The bearded man from earlier slides open the hatch on the door. Seeing they were working, he gestured to the guards behind him and said something in a foreign language. They close the hatch and leave.
Tony and Yinsen proceed to make the armor.
A/N I don't know how to phrase them making it. Sorry ;(
The terrorists are huddled around a camera, holding a picture of the Jericho and arguing in a different language. Subtitles are helpfully provided.
"It doesn't look anything like the picture."
"Maybe it's just modified."
"The tail is wrong."
"It's just backwards"
"Wow. They are stupid." Natasha said, and everyone agreed.
The bald creepy man with the weird smile is back on the screen, his face twisting into a scowl at the sight of Tony swinging his leg, that is encased in wires and metal. The hatch on the door is opened and someone yells something to them. Tony turns off his blowtorch and looks up. As the men enter, Tony and Yinsen raise their hands above their heads.
The bald man dramatically entered and finally approached them. He turns to Tony and says,
"Relax."
"He speaks English?" Rhodey asked.
Tony and Yinsen slowly lower their arms and the leader walks up to Tony, pulling his shirt down to view the arc reactor.
"The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology."
"Once?!" Clint shouted, and leapt to his feet."
"It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire."
He picks up the plans to the armor, studying them for a moment.
"But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. And soon, it will be my turn."
He glared at the billionaire for a second, then turned to Yinsen, addressing him in another language. the subtitles come up again, saying,
"Why have you failed me?"
"We're working. Diligently."
"I let you live, and this is how you repay me?"
"It's very complex; he's working very hard."
"Oh, my goodness," Pepper said, pressing a hand to her mouth. "He knows."
Tony stands nearby, not able to understand.
"On his knees!" Raza orders. A soldier comes over and forces Yinsen down. He walks over to the fire and grabs a burning coal with the tongs.
"You think I am a fool?"
"We're both working."
"Open your mouth." He holds up the coal.
About half the people in the room suddenly found vines wrapped around their mouths.
Peter whispered. "He's going to burn Yinsen's mouth."
"What does he want?" Tony looked helpless as he was trying to figure out what was going on.
Ignoring him, Raza continues.
"What's going on? Tell me the truth."
"He's building your Jericho."
"The truth."
"He's building your Jericho!"
"THE TRUTH!"
Tony stepped forward, obviously having realized what was going on.
"What do you want, A delivery date?"
He stepped back and held up his hands as all the men yelled and raised their guns.
"I need him."
They all just stared at him.
"Good assistant."
Raza dropped the coal and said,
"You have till tomorrow to assemble my missile."
The iron man theme song plays, and Tony is shown pounding at a piece of metal with a hammer. He put's the metal in a bucket of water, then sets it on the table. Yinsen looks at it and smiles. It's the mask of the suit.
Rhodey whistles. "Dude, that's scary."
He wraps his hands in bandages or tape and Yinsen helps him get into the armor.
"Okay? Can you move? Okay, say it again." Yinsen talked hurriedly, knowing they didn't have much time.
"41 steps straight ahead. Then 16 steps, that's from the door, fork right, 33 steps, turn right."
"He remembered all that? From one trip outside?" Sam asked.
"Yea!" Peter said. "He has a photographic memory! He is always remembering stuff from books he read, and will sometimes tell me stories he read when we work in the lab!"
"Wait, he let's you work in his lab?" Steve asked.
"Yea, why?"
"Because I've never met anyone who he'll work with. He didn't even let Shuri, the princess of Wakanda, work there."
Peter's face was now stuck in an 'oh' shape.
"What do you work on in there anyway?"
"Mostly my suit, but not my web shooters, those are strictly off limits to anyone but me."
"Wait, didn't he make them?"
"No, I did."
Bruce was suddenly very curious.
"What is the web fluid made of?"
"Just Acetaldehyde, Streptomycin Sulfate, and Naphthylethylenediamine Dihydrochloride."
Such big words coming out of a seventeen year old boy was astounding everyone.
"By the way, Dr. Banner, your most recent paper on Gamma radiation was incredible!"
Dr. Banner tried to understand.
"But, that one is my one that made the least amount of sense!"
"Not to me," Peter chuckled, "I remember coming in to Tony's lab one day, him so frustrated because he couldn't understand your paper. I read it, then gave a simpler explanation to him."
"Wait a minute." Clint said, "You're telling me that Tony Stark, billionaire genius, couldn't understand a paper, but you did?"
Peter nodded. "That pretty much sums it up."
Dragon was getting impatient, so when a whole minute came and went without anyone doing anything except stare at Peter, she sighed and pressed play.
Raza approached the security monitors, frowning when he didn't see Tony. He spoke to the guards in Urdu, with subtitles appearing.
"Where is Stark?"
"He was there a minute ago."
"Go find him!" Raza ordered the guards.
A couple of soldiers shouted in Arabic, and ran to Tony's cave, leaving Raza to stare at the screen, which showed Yinsen working on something.
Yinsen worked swiftly on the Mark 1 armor, not yet complete.
The soldiers raced towards the entrance to Tony and Yinsen's cave. One opened the hatch in the door and yelled.
"Yinsen! Yinsen! Stark!"
"Say something. Say something back to him." Tony whispered
"He's speaking Hungarian. I don't..."
"Then speak Hungarian." Tony interrupted him.
"Okay..." Yinsen was panicking.
"What do you know?" Tony struggled too keep his voice calm, in order to assure Yinsen.
The soldier continued to yell in Hungarian, a bit louder now.
Yinsen yelled something back. The soldier continued yelling, and the view of the hatch lowered slightly, revealing a bomb attached to the door, under the handle.
"Awesome." Peter's words perfectly described what they were thinking.
The soldiers had apparently waited long enough, and started to push the door open, but the bomb was set off and the soldiers were thrown back.
The view changed to Raza, still watching the screen, when the camera revealed the fire from the explosion before it showed static. Raza gestured to the men and yelled to them in another language.
It changed back to Yinsen, who was staring at the destruction the bomb created, before turning back to the armor.
"How'd that work?"
"Oh, my goodness. It worked all right."
"That's what I do."
"Let me finish this."
"Initialize the power sequence." Tony realized they didn't have much time left, and that the soldiers would be here any minute.
"Okay." Yinsen put down his tools and turned to a computer.
"Now!"
"Tell me. Tell me."
"Function 11. " Yinsen typed it in. "Tell me when you see a progress bar. It should be up right now."
"Yes."
"Talk to me. Tell me when you see it."
"I have it." They were both clearly panicking as the soldiers drew nearer.
"Press Control 'l.' 'I.' Got it. 'I.' 'Enter.' 'l' and 'Enter.' Come over here and button me up."
Yinsen went over to help as the progress bar inched along. The camera changed to a lot of soldiers, shouting as they ran to the cave. It changed back to Yinsen and Tony, who were both struggling to stay calm.
"Okay. All right."
"Every other hex bolt."
"They're coming!"
"Nothing pretty, just get it done. Just get it done."
"They're coming."
The soldiers ran to the cave, almost there. The view changed to the computer, where the progress bar was barely halfway through. The camera slid up to Yinsen, watching with a worried look.
"Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?"
"We need more time." Yinsen knew what he had to do as he turned to Tony. "Hey, I'm gonna go buy you some time."
"Stick to the plan! Stick to the plan! Yinsen!" While Tony yelled to him, Yinsen ran to the doorway, grabbed a gun from one of the guards, and shot it into the air, before running down the tunnel. Tony turned from the door, wide-eyed, as he stared at the computer, willing it to go faster. The progress bar inched slowly.
Soldiers continue running towards the cave, before being turned around by Yinsen coming towards them with a gun.
"Why isn't he shooting anyone?" Carol asks.
Then Natasha puts a hand to her mouth as she contemplates what Yinsen said about seeing his family when he left. His family must be dead.
He runs, yelling, before stopping as a group of soldiers all aim their guns at him, ready to fire.
Back in the cave, the bar is nearing one hundred percent. Once it hits, the entire cave goes into darkness. There are men running through the now dark cave, towards Tony's. They glance at the dead bodies before hesitantly stepping into the room. A glove can be seen in the dark, squeezing open and shut menacingly. One of the men turns around when a bright blue light shines in his face. He looks up, and the source of the light moves, sending him flying across the room, the other men shooting bullets around the room.
Clint jumped up. "They are seriously shooting bullets around a room full of explosives?!"
The men appear to have thought they hit their target, when the light appears again. Instantly, more shots appeared, they only ricocheted off the suit. He quickly defeated the soldiers and showed the entire armor.
Scott and Peter cheered. "Ladies and gentlemen, may I present…The Mark 1!" Scott said, looking triumphant until Hope looked at him with a look saying, 'Really?' Scott sat down.
Tony quickly made his way through the caves, destroying anyone in his path.
Iron man tried to punch someone, but only succeeded in getting his arm stuck in a rock wall. As he tried to pull it out, a brave, or stupid, man came up and tried to shoot Tony, but the bullet bounced off the helmet and killed the man. Tony looked at the man before yanking his arm out of the wall.
"That was awesome." Clint said.
Raza is seen, holding a huge gun, pointing it at where Tony would be arriving. Yinsen lays on the ground, barely breathing, as the Mark 1 enters. He sees Yinsen and yells.
"Yinsen!"
"Watch out!" Yinsen manages to cough out a warning before Raza fires. Tony ducks, while the missile barely misses him, before firing a small missile of his own, which explodes, and rock falls on him.
"He deserved it, that so-" A rope tied around Steve's mouth.
"Language!" Dragon shouted, with all the original avengers laughing.
"C'mon! That was over a year ago!" Steve shouted.
"But that's what makes it funny."
"Stark." Tony rushes over to him before lifting the mask and crouching down.
"Come on. We got to go. Move for me, come on. We got a plan. We're gonna stick to it."
"This was always the plan, Stark."
"Come on, you're gonna go see your family. Get up."
"My family is dead. I'm going to see them now, Stark." Tony was wide-eyed as Yinsen said goodbye.
"It's okay."
"I want this. I want this."
"Thank you for saving me."
"Don't waste it. Don't waste your life." Yinsen reassured Tony as he drifted off, then died. Tony suddenly got very angry as he turned to the exit. Outside the cave, the terrorists are ready to fire, each gun pointed at the cave. Iron Man emerges, and the soldiers start firing. The bullets, of course, do nothing but make him slightly off-balance. The men stop shooting, assuming they have killed him, but all Tony does is say two words.
"My turn."
He then activates flamethrowers built into his suit, and yells are heard as soldiers are suddenly surrounded by fire. Tony sets the boxes full of explosions on fire and a man with a giant machine gun starts shooting him. Tony struggles to stand as the force of the bullets makes him stagger.
The other soldiers see their chance and start shooting him from all sides. Tony falls to his knees before getting back up and shooting fire at the person nearest to them. He is nearly overwhelmed, but the explosives start going off. He presses a button on his arm and lifts off just before the fire engulfs everything.
The Mark 1 starts to fly, rising out of the fire. There is a view of far away. It shows the armor rising out of a ball of fire-
"IT CAN FLY TOO?" Everyone is impressed.
-before the thrusters give out and Tony plunges downward, yelling as parts of the suit fall off. He shoots into the sand as pieces come down after him.
Everyone is laughing
He gets most of the armor off his arms before removing the helmet and saying,
"Not bad."
Dragon pauses it.
Everyone is too amazed to say anything. Then Natasha says slowly,
"We all thought we knew Tony, but never knew that how he acted, was actually acting. He is just a shell of Tony, he is hiding a dark past from us, and never told anyone. He never asked us to thank him, we never asked him for permission to stay in his house, we never asked him for equipment… We never asked him why he became Iron Man…"
She lowered her head.
"I guess I always thought that I had figured out Tony, that he was selfish and didn't care about us. But he does care, he became Iron Man to protect, and he would gladly give his life for any of ours, for any person."
She lifted her head up, and said,
"Everyone, don't talk to Tony about what we saw. It's obvious he doesn't want sympathy, and if we mention this to him, he'll probably have a panic attack."
She then nodded to Mantis, who went over in the complete silence of the room, rested a hand on Tony's head, and said,
"Wake."
Tony blinked his eyes open, to see utter silence. He cracked a joke.
"Who died?"
Everyone just stared blankly at him as he remembered requesting they wake him after his escape.
Yinsen.
He looked down at his feet until Mantis put a hand on his head. He yanked his head back up as Mantis suddenly started sobbing. He immediately tried to comfort her.
"Whoa, what's wrong?"
"How do you live through this pain, alone?" Mantis was so confused by this man. "I have never felt anyone as sad as you before."
"Never?" Tony was surprised.
"Never."
A/N I do not own Marvel or any of it's characters, this is fictional, and the chemicals Peter mentioned are real, just not used for his web fluid. DO NOT USE THEM. They are dangerous.