Capítulo 12: Confrontation
"Fuck." I yelled out as I began to suck the finger I had just pinched into a magnetic servo prototype I was building. I had been stuck on this for the past week, and it was a necessity that I did until I got my hands on some alien tech. It was pretty much impossible for me to create nanotechnology with any meaningful efficiency; until then, I would have to make the best robots I could.
Theoretically, magnetic servos could take the place of the regular pneumatic or hydraulics I was currently using. They were also going to be much cheaper to use since they did not need constant maintenance, were simpler to manufacture, and used much less power, which, combined with carbon batteries, would allow me to make cheap worker drones on mass for future projects. My primary goal right now was to create worker drones that could be used in disaster relief to provide medical care, search and rescue, and rebuild infrastructure.
A few months ago, cyclone Nargis hit off the coast of Myanmar and killed over 130,000 people. All I could do was send aid money, but inevitably, over ninety percent of it ended up in the hands of corrupt officials.
I intended to have a much larger effect. I would take the oil tankers I had bought, strip them out, and turn them into giant hives for worker drones, hospitals, and materials. I couldn't remember every natural disaster that was going to happen in the next twenty years, but I hoped to have the fleet of relief ships ready for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which would claim over 350,000 lives.
Actually, now that I think about it, when there was Fukushima again, I should probably do something about that.
…
In the streets of St.Louis was a convoy of three large vans, moving across the urban landscape, inside several masked men, all armed with military-grade rifles, approaching an innocuous building. The Convoy split up as they arrived, one each taking one of the entrances. Simultaneously, all three vans came to a stop, and out of each, a dozen men came out.
Screams echoed as bystanders saw the men, some calling 911 while others ignored it, minding their own business.
They stormed the building as one let out a burst of his rifle and the ceiling of the lobby and said, "Everyone out, NOW!!!" before letting out another burst. Within minutes, they had secured all the exits and barricaded most of them.
Within ten minutes, the police had arrived, but they had already cleared all twenty floors of the building, taking a hundred or so hostages from the upper levels while letting the majority out. Soon, a cordone was set up around the building as hostage negotiators were called and news crews started to get an inkling of a story.
However, within two minutes of the men arriving, Jarvis had already been alerted by one of his automated protocols, which tapped into the NSA's monitoring feeds. He had other protocols for scouring social media, other countries monitoring feeds, and dozens of other sources of information. Each of them would filter through petabytes of information every minute and channel terabytes of useful information back to him.
Within five seconds of being alerted to the presence of a hostage situation, Jarvis frowned, or at least created the feelings he had approximated with causing someone to frown within his personality matrix. Something was off here.
He had only managed to identify one of the hostage takers as an American who was employed at a private security company. That, combined with the fact that he had suspected the building of being a government blacksite of some kind, raised several red flags for him.
Jarvis immediately flagged Tony, who was complaining about taking some physical damage, and tried to alert him to the fact that he needed his input. However, the man just seemed to stare off into space for several seconds, thinking about something, before gaining what Jarvis thought was a resolute expression on his face and then noticing the notification.
"What's up, Jarvis?" Tony's voice came into one of the microphones inside the workshop. Immediately, the sound was run through some very complicated speech-to-text software so Jarvis could understand what he was saying. A split second later, he replied, "I have a situation with which I need your attention, sir."
"On Screen." He replied, before chuckling silently while shaking his head and saying, "I don't know why saying that is so funny."
Jarvis had been confused by the changes his creator had made to his mental state in the last few months. He was aware of how traumatic events can affect humans in various ways, but this was outside of the expected parameters he could predict. He immediately shut down that logic loop that had kept popping up and deleted it since it only ever led to either a dead end or draining a significant amount of computational resources. Jarvis just gained an exasperated feeling in his personality matrix and realised he was still a long way from fully understanding his creator's species.
…
I looked at the several phone and security camera feeds of the events and said, "Is the suit on route?"
"Yes, sir, its ETA is approximately seven minutes," replied Jarvis immediately.
I chuckled slightly, seeing all the information Jarvis had displayed as to why he hadn't just acted automatically, and I had to agree. "Good job. Show me a list of all the hostages with photos if possible."
I scrolled for a few minutes following a hunch, and a smile appeared on my face as I said, "It's a trap, alright." in the admiral Ackbar voice while smiling broadly, "Jarvis, I want to take personal control when it arrives." I put on a headset that looked similar to the Oculus Rifts created in the near future.
I walked over to a rig I had set up to control the suit remotely, which I would have to do until I could figure out some way of controlling the suit more precisely without having to use an actual rig. I still can't figure out how I did that in the movies. It looks awesome, though. Maybe something similar to the NerveGear, but while you're still conscious.
I got into the rig and took control after Jarvis smashed the suit through the glass on one of the upper floors of the building. It was empty. A few seconds later, the scan of the building returned the number of hostels and hostages, 38 and 112, respectively.
I had a hunch this might be a trap, but I didn't want to risk it. The nearest set of three Vanguard suits was over twenty minutes away, since I had started stationing sets of three all over the place so they could respond to things that would take the actual Ironman suit a few hours to respond to.
After scanning the whole building, I took off again and went up a few floors to where they were keeping the hostages, then went up higher to the roof. There were three guys up there, and I quickly shocked them with taser darts.
I don't know why, but no matter how many times I see people writing on the floor, it's still funny. I shook my head as I approached the primary vent for the building. "Jarvis, this is the one, right?"
"Yes, according to the building plans within the city database." I nodded at his words and fired a few canisters into the vents, then looked up and saw the gateway arch hanging above the city ominously. "Hey Jarvis, tell me about the arch."
"Certainly, sir. The St. Louis Gateway Arch is a magnificent monument located in St. Louis, Missouri. It stands as a symbol of America's westward expansion and commemorates the role St. Louis played as the gateway to the West during the 19th century. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen, it is an iconic piece of modern architecture, standing at 630 feet tall. The arch's unique shape and stainless steel exterior make it a striking landmark visible from miles around. It also houses a tram system that takes visitors to an observation deck at the top, offering breathtaking views of the city and the Mississippi River."
"Huh, I never knew that." I responded.
I then pretended to freeze as I heard a loud cough from behind me and slowly turned as if I hadn't seen the guy. I had, in fact, done so through my rear cameras, but the entire thing was a charade on my part. I looked at the eye path of a super spy behind me and said, "Chazu Cheda?"
And then proceeded to fall over laughing, though to the discerning eye of the spy, it just looked like I jolted slightly before Jarvis got control of the suit. We proceeded to get into a staring match as he looked at me, and I got back into the rig. The silence was broken when I said an awkward "Hello?"
"You can call me Fury," he said, now leaning nonchalantly against a wall.
I shrugged as I said, "And you can call me Ironman."
"No name?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
I then gestured with both my hands, "Iron. Man."
Listen up. We don't exactly roll out the red carpet for vigilantes. You've wrecked several of our ops, taken out dozens of my agents, and levelled multiple US facilities. Your antics have consequences." he said.
I laughed heartily as I said, "And what exactly are you going to do about it? First of all, I know full well that you have no idea who I am. Second of all, if anyone surrenders or is unable to fight fairly, I don't kill them; that's their own fault if they don't stop shooting after the first magazine straight to my chest. Third, don't go saying those facilities were innocent; one was providing arms to an extremist group in Iran that wants to wipe out the ethnic Arab population of the area; another was smuggling tainted drugs into the States; and another was trying to launch a military coup in Burkina Faso."
"I'd very much like to see the proof you have for that," he said.
I just shrugged and said, "Sure, but in return, you need to tell Pierce to fuck himself. Those nonces on the world security council should stop being such bellends and let me know when some aliens show up again or something like that."
I looked at him; it was almost like I could feel the cogs in the back of his head whirring to life, trying to figure me out. After a few seconds of silence, I said, "Well, it seems you have control of this situation; get control of your organisation, and I won't be forced to clean up after it. Till we meet again."
As I took off the microphone, I heard him say into the comms, "I want to find out who this guy is."
I knew sooner or later I was going to get on SHIELDs, or, shall I say, Hydra's bad side. That was why the MK.III, or several dozen Vanguard Drones, didn't have a place to stay, and they never came back to the mansion, only coming back occasionally to get repairs and after making sure they were not traced.
Though I had come up with a plan to make sure that soon they wouldn't have to come near me and that soon there would be no connection between me and Iron Man for the foreseeable future,
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