Jack had been injured? You waited until everything was done before telling me about it. That doesn’t seem to be in lih the wartime protocols we built together,” He crossed his arms and looked at the digital avatar of Jarvis that appeared in front of him.

  It was a small, somewhat accurate representation of the core protocols of what made Jarvis, well, Jarvis. It was something that had naturally occurred over time and Jarvis had figured out that the best way to represent his self-sciousness was to cobble up a small visual dispy of his core self.

  It was ever-expanding, especially sihe server upgrade he got with the Fen Arc Reactor that was installed in the basement of Stark Tower.

  The Stark Tower that was now being ned by the city before he intervened and greased hands, allowing him a couple of months until the audit happened once more. He was not worried about the Tower, hell, now that the Arc Reactor was active once more, Jarvis could project a building-wide shield that would not budge even if hundreds of Jeriissiles were fired at it in a sed.

  No, what he was more worried about was Jarvis being promised somehow. He could not risk it, especially with the startling petehat Loki's subordinates dispyed in the fight.

  “I am aware that I vioted Protocol 6 and slightly bent Protocol 23 when I informed you of the death of Mr.Sullivan after he had already passed away but when Mr.Sullivan was first…injured by the sceptre, I made a split-sed decision to not inform you the moment it happened. Mr.Stark, you were carrying a thermonuclear on on your bad while it was a viotion of Protocol 6, doing so would have been in a plete and utter viotion of Protocol 3, ensuring the tinued survival of Tony Stark and all that he siders his family,”

  Jarvis said, mimig or rather, repying the rec of his voice as he had dictated the protocols to Jarvis when he was oeenager.

  “...Fine, Jarvis. Just double and triple-check your g. That decisiht there might just be the spark you o reach the step. Also, let’s look at the readings once more. Build the simution again, J,” He said as he dismissed all the holographic dispys and took a couple of steps back, in anticipation of a 3D hologram appearing in front of him.

  “Sir, may I suggest tag a therapist to process-”

  “Oh, e on! Not you too, J. Like I said to Pepper every time she has asked me for the past week, I am fine. I don’t herapy, I need answers. Now, are you going to start the simution or do I have to?” He ground out.

  “......Very well, sir. Starting Simution.”

  He did not need more people pitying him. What he o do was figure out exactly what happened and make sure that nothing of that sort ever happened again. He was a stist first and foremost and that was his job. Figuring out stuff and then making stuff so that nothing of that sort happened again. He did not want him or anybody else to gh that experience ever again.

  Losing Jack had been a bitd a half. It was not as if he articurly close with Jack, what with him disappearing and ing back strohan anyone on the p. But it was not as if he found the kid annoying.

  After all, he was the one who made the first tact with him and part of him still thought of what would have happened if he had not tried to abate his idle curiosity when he saw that weird energy signature in ada.

  And then there was the end. At the end of that fight, the ptform he had built had run pletely out of parts, Jarvis’ fabrig capacity not being able to keep up with the high-paced rough battle. Eveher two suits had been occupied. One of them was responsible for stragglers, one was with Romanoff and the one he was in, was on the way to intercept that damned nuke.

  So, with already very little energy left in the Arc Reactor, he had been fully ready to make that one-way trip, if it meant that millions of people could be saved. See, he khat the nuke was nowhere near big enough to wipe out New York or even a big part of it but what made Nukes scary was not the immediate bst radius. No, it was what came after the Nuke exploded.

  Geions of trauma could still be felt and they had the bright idea to unch a a civilian popution. He couldn’t wait to figure out who exactly it was and then reveal that politi's name, because it could not have been anybody other than a politi, to the public so that they could crucify them aroy their political career.

  So, knowing the dangers of that bomb, he had resolved to take the bomb to the other side, killing their enemies and saving the city, hitting two birds with oone, albeit with the caveat being that he might not make it back.

  He had been utterly surprised afterward, that he had been so easily willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

  A, as he had braced himself to breach the portal and cross over into deep space, a hint of green had filled his vision as Jack, seemingly with his st breath, had used his powers to shove him out of the way and drag him straight down to the ground.

  The shove was so hard that it damaged most of the suit’s pos, including the repulsor arrays, a, he was alive.

  That part stung the most. The fact that Jack had somethi in his tank and instead to get himself out of his predit, he had apparently decided that he, Tony Stark, former Mert of Death, was worth saving, more than he himself was.

  So, no. He was not going to stop looking. There was no reason whatsoever why that explosion occurred. He had gohrough all the schematics SHIELD could recover from Selvig before he was shipped off to some mental hospital due to his ramblings.

  He could not make heads or tails about the energy rea that led to a vaporising radius that simply wiped off his roof from existence, along with Jabsp;

  Part of him was gd that Jack’s body was erased because the vultures he knew were salivating at getting a DNA sample of the man who oised to bee the stro being on the p, surpassing even the Hulk by a wide margin. Bunch of parasites, the e, a, he could uand their greed to a certaient. He hated feeling that weak and they must have felt ht useless in that fight’s text.

  He had gone around, trying to see if anything could be gathered from the remnant of that energy cocktail that was there, even now, after a week of it happening, on top of Stark Tower. That art of the reason it was being ned. After all, no city wanted a pce that actively geed radiation, no matter how i it was.

  Then again, he was not an expert oesseract or the sceptre, both of which were alien objects, out of human uanding, a, he had to know. He wao know if there was any way that Jack could have survived. The bination of their energies (Tesseract, Sceptre, Jack’s barriers) meant that it was impossible to predict the oute of that cocktail but maybe, just maybe, Jack survived.

  That was why, for the past three days, once his injuries had been healed, he had been holed up here, in his basement, trying to figure out if he could have done something to prevent that.

  “Oh yeah, Jarvis, run the simutions with Project AEGIS V4 again,”

  Project AEGIS. At first, it was just to see if he could replicate Jack’s abilities using just teology, something he was obsessed with, replig amazing abilities that could be found in nature, using teology.

  But then, once he had a w prototype, he kept on improving it further and further until he hit a roadblo terms of the energy ption. That had led to the discovery of the Arc Reacten 4 and what a marvel it was.

  It was something that could sustain the heavy loads of the shields with ease. That was Gen 2, to install shield modules on the back of his suits, allowing him to tank hits even from Point Break without his suit immediately breaking apart.

  Gen 3 was his grand project to create a shield module that Jarvis could remotely activate, c the eark Tower in it, and proteg it from the outside forces.

  Gen 4 was just Gen 3 but on steroids. To make that, however, he needed something that was in rare supply in the world.

  Vibranium.

  He had…done something that he probably shouldn’t have in the past week, hidden from everyone. If anybody dug through the 6 levels of his basement, they would find dirt, gravel, and hard rock as was expected but if o past that, they would find a -built safe built by yours truly. That safe rotected from just about everything and could only be opened by him and him alone.

  In that safe, robably the world’s single rgest reserves of raw VIbranium. Once he had settled ba LA, he had started sending out feelers for even more Vibranium because there was no way he could be satisfied with a single Gen 4 Arc Reactor. If he o find a way to arm humanity, he needed more and that was when he found him.

  Ulysses Kue.

  ons dealer, merary for hire, human trafficker, all-round grade one asshole, a, he was the one who was supplying the majority of the VIbranium that was found in the bck market for the past two decades.

  He had then tracked him down, only to find nothing but destru i known pce of Kue. His ship was sunk and trag down his past ckeys did not result in finding anything crete. Then, he had done something that he was not proud of.

  Over the course of the Invasion, Cap’s shield had been in his custody because Cap trusted him more than SHIELD now, because of the hat would have killed them all. He had thehe Gen 4 Arc Reactor to create an energy beam dense enough that he was able to shave off a couple milligrams of the shield, before the entire ser just melted from the sheer energy passing through it.

  He felt bad because he had betrayed Cap’s trust in a way but he was not in the right headspace then so he had happily taken the samples and devised something that would have him hunted down to the ends of the world.

  He had made a Vibranium tracker a loose on the world, literally. Jarvis had been carrying the tracker around the globe and had ced upon a huge (retive) reserve of Vibranium just sitting there in a cave behind a waterfall in Africa. He had immediately gohere and found, to his disbelief, the part of the cave that had been caved in, tained almost a quarter ton of Vibranium in it.

  Well, safe to say that he had immediately obliterated the Vibranium tracker, destroyed any digital copies and spread the ashes of the mae across the os. He did take custody of that Vibranium of course. He would ehat it was used for the right purposes.

  He had pns to create a rge range one and install it on satellites but that seemed like a supremely bad idea once he realised that Vibranium was just sitting in pces ie areas of the world, just sitting for some corrupt anisation to steal.

  No, he would use his current cache and use it carefully before even thinking of creating another Vibranium detector.

  He couldn’t believe that some random ass cave held almost a quarter ton of that miracle metal. At first, he had beeed beyond belief to make newer discoveries but then the reality of the situation crashed on him and thus, the new safe in the basement, safeguarded by its own Arc Reactor, capable of shielding itself using PRoject AEGIS Gen 4 for an indefinite period of time.

  Gen 4 shields were just something that upped the shield strength from Gen 3, only this time, it mimicked the barrier structure of Jack. That alone boosted the shield strength by 20% and he was making inroads with different patterns for different loads. Pierg attacks, blunt attacks, area of effect attacks, energy attacks, heat attacks, etc.

  “ces of Gen 4 shields surviving the ining salvo from the portal - 6%,” The number fshed red on the s as he once sighed in disappoi. So, that was a bust as well. How could he hope to stop something of the Tesseract’s magnitude when a mere attack from the Chitauri failed to be stopped by his shields?

  “Sir, if I may?”

  He looked up as the simution was dismissed and Jarvis was once again in front of him, in his digital avatar.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you perhaps….using work as an excuse to avoid the Funeral servi New York?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Jarvis. I told you we have more work to do. No point going there anyway. Jack is gone, wiped out by that energy storm. There is nothing of him in that casket. Plus, you know I don’t believe in that stuff. I am a man of SCE!, you know that,” he said as he turned around and started w on something, anything to take his mind off the stupid procession that was going to happen tomorrow in New York, in Jack’s, in the Green Guardian's name.

  “Sir, I have missed calls from all Avengers, along with a dozen voicemails from Ms.Potts. I strongly urge you to look at them. The private jet is ready and prepped for your flight, if you wish to go, that is,” Jarvis annoyingly reminded him of the phone he had already thrown in his bedroom, which he had then proceeded to avoid like the pgue. He also had the audacity to emute his phone and dispy all the texts, emails, and voicemails on a s in front of him.

  He didn’t think Jarvis gaining partial autonomy would backfire on him in such a way as well.

  “Very well, prep the suit. Tell the pilot I’ll be at the airstrip in an hour,” He sighed and headed out of his b, everything shutting down and the doors closing after him on their own.

  God, he hated how whiny his own thoughts souo him. Not attending a funeral because of how disappointed he was in himself?

  He scoffed at himself ao get ready for the procession. Jack deserved nothing but the best and while he was not enough when he was alive, he would do everything in his power to make sure that his memory reserved.

  He owed it to Jack at least that much.

  Word t - 3052

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