10. Hashtags and Paper Bags

The first month and a half of single-handedly running the brand-new SI had actually been fun for Tony. It was just the way he liked it. He worked at his own rate (all day, every day) on things he wanted to (including the promised Iron Maiden armor). He didn't even need to humor a board. Time slipped away with a familiar fluidity that Tony was so familiar with. Yes, he let other people into his haven, but Tony almost had a heart attack and barely stopped himself from banning Gis from the workshop after the Saurin nearly cut his own hand off. Tony had to wonder if this was the way his father felt, and if Howard had been a better father than he had thought.

His inventions were good. Too good.

The message came in a scant month after SI lifted off the ground. Summons to go to Coruscant for a meeting with potential investors. Apparently, some upstart businessmen took notice of some of his non-lethal weapons and wanted to 'improve' them. Tony very much knew what it meant - both an offering and a threat. They wanted to weaponize his things and militarize its use. If he didn't go, they'd steal his designs anyway. Tony wouldn't let his stuff be used to take innocent lives again. He had to go. Sending a suitably enthusiastic message back to delay them, he set a date almost a whole month later. A whole month that he used to build his case.

Tony had already decided to keep SI in his hands. That was nonnegotiable. What he could do, however, was go to Coruscant to spread publicity and dabble around with technologies only sold there. Coruscant was an Elite planet of Elitists. Snobs. They had inventions and privileges they kept only for themselves. From what he heard from other bounty hunters, even a homeless beggar on Coruscant looked down on relatively well-off people from other planets.

Tony was sure they were joking. Bounty hunters tend to be a caustic bunch.

That point aside, Tony was headed towards the big city. Planet. Whatever.

Of course, he didn't take the straight way. It was more of a longabout way, hopping from planet to planet, system to system, selling and trading goods to pay for Tony's workshop funds, hyperfuel - gotta take that down to the molecules and find out how it worked - and the crew's pay. Kristoff was understandably nervous about returning to a place that had a bounty on him, but Tony secretly paid the lady the ex-smuggler swindled and promised to bring her some necklace from one of their stops. He didn't tell Kristoff - it would be a nice surprise.

It was on one of these such planet-hops that Tony was introduced to a problem much more rampant than criminals running amok and he couldn't help but wonder if this type of thing happened back on Earth, too, and that he just didn't notice.

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

Tony was strolling back towards the ship, a scrap of phrik in his pocket from one of the stores that actually sold ship parts. They had run across an artifact that had a small percentage of phrik in the alloy. Phrik was prick, watered down or not, and Tony had his hands on it at a "discount rate," after buying some durasteel plates for his ship and promising to deal with only them for more alloys and parts whenever he was in the system.

It was rather expensive and the alloy had twelve percent less phrik than they said it did, but Tony thought it was a pretty fair deal, considering the fact that FRIDAY estimated that they would be put out of business within the next three years by an upcoming business that opened a year ago, just down the street. He wasn't planning on coming back here anytime soon, anyways.

His clothes - a slightly stained T-shirt and a pair of something that resembled jeans - were not part of the typical wardrobe around here, but they helped him fit in a lot more than the more clean flightsuit-style clothes he usually preferred to use in combat situations. As rare as it was, Tony felt strangely underdressed. The slightly medieval clothes were conservative and well-kept, despite being worn out. Tony's T-shirt, though of a moderate quality, was just plain grubby next to them. The civilians gave him a wide berth as he walked, but it was for all of the wrong reasons.

The civilians were gossiping about him, that much he knew. Tony rather wished he kept FRIDAY's advice of changing his clothes before he disembarked the 'Falcon, but it was all too late for that, now. Figuring that a slightly pricey purchase would dissolve some of the more venomous remarks, Tony headed towards the stall with relatively expensive prices on its signs. It happened to sell some exotic sandwiches.

The hawker at the stand turned his nose up at Tony, explaining in the most uppity tone Tony had come across yet, that Tony would simply be unable to afford the scrumptious food provided by the stand. The hawker was promptly shoved by his sister, who gave him a nasty look and turned to explain to Tony in a kindly tone exactly what the hawker said, though admittedly in nicer words.

Opening his credit pouch abruptly shut up the siblings, who all but fell over themselves to please him. Yes, Tony would be glad when it was time for them to leave.

After buying several of some sort of meaty, steak-y sandwich for a handful of credits - hey, he was allowed to indulge himself - Tony wandered around the marketplace, wondering if any of the more worn-down stalls were run by Kristoff's contacts. He was actually going to ask one of them, but the look on the Duro's face when he started hinting at it warned him off.

Standing half-hidden in some racks, clothes discreetly out of sight, Tony flirted with some of the ladies running the stalls, several of which were hoping to escape their small-planet life and may their way among the stars, but none of them had any worthwhile skills. He eventually decided this was not the place to recruit, heading back to the ship.

That was when he tripped over the man.

"Whoa!" Tony said, arms flailing for a moment before Extremis flared with his emotions, allowing himself to abruptly catch himself before he fell and hit his head on the alley walls. Why was it always alleys? "Sorry," he apologized to the lump on the ground. "Didn't see you there…"

He paused as a dusty hand reached out, grabbing a paper bag with a bottle of some sort in it. The sheets shifted, allowing a dirty man to sit up and chug at whatever was in the bottle.

Tony suspected moonshine or some other contraband. "S'okay," the man slurred out blearily, peering up at Tony.

Tony's blood froze. He knew that face. "Happy?"

The man's face scrunched up in confusion. "Nah, 'm unhappy!" he chortled at what he saw as a clever play on words.

Tony calmed his breathing, taking a moment to objectively examine the situation. Happy practiced abstinence. He would never touch a bottle of alcohol.

Looking back at the man trying to coax another couple drops out, he could now clearly see that it wasn't, in fact, Happy. Though the brown eyes were identical, the facial features on this man were softer, despite being hollowed by hunger. He wasn't a doppelganger of his bodyguard-friend, maybe a brother of the doppleganger.

Then, the man turned his eyes on Tony. Tony's breath caught in his throat. The man's brown eyes were unnaturally sharp, despite his obvious drunkenness. "You 'kay?" the man asked in concern.

Taken aback, Tony resisted the urge to step back. The man was homeless, but he was asking if Tony was okay? Tony might not be rich anymore, might not be dressed in his traditional ratty engineering clothes, but this man needed more help than he did.

"Yeah, you?" Tony's throat closed. He cleared it. "Do you need any help?"

"Open?" He lifted a sealed bottle towards Tony.

"I'm probably the last person who should be saying this, but drinking's bad for you." Tony opened it anyways and handed it back, sitting down next to the man on his blanket when he patted it in invitation. He passed over his entire bag of sandwiches. If his crew wanted some, they could buy them themselves this time. Happy's-brother-from-an-alternative-universe needed it more than them.

"Got nothin' left nee-ways," the man grumbled good-naturedly. "'M Ch'rles," he introduced himself.

"Tony Stark," Tony answered automatically. Charles? That sounded nothing like 'Happy.' Still, Charles had said he had nothing left. The least Tony could do was give him some company.

As such, he accepted the bottle that Charles handed to him, popping open the cap and taking a cautious sip. It burned like disinfectant, a reminder of his misspent college years. Tony grinned and took a slightly bigger gulp.

They spent a little over an hour bemoaning their lives and eating the sandwiches. To his dismay, Tony found that having Extremis in his bloodstream meant he couldn't be drunk or even tipsy. It burned all the alcohol out of his system before it really even entered. On the bright side, no alcohol poisoning. On a more worrying side, he had to switch their drinks for some juice he picked up earlier - FRIDAY alerted him that he was starting to get feverish, probably due to the active Extremis. Tony hadn't even noticed.

Tony learned that Charles's wife ran off with her secret boyfriend after stealing all his money, taking their underage two children with her. She cried foul and had his guardianship of their children rescinded, on the grounds that they weren't his children at all - she had been cheating on him for over two decades. His children wanted to be with him, but without a job or home, he couldn't take them back anyways.

FRIDAY confirmed this was all true, but also pointed out several loopholes that could potentially get Charles his children back. Unfortunately, without a home Charles still could not take custody of his children. It was a sad story that made Tony feel guilty that all that happened to him was getting thrown headfirst into a second chance. Of course, this was when everything went wrong.

"Oi, don't you know that being drunk and disorderly in this district is a felony?" Tony looked up to see two approaching peacekeepers. Their most defining features were that one had a toothbrush-style mustache, while the other had Harry-Potter spectacles.

" Boss, being drunk does not constitute as a felony in this sector. They're just required to give a warning and make sure you get off the streets, " FRIDAY told Tony without prompting. "

The- " she cut herself off as the peacekeeper swung his baton at Tony's head. Tony lifted his arm to block the hit with his forearm. " I'm sending Kristoff and Chewbacca over, " FRIDAY informed Tony seriously, none of her usual disdain for the Wookie showing.

A yelp from Charles had Tony throwing an alarmed glance over to where the mustached peacekeeper had knocked Charles over with an electrified buzz of his baton.

"Hey!" Tony shouted, wrenching Mustache's baton out of his hands. "It is not illegal to drink in this sector, and I'm perfectly sober!"

Mustache and Spectacles sneered. "You're under arrest for assaulting an officer of the law!" Spectacles claimed, tossing his baton in the air. Tony ducked out of the way, and Mustache grabbed spun it lazily.

"Yeah, no," Tony answered, glancing warily at Mustache from where the man was standing off to his side. "You assaulted us first."

"You won't be saying that after the next fifteen minutes," Spectacles threatened.

"Is that a threat?" Tony asked. He was immediately embarrassed with himself for using such a cliché phrase, but Spectacles merely smirked at him.

To his eternal mortification, Tony was caught off guard by Mustache, who had snuck in from his side while he was distracted by Spectacles. It was probably the oldest trick in the book, and Tony had fallen for it. Tony's limbs locked up under the electrical currents. FRIDAY's alarmed shouts in his ear flickered off and on, but Tony couldn't tell if it was because of the earpiece shorting out or because he went momentarily unconscious.

When he finally came to, his ribs ached in a way that told him that they were just fractured less than a minute ago. They were inconsequential; he had been eating regularly and they would finish healing in just another minute. What was more concerning were the peacekeepers, who were beating on Charles.

"Hey! Pick on someone your own size," Tony yelled. He then realized they were taller than him, but that wasn't the point. When Spectacles came for him, Tony knocked him out quickly and painlessly with a rabbit punch to the temples.

Tony held his fists up, ready for a brawl with Mustache, but he didn't need to. The man collapsed on the ground, revealing a Wookie. "He isn't dead, is he?" Tony asked rhetorically as he kneeled down next to Charles, Kristoff next to him. The other man's fingers fluttered up and down Charles's side with deceptive softness. Chewbacca shook his head and tossed the man on top of his comrade.

" I have the footage ," FRIDAY told him grimly as Tony scanned Charles. " No broken bones ," she added.

Kristoff must have been listening, or perhaps he finished his own inspection, because he moved Charles to a sitting position and started to pull him up. "They didn't break any bones," Kristoff told Tony, dispelling that thought. Kristoff wouldn't have just paraphrased FRIDAY's words if he had heard her. Tony gave the ex-smuggler a long look and wondered how many broken bones the man must have received to know so quickly.

"Great, send them to the police station, the local news stations, everything," Tony told FRIDAY, tapping his earpiece to tell his friends who he was talking to. He nodded to Kristoff, throwing Charles's other arm over his shoulder.

" Done ," FRIDAY said.

"Where to?" Kristoff asked.

"Back to the ship. Meet our newest crewmate," Tony announced. FRIDAY played a recording of Pepper clearing her throat. "If he consents, of course," Tony added.

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

Tony let the holographic code for his latest project gently revolve. It was completely built-in Earth coding, Italian-based. It wasn't sentient like FRIDAY, JARVIS, or any of his robot kids were, but it was aware. It wouldn't abolish events like what happened with Charles, but maybe it would give people a pause before afflicting such cruelty.

Tony didn't expect this to take off immediately, maybe not even in a few years, but it was a start. In all honesty, it started as a sham to gain legal access to some satellites, giving FRIDAY more width and leeway. Slowly hacking and crawling through programming was fine and all, but the chances of getting caught were always there. This way, there was less chance that FRIDAY would be caught.

One of the differences between Earth and this galaxy was the media. Sure, there were news and discussion boards on the 'holonet' or whatever, but normal social media sites were seriously lacking. Twitter, Vine, Snapchat… all those short memes and clip compilations of people getting hit in the groin area were seriously lacking. In the Republic, each and every planet had its own tiny group of funny stuff, but nothing was shared on a galactic level. Maybe his would be different.

Technically, there were a multiple sites, but they were hard to find, buried under layers of 'real' stuff. Only die-hard fans could find them. They were also highly divided. The fans only frequented one site or the other, based on their individual planets.

Tony wanted to change that, hence the new program.

It had took a lot of pleading, promises, and a starting pay, but Tony had traded some of his signal amplifiers and several contracts to a HoloFeed company for his website-thing to use their satellites.

He exhaled. "Launch it, Fri," he said. The percent bar appeared, going to a hundred almost immediately. StarkWeb was active. Tony's fingers ghosted over the keys.

#IAmHere

Well, this is me and here I am!

Underneath, Tony posted a short bio and a funny picture of himself wandering the streets of Eepis Haal, one their traditional carrying bags wrongly used as a hat. He also put random clips of various explosions he made while testing chemicals, the time he got chewed out by one of the Aleena for violating one of their traditions, and a security feed of the 'Falcon's latest, semi-failed landing. In his defense, Gis did it.

He posted it. It was Basic, but would change languages based on the viewer preference.

A ping made him look at the activity log. A new user! Already? WhaTony blinked as he looked at the profile pic. It was a glowinging, pink orb reminiscent of JARVIS. "Fri?"

FRIDAY had posted her own clips, a much funnier range of mistakes by the crew, from Tony getting hit by the FRIDAY-Orb to the tug-O-war between Gis and all the Aleena on the ship.

Gis had won by a landslide, only to be dogpiled by the entire group.

#IAmHere

Hi! I'm Friday, Tony's go-to gal!

Underneath it was a bunch of peppy quotes and just overall... peppiness... that Tony didn't realize FRIDAY was capable of. "With you to the end," FRIDAY said.

"Did I even use the hashtag correctly? I never joined Twitter or SnapChat or whatever."

"I don't know. Miss Potts and the PR division took care of your social media accounts."

"That explains a lot."

Both Tony and FRIDAY stopped their lazy banter as the news feed for StarkWeb alerted them that there was a new post. Neither of them had posted anything. FRIDAY pulled up the newest post. It was a stunning picture of Galee against the sunset of one of the planets they were recently on, beaming at the viewers and hair flying everywhere.

Tony glanced at Galee, at the other terminal. "Peace out," she said, using one of the Earth terms he introduced to the crew. She threw up two fingers.

Another ping alerted him to… Suffee? There was no picture of the Rodian to be seen, just several interestingly angled pictures of the places they've been and the people they saw.

Greer had made one too, only there was single, blurry picture of some unidentifiable blue thing.

Suffee's Chiss friend had joined and friended Galee. A friend request was sent to him too.

Then there was a whole wave of new users and posts. Tony recognized some of the Aleenas's relatives and some Rodians that looked surprisingly similar to Shoragg. And was that one of the slaves they had freed? Where did he get a terminal - he had insisted on being dropped off on a backwater moon…

Tony checked again. Every single one of them, Tony recognized by face, if not name, from Janq Paramexor to one of the people whose bounty he fulfilled. "What…?" he asked, looking at his crew.

"We asked Friday what you were doing and she told us. I've been waiting for forever to show off that pic!" Galee gushed.

"I thought it would be 'cool,'" Quinton said. "I don't like your font."

"You wanted to spread the word on your HoloSite, so we spread the word for you. Our family members, people we've befriended, all our contacts, everyone we met the last couple of days," Suffee explained.

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

After that first, initial burst of users and posts, the HoloSite went silent. No new accounts were created and no new pictures or comments were posted. Honestly, Tony and FRIDAY would have loved to help the HoloSite flourish, but neither of them were experienced in PR. They were forced to just let it be. Besides, the reason Tony created it in the first place was accomplished - FRIDAY now had a finger in roughly - very roughly - a twentieth of the Republic's HoloWeb. She could manipulate or control it like JARVIS had with Earth's internet, but it was a start.

Over the next couple days, the little hashtag - a new concept for this galaxy - was viewed with curiosity by several avid Holonet Surfers, though it was mostly unknown. Then, some enterprising soul from Alderaan created an account.

#IAmHere.

Hi. You can call me Jaime.

There were a couple of pictures of a human-looking girl (Tony knew better than to assume) smiling shyly at the camera, then several more Alderaanian sights and a furry thing with toobig eyes. It was probably their version of cat pictures.

Two more profiles were created, probably her friends - both teens were from Alderaan. They held personable pictures and generic descriptions.

The next day, someone from Tatooine posted, a young moisture farmer. His #IAmHere was exactly what Tony was looking for. It held both hardship and hope. From Tony's discussions with the natives there, there was supposed to be wild slave trading business. The pictures didn't show that, but that was fine. The galaxy had to get used to this new form of communication first.

The first girl commented on the moisture farmer's picture of a huge dust storm, and the moisture farmer replied back. They continued on that thread for a while, getting more comfortable with talking to each other. Tony interrupted their causal barrage of posts to mention they could both 'friend' and 'message' each other.

The posts on that thread stopped after that, but the boy mustered up his guts after a minute and messaged her (Technically, Tony wasn't supposed to know that, but being the creator of the site has its perks - he saw everything that happened).

#IAmHere

Corellia rocks. That guy on the speeder is me.

This time, it was Corellia. Obviously. Anyways, the profile looked fine. There was a kid on a speeder. It seemed like people were starting to get the hang of it.

"Make sure no one posts anything inappropriate, will ya?" Tony asked FRIDAY.

A new post was sent in from Mandalore. Tony curiously opened it, but it was just a couple pictures of blasters and stuff like that. Tony shrugged and closed the feed.

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

Rubbing his hands in glee, Tony eagerly stole the bags Kristoff had lugged in, completely missing the other man's jealousy at his superior strength. "Thanks, Kristy!" Tony belatedly thanked him. Kristoff shot off a light glare at him and waved him off in mock disgust.

Tony made a mental note to have the ex-smuggler reveal the locations of all the 'underground trading centers' he frequented. Phrik, Vibranium, and all the other metals were more costly there, but also more accessible than in official channels. Less regulated, you see. It was almost enough to build FRIDAY's armor.

"Help me with the shading, will you?" he grunted, pouring the metal into the smelter. FRIDAY quickly ran calculations on the dye and bronzer and Tony added it into the molten metal.

Under his careful watch, the silvery metal slowly pinkened. It was merely a blush of pink. "We're going to need more. A lot more."

Tony glanced out the window, seeing nothing but stars zooming by with dizzying speed. Time was running out. Just over three days until he had to be on Croissant or whatever, defending his products. Neither Iron Man nor Iron Maiden were completed, and his website - sorry, HoloSite - didn't have a large enough fanbase. FRIDAY's digs at the business were inconclusive.

At this rate, he'd have to do fireworks above the atmosphere or a huge display of his inventions right before the business meeting with those sharks. That would be the only way to get enough public attention, and even that could fail. It depended on how self-absorbed the Croissant-people actually were.

"Hey Fri? Feel like doing an aerial dance?"

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

Just a couple hours left until they reached Croissant. Tony was letting the Iron Maiden cool, instead by the terminal. FRIDAY was arranging the hundreds of glowing, blue dots in mesmerizing patterns. Along the outer walls of the ship, strange rolling could be heard, like sets of pool balls were sent spinning across. It thoroughly creeped out the crew, but Tony assured them it was nothing to worry about.

-I'm just not the hero type. Clearly.-

They were there, almost twenty-four hours before the meeting was to take place. FRIDAY had answered the airspace people's hails, giving their reason for being there, paying the taxes, everything. They were there. Home of the Jedi. Capital of the Republic. Technological haven. It wasn't what he expected.

Standing motionlessly at the window, Tony stared unblinkingly at the urban planet. It was impressive and terrifying at the same time, like his greatest dream perverted into a nightmare.

The planet was completely overtaken by urban sprawl. The entire thing was a sickly gray color, with not a hint of green or blue.

"What happened to you?" Tony asked quietly, hand on the plexiglass of the window. Contrary to popular belief, Tony's idea of a utopia was not a place where all wildlife was replaced by metals and steels, with circuits instead of grass and robots dogs instead of puppies. FRIDAY hummed in his ear, but she too was speechless.

It was not the dirty despair of Nar Shaddaa, but was somehow worse.

Skyscrapers speared the atmosphere. Factory buildings churned out synthetic oxygen in huge clouds. Speeders whipped past them. People shouting and honking at each other could be heard, even from up on the ship. There was not a plant to be seen. This was what his rivals would have had him do to Earth, just to prove a point.

This was a dead planet, just hanging on through life support. It could make nothing itself, depending on what was brought in from other planets to survive. Did none of the inhabitants see this?

"Steer to the other landing strip. This one will take hours," Suffee sighed, sending a transmission. FRIDAY and Kristoff turned the ship and flew it to the top of the atmosphere.

"I know a place," Kristoff reassured them. He let the ship drift. Tony glanced up. Neither Kristoff nor Suffee seemed concerned at the state of the planet. He looked away.

"Boss!" The 'Falcon stopped short. Kristoff nearly face-planted onto his console, Tony had to grab a conveniently-there joystick to remain on his feet, and Suffee was thrown harshly against the wall with a sound that resembled a whimper.

Kristoff sat up and Tony wobbled upright, but Suffee stayed on the ground. Kristoff clutched his chest and hissing something at FRIDAY through his earpiece. Tony helped Suffee upright, pounding his back when the Rodian couldn't stop coughing. "What is it, Fri?" Tony asked, giving Kristoff a nasty glare. FRIDAY might've answered, but the words were lost to Tony. He was more preoccupied by what he saw outside.

A grey comet filled the viewing window, scraping across the front of the ship with a terrible shriek of metal on metal. The people inside were once again knocked down. Kristoff was fine,

strapped down to the pilot's chair, but Tony only had a second to shield the much more fragile Rodian with his body before they were knocked into a terminal. For a crazy moment, Tony realized that the cockpit had an unhealthy amount of angles and hard surfaces. Then, he had a split second to hope that the rest of the crew was okay. It was a thought that he immediately berated himself for - as a captain, his crew should have been his first concern.

That thought was cut off, however, because a moment later the 'Falcon was hit by something much stronger than a mere graze and sent tumbling helplessly through the air like a leaf in the wind.