The Iron Sith (Star Wars x Marvel Cinematic Universe)
- Thread starter Illuviar
- Start date
- Crossover
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Just found this thread and read it. Quite impressive.
I'm curious whether we'll learn more about the first life of 'our hero', at some point. Before he ended up (60yrs?) being a Sith. Was Marvel Comics/Films fictional in his origin world, which I think you've hinted at? I'm guessing that Star Wars wasn't (known of in his origin world), otherwise he'd have likely commented on that.
Mixing bits of Star Wars tech which proves to be compatible with Marvel tech should be interesting... I'm curious whether he might start looking at weird tech that he can obtain, like Machinesmith robots? Some of the HYDRA tech which was pretty advanced even in the 1940s might also be of use.
I'm guessing he's unlikely to get into magic, as that's typically pretty difficult in Marvel, unless you follow some really dangerous paths. Though, he can chuck money at the problem, which might throw up some 'fun' results. Explaining to Pepper what he's about could be... interesting.
I wonder if he might be interested in the path Simon Williams followed, as that would make him a lot less easily fragile?
You get more possibilities if you blend some of the long history of Marvel comics into the MCU, of course. Quite curious where you might take this!
I'm curious whether we'll learn more about the first life of 'our hero', at some point. Before he ended up (60yrs?) being a Sith. Was Marvel Comics/Films fictional in his origin world, which I think you've hinted at? I'm guessing that Star Wars wasn't (known of in his origin world), otherwise he'd have likely commented on that.
Mixing bits of Star Wars tech which proves to be compatible with Marvel tech should be interesting... I'm curious whether he might start looking at weird tech that he can obtain, like Machinesmith robots? Some of the HYDRA tech which was pretty advanced even in the 1940s might also be of use.
I'm guessing he's unlikely to get into magic, as that's typically pretty difficult in Marvel, unless you follow some really dangerous paths. Though, he can chuck money at the problem, which might throw up some 'fun' results. Explaining to Pepper what he's about could be... interesting.
I wonder if he might be interested in the path Simon Williams followed, as that would make him a lot less easily fragile?
You get more possibilities if you blend some of the long history of Marvel comics into the MCU, of course. Quite curious where you might take this!
Just found this thread and read it. Quite impressive.
I'm curious whether we'll learn more about the first life of 'our hero', at some point. Before he ended up (60yrs?) being a Sith. Was Marvel Comics/Films fictional in his origin world, which I think you've hinted at? I'm guessing that Star Wars wasn't (known of in his origin world), otherwise he'd have likely commented on that.
Mixing bits of Star Wars tech which proves to be compatible with Marvel tech should be interesting... I'm curious whether he might start looking at weird tech that he can obtain, like Machinesmith robots? Some of the HYDRA tech which was pretty advanced even in the 1940s might also be of use.
I'm guessing he's unlikely to get into magic, as that's typically pretty difficult in Marvel, unless you follow some really dangerous paths. Though, he can chuck money at the problem, which might throw up some 'fun' results. Explaining to Pepper what he's about could be... interesting.
I wonder if he might be interested in the path Simon Williams followed, as that would make him a lot less easily fragile?
You get more possibilities if you blend some of the long history of Marvel comics into the MCU, of course. Quite curious where you might take this!
As the story unfolds, I'll mention what's relevant as far as his backstory unfolds. This is a version of the protagonist from my stories Rogue Knight, Rogue Knight II and their prequel Imperial Knight.
As far as magic and other dangerous stuff is concerned - if he finds a viable way to pursue it, Sith Tony will do it and damn the consequences. He spent decades clawing his way to a position where there were handful of people in the galaxy who individually could pose a credible threat to him and now he is stuck in the body of a middle aged man without the Force... in a world where the Hulk and other beings that could squash him without breaking a sweat exist. That's not a good headspace for him to be. On the plus side, the Dark Side no longer whispers sweet nothings in the back of his head.
The Iron Sith will be based on the MCU. I've seen little from the various comics and when all is said and done, adding them in the story will be a complete mess.
Chapter 3 Part 1
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor any of the Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
Tony's house
California
Late in the evening, Jarvis was still busy searching for solid incriminating evidence. So far, there weren't any extra trucks logged in entering or exiting any of SI's factories, nor the available internal footage suggested ghost production. That by itself didn't mean much, especially considering that Obi did know about Jarvis almost from the moment my AI friend came online. If he had gone bad after that, he would have taken counter-measures. I could say many things about the man, however accusing him of being a fool, that would never be one of them.
Before I ended up in Tony's head and merged with his memories or perhaps with him himself, I'm sure he would have scoffed at the idea that Jarvis could be so easily fooled. I on the other hand had worked extensively with droids, which while usually quite limited by design, could excel in informational warfare. There were various ways to fool them and you didn't necessary needed access to AI's or droids of your own, especially if you potentially had years to figure out how to pull it off and direct, legitimate access to the hardware at the sites you wanted to operate. That said, there seldom was something like the mythical perfect crime. Even if Jarvis couldn't find enough solid evidence that would hold up in court, he should be able to gather enough to either clear or damn Obi in my eyes and that was the most important thing in that regard.
While the AI utilized most of his processing power to gather information, we were busy designing tools. I could honestly say that without the Force to allow me to utilise Sith Alchemy as short-cuts, only SI's bleeding edge technology and my personal resources would allow me to eventually re-create the industrial and technological base of the galaxy I spent decades living as a Sith.
It wasn't just the need to build the tools to build the tools to a ninth degree. It was the need to procure alloys, chemicals and materials that were extremely hard to get a hold of, could be produced in minimal quantities with available technology or didn't even exist on Earth and perhaps the solar system. Not to mention some things required zero-g manufacturing. The latter could at least in theory be done on the ground if you had access to advanced enough anti-gravity generators to make it practical... which in turn required orbital infrastructure to make it economical to built.
One of the things we spent most of the evening was on designing a crude ion engine and a basic zero-g alloy plant that could produce limited quality of the alloys needed for an anti-gravity generators. Of course, once that was finalized, we would need to get through the legal hurdles establishing the first commercial orbital facility. That would be "fun"indeed.
Another thing that I found frustrating was how chemicals could be handled with currently available tech. Some of the stuff I needed to create basic components from scratch was quite volatile, corrosive and could easily choke everyone in the house to death if mishandled. Something that a proper lab station could safely do in ones bedroom now required a bloody airtight facility to operate. It was vexing in the extreme. Thankfully, Jarvis helped tremendously in that regard. He used the information I gave him to remotely guide the staff of one of my chemical plants in creating and shipping some critical components for various projects. At the same time, a large part of my personal workshop's manufacturing capacity was busy upgrading itself. Anything I could get in the foreseeable future would be far cry from the industrial molecular or even atomic level manufacturing used across most civilized systems in the universe I came from. That meant a huge hit in efficiency and significantly more bulky and heavy equipment, which would still be light-years ahead of anything this Earth could make. With the notable exception of the weird arc reactors.
I could solve the basic equations behind those, I could remember how Tony solved the more advanced ones that was required for miniaturising the tech and making it more practical, not to mention recreating such a reactor in the first place. However, when I tried to actually solve them from scratch, it plainly didn't work. They flew in the face of some things that I took for granted, not to mention I was never really good at this high level of math. It was quite obvious that adding a few decades of memories into Tony's brain, not to mention my personality, had some intended or perhaps unintended side-effects.
That would be another source of vexation if I let them. Things couldn't be ever easy, could they?
On the bright side, I was pretty sure I would be able to make the promised gear for the spy currently lounging on my sofa and chatting up Pepper. It helped that some components were either the same I would need for certain personal defence gear I would be making for myself or required the same tools to manufacture.
It wasn't until now that really struck me how much a difference a wide-spread advanced tech base could make. With a galaxy were interstellar civilization was around for tens of thousands of years, one could go to the average junk-yard and use scrap for many things that even bleeding edge Earth tech, my knowledge and resources couldn't procure easily nor cheaply if at all. For example, those convenient armband sized shields, it would be years, perhaps even decades before something like that could be practical, which sucked. On the other hand, with an arc reactor to power one, I could feasibly build a deflector into a power armour suit, once the other kinks of such an armour got soled. From the armour alloys, to the small motors needed to make such a thing fast, strong and robust enough for it to be useful, almost everything had to be either created from scratch or re-built and upgraded to such an extent that it might as well be... and that project was on the back-burner for the time being, because I simply couldn't be within such an armour 24/7, 365 days in the year.
While strictly speaking I didn't know how to manufacture various protective textiles and alloys that would make lightweight armoured clothing for everyday use, I knew enough of how those worked and the basics to give Jarvis and certain SI labs enough hints that they might give me something to work with in the foreseeable future.
One thing that I could clobber together from mostly off the shelf components and a few precision manufactured parts, was a basic prototype blaster. The basic design hadn't changed in thousands of year, even if refinement of the tech, advancement in material science, electronics and miniaturizing power sources led to the designs shrinking while retaining their robustness and power.
The same was true for laser cannons. While repulsor tech was versatile and powerful, those were aces in the hole along with arc reactors that I wasn't going to spread for the time being. By tomorrow noon I would have the components needed to built a pair of prototypes for testing. In the later case, those would make the basis of my planned manor defences along with a more conventional, rapid firing PD.
I finished the sandwich I ate while my mind was drifting over the ongoing projects and went back to designing basic orbital infrastructure.
Phase 3: Butterflies
=IS=
Part 1
=IS=
=IS=
Part 1
=IS=
Tony's house
California
Late in the evening, Jarvis was still busy searching for solid incriminating evidence. So far, there weren't any extra trucks logged in entering or exiting any of SI's factories, nor the available internal footage suggested ghost production. That by itself didn't mean much, especially considering that Obi did know about Jarvis almost from the moment my AI friend came online. If he had gone bad after that, he would have taken counter-measures. I could say many things about the man, however accusing him of being a fool, that would never be one of them.
Before I ended up in Tony's head and merged with his memories or perhaps with him himself, I'm sure he would have scoffed at the idea that Jarvis could be so easily fooled. I on the other hand had worked extensively with droids, which while usually quite limited by design, could excel in informational warfare. There were various ways to fool them and you didn't necessary needed access to AI's or droids of your own, especially if you potentially had years to figure out how to pull it off and direct, legitimate access to the hardware at the sites you wanted to operate. That said, there seldom was something like the mythical perfect crime. Even if Jarvis couldn't find enough solid evidence that would hold up in court, he should be able to gather enough to either clear or damn Obi in my eyes and that was the most important thing in that regard.
While the AI utilized most of his processing power to gather information, we were busy designing tools. I could honestly say that without the Force to allow me to utilise Sith Alchemy as short-cuts, only SI's bleeding edge technology and my personal resources would allow me to eventually re-create the industrial and technological base of the galaxy I spent decades living as a Sith.
It wasn't just the need to build the tools to build the tools to a ninth degree. It was the need to procure alloys, chemicals and materials that were extremely hard to get a hold of, could be produced in minimal quantities with available technology or didn't even exist on Earth and perhaps the solar system. Not to mention some things required zero-g manufacturing. The latter could at least in theory be done on the ground if you had access to advanced enough anti-gravity generators to make it practical... which in turn required orbital infrastructure to make it economical to built.
One of the things we spent most of the evening was on designing a crude ion engine and a basic zero-g alloy plant that could produce limited quality of the alloys needed for an anti-gravity generators. Of course, once that was finalized, we would need to get through the legal hurdles establishing the first commercial orbital facility. That would be "fun"indeed.
Another thing that I found frustrating was how chemicals could be handled with currently available tech. Some of the stuff I needed to create basic components from scratch was quite volatile, corrosive and could easily choke everyone in the house to death if mishandled. Something that a proper lab station could safely do in ones bedroom now required a bloody airtight facility to operate. It was vexing in the extreme. Thankfully, Jarvis helped tremendously in that regard. He used the information I gave him to remotely guide the staff of one of my chemical plants in creating and shipping some critical components for various projects. At the same time, a large part of my personal workshop's manufacturing capacity was busy upgrading itself. Anything I could get in the foreseeable future would be far cry from the industrial molecular or even atomic level manufacturing used across most civilized systems in the universe I came from. That meant a huge hit in efficiency and significantly more bulky and heavy equipment, which would still be light-years ahead of anything this Earth could make. With the notable exception of the weird arc reactors.
I could solve the basic equations behind those, I could remember how Tony solved the more advanced ones that was required for miniaturising the tech and making it more practical, not to mention recreating such a reactor in the first place. However, when I tried to actually solve them from scratch, it plainly didn't work. They flew in the face of some things that I took for granted, not to mention I was never really good at this high level of math. It was quite obvious that adding a few decades of memories into Tony's brain, not to mention my personality, had some intended or perhaps unintended side-effects.
That would be another source of vexation if I let them. Things couldn't be ever easy, could they?
On the bright side, I was pretty sure I would be able to make the promised gear for the spy currently lounging on my sofa and chatting up Pepper. It helped that some components were either the same I would need for certain personal defence gear I would be making for myself or required the same tools to manufacture.
It wasn't until now that really struck me how much a difference a wide-spread advanced tech base could make. With a galaxy were interstellar civilization was around for tens of thousands of years, one could go to the average junk-yard and use scrap for many things that even bleeding edge Earth tech, my knowledge and resources couldn't procure easily nor cheaply if at all. For example, those convenient armband sized shields, it would be years, perhaps even decades before something like that could be practical, which sucked. On the other hand, with an arc reactor to power one, I could feasibly build a deflector into a power armour suit, once the other kinks of such an armour got soled. From the armour alloys, to the small motors needed to make such a thing fast, strong and robust enough for it to be useful, almost everything had to be either created from scratch or re-built and upgraded to such an extent that it might as well be... and that project was on the back-burner for the time being, because I simply couldn't be within such an armour 24/7, 365 days in the year.
While strictly speaking I didn't know how to manufacture various protective textiles and alloys that would make lightweight armoured clothing for everyday use, I knew enough of how those worked and the basics to give Jarvis and certain SI labs enough hints that they might give me something to work with in the foreseeable future.
One thing that I could clobber together from mostly off the shelf components and a few precision manufactured parts, was a basic prototype blaster. The basic design hadn't changed in thousands of year, even if refinement of the tech, advancement in material science, electronics and miniaturizing power sources led to the designs shrinking while retaining their robustness and power.
The same was true for laser cannons. While repulsor tech was versatile and powerful, those were aces in the hole along with arc reactors that I wasn't going to spread for the time being. By tomorrow noon I would have the components needed to built a pair of prototypes for testing. In the later case, those would make the basis of my planned manor defences along with a more conventional, rapid firing PD.
I finished the sandwich I ate while my mind was drifting over the ongoing projects and went back to designing basic orbital infrastructure.
Chapter 3 Part 2
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor any of the Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
Tony's house
California
Next morning saw me in the kitchen, nursing a strong coffee after another sleepless night. Tony's bad habits were rubbing off me and if I didn't do something about them soon, they might drive me into an early grave. I wasn't exactly a spring chicken and his lifestyle would adversely affect even someone a decade younger.
"Tony..." Pepper pouted at me a moment after she entered the room and looked at me."We talked about this!"
"I know." I didn't whine. Really! "I didn't notice the time passing by."
"Jarvis?" Pepper turned her glare towards the closest camera.
"It must have slipped my mind too, Ms Potts. It won't happen again."
Did he just grovel? I looked at my coffee, then at Pepper and shook my head. "I'm going to sleep. Hopefully, when I'm up the world will make sense again."
It was near noon when I awoke and after a brief visit to the bathroom I ended up in the kitchen with the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. After I got my first cup of coffee in and began feeling somewhat alive, I had the sense of deja vu increased.
"Jarvis, what did I do last night?" I was sure I didn't get drunk.
"I believe you overworked yourself, sir. This morning you were out of it as Ms Potts and Ms Not-Agent as you insist calling her, concluded. I'm inclined to concur."
"Joy. Where are they?" There was a conspicuous absence of red heads in the house.
"Miss Potts is at Stark Industries, handling her duties. Ms Not-Agent was called for work. Another SHIELD bodyguard should be arriving soon."
"We'll know they will be for real how?"
"Ms Not-Agent gave me a description. SHIELD send photos and a code phrase to confirm their identity."
I gave the AI's cameras a flat look. "Jarvis, did I get my hands on your programming while I was half asleep?"
"You certainly did, sir."
The fuck did I do last night?!
"Show me your runtimes and all the code I've touched last night." God damn it!
Fortunately all I've messed up with appeared to be his sense of humour, otherwise I've just examined his programming. That was a relief.
"Jarvis, make it a standing order, I want you to have offline backup prepared before you let me fiddle with you mind again. Just in case."
"Dull noted, sir." Now he sounded a bit less cheerful than before. Seriously, what was I thinking? "Jarvis, make a note, unless a lot of lives are at stake, don't let me tinker and science when on just a few hours of sleep."
"Ms Potts will be ecstatic to learn of this."
"I'm sure she will be. Now, where were we? Anything new about the weapons?"
"Nothing conclusive, sir. I've run the numbers. If there were ghost shipments, they were distributed among the regular ones and then removed outside of my range. The various internal logs of our factories do check up. The only notable oddity is increased power drain from the grid in three factories and one laboratory. They are explained as high energy tests of various kinds. The records I have access to does check up."
Well, if anyone in SI was involved it had to be Obi. No one had the reach to engineer such a cover up, if there was one in the first place, without alerting him at the very least. It was too bad that the absence of evidence wasn't enough of evidence in this case. For all I knew, those weapons the terrorists had might have been "lost" by the US government in order to create some plausible denialbility when they later blew up something they couldn't be seen as destroying using my weapons. Or plain good old fashioned corruption and black market dealings. No government was immune to those.
If it was any of those but Obi, I wasn't likely to hear anything official from the investigations being run.
Damn it, I hated being out of the loop. That was just one more reason to create closer ties with shield and the US government. I wasn't accustomed to operating outside high level government circles and the level of access to information doing so could grant, not to mention the power.
To do that however, I needed my various project to reach a prototype stage that could be demonstrated. So it was back to the workshop, but only after I got another coffee or two in me and a hefty breakfast.
A holographic image of a commercial fusion reactor floated in front of me, rendered and projected by Jarvis. It took us until now to make a design simple, robust and easy to manufacture enough that people might view it as something to buy instead of yet another scientific curiosity. It was safe, it could be fed on helium or hydrogen and it could produce more raw power than the largest operational nuclear power plant at a fraction of the operating cost. Security wise, a catastrophic meltdown would endanger only whoever was in the immediate vicinity. There was no radioactive fuel to worry about, no nasty spent nuclear waste to dispose off. The only downside was that this initial model was big, which was still lesser in size than most modern power-plants.
"It looks good, right?" I used my hands, which were clad in thin gloves that allowed me to operate the holo-image as if it was a touch-screen to make the design explode into the hundreds of components that made it up.
"It should work." Jarvis admitted.
"Of course it would work! I wrote a dissertation on the model we spent days dumbing down!"
"Sir, one of those days you should tell me or Ms Potts more about those new memories you claim you received while in captivity."
"There is no 'claim' about them. They are very much real."
"SHIELD would like a briefing too." A quiet voice spoke from behind me."
I jumped from the sheer shock and instinctively grabbed the first thing that my hands could reach, then turned around as fast as I could and threw it at the threat before my mind could consciously catch up.
"Not bad reactions."
A not particularly tall woman stood in the middle of my workshop, holding the tool I threw at her. She wore a tasteful business suit that looked like wouldn't constrict her movements and had a no-nonsense expression on her face. Her eyes however told me she would rather be anywhere but here. I couldn't blame her if she had read Tony's file or just browsed through the internet about me.
"I'm Agent May, Mr Stark. Officially your new personal assistant."
"What did I do to piss you off?" I asked after my heart slowed down its hammering. I glanced at Jarvis' cameras promising him retribution.
"I got assigned as your babysitter, Mr Stark." She delivered in a cold, uncaring tone.
"Fair enough."
"I wasn't joking about that debriefing, Mr Stark."
"I'm too busy putting some of those memories in good use." I waved at the schematics floating behind me. "This will revolutionize energy generation across the world and in one fell sloop cease our dependency on fossil fuels as anything but lubricants and an easy way to make plastics."
"If that's true, it would make you a lot of enemies."
Should I be ashamed to admit that it took me few long seconds to connect the dots about her meaning? "Ah, our Saudi and other Middle Eastern friends. That would be a feature I recon. Besides, they will have just enough time to use their petrol dollars to overhaul their economics if they're smart anyway."
May gazed at the hologram for a few seconds and sighed. "Give me a head's up before you go public with this, Mr Stark. I'll need to arrange a much larger security detail for when that happens. Better yet, do so before you even mention this technology and its potential to anyone outside this room."
Thinking about it... Yeah, my plans were going to make me some very wealthy enemies and at least a few of them wouldn't think twice to paying for a hit on me. I would need to have the house turned into fortress before I went public with the fusion.
"Dully noted, Agent May. Recommendations of making this place secure?"
"I'll need to tour the house. My first thought? Its very exposed and large parts of it are a sniper's wet dream."
Once I'm done with it, that won't be the case. Heavy duty armoured windows were already being built by one SI's subsidiaries and will be installed soon; that was just he start.
"Please make yourself at home and do tour the building. I'm sure Jarvis would tell you all you need to know."
I returned my attention to the design. Agent May raised a good point. How many of my other ideas were going to make people want to kill me because they would make their sources of money dry up once operational?
Just a brief overview gave me a simple answer, most of them. I would need to think carefully about how I would approach spreading my technology, because I had to spread it in order to make my life easier and use it as a stepping stone for even better things.
Tonight, I would need to speak with Pepper, perhaps use my new bodyguard as a sounding board too. I did plan to work closely with the government and many of the things I would be building or was busy creating the infrastructure to build were for the US military and our allies after all.
Phase 3: Butterflies
=IS=
Part 2
=IS=
=IS=
Part 2
=IS=
Tony's house
California
Next morning saw me in the kitchen, nursing a strong coffee after another sleepless night. Tony's bad habits were rubbing off me and if I didn't do something about them soon, they might drive me into an early grave. I wasn't exactly a spring chicken and his lifestyle would adversely affect even someone a decade younger.
"Tony..." Pepper pouted at me a moment after she entered the room and looked at me."We talked about this!"
"I know." I didn't whine. Really! "I didn't notice the time passing by."
"Jarvis?" Pepper turned her glare towards the closest camera.
"It must have slipped my mind too, Ms Potts. It won't happen again."
Did he just grovel? I looked at my coffee, then at Pepper and shook my head. "I'm going to sleep. Hopefully, when I'm up the world will make sense again."
=IS=
It was near noon when I awoke and after a brief visit to the bathroom I ended up in the kitchen with the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. After I got my first cup of coffee in and began feeling somewhat alive, I had the sense of deja vu increased.
"Jarvis, what did I do last night?" I was sure I didn't get drunk.
"I believe you overworked yourself, sir. This morning you were out of it as Ms Potts and Ms Not-Agent as you insist calling her, concluded. I'm inclined to concur."
"Joy. Where are they?" There was a conspicuous absence of red heads in the house.
"Miss Potts is at Stark Industries, handling her duties. Ms Not-Agent was called for work. Another SHIELD bodyguard should be arriving soon."
"We'll know they will be for real how?"
"Ms Not-Agent gave me a description. SHIELD send photos and a code phrase to confirm their identity."
I gave the AI's cameras a flat look. "Jarvis, did I get my hands on your programming while I was half asleep?"
"You certainly did, sir."
The fuck did I do last night?!
"Show me your runtimes and all the code I've touched last night." God damn it!
Fortunately all I've messed up with appeared to be his sense of humour, otherwise I've just examined his programming. That was a relief.
"Jarvis, make it a standing order, I want you to have offline backup prepared before you let me fiddle with you mind again. Just in case."
"Dull noted, sir." Now he sounded a bit less cheerful than before. Seriously, what was I thinking? "Jarvis, make a note, unless a lot of lives are at stake, don't let me tinker and science when on just a few hours of sleep."
"Ms Potts will be ecstatic to learn of this."
"I'm sure she will be. Now, where were we? Anything new about the weapons?"
"Nothing conclusive, sir. I've run the numbers. If there were ghost shipments, they were distributed among the regular ones and then removed outside of my range. The various internal logs of our factories do check up. The only notable oddity is increased power drain from the grid in three factories and one laboratory. They are explained as high energy tests of various kinds. The records I have access to does check up."
Well, if anyone in SI was involved it had to be Obi. No one had the reach to engineer such a cover up, if there was one in the first place, without alerting him at the very least. It was too bad that the absence of evidence wasn't enough of evidence in this case. For all I knew, those weapons the terrorists had might have been "lost" by the US government in order to create some plausible denialbility when they later blew up something they couldn't be seen as destroying using my weapons. Or plain good old fashioned corruption and black market dealings. No government was immune to those.
If it was any of those but Obi, I wasn't likely to hear anything official from the investigations being run.
Damn it, I hated being out of the loop. That was just one more reason to create closer ties with shield and the US government. I wasn't accustomed to operating outside high level government circles and the level of access to information doing so could grant, not to mention the power.
To do that however, I needed my various project to reach a prototype stage that could be demonstrated. So it was back to the workshop, but only after I got another coffee or two in me and a hefty breakfast.
=IS=
A holographic image of a commercial fusion reactor floated in front of me, rendered and projected by Jarvis. It took us until now to make a design simple, robust and easy to manufacture enough that people might view it as something to buy instead of yet another scientific curiosity. It was safe, it could be fed on helium or hydrogen and it could produce more raw power than the largest operational nuclear power plant at a fraction of the operating cost. Security wise, a catastrophic meltdown would endanger only whoever was in the immediate vicinity. There was no radioactive fuel to worry about, no nasty spent nuclear waste to dispose off. The only downside was that this initial model was big, which was still lesser in size than most modern power-plants.
"It looks good, right?" I used my hands, which were clad in thin gloves that allowed me to operate the holo-image as if it was a touch-screen to make the design explode into the hundreds of components that made it up.
"It should work." Jarvis admitted.
"Of course it would work! I wrote a dissertation on the model we spent days dumbing down!"
"Sir, one of those days you should tell me or Ms Potts more about those new memories you claim you received while in captivity."
"There is no 'claim' about them. They are very much real."
"SHIELD would like a briefing too." A quiet voice spoke from behind me."
I jumped from the sheer shock and instinctively grabbed the first thing that my hands could reach, then turned around as fast as I could and threw it at the threat before my mind could consciously catch up.
"Not bad reactions."
A not particularly tall woman stood in the middle of my workshop, holding the tool I threw at her. She wore a tasteful business suit that looked like wouldn't constrict her movements and had a no-nonsense expression on her face. Her eyes however told me she would rather be anywhere but here. I couldn't blame her if she had read Tony's file or just browsed through the internet about me.
"I'm Agent May, Mr Stark. Officially your new personal assistant."
"What did I do to piss you off?" I asked after my heart slowed down its hammering. I glanced at Jarvis' cameras promising him retribution.
"I got assigned as your babysitter, Mr Stark." She delivered in a cold, uncaring tone.
"Fair enough."
"I wasn't joking about that debriefing, Mr Stark."
"I'm too busy putting some of those memories in good use." I waved at the schematics floating behind me. "This will revolutionize energy generation across the world and in one fell sloop cease our dependency on fossil fuels as anything but lubricants and an easy way to make plastics."
"If that's true, it would make you a lot of enemies."
Should I be ashamed to admit that it took me few long seconds to connect the dots about her meaning? "Ah, our Saudi and other Middle Eastern friends. That would be a feature I recon. Besides, they will have just enough time to use their petrol dollars to overhaul their economics if they're smart anyway."
May gazed at the hologram for a few seconds and sighed. "Give me a head's up before you go public with this, Mr Stark. I'll need to arrange a much larger security detail for when that happens. Better yet, do so before you even mention this technology and its potential to anyone outside this room."
Thinking about it... Yeah, my plans were going to make me some very wealthy enemies and at least a few of them wouldn't think twice to paying for a hit on me. I would need to have the house turned into fortress before I went public with the fusion.
"Dully noted, Agent May. Recommendations of making this place secure?"
"I'll need to tour the house. My first thought? Its very exposed and large parts of it are a sniper's wet dream."
Once I'm done with it, that won't be the case. Heavy duty armoured windows were already being built by one SI's subsidiaries and will be installed soon; that was just he start.
"Please make yourself at home and do tour the building. I'm sure Jarvis would tell you all you need to know."
I returned my attention to the design. Agent May raised a good point. How many of my other ideas were going to make people want to kill me because they would make their sources of money dry up once operational?
Just a brief overview gave me a simple answer, most of them. I would need to think carefully about how I would approach spreading my technology, because I had to spread it in order to make my life easier and use it as a stepping stone for even better things.
Tonight, I would need to speak with Pepper, perhaps use my new bodyguard as a sounding board too. I did plan to work closely with the government and many of the things I would be building or was busy creating the infrastructure to build were for the US military and our allies after all.
Interlude: Bonfire
AN: After a lot of speculation and assumption about Sith Tony's personality and motivations, I'm putting this interlude up. It would take moths in universe time for the memories of Tony Stark and the Sith to properly merge and even longer for him to get his head straight. Further, it would take some pretty shocking events for him to sit down and reflect on how that merger has effected him. At this point he is almost gliding on autopilot, dealing with the obvious issues that he faces. He takes a great deal of things for granted, because as far as he is currently concerned, they just are so to speak, things like his morality, his patriotism, etc...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor any of the Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
Stark Tower
New York
It's not often that I've spent time reflecting on the past. It was even rarer to ponder my actions and the reasons behind them. A large part of it was that as a Sith I often didn't care about such trivialities unless they could confer me some tangible advantage. Thinking about it, it was funny. I've been in this universe for a few years now, cut off from the Force and more importantly, the Dark Side. I barely paused to reflect upon that until now. It was enough of an upside that the Dark Side no longer whispered sweet nothings in the back of my head. The downsides, however, were significant. I was just plain ordinary human. Weak, vulnerable. I threw myself in my work as a way to escape thinking about that reality until I could do something about it.
The Dark Side had warped me to such an extent that even the complete absence of the Force couldn't really soothe the scars. I didn't stop to properly think things through. I was too busy acting, struggling against being just another ordinary person, with all too human limitations. What did I have to ponder? I knew my situation, or at least I thought I did.
I made too many assumptions, took too many things for granted without even being aware of it.
Light flickered over my face through the windows overlooking one of New York's largest avenues. This was not the neon glare of advertisements, nor the bright lights of cars crawling up and down like ants. It was fires and the distinct blinking of emergency vehicles. Only a few buildings had working lights, all thanks to emergency generators, more often than not supplied by Star Industries subsidiary.
Until these last few days, all the enemies I faced in this world were normal ones – very human ones. Some with guns, others with deep pockets and influence, or even whole countries to do their beck and call. When all was said and done, my legal department and properly outfitted security could tangle with those on even ground and that was the worst case scenario. Power Armours tilted the advantage in my favour, the same was true for all the things SI was busy making for the US government and its allies.
The Asgardians and Loki's Chitauri, those were cut off from a different cloth. All my preparation, all that playing by the rules, all my decisions up to this point led me up to this point.
A flight of scout drones warbled overhead. Their sensor clusters rotated to better examine the streets below for enemy stragglers or missed casualties.
How did we get here? If I was to be honest with myself, my wilful ignorance and blindness both. There. That would be a simple start, though without even trying I could name a lot of people I could gleefully blame for what happened right along myself.
Tony Stark has already been a patriot. Me on the other hand? It has been a very long time since I believed in anything beyond raw power. Having it tends to often simplify matters tremendously. Without it, it doesn't matter if you have the moral high ground. You're fucked anyway.
I never thought to question that fact, nor everything that implied. As a Sith, I had a certain preconceptions about what a decent government should and should not be. When I merged with Tony, his patriotism and my cynicism gave me some quite glaring blind-spots. At least in retrospect. Even now I wonder if I had become aware of them if I spent the time for self reflection after escaping those terrorists in Afghanistan.
A decent government would seek to do what is best for the majority of its people. While individuals could be corrupted, indeed some level of corruption tends to be inevitable, the whole would be above such failings and able to act to correct them. It couldn't be to act against its own interests and those of its people by mere corporations, no matter how wealthy they were. For example, a good government could never fall as low as the Republic Senate of the Clone Wars era.
I was a patriot. I believed in the American Dream, in America and our lawfully elected government. That by definition meant that said government was a decent one. Any failure I saw as undoubtedly the fault of individuals, not of the system. Anything else was simply unthinkable.
I wanted to smash my head through the window at how wilfully naïve I've been.
Of course, I trusted the various agencies of the US government. I was most eager to work with them, to use my new-found well of knowledge to help my country, its citizens and by an extension the whole world. At the same time, I was afraid of what said government could to me if it concluded that I was a threat. At least as far back as WWII, when the Allies fought Nazi Germany and Hydra, in certain circles it was known that aliens existed and their technology had been utilized by friend and foe alike. There were the odd powered individuals cropping up all over the place for decades now. In that context, a radical shift in personality would have been noticed. I would have been monitored after my return from Afghanistan even if it wasn't for the SI weapons found there or the fact that I detonated what practically amounted to a tactical nuke... And to add insult to injury I felt I shouldn't lie to those closest to me, at lest not completely. Who could say where Tony Stark and his thirty odd years of experiences ended and the Sith Lord I was and his ninety years of life began? Was there a difference in a universe without the Force? Who is to say that if I am Tony Stark or the Sith? Perhaps I was neither ever since the moment we merged.
I couldn't properly remember the moment I decided not to hide from anyone that I somehow gained new memories and technological knowledge. Was it even a conscious decision? Thinking back... I would probably have to consul Jarvis about it, but I digress.
When SHIELD approached me for the first time, that was both a danger and an opportunity. In my mind, no corporate CEO, no matter how wealthy or connected, could compare in power and freedom of action as a high placed government official, within the military or especially a clandestine intelligence agency. Having close ties with an outfit as SHIELD, well it offered so many benefits that despite any possible strings attached ingratiating myself to them was no brainier. At least to my mind, doing so was an obvious course of action that neatly sidestepped all the exposure and circus connected to any elected office, not to mention the additional scrutiny. It was simply how the things were, no need to think deeply before jumping with both legs.
I never stopped to think that perhaps things didn't work quite that way on Earth and Tony... he had spent the past decade tinkering and inventing, living the high life, drinking himself to death and only dealing with anything else if Obadiah or Pepper managed to corner and guilt trip him into it. My memories from that corner were singularly unhelpful.
Was I that way before, when I didn't have a mission to focus and keep me on track? Was I just moving with the flow and doing only what was in front of me without thinking too deeply on the consequences or even my actions?
Perhaps. The truth, even now I'm unsure. All I knew was that I found it too damn easy to lose myself in my tinkering and the consequences of my actions and inactions... No, that isn't really true. I didn't want to think about that, because doing so came back to a simple fact. I no longer had the Force. I was weak, just human in a world that being such sooner or later wouldn't cut it. That was a terrifying prospect. I was faced with my own mortality and after decades of laughing at death and spiting it, I flinched and up until today I kept doing so.
It was an easy thing, going with the flow, loosing oneself in day today trivia. It was insidious, you didn't even notice it until something happened to rub it into your face.
Damn it, I needed a drink and figure out where to go from now on. I needed help too and wasn't that a bloody hard realisation that came too little too late?
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor any of the Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
The Iron Sith
=IS=
Interlude: Bonfire
=IS=
=IS=
Interlude: Bonfire
=IS=
Stark Tower
New York
It's not often that I've spent time reflecting on the past. It was even rarer to ponder my actions and the reasons behind them. A large part of it was that as a Sith I often didn't care about such trivialities unless they could confer me some tangible advantage. Thinking about it, it was funny. I've been in this universe for a few years now, cut off from the Force and more importantly, the Dark Side. I barely paused to reflect upon that until now. It was enough of an upside that the Dark Side no longer whispered sweet nothings in the back of my head. The downsides, however, were significant. I was just plain ordinary human. Weak, vulnerable. I threw myself in my work as a way to escape thinking about that reality until I could do something about it.
The Dark Side had warped me to such an extent that even the complete absence of the Force couldn't really soothe the scars. I didn't stop to properly think things through. I was too busy acting, struggling against being just another ordinary person, with all too human limitations. What did I have to ponder? I knew my situation, or at least I thought I did.
I made too many assumptions, took too many things for granted without even being aware of it.
Light flickered over my face through the windows overlooking one of New York's largest avenues. This was not the neon glare of advertisements, nor the bright lights of cars crawling up and down like ants. It was fires and the distinct blinking of emergency vehicles. Only a few buildings had working lights, all thanks to emergency generators, more often than not supplied by Star Industries subsidiary.
Until these last few days, all the enemies I faced in this world were normal ones – very human ones. Some with guns, others with deep pockets and influence, or even whole countries to do their beck and call. When all was said and done, my legal department and properly outfitted security could tangle with those on even ground and that was the worst case scenario. Power Armours tilted the advantage in my favour, the same was true for all the things SI was busy making for the US government and its allies.
The Asgardians and Loki's Chitauri, those were cut off from a different cloth. All my preparation, all that playing by the rules, all my decisions up to this point led me up to this point.
A flight of scout drones warbled overhead. Their sensor clusters rotated to better examine the streets below for enemy stragglers or missed casualties.
How did we get here? If I was to be honest with myself, my wilful ignorance and blindness both. There. That would be a simple start, though without even trying I could name a lot of people I could gleefully blame for what happened right along myself.
Tony Stark has already been a patriot. Me on the other hand? It has been a very long time since I believed in anything beyond raw power. Having it tends to often simplify matters tremendously. Without it, it doesn't matter if you have the moral high ground. You're fucked anyway.
I never thought to question that fact, nor everything that implied. As a Sith, I had a certain preconceptions about what a decent government should and should not be. When I merged with Tony, his patriotism and my cynicism gave me some quite glaring blind-spots. At least in retrospect. Even now I wonder if I had become aware of them if I spent the time for self reflection after escaping those terrorists in Afghanistan.
A decent government would seek to do what is best for the majority of its people. While individuals could be corrupted, indeed some level of corruption tends to be inevitable, the whole would be above such failings and able to act to correct them. It couldn't be to act against its own interests and those of its people by mere corporations, no matter how wealthy they were. For example, a good government could never fall as low as the Republic Senate of the Clone Wars era.
I was a patriot. I believed in the American Dream, in America and our lawfully elected government. That by definition meant that said government was a decent one. Any failure I saw as undoubtedly the fault of individuals, not of the system. Anything else was simply unthinkable.
I wanted to smash my head through the window at how wilfully naïve I've been.
Of course, I trusted the various agencies of the US government. I was most eager to work with them, to use my new-found well of knowledge to help my country, its citizens and by an extension the whole world. At the same time, I was afraid of what said government could to me if it concluded that I was a threat. At least as far back as WWII, when the Allies fought Nazi Germany and Hydra, in certain circles it was known that aliens existed and their technology had been utilized by friend and foe alike. There were the odd powered individuals cropping up all over the place for decades now. In that context, a radical shift in personality would have been noticed. I would have been monitored after my return from Afghanistan even if it wasn't for the SI weapons found there or the fact that I detonated what practically amounted to a tactical nuke... And to add insult to injury I felt I shouldn't lie to those closest to me, at lest not completely. Who could say where Tony Stark and his thirty odd years of experiences ended and the Sith Lord I was and his ninety years of life began? Was there a difference in a universe without the Force? Who is to say that if I am Tony Stark or the Sith? Perhaps I was neither ever since the moment we merged.
I couldn't properly remember the moment I decided not to hide from anyone that I somehow gained new memories and technological knowledge. Was it even a conscious decision? Thinking back... I would probably have to consul Jarvis about it, but I digress.
When SHIELD approached me for the first time, that was both a danger and an opportunity. In my mind, no corporate CEO, no matter how wealthy or connected, could compare in power and freedom of action as a high placed government official, within the military or especially a clandestine intelligence agency. Having close ties with an outfit as SHIELD, well it offered so many benefits that despite any possible strings attached ingratiating myself to them was no brainier. At least to my mind, doing so was an obvious course of action that neatly sidestepped all the exposure and circus connected to any elected office, not to mention the additional scrutiny. It was simply how the things were, no need to think deeply before jumping with both legs.
I never stopped to think that perhaps things didn't work quite that way on Earth and Tony... he had spent the past decade tinkering and inventing, living the high life, drinking himself to death and only dealing with anything else if Obadiah or Pepper managed to corner and guilt trip him into it. My memories from that corner were singularly unhelpful.
Was I that way before, when I didn't have a mission to focus and keep me on track? Was I just moving with the flow and doing only what was in front of me without thinking too deeply on the consequences or even my actions?
Perhaps. The truth, even now I'm unsure. All I knew was that I found it too damn easy to lose myself in my tinkering and the consequences of my actions and inactions... No, that isn't really true. I didn't want to think about that, because doing so came back to a simple fact. I no longer had the Force. I was weak, just human in a world that being such sooner or later wouldn't cut it. That was a terrifying prospect. I was faced with my own mortality and after decades of laughing at death and spiting it, I flinched and up until today I kept doing so.
It was an easy thing, going with the flow, loosing oneself in day today trivia. It was insidious, you didn't even notice it until something happened to rub it into your face.
Damn it, I needed a drink and figure out where to go from now on. I needed help too and wasn't that a bloody hard realisation that came too little too late?
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
This is a flash forward to after Avengers?
A hint of things to come. I won't be jumping to that point and skipping all that led to it along with the events of the movies.