Don't mind me, I'm just your resident Shinobi! - The Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Disclaimer- I don’t actually own anything that the Mouse lays a claim to. He could own me at this moment, I wouldn’t know. All hail to the Mighty Mouse!

Rural Tennessee

–Tony Stark–

Waving and smiling at the person who was supposed to guard the media van, he closed the door and pulled out their terminal, smirking as his thoughts of this being a high speed satellite terminal turned out to be true.

Quickly bypassing the mediocre protections set in place with contemptuous ease, he authorised two connections. One to Jarvis, back home, and another to a specific communication protocol he built in Rhodes’ suit, one that could not be removed without dismantling the suit.

Jarvis was the first to respond, obviously, as Jarvis quickly took over the entire system and activated the speakers, mics in this place.

“Hello? This is a secure channel. Please identify yourself.” He smiled as he saw Jarvis buying time as the malware he designed with his buddy quickly began doing their work. Before Jarvis could compromise his communications with Rhodes, though, he quickly spoke up, "Jarvis! Buddy? It’s me.”

He saw the programming for complete invasive takeover stutter for a moment as he typed in his password, as Jarvis reigned in his infiltration attempts, before replying, “It’s good to hear from you, sir. I still recommend activating—”

“Nope,” He said, rejecting Jarvis’ idea of going scorched earth on Mandarin for the third time since he escaped from Malibu within an inch of his life. Okay, that was an overstatement. He was not going to die, especially not with Alex popping out of the woodwork right at the same time as the attack.

His fingers flew across the keyboard, wincing at the horrible feedback and actual misses this keyboard had after probably years of sitting here, with only a couple of keys ever used for daily activities. “So? How’s Pepper taking it?”

He had not yet spoken to her, mainly because she and he both were traumatised from what had happened. He was not in the right headspace when he just threatened Mandarin without even thinking of Pepper and what it would mean for her, to constantly live on the lookout for a terrorist attack just because their boyfriend/boss taunted an international terrorist already responsible for dozens of lives lost.

In truth, he was ashamed to face her, which is why outside of just informing that he was alive and fine, he had not said anything else. She, too, had not spoken to him, and he could totally understand that.

Not that it didn’t hurt.

Jarvis replied after a moment of hesitation, “She…is working.”

He scoffed, even having no hormones or an evolutionary drive to be with someone else, Jarvis could tell that the topic was a landmine of unresolved emotions. It was practically a guarantee that what awaited him once he got past this Mandarin was a breakup.

The thought made his chest tighten, as he controlled his breathing. He shook his head, trying to banish that thought, to focus on the thing that was more important right now.

Which was Mandarin and taking care of that bastard before he could hurt anyone else.

And as if answering his prayers for something else to occupy his attention, Rhodey got his message as a secure communication line opened up, “Hello? Who is this?”

He smirked, remembering what he programmed into the suit when this specific connection would be used, “Who do you think it is?”

The sound of Rhodey’s sigh, which conveyed equal parts exasperation and equal parts relief, was like music to his ears, “Tony! Oh, dear god, where are you, man? Also, Iron Patriot Sucks, really? You had to go with that?”

He smiled as his fingers flew across the keyboard, accessing government databases with Rhodey’s authorisation, “With three X’s too.”

“Haha, very funny. Seriously, where are you? I’ll have someone pick you–Wait, are you hacking my access ID?”

“It’s hardly hacking when the password is so simple. Also, don’t worry about it. I’ll be out before you know it.” His eyes narrowed as he saw multiple data points, leading to an AIMS think tank, developing both weapons and some sort of medical advancement for the government, mainly for offensive purposes.

“Bingo,” he whispered to himself, as he throttled the network for the broadcast and gave his download full unrestricted access, taking all the data and dumping it into the laptop connected to it. He was sure the nice guy waiting outside would not mind too much if he just took a high performance laptop.

“Tony, I don’t think you understand what you are doing but–”

“Please,” He scoffed openly, watching the progress bar slowly inch forward. It was terabytes of data, and despite the speed, it was still going to take a few minutes, “I’ve hacked into things more secure when I was in college. I just need you to cover for me just in case someone happens to look too closely. Hacking is easy, erasing the traces of a hack is the hard part.”

“That is not what I meant, Tony, and you know it,” Rhodey said before falling silent for a minute. He remained silent as he knew what Rhodey was talking about but he had actively steered his mind away from that and was doing everything in his mind to keep himself busy, just so he could delay those heavy thoughts.

Rhodey, apparently, did not get the memo as he continued, “The world thinks you’re dead, Tony. I assume you told Pepper, but even so…I saw you on TV, Tony. That was reckless and you know it.”

“Yeah, I agree,” He said, “Which is why I’m going to make it right. I’m going to bring down Mandarin and stop him from hurting anyone else.” A pretty lie he told himself, that bringing down the big bad villain would magically solve all the problems in his life. 

He knew there was always going to be a villain out there, hurting people and there were always people that had to be saved. That was not going to save his life, his relationship with Pepper, and he knew it, but was not ready to confront that reality just yet.

“If you say so,” Rhodey replied, somberly, perhaps realising that he was not yet ready to talk about that, before continuing, “Listen, you can use my ID. I’ll tell the President the truth if he asks but that’s about it. I want you to know Tony, that I don't think this is the right path. Aside from that, I have been pulled back home for an important assignment. I would love to meet you, if you have time, that is.”

“Goodbye, Rhodes,”

“Goodbye, Tony. Stay safe.”

The call line went silent as the location of the Iron Patriot blinked on the screen, somewhere in the Middle East, dealing with insurgents, most likely.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Jarvis said, as he likely sensed the lull in conversation, “I would still recommend that you activate the House Party Protocol just in case,”

He pressed a finger, muting Jarvis’ connection. It was just symbolic since Jarvis could, at any point, assume complete control over the systems he was using currently, but receiving his message loud and clear, Jarvis stopped talking about the House Party protocol.

Frankly, it was overkill just to deal with someone like Mandarin, provided he did not suddenly obtain an army of supersoldiers or something equally absurd like that. If he had that, he would not have bombed his home. A single super soldier catching him off guard, outside his suit, would have probably spelled the end of the Stark bloodline, provided that Jarvis did not take his ass out with his security protocols first.

He was just staring at nothing in particular, thinking of just what he could say to Pepper that would make this whole clusterfuck sound not bad as it currently was, when a single beep pulled him out of his thoughts.

Hopefully, he could resolve it with just the Mark 42, without any need to call in the cavalry. Just summoning so many suits and revealing his ability to deploy what was essentially a small sized army remotely globally would open so many political can of worms, it was not even funny.

He quickly pulled the files up and opened the first recording….

__xx___

Florida

–Alex Warner–

Welp, as it turned out, an entire state was a huge place to search for a lone person, even if said person had a hyper advanced suit of armour with him. He did not have Jarvis, or a fancy team to track Tony down based on some bullshit power fluctuations on the grid, so he just skipped the part of meeting Tony and moved on to the next step, where he knew Tony was going to go.

Miami.

Hopefully, with his warning to Fury, POTUS was not scheduled to fly anywhere, and Tony did not need to use his suit to rescue the dozens of people who will drop down from the burning plane, but who knows, idiots were commonplace around the world and spy agency or not, incompetence could be found everywhere.

Which is why he sighed and stormed out of the bar when he saw the TV footage of Mandarin appearing once more on the stage, revealing not President Ellis but the Vice President instead, gagged and tied to a chair, in tears.

“Greetings, Americans….”

The dialogue from that actor was ignored as he paid the bill, grabbed his bag, and got out of the bar. One more disguise burned but then again, it was getting boring just competing with alcoholics who could never outdrink him as he was just built different.

Well, if he didn’t do anything soon, Ms.Potts might just get built differently as well, and not in a consensual manner. 

Ewww. That came out wrong.

Resolving to do something about it, he noted that it was getting increasingly difficult to ignore the itch of just training non stop and activating the God Eyes he was blessed with. If only the stupid world could not have a stupid villain trying to take over a major country every damned year.

There was an argument to be made, within his mind, of how he could just grow uber powerful and then save people at a faster rate instead of wasting his time right now and not activating the powers he was given, and honestly, he agreed with that line of thinking.

Which is why, he quickly dialled 911, and did his whole spiel of saying names out loud of SHIELD agents, going from the mostly known to the highly classified. This time, he even had to go through the names of classified SHIELD facilities, like the BUS and the FRIDGE before the call went static and a female voice answered.

“Mr.Warner, you have multiple felonies on your name and your current stunts are only–”

“Agent Hill,” He interrupted her, “As you might have imagined, I don’t really care much for what the government thinks of me. As for why I do this? Well, Fury didn’t really give me a direct line of contact, not that I would want one anyway. Secondly, what is Fury doing? I warned him of the Mandarin’s intention of attacking POTUS. Isn’t the SOP to secure the VP as well?”

Honestly, who was the head of the Secret Service? 

It was then, when Fury entered the call, “How did you get that intel?”

“That’s what you are asking me?” He asked incredulously, ignoring the looks people walking around gave him as his voice went a little loud there, “Anyway, I know you’re trying to track me down. I won’t be here by the time anyone gets here anyway, but you’re free to try. I would like to propose a truce. I get you your VP back and you start hunting me once that happens? Deal?”

The silence was telling, so he quickly popped his head back into the bar and winced at what he saw.

“He is livestreaming the mistreatment of the Vice President currently and will most likely have a list of unreadable demands. Now, would you–”

The call was hung up, as he gawked at the burner phone, surprised by Fury’s audacity. He looked around, surprised to hear cheers of all things, so he popped his head back in, and his eyes widened as Tony, or rather, Iron Man, had assaulted the facility, breaking down walls and securing the VP.

The camera likely fell down in the middle of all that chaos, revealing the roof that was more swiss cheese than a solid roof, and through those holes, he counted no less than six distinct Iron Man suits just floating in the air, before debris impacted the camera, and the feed was cut off.

Huh, that explained Fury hanging up on him. The services he was offering were no longer required.

He smiled as he dipped into the flow of the traffic, manoeuvring the cars, sidewalks before entering and exiting a small motel, with minute changes to his face, and his jacket and cap discarded, fooling the early wave of law enforcement. 

Another thing he learned that he could do with chakra. Just like reinforcement, where he flooded the body with chakra to enhance its features, he could use it in minute quantities and had to actively focus to alter some properties of his body. He could darken his skin, though not too much, move around some fat on his face, and change the flow of lines in his ears, slightly altering their overall appearance.

Individually, it did not change much but when combined? Within the span of a minute, he might as well have been an entirely different person.

As he heard the news reports, in relief, about how Tony Stark was alive and on the scene with an army of Iron Man suits, to rescue the Vice President, he smiled and went about his way.

It would seem that he was going to get his training Arc soon enough.

Shinra Tensei, here I come.

A/N - I feel as if something is off with the flow of the chapter. But after a day of coming back and doing it again, including the break on Sunday, this is what I could come up with.

Hope it’s alright.