9 Chapter 9) – West Coast

After only a couple hours of discussion, mainly revolving around the trio asking every question they could think of in such a small timespan, Tony eventually came back to collect them so that they could return back to the states. During the discussion Mara also confirmed that she achieved her objective of ensuring that everyone had at least a neutral perception of her. Happy and Pepper felt pity for her – a side effect of her amnesia story – so they had a positive view of her, whereas Natasha a.k.a. Natalie was just neutral. She may have dropped the initial suspicion she, without a doubt, had against Mara but, as arguably the best spy on the planet, it was impossible to read what she was thinking through her facial expressions or body language.

Pulling the four out of their conversation, Tony interjected, "Good to see you're all getting along."

As they all turned to face him, Mara was the first to ask, "How did the questioning go? You find out why he had his dick in a twist?"

"That's a painful way to put it, but yes, he let me know his problem with me. I'll explain on the jet back if you're coming?"

Shrugging her shoulders she replied, "Sounds interesting. Why not."

------

Whilst Happy, Pepper and Natalie were waiting for the Stark jet to be cleared for the return flight to Malibu, they took the time to inform Tony of everything Mara talked with them about during the hours he was away questioning the now known Russian, Vanko Jr. So, he was well aware of her lacking memories as well as her 'biological superpowers'.

As the trio were bringing Tony up to speed, Mara explained to me why Tony was silent about his body's condition, [More than likely, he's been internally debating if he wants to tell us, or anyone, about it. He probably wants to spill the beans on everything, so that I could take over his hero shenanigans either until he finds a cure or after he dies in like a week or two. But now that I think about it, after those three are done telling him about my 'memory loss', there's a good chance he won't ask for my help with the hero stuff. He'd probably feel bad about it since he thinks I'm clueless about everything. Since everything seems to be the same as the movie so far, it's also probably safe to assume he hasn't even told Pepper he's dying either.]

Without showing any outward expression on her face that she was communicating with anyone, Mara continued the conversation, [It would depend on the partner probably. Pepper seems like the type to spiral into constant crying and depression if she found out, so it's probably the correct thing for him to keep it from her. Otherwise, he won't be able to continue researching for a cure cause she'll be attached to his hip, and she would become a distraction. As for asking us for help, technically he didn't ask for help with Whiplash. We offered and he accepted. For someone like Tony, with his stupid pride, asking for help is a completely different thing than accepting offered help. Whole lot of good pride does when you're dead. But hey, we'll let him learn the hard way.]

Once the jet was cleared for flight, Mara, Pepper and Tony settled into the fuselage of the jet. Happy took the responsibility for flying the jet, and Natalie joined him in the cockpit after she stated she was interested on seeing how a plane is flown, much to Happy's delight. When they finally got into the sky, Tony began to explain what he learnt during the questioning.

------

Leaning into the backrest of the extremely comfortable chair she was sat on, Mara rubbed her temples with both hands while asking, "So let me get this straight. He attacked you… just to show that you weren't invincible?"

Imitating Mara's temple massage, but hunched forwards in his chair, Tony reaffirms, "Came straight from the horse's mouth. Safe to say he's also got a personal vendetta against my family as well. Said I came from 'A family of Thieves and Butchers'."

Mara sat up straight and focused her eyes on the hunched man, "For someone smart enough to copy your chest battery, he was pretty stupid. Why would you settle for making the perceived 'invincible one' bleed when you could prepare better and kill him. No offense Tony."

"None taken since it's a good point. If he had optimised the performance of his reactor by doubling up his rotations and focused the repulsor energy through ionized plasma channels, on top of not just settled on a torso harness, he might have been able to kill me without having to catch me out of my suit in the first place."

With her eyes widening slightly, appearing like she was shocked by Tony's revelation, Mara actually remembered something completely unrelated to what he was currently talking about. It was essential information about Tony's personality she overlooked when she planned our intervention in Tony's original fight.

[Ah shit El, I just realised something important we fucked up. Tony has a habit of upgrading his suit every time it shows some form of weakness. This fight was meant to inspire him to evolve his suit such that when it is hit with electricity it powers up instead of crippling him. Because we got involved and he never got zapped with the whips, considering we never even gave him a chance to put his suit on in the first place, he won't know to make himself immune to it! I should probably mention it cause he needs that feature later to fight a thunder god and without it he'll probably get stomped.]

Picking out a small section of her internal monologue to focus in on, I inquired, <There are thunder gods in this universe?>

[Meh, more like an adolescent child than a god at this moment in time, but yeah, there's quite a few gods and we'll get to play with them too~.]

Imitating a sage like posture, Mara graces Tony with some words of wisdom, "You'll have to make sure your next suit gets charged if it's hit by lightning or electricity just in case anyone else gets the idea that he used lightning whips because it was your weakness or something."

Tony stops to think at Mara's words for a second, "That's… actually a good point, I should do that. Thanks Mara."

"No need to thank me, once you had some free time you probably would have come up with it as well after what you'd been through."

[Phew, crisis averted.]

As the conversation died out, the TV built into the wall of the jet became clearer for the three passengers.

'…this man has no idea what he's doing. He thinks of the Iron Man weapon as a toy. I was at a hearing where—where Mr. Stark, in fact, was adamant that these suits can't exist anywhere else, don't exist anywhere else, never will exist anywhere else, at least for five to ten years, and here we are in Monaco realizing 'Uh-oh. These suits-'

Cutting off Senator Stern being interviewed on the news; Tony instructs the seemingly voice activated TV to, "Mute."

"Man, Tony, why's that guy got such a hard on for you and your suit? Anyone would think you slept with his wife or something."

"*Sign* I don't know either, I guess he just hates my complete disregard for military orders, the fact the government can't control me, that I won't let them mass-produce my suits for their soldiers or that I'm just too unpredictable. Take your pick."

"Now that you say it out loud, I suppose it makes sense. Doesn't mean he isn't a cunt though."

"That we can agree on."

Yawning and stretching her arms above her head, Mara decides to sleep the rest of the flight. "If there's nothing else, I'll take a nap for the last hour or so of the flight if that's alright? Girl needs her beauty sleep, no matter how short, after all~"

"Yeah, go ahead, it's been a long day."

Nodding to Tony in appreciation, Mara grabs a blanket from the side of her chair before reclining it and starting to get comfy.

As she lies back on the chair ready to drift off, Pepper, speaking for the first time since taking to the sky, politely says, "Sleep well Mara. We'll figure out some sleeping arrangements when we arrive back at Malibu."

Replying with a cheerful, "Will do, cheers Pepper." Mara happily slipped off into her dreamland while Tony and Pepper stayed up to talk for a bit. With me not needing to sleep, I listened to their entire conversation, learning as much as I could about the pair, to assist my host if she ever required it.

It started off with how Tony didn't want to go home and wanted to cancel his birthday party in favour of going to Venice with Pepper. He even justified that he would send Mara to his Malibu home on the Jet whilst they spent time in Venice so she couldn't be a reason for Pepper to refuse. Unfortunately for him, Pepper's priority at the moment was her new CEO position at Stark industries so she still refused the 'company retreat' as Tony put it. After a few more minutes of discussion, they both decided to ultimately copy Mara, taking a nap as well since they too, had a long day.

------

By the time the Stark Industries jet landed in California, it was technically still the dawn of the 24th of May. The jet had taken off from Monaco in the early hours of the day, but since Monaco was 8 hours ahead of the west coast, by the time they had landed in California it was even earlier than they had started the return journey!

As soon as the jet landed, Happy brought round the Range Rover Sport, left at the airfield from their initial flight out to Monaco, to take the group back to Tony's Mansion. This included Mara since she had been invited along in the first place. Although, with the tight seating arrangements, she sat in the boot area, or the 'trunk' as Happy called it, secured down with tendrils functioning as stabilisers and her head resting on the middle seat's headrest allowing her to still converse with everyone.

By the time everyone made it to the mansion it was still very early morning with no sign of the sun, ensuring the outside was enshrouded into darkness. Tony went straight underground to his basement while Pepper immediately set up a mini-control centre at the table in Tony's lounge where the glass windows could be used as display screens. She pulled out her laptop, brought over the landline and set down all her mobile phones to begin firefighting the Public Relation shitshow about to rain down on Stark Industries which she was now CEO of.

Feeling bad, Mara offered to help Pepper out, "Pepper, do you need a hand with anything? I don't really know what to do, but if you've got anything I could do let me know."

"Don't worry about it, Mara. Would you mind checking up on Tony, I feel like something's been off with him recently."

"Sure thing. Just remember that if you need anything, and I can help, let me know."

After their brief discussion, Natalie made her way over to Pepper. She also brought out her laptop and various phones, expanding the control centre essentially turning the entire lounge into an emergency office. Mara decided to check on Tony like Pepper wanted. She was going to check on him regardless, but apparently it was polite to ask Pepper if she needed help even when she knew that there was nothing she could help with.

What greeted Mara when she got down the basement steps was a locked glass door, with accompanying floor to ceiling windows. This gave whoever reached that point an unobstructed view into the humongous garage spanning nearly the entire floorplan of the mansion. The glass door was locked and didn't appear to have a key hole or anything, for that matter, other than a handle.

Thinking for a second, Mara projected her thoughts to me, [The door is magnetically locked and either a code or biometric data is needed to unlock it using the display on the glass window next to it El. That's what it was in the movie anyways, and, so far, everything's been exactly the same.]

<Do we knock on the door or window to get him let us in? I assume need act like don't know how this opens operate holographic display.>

[Correctomundo, the best thing to do is see if he opens it himself but judging from the way he's sat in a car in the middle of the garage fully focused on the screens hovering in front of him I'm not holding onto hope he'll notice us.]

Knocking on the window leads exactly to the outcome that she anticipated. Tony didn't react at all to the sound so either he was completely elsewhere mentally like Mara suggested, or the glass was soundproofed.

<Do you want me to break it, even if it is strong enough survive conventional human weaponry, should pose no problem us.>

[Nah, we'll go see Pepper again and see if she can let us in. Worst case, Tony's friend Rhodey should be coming over soon. He's coming to let him know the US Air Force are a hairsbreadth away from storming his house with tanks so they can take his suit tech.]

Making our way back up the stairs we noticed that Natalie was just as knowledgeable as Pepper, the CEO of the company was, regarding the inner workings and behind the scenes of Stark industries. It seemed that her repertoire of skills were continually increasing, the more we saw her of her. Since both women were on their phones talking to various disgruntled voices, Mara decided not to interrupt them and so waited until Pepper was free before asking how she should get through the locked door.

After nearly 10 minutes, Pepper was about to come off the phone after talking about how 'the fundamentals of the company are still very, very strong', when the front door to the mansion opened and a man in business attire walked in.

He had cool, chocolate coloured skin, with dark brown eyes and buzzcut black hair. He was wearing a pale blue, military standard office shirt tucked into black formal trousers with a belt. Said belt would have blended in with the pants if it was not for the buckle being a standout silver, holding his pants snug. He had a black tie with silver clip, matching his belt buckle, secured around his neck, partially hidden underneath his shirt collar. Military identification was the predominant feature of his shirt attire. It consisted of a nametag above his right pocket, two shoulder pads and pins, one on each side of his body, signifying his rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. Finishing off the military ensemble was Aviator and Parachutist skill badges above the left shirt pocket.

Going off what Mara had previously said, alongside the name tag on his shirt, it was clearer than a cloudless sky, that the man was Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, a.k.a. Rhodey.

Like the man on a mission he was, he completely glossed over Mara and interrupted Pepper before she could hang up on the person she was speaking to.

"Where is he?"

Natalie was the first to turn around and tell him, "He doesn't want to be disturbed."

Within half a second, however, Pepper, clearly not caring about what Tony had instructed his assistant, turned around as well to tell him directly, "He's downstairs."

Neither of the two women waited for a response from him, or argued with each other, and immediately turned back away from him to continue their conversations or emails.

Whichever fire burned the hottest.

Mara decided that it would also be best not to bother the two firefighters and instead walked up to Rhodey to introduce herself prior to them going down to the garage.

"Colonel Rhodes, right? I'm Mara. I met Tony and the rest in Monaco, helping stop the Russian psycho from making ribbons out of Tony. Pleasure to meet you, I'm a big fan."

"I'm not entirely sure how you can be my fan since we've never met and I'm not exactly famous, but sure, nice to meet you too. Like you said, I'm James Rhodes. You can just call me Rhodey like everyone else I know out of work."

Shaking his hand, Mara expanded on why she was his fan without letting anything slip about her knowing the future.

"I'm more so a fan of your personality, from what I've seen, than anything to do with fame. I find it respectable that you don't blindly support Tony as Iron Man just because he is your friend. I also appreciate how you respect authority but are more than willing to challenge it, even when ordered, if it goes against your morals."

After seeing Rhodey furrow his brows and open his mouth to talk, Mara interrupted him by holding her hand up, preventing him from getting a word out.

"And before you say anything, yes this is the first time we've met and no I'm not some stalker or anything. I just watched Tony's hearing and came to a conclusion from that. If I've made any incorrect conclusions, you're more than welcome to correct me. Now, should we go and see Tony? No doubt he's trying to shoulder everything about Vanko Jr., even with someone like me here."

Rhodey relaxed his facial muscles, seemingly satisfied with Mara's explanation, he agreed, "Yeah let's go." Mara also noticed that he didn't correct her assumptions about him.

Making their way down the stairs, Rhodey requested, "Can you let me speak to him first please? I have something important to talk about that he needs to sort as soon as possible."

Knowing exactly what he needed to tell Tony from her memory of the scene in the movie, Mara was more than happy to let him go first. "No problemo, just pretend I'm not here. I'll have a look around at all the cool Iron Man stuff or find something else to occupy me while you do that."

Almost as soon as their quick conversation had ended, they reached the bottom of the stairs where the glass door and windows Mara previously couldn't get through were. Rhodey accessed the garage like he had countless times before, putting in a pin code on the holographic display and sliding down some kind of bar on the same hologram.

In wonder, Mara spoke through our connection, [The display identified him as Rhodey. I wonder if the pin and the bar thing are unique to him. Or maybe there is some hidden facial scanner or something? This is already so sick and that's just to get into the garage!]

<If you're planning to associate with Tony for a while, you should ask him about it at some point. Now that he isn't CEO of his company anymore, will probably be spending all time down here.>

[Yeah, even when Tony moves out to his new tower, we'll still visit to play with his toys if we get bored. It would be convenient to at least be on his system.]

Instead of looking around the garage at the Iron Man stuff like she said she might, Mara instead went to the fridge at the back of the workshop and took out a Dr. Pepper before cracking it open. Afterwards she sat herself on the white sacco style chair facing where Tony was sat in his Roadster, adorned with flame decals, and had various floating screens hovering in the air in front of them both. She then focused all her senses on watching the movie unfold, in person, with her own eyes and ears.

"…rolling tanks up the PCH, knocking down your front door and taking these. They're gonna take your suits, Tony, okay? They're sick of the games.-"

[Man, I wish Tony had popcorn in here, it would be the cherry on top right about now. Actually, he probably does somewhere, but I don't want to interrupt their moment or risk missing this, you know?]

"-You said nobody else would possess this technology for 20 years. Well, guess what? Somebody else had it yesterday. It's not theoretical anymore."

Throughout Rhodey's speech to Tony, the former was walking closer to the car the latter was sat in, and when he finally got within arm's reach of Tony, he realised something was wrong.

As Rhodey placed his hand on Tony's shoulder he asked, "Are you listening to me? Are you okay?"

Tony slowly turned to look at Rhodey before he slapped his hand on Rhodey's bicep. Mara took the action as a sign to move closer and get involved slightly. She slowly got up from her chair and made her way over to Tony's large semi-circle desk, sitting down on the chair.

After Tony said, "Let's go." he opened the door of the Roadster he was sat in and tried to get out. Unfortunately, he seemed to have underestimated his condition as his legs gave out under him. He fell down onto his knees thankfully managing to catch himself on the car itself to prevent him from completely falling onto the floor.

Quickly running around the back of the car, Rhodey picked Tony up under his arms and wrapped one of his arms over his own shoulder to help him stand, "Hey man. Hey, hey! You alright?"

"Yeah, I should get to my desk."

As soon as Mara saw what happened she stood up from the chair she was sat on and pushed it around the desk towards Tony, so Rhodey wouldn't have to carry him as far. As he sat on the chair, he spoke to her.

"See that Cigar box, Mara?"

Nodding, she points at the rectangular box, "The one on your desk, yeah?"

"It's Palladium, can you grab one out for me?"

"Sure thing, bossman."

Doing as requested, Mara opened the lid of the brown cigar box, revealing six rectangular metallic slots. Of the six, two were empty while the other four contained form-fitting, rectangular cores of the Palladium Tony used as a battery for the Arc Reactor in his chest. As she removed one of the cores from the cigar box, Tony took the time to remove the Reactor from his chest and ejected the worn-out core currently within it.

As Rhodey witnessed this, he asked the question that would be on anyone's mind, "Is that supposed to be smoking?"

To which Tony casually replied, "If you must know, it's Neutron damage. It's from the reactor wall."

Mara picked up the Reactor and pulled out the ejected core, completely exposing the true extent of the damage done to the Palladium. The previous silver sheen of the rectangular core had been replaced with a corroded rust-like appearance and a visibly deformed shape that was in no way comparable to the previous rectangular form or silver colouring at all.

"*Whistle* Damn Tony, this doesn't look healthy at all. You had this in your body?"

After she asked her question, the only response she received was Tony turning away. Mara inserted the new core into the Reactor while Rhodey spotted Tony's neck and asked about the markings.

"And how about that high-tech crossword puzzle on your neck?"

Unlike Mara, he got a reply from Tony, albeit a clearly dishonest one, "Road rash."

Mara then handed Tony his Arc Reactor back, with its new battery core installed. He inserted it into his chest cavity and secured it in place with a couple of strong slaps after giving her a quiet, "Thank you."

He then grabbed a bottle full of extremely dark green, basically black, fluid that looked like motor oil used in a car and had a drink. He then turned back to the pair.

"What are you two looking at?"

To which Mara allowed Rhodey take the lead as Tony turned away again, "I'm looking at you. You wanna do this whole lone gunslinger act and it's unnecessary. You don't have to do this alone."

Tony countered back, "You know, I wish I could believe that. I really do. But you gotta trust me. Contrary to popular belief, I know exactly what I'm doing."

Mara decided to interject to try and help the situation, "Yeah sure, you knew what you were doing getting attacked without your suit in Monaco. You already know you're not doing this alone now that I'm in the picture, so why not let Rhodey join the club? Not like you're lacking in the suit department, and you can only wear one at a time. The rest are just collecting dust."

"As much as I appreciate the help in Monaco, Mara. Happy had a portable suit with him so I would have been able to resolve it myself if I just stalled for long enough. And although you're here to help now, you can't always be around me since you've got your own life."

"Haaah… Well don't say I never offered to help. I may not remember a lot about myself, but I do know that fighting Mr. Whippy was pretty fun. I'll leave you two lovebirds to talk out your issues."

Just as Mara got halfway to the glass garage door, to go back upstairs, she stopped mid-stride and tapped her fist against her open palm, clearly having remembered something.

"Oh right, I almost forgot! Tony, can you give me a phone or something so you can contact me if you do need help? Kinda don't have one and got no money to buy one. I'll also crash on your couch or something, 'K thanks bye~"

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