7. An Adventure Starts (It's about time)

The Iron Man armor was a heavy piece of technology that could weigh tons at its heaviest (VERONICA armor), but the titanium needed for his preferred titanium-gold alloy was proving much more difficult to procure. Apparently, titanium was all but unknown in this galaxy. Instead, Tony was offered metals more costly than platinum and assured that they were some of the strongest materials available. He wasn't able to get phrik, but the rest were his, with heavy bartering and promises of future business. Cortosis and Mandalorian iron. Songsteel.

Ultrachrome. Beskar. Neuranium.

Tony had bought less than half an ounce each of all of the metals. He didn't need much more for testing.

Of course, the first thing he found out was that he had been cheated: Subject Two was the same thing as Subject Five. Beskar and Mandalorian iron were the same thing. Other than that, everything went well. More than well, actually. Subject One was actually a rock with special abilities. Subject Three would have made Vibranium jealous. Speaking of Vibranium...

"Boss, this is Vibranium," FRIDAY stated.

"Excuse me?" Tony asked, glancing over at Subject Four. FRIDAY ran the scanner over the rounded metal pebble again.

"I am certain. This is the exact molecular formula of Vibranium," FRIDAY answered.

"Exponential times the availability at a fraction of the cost," Tony murmured with a smirk, shaking his head in wonder. It led to questions, though. If there was more Vibranium in this universe, it would be logical to conclude that Vibranium came from this universe. If they found and replicated the path the Vibranium took to get to Earth... "And you said Subject Two was more durable?"

"Yes, along with Three."

Wakanda's going to be jealous," Tony snickered. "Okay, Fri, set aside a small portion of my funds every week. I need enough credits for ten pounds of Subject Four, one pound of Subject Three, four pounds of Subject Two, and possibly half a pound of Subject Six."

"And Subject One?"

"Both of its abilities are easily replicated. Not worth the price. Plus, it's a rock."

"Confirmed. You currently have forty-two percent of the funds needed," FRIDAY added smugly.

"Whoa, where did that come from? You didn't rob a bank, do you?" Tony questioned. He wasn't sure that FRIDAY could transfer that amount of money untracked and he was unwilling to risk his girl like that.

"Stocks," FRIDAY answered, exasperated. FRIDAY had been playing with stocks? Smart.

"Stocks, huh? That's my girl," Tony said proudly. His little girl was taking initiative.

"Thanks, dad," FRIDAY said softly. Tony froze. Sure, he regarded FRIDAY as his own child, and she called him dad whenever she was frightened for his life, but this was a completely different scenario. He wasn't in any danger... "Boss? Did I do something wrong?" FRIDAY asked quietly.

This snapped Tony out of his shock. He was overthinking this. Tony shook his head. "No! No, you didn't do anything wrong, Fri. I was..." Tony searched for the right words. "I was just surprised. Lost of things are changing. That's all. You're growing up so fast."

"If it makes you uncomfortable..." FRIDAY hedged.

"Heck, no! This is great! Unexpected, but great," Tony said, wondering what a normal father was supposed to say. "I'm just going to keep calling you Fri, if that's alright with you. 'My daughter' is way too formal, don't you think? Too much of a mouthful, if you catch my drift. I mean, if you want me to, I guess I can call you that. It'll take some getting used to, but it's doable."

"Friday's fine," FRIDAY assured him. "...Dad."

Tony smiled up at where the orb was hovering over the desk, making sure that the cameras and sensors caught every inch of it. They both turned back to the metals, the father-anddaughter pair happily 'sciencing' together.

-Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?-

Bounty hunting was... a different experience. It was the subtlety of weeding out Obie's moles, the fire of the Avenger's clashes, the in-and-outs of Iron Man's first, self-imposed 'missions,' and the false pleasantries and double meanings of foreign dignitaries. All that was added to 'not-enough-credits' and 'Tony, the ship doesn't have enough hyperfuel for that!'

Basically, it was an organized chaos that he was intimately familiar with.

After he tried to straighten out the mess with Gis and the 'Wookie,' the two of them teamed up to take him down - or, as FRIDAY gleefully called it, 'totally owned by a lizard and a rug.'

Apparently, that ground whatever beef they had with each other. They still eyed each other with suspicion and distrust, but they weren't actively trying to strangle each other, so that was a plus. Throughout the entire fiasco, the man Suffee brought along unhelpfully laughed and kept riling them up. Tony ordered him to the brig, which was completely ignored, even by Suffee.

Apparently, the man - Kristiff Lonely or something or the other - was a brilliant pilot. At first, Tony was offended that they thought he wasn't good enough to pilot his own ship, but, as FRIDAY pointed out, sometimes, the captain just commandeered the ship and ordered the crew around. At any rate, he couldn't stay there for 24/7, or whatever the phrase was, here.

He had to eat and sleep, of course. At any rate, Christopher Alone was an 'ex'-smuggler ("I stopped smuggling for twenty-one days, now!" "You've been a prisoner for twenty-one days.") Five minutes behind the wheel proved that Kristian could definitely do some drastic evasion maneuvers.

Chewbacca, the Wookie, had been a spacefarer for a decade or so, now. He was sort of a jack-of-all-trades, something Tony deeply respected. He and Gis didn't get along because of some inherent racism between their species. Something about Trandoshans hunting on Chewbacca's planet. Tony couldn't understand Wookie-language, and Gis's enthusiastic miming was rather unhelpful, to say the least. Tony muted FRIDAY, not trusting FRIDAY's quick words. He knew that she was biased against Gis (sibling rivalry, anyone?) and that a biased explanation was often worse than heading into things with an open mind.

An act of good faith, Tony gave Suffee full control over their collective bounty hunting activities. In hindsight, giving the most pacifist member of the crew in control of the most violent activity might have been a mistake. The first thing Suffee did was filter out all bounties that said "Wanted: Dead or Alive," "Hit," or "Assassination." What it led to was a long list of object retrievals and rescues.

"Those are...interesting enough," Tony said cautiously, watching from over his shoulder. Most of them led to fighting, anyhow. Thieves really didn't want to give up whatever they stole.

Tony pointed at one that seemed like the most action-packed. "How 'bout that one? I want to be a knight in shining armor. Feel like rescuing a princess from a gang of thieves?"

Suffee barely spared a glance before deleting it.

"Hey!" Tony protested. "I wanted to kiss the princess!" Tony had kissed more than his fair share of princesses. They were actually surprisingly bad kissers, actually. Tony wouldn't mind kissing the princess, though. Did this universe's princesses also tend to give their rescuers a kiss in thanks?

"She's kidnapped by the Hutts for her father cheating them out of several thousand credits. They aren't going to let her go, and we aren't going to get into it."

"They used it to get rid of poverty on their half of a moon! They shouldn't get punished for doing a good deed," Tony said. "Seriously, are the Hutts that bad?" Honestly, the most contact he had with a Hutt was when one pushed him off a ramp to make way. Rude, yes, but murderous?

Suffee gave him an incredulous look. "They are the greatest crime lords of the galaxy. Do not interfere."

"Malfia, got it," Tony muttered. He felt sorry for the kidnapped girl, but he wasn't influential enough to affect things even at a local level, yet, and the Iron Man armor couldn't go through space or travel at lightspeed. The Hutts didn't seem up to Hydra standards, more like the Ten Rings. Still, it was something Tony had to look into. He needed to make sure they weren't some sort of Robin Hood organization, then see what he could do to start chipping away at their power base. "Where to, now?"

-Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?-

It turned out that Suffee wanted to retrieve a rare book that his family once guarded, many centuries ago. It had left Rodia - homeland of the Rodians - and somehow made its way to the Outer Core with some Rodian smuggler, transferred hands well over dozen times, then got on some Outer Rim planet for several decades. Now, the Rodian that collected it had posted on the Guild's Bounty Board as stolen.

Under Suffee's watchful eyes, crates of some sort of cherry-like fruit were loaded into the 'Falcon, packed into the cargo hold with the twenty-or-so humanoids who were waiting for the ship to edge closer to the Core Worlds to depart. The Rodian had stated that it was a common delicacy that many of his species consumed and would be a useful side-income. Tony had tried one, only to spit it out. If the Rodians wanted it, they could have all of it.

Of course, what Tony thought to be the most boring mission ever led to the most interesting encounter Tony had yet.

The Outer Rim planet turned out to be a rather swampy rainforest, mostly inhabited by Rodians, humans, and a blueish race of humans called the Chiss. There used to be a lot more humans, but rising contention between the Chiss and the Rodians led to almost all the humans departing towards neighboring suns.

At first, it was just a normal 'rich-guy's favorite so-and-so went missing' gig. Personally, Tony thought that Tysooso just misplaced the book and forgot. The gigantic mansion the old Rodian owned was certainly crowded enough for entire speeders to get buried in. There were 'priceless' artifacts in stacked glass boxes, enough gems to give Wanda a headache, and more weapons scattered carelessly on the walls and in crates than Thor, Rogers, and Barton could've worn out in a human lifetime.

Of course, since Miss Universe (or perhaps Lady Fate) wasn't too pleased with him, the simple hide-and-seek turned out to be much more complicated. The planet, Sanshri happened to be embroiled in a Cold War that anyone who didn't visit the planet was completely unaware of. In Earth terms, there was at least a bomb scare every other week.

After Afghanistan, Tony was understandably worried about taking civilians into such a tension-filled area, but the crew had assured him that, living in Nar Shaddaa (or, in Chewbacca and Christin's case, as slaves) had made them completely capable of holding their own. They were all willing to brave the planet, more so than he was. Tony was far from reassured, but it wasn't his choice to make. Democracy and all that.

In any case, Suffee wasn't going to budge on the thought of that lost artifact. 'It's a priceless piece of history!' Yeah, right. Tony was of the opinion that 'important' data like that should be scanned and mass-transmitted to a bunch of datapads all around the galaxy to prevent it from being lost. If it wasn't important enough to make multiple copies of, then the info on it wasn't that important. But, hey! That's just Tony and his paranoia.

So in any case, he and his crew were finished sorting through the junk within two days. Tony's modified scanners that he rigged up from extra starship parts helped out a lot. It scanned for anything made out of gold. If a starship's powerful sensors couldn't find a gold-embellished book, then it wasn't in the house.

Greer and some of the other crew members were hesitant to listen to his inventions, but Tony was sure they'd come to trust his technology in time. At any rate, the Chiss hair Suffee was OCD enough to pick out was able to be identified through FRIDAY's DNA scan.

-Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?-

FRIDAY identified the Chiss who stole the book. Suffee wasted no time 'convincing' the poor Chiss to reveal who hired him. Tony wasn't sure how, but it involved a handful of the bitter cherries in the cargo hold and about five bottles of hot sauce.

So now, there they were, neck deep in Chiss-Land in the middle of a 'formal festival.' Galee was in a pretty, floaty dress, while Greer, the Kristy dude, and Tony were in monkey suits with the standard green color of the Rodian-supporting humans. Suffee refused to go, even at the chance of finding a lost book. Apparently, it wasn't that he was afraid of being lynched.

No, the Rodians on board hated the thought of dressing up. Understandable, but annoying.

It was a perfect set-up, with Greer 'harassing' Galee in full sight of Tysooso's rivals. Predictably, one of the Chiss gentlemen decided to 'rescue' a suitably tearful Galee, who sprouted pitiable tales of how the big, mean Rodians took advantage of her destitute situation, and her family's homelessness. The Chiss ate it up. The Chiss who rescued her wasn't the Chiss they were aiming for, but the man's nephew.

Eh, close enough.

Tony was very proud of his crew's acting. Kristal was there was a potential distraction and Tony was there to act as back-up if things went wrong, but it was clear that Galee and Greer didn't need help. Galee wormed her way into the man's good graces and would be having lunch with him the following day. Tony was all for just outright asking the guy about rare texts, but Galee had convinced him that it was a better idea to slow it down a bit.

Still, Tony worried.

-Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?-

The Iron Man armor wouldn't be fully functional until he got all the metals he needed, but Tony wasn't the one that needed protection. He'd actually been working on a couple of things for his crew. As such... Tony handed a thick, metal belt to Galee, who looked at it in despair.

"Oh, lighten up! It's just a projectable shield, a camera, and a panic button," Tony said crossly. "It's not a collar or manacle. It takes forever to modify standard shielding to generate that small!"

"It goes horribly with this skirt!" Galee protested. "You couldn't have painted it gold, or even silver? Plain metallic grey isn't a flattering color!"

"Hold on, you don't care about the fact that it's heavy or that it can repel a bunch of far-ranged blaster bolts or books that are thrown at you, you just don't like the color?" Tony asked.

This was... admittedly never an issue. Romanoff just spray-painted everything black, while Wanda didn't use anything tech-related in battle, other than throwing them at people. The guys didn't care about how an object looked, just that it fit comfortably in their hands and that it worked. "Friday thought it was fine." FRIDAY had added some curves and grooves into the metal, both for an easy grasp and for aesthetic reasons.

"Why would someone throw a book at Galee?" Suffee asked crossly. "You aren't, by any chance, referring to the Book of Elders?" He was promptly ignored.

"Friday's a..." Galee hesitated. "A little unexperienced in areas of human fashion."

Tony knew what Galee was going to say. FRIDAY's a droid. He exhaled heavily. He and FRIDAY had their work cut out for them, getting rid of all preconceptions like that. "Just... borrow some silver heels from Pep-" He stopped, mouth moving uselessly. Pepper and her array of fashionable shoes weren't here. Why did he think- It's been a while since he had a relapse. It was an unpleasant jolt that made him feel small and insignificant in the face of universe. "Just... put on a black dress or something. Black goes with everything."

Galee blinked at him slowly. "Is everything alright, sir?" she asked him timidly.

"Just memories of someone I used to love," Tony said bitterly.

"I reminded you of her?" Galee shifted back on her heels a little.

"Nah, she just had every type of footwear imaginable. She has heels that can go with anything. Giant, bulky, metal corsets included." He sent a wry look at the belt hanging loosely from Galee's hand.

Galee pursed her lips. "Black would send the wrong impression. White isn't much better. I think a nice, shiny blue would do. That, or a pattern..." She gave a curt nod and walked off.

"Women," Tony muttered, head spinning from the sudden change in topic. "Did I say something?" he asked FRIDAY.

"Men," FRIDAY retorted.

-Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?-

It went well until it didn't. Galee's surveillance was able to confirm that Cur'reth'urerron-call-me-Hue's uncle had the book stolen. Tony and Kristoff, having drawn the short straws, were volunteered into retrieving the object. Tony had spent most of their savings on the metals, so they were rather low on weapons. Greer, Shoragg, and a couple others reluctantly handed over their blasters, while someone else offered a durasteel blade that was declined. Clothes the color of the planet's brown flora were borrowed and tools were scrounged up.

Just as Tony and the 'ex'-smuggler were breaking into the mansion, everything went to hell. A nearby explosion caused Krystil to drop his lock-pick with a curse. Why they were still using locks, Tony didn't know, but he knew they couldn't stand in the open. By mutual agreement, the two humans ducked and rolled as speeders burst out of the tree line and zoomed around small obstacles. Humans he didn't know charged out of the main building to smaller ones surrounding it get a better vantage point. Tony was separated from Kristen as other aliens attacked.

No, not aliens... They were humans, or at least of a species that diverged from humans.

"Friday, who are they?" Tony asked. "Guys, anyone know these people?"

"Scanning," FRIDAY said, sounding strained.

"I don't think they're from the city..." Galee reported, uncertain. "Please, make sure Hue is okay! Miss Friday, would you please move the camera higher? I can't find him!"

"We're under attack, and all you can think about is that blue guy?" Kristoff yelled, both through the earpiece and close by. Tony looked behind himself, spotting Kristoff behind some purple bushes. He raised a hand to alert Kristoff, only to yank it back as a dead attacker fell down next to him.

"We're not under attack, they are!" protested Tony. After all, the Chiss stronghold and the guards who manned it were the ones being shot at, not Kristoff and Tony. As far as Tony knew, none of them knew the two bounty hunters were supposed to be there.

"None of the attackers are notorious enough to be reported," FRIDAY fretted.

Tony spotted dark grey lettering on the man's brown uniform. "KSC! Does anyone know what KSC stands for?"

"It's the kriffing Karazak Slavers Cooperative!" Kristoff bellowed, launching himself out of the bush, uprooting it as he slammed into the closest man in brown. "Frizzled slavers!"

'Frizzled?' Tony mouthed in confusion as he stepped out of his hiding place to aid his team member with several repulsor blasts.

"Common smuggler's swear," FRIDAY told him shortly, having seen him from wherever she sent her camera-orb.

"Guess he was telling the truth when he said he was a smuggler," Tony said disappointedly. The palm of his new gauntlet was heating up uncomfortably. Apparently, he used the wrong alloy. Inching closer to his enraged ally, Tony snagged the firearm from Kristoff's belt. He switched to using Greer's blaster, seeing that Kristoff wasn't using it.

"Ex! Ex-smuggler! I'm a skrogging bounty hunter now!" The self-proclaimed skrogging bounty hunter was choking another human with the fork of the bush, having knocked out the first one.

Just when Tony thought things couldn't get any crazier, a man in wizard-y robes jumped out of a kriffing tree and started decapitating the aliens with a glowing sword.

"Color me impressed," Tony said, staring at the very shiny piece of technology. It sliced neatly through a vehicle that was a cross between a buggy and a really fat speeder bike. "Color me very impressed." A dead person, cut into two nearly symmetrical pieces, landed on the ground several meters away from him. "Um... actually, I take that back."

"Color, got it, boss. What color hair dye do you wish for me order?" FRIDAY asked through the earpiece with false seriousness.

Tony groaned at the weak attempt at humor. "That was awful."

"He was joking," Kristoff's voice snapped.

"So was she," Tony said dryly. "Actually, mine wasn't a joke. It was an expression. What's up with the maniac with a glow-in-the-dark sword?" Really, maniac was really the only way to describe him. He was a slash-happy moron that ran headfirst into danger. Even more surprisingly, he didn't get hit. The aliens must have Chitari-level aiming skills, or he just had really good reflexes, not that Tony was jealous. That had to be the only explanation. That, and luck.

"What? You don't know about the Jedi?"

"Fri?"

"The Jedi are a group of government-funded peacekeeping force, more or less allowed on any planet. They are rumored to have abilities unlike any other."

Tony took a moment to think that over. Overpowered people who thought they had the right to butt in anywhere, government and civilians' opinions and desires be d***ed. There was only one conclusion to be reached... "Great. More Avengers," Tony groaned. "Can't I catch a break?"

"No," deadpanned FRIDAY.

"Be nice," Suffee scolded from the 'Falcon.

"It's nice that you acknowledged me as a sentient, learning being," FRIDAY said snidely. "Boss!" she warned as the Jedi moved too close to her father for comfort.

"I see him," Tony said, ducking a blaster bolt and firing his own. The Jedi was getting close to where two slavers hid behind three fallen speeders. "Gandalf, behind you!"

"It is highly unlikely he understands that reference," Friday informed him. "Less than a hundredth of a percent, actually. Even less than the chances of-"

"Cut out the chatter!" Kristoff grunted as he punched someone else.

Extermis gave him a split-second's warning to dodge, arm raised to deflect. Searing heat whited out his vision for a moment. "Hey, I'm with you on the beat-up-guys-in-brown!" Tony protested, eyes focusing on the attacker - the Jedi. He looked down to check his arm. "Um... That wasn't what I meant!" he blurted, realizing that he was clad in brown.

Without even an apology, the Jedi turned away.

"He just broke your hand-gun thing!" Galee said, horrified. Tony scowled at the two-inch slash on the forearm of the gauntlet.

"No, he just disabled some of the circuitry. It can still fire." He shot at a pair of slavers that peeked over a crumbled wall. Tony raised his voice. "It was very expensive, though, so I expect you to pay for it, Robes! I can take your light-sword instead, though!" he shouted after the Jedi. The sword was admittedly good technology. Tony wanted to get his hands on it. It went right through the aliens like butter. Horrifying and gruesome, but something he had to have, if only to defend himself and his people.

"Son of a blaster," insulted Kristoff as Tony knocked out the last slaver still standing. He kicked at a (hopefully) unconscious body. "You realize they're basically broke, right? No accepting money, no material possesions. Heck, no emotions! They're practically droids."

Tony straightened and surveyed the destruction. His time on the Avengers team had made him more or less an expert on architecture. The buildings had suffered cosmetic damage, but the structure was still firm. None of them were in any danger of falling. In silent agreement, Kristoff had his six o'clock as they made their way to a large, gaping hole on the main building. They two of them strode purposely through it and down the hall. Assuming that they were meant to be there, the building's guards ran right past them, busy securing the premises. FRIDAY directed her orb ahead, already scanning for gold.

"The Jedi is in the next hall over, talking to the thief and his nephew," FRIDAY said. Tony and Kristoff froze, immediately backtracking. It was all for naught. The Jedi rounded the corner,

not seeming at all surprised to see them there. Hue and some other Chiss, presumably a guard, followed.

Seeing that they were caught, Tony held out his hand. "Hello, sir Jedi. May I say it was an honor fighting with you? Those sword moves you used were kriffing awesome!" Tony told him enthusiastically. He had to cut himself off, remembering Underoos fondly. Even so, he couldn't help giving a longing glance at the light-sword.

"Bounty hunter," the 'Jedi' greeted with contempt, inclining his head a fraction, but not reaching for the hand. "I wasn't expecting one of your kind here."

"Um.. okay? I thought they were supposed to be the good guys," Galee huffed.

Tony withdrew his outstretched hand, a hard glint appearing in his eyes. If the Jedi wanted to pay this game, Tony would happily oblige. He was a fluent speaker of 'arrogant, entitled asshole.' "Oh, yeah, we kind of know everyone, get into everything. Part of our charm, you see. So... doth your mother know you weareth her drapes?"

Kristoff snorted. 'Hue' had a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like laughter.