This is kind of my experiment with the mind of Tony Stark, along with a decent amount of fun with creating a plausible storyline that isn't too ludicrous. And sorry if the summary is complete garbage, because I find it hard to sum up within about 230-240 words. All you got to know is this: Tony Stark is thrown brutally to Middle-Earth via accident, finds himself in a series of strange yet often amusing situations, and inevitably ends up being forced into the fellowship while trying to get back to the Avengers' Tower in his own universe. May the fun begin!

P.S. This bout of inspiration came from reading Avengers of the Ring by Dr Matthattan. Awesome story, great insight. And since he said in the beginning of his story that Tony Stark should not be simply put in a crossover story of Lord of the Rings, I'm kind of challenging that idea with this very work. Anyway, start reading! And review!

Edit: Revised November 2018, because my writing was good but not GOOD.

Tony Stark is many things. He's a billionaire, he's an immature genius-level playboy, he's the superhero Iron Man, and not to mention a guy who's into philanthropy. But things like that can change within the blink of an eye, especially when something explodes in your face. After all, the man's made from a different metal than most would honestly expect...

Chapter One: When Things Go Boom

Tony Stark is an immature, genius of an asshole. He has quite the flair for the dramatic, well-known for reveling in the limelight provided to him when insulting others. His primary weapon of choice for insulting and getting his way—let it be said—is using his dry sarcasm as a verbalized grenade launcher. The man probably drinks more whiskey than a devoted alcoholic, which constantly worries his staff. Stark is in his mid-forties, not his mid-twenties; alcohol abuse is a dangerous lifestyle for a man of his age. His teammates, the Avengers, oftentimes find him annoying and undeniably exasperating. With his arrogant behavior and near-constant open gloating, headaches are a common after-effect. Steve Rogers, better known to the public as Captain America, is practically driven insane with the influx of impulsive rock and popular radio substance the billionaire listens to in his lab. And Thor, in his own Asgardian opinion, always found the color combination of Tony's suit ridiculous with its bright paint job. An enemy could easily shoot the metal man out of the sky! But that's just how Tony-motherfucking-Stark likes it. Who can predict somebody like him to have a heart underneath his magnet-lightbulb of an arc reactor? Nobody ever acknowledges it, but his teammates know deep down he has one. That was why they put up with the filthy rich idiot most of the time, with his absurd IQ that effortlessly surpassed Einstein.

Then again, at the end of the day... Tony would usually end up doing some stupid, socially unacceptable things, Pepper would scramble clean up after him, and then the Avengers would have to deal with his social stupidity while questioning in their minds if he was at all sane.

And maybe it was for that reason—great, rich and powerful—Tony Stark was completely alone in his tower for once in his somewhat new Avengers-style life, sitting at a workbench in his lab while tinkering aimlessly with new possibilities for his suit. Thor was currently in Asgard dealing with his imprisoned brother and the internal politics surrounding it amongst his people, Natasha was busy with her super-secret-spy missions, Bruce decided to help out at a nearby clinic, and Steve Rogers was stuck in some old-timey gym. Knowing his poor habits, the super soldier was probably drowning in a volatile mixture of trauma and his own self pity away from his teammates. That left Stark with nobody to pester him, contently alone with his work. A small part of him wished there was some type of organic social contact, someone demanding a weapon upgrade or his unquestionable opinion, but who needs it?

Surely not Tony Stark.

With thick work gloves covering his hands and a blocky welding mask hiding his face, the genius angled a blowtorch to burn furiously against flattened plates of condensed alloy. A protective upper-body jerkin secured his figure with the famous Black Sabbath shirt underneath. A pair of heavy work jeans hugged his narrow hips. Stark's feet are not covered, bare and slightly pink from the cold temperature of the tiled lab floor. The man, despite all his brilliance, was pointlessly bored. Which, in fact, meant the probability of him making something very creative was disturbingly high, along with the fact he had already consumed three cups of pure black coffee and double that in exotic homemade cocktails. He does, truth be told, work better when he is drunk; it slows his overwhelming amount of thought after about glass three to a manageable speed.

Tony's project was... Well, something that went boom. The media didn't call the man a weapons manufacturer, the Merchant of Death, in the past for nothing. He has made his share of bombs, missiles, and explosives. But for his suit? It was all about the size and cleverness involved. If Thor's brother Loki proved anything before he was defeated, it was this: better to be cleverly underhanded and a few steps ahead, than to be naïve and a few steps behind. Though Tony's upcoming plans for the Iron Man suit had something to do with brainwave responses and internal power cells, the billionaire figured it was much smarter to be paranoid and make a bunch of backup suits before he moved onto the bigger, more ambitious stuff. Not that he always planned such things out in such a manner, but even old dogs can manage to learn a few tricks. Thus, the thing being tinkered with that could very possibly go boom.

"Sir, Director Fury is on the line."

Tony groaned, switching off his blowtorch so he could respond to his AI without background interference. "Jarvis, put him on voicemail! The one with that obscene youtube video would work best for dear ol' Patches. You know, the salamander man one by that guy in the pink onesie. That'll cheer him up some..."

He flicked the torch back on, the loud screech of fusing metal returning in the lab.

"Sir," spoke Jarvis, his tone louder and more insistent than before, "He's attempting to override your commands. It seems his call is urgent."

Stark twitched in annoyance behind his blast mask, a specific nerve in his eye spastically fluctuating with the man's feelings of agitation. He threw the blast mask away, discarded the blowtorch, and revealed his freshly irritable scowl. Tony hated it when the stupid spy disguised as a leather-clad pirate interrupted his life.

The guy needed a fucking hobby. Like stamp collecting. Or bug catching. Hell, maybe even arranging flowers!

"Put him on screen three, Jarvis. Set a timer for five minutes, so then I can hang up on him before he makes me go on a jolly journey with Capsicle and friends." His tone was resigned, like a person tired of incompetence, but rebelliously snarky.

Hopping up and swiftly plopping himself at another desk with an entertaining swivel-chair, a hologram blinked into life. The aggravated, eye patch-equipped Director of SHIELD peered at Tony with an intensity that could make even the strongest man crumble. But Stark just gave the man his famous shark-eating smile. The very same smile that left his board of directors nervous and his investors shaking in their designer suits.

"You rang?"

"Stark, do not block me again. If you do, I will personally ship your ass to the Triskelion for reprobation without abiding by any humanitarian protection laws enforced in the United States."

"Why, hello to you too," said Tony with another cheeky grin. "Now what do you want, Patches? I was busy with stuff. Said stuff usually explodes, and when things explode under my attention, that means more funded reconstruction from your organization."

"I hope you exercise caution," Fury responded dryly, only to become serious again. "I need you and Banner to study something. It's some type of chemically enhanced bio-cable created to be virtually tear resistant, with very few exceptions. Both of you need to find out everything possible about it, become experts."

Tony arched an eyebrow. "No offense, Cyclops, but that sounds more like Banner's territory than mine. Not to mention that seems to really remind me of that new vigilante on the block, Spider-Man."

The dark-skinned man glowered. "That's something you do not need to know. The data should be sent to you now. Goodbye, Stark—"

"Oh no you don't!" Tony shouted, raising his voice, "I'm not letting you off on this, Fury. Is Spider-Man just the newest victim of your radar, or are you going to shove him into our little house of horrors?"

"As I stated before, Stark, this is none of your concern. Goodbye."

The holographic screen blinked out of existence. Tony growled, brimming with disconcertion and frustration, maddened by the sudden turn of events. In the last week, the billionaire observed that the world was trying to catch up with itself. After confronting Loki, New York was not the same. Hell, he wasn't the same! There were people dead, over twenty blocks of Manhattan destroyed, and a grand-spanking new team of misfit superheroes that occupied what was once Stark Tower. Not counting Barton, who was undergoing therapy for his time as Loki's brainwashed tool.

Then, not long after that, there had been a big bulletin in the news (which all of the Avengers sat down to watch on the widescreen with grim expressions) of a genetically-spliced lizard man battling it out on the top of a corporate building against the new vigilante, Spider-Man. Ever since then, their team had been tracking SHIELD's files for the new masked man on the block. As much as they wanted to trust Fury after his first foolhardy stunt, it was hard to take his word for anything.

Stark, in response, tried to cover the new guy's trails for him. Expertly hidden kindness lead Tony to protect the kid, yet it appeared now that SHIELD wanted none of that. They were hoping to force Tony and Bruce to experiment and outsmart a guy who was actually helping the city! The billionaire was, in all honesty, having a hard time not making something go boom. Maybe that's why he was an ex-weapons manufacturer. Sighing, Stark slipped his appropriate welding equipment back on and moved to continue fiddling with the explosive technology. Flipping the blow torch on and lowering it to the pieces of condensed alloy...

KAAAAH-

Flames and shards of red-hot metal suddenly appear, and Tony takes to the air from the unexpected shockwave.

-BAAAOOOOMM-

The table where the metal-encased explosive once sat uproots itself, and anything composed of glass or coming from otherwise fragile origins shatters on the spot. Temperature abruptly rises with the onslaught of heat created by the experimental explosive, oxygen sapped out of the air by the vacuum. Liquids fizzle, evaporating into some form of dangerous gas or turn into puddles of boiling toxins. The walls shake and creak, the air particles appear to visibly condense in on themselves like thick fog. Tony crashes unceremoniously onto the tiled floor with glass stabbing into his flesh like needles into a pincushion, blood already oozing to the ground. He can't find breathe.

-AROooooooOOMPH!

The flames grow wild, flaring high and hot, feeding off the oxygen it consumed while spraying sparks and metal every which way. An exceptionally large piece of metal that was formerly a part of a work table, about the length of a hunting jackknife, slices up Stark's arm from his shoulder to the crook of his right appendage. The walls cave in, plaster burns, and everything is writ with destruction. The flames—fluttering about his body like eager hands—swallow up the billionaire's wounded, gasping body.

All that is left behind is the fiery inferno and a very large hole in the side of the Avenger's Tower.

Bruce Banner was driving home in a vintage Jaguar. It really hits him sometimes, just how much wealth Tony Stark has at the tips of his fingers. He honestly hates the fact he has to drive to a non-profit clinic in an expensive and flashy car, but his stupid best friend owns nothing but fancy sports cars. Even if he is irritated, Banner honestly smiles at the idea of having a billionaire like Tony Stark for a friend. Sure, the man was a difficult person at times and can barely restrain himself from being impulsive, but he meant well.

Bruce headed towards an old gym in Brooklyn, meaning to pick up his other... friend after dropping him off a few hours ago. That was another friendship the scientist-doctor had not expected. Captain America was his friend. Another smile crosses his face, strangely bittersweet, as he turned into the parking lot. Spotting his tall, muscled companion holding a duffle and another one of his precious patched-up punching bags over his shoulder, Bruce offered a quick wave. The taller man, upon spotting the scientist, moved ahead and around to the trunk. He stuffed his things in and closed it with a clunk. He laid the punching bag down in the cramped back seats.

Taking up the shotgun seat, Steve Rogers smirked in a friendly fashion at Banner, albeit boyishly. "So, how was the clinic?"

Banner shrugged, backing out of the parking lot and heading straight for the tower. "Busy, but workable. Nobody thankfully knew who I was, so there was no trouble. You?"

Steve mirrored Banner's actions, shrugging. "Nothing much."

The super-soldier didn't continue on, not yet comfortable with sharing his haunting thoughts with his fellow teammates. Clearly he still felt uncomfortable about sharing his issues with his teammates. Banner accepted his wordless answer without question, a knowing glint shining in his eyes, but silently understanding as always. The two chat amiably on and off, chuckling in places or simply conversing. It was easy interaction, something both men needed and found themselves engaged in when no immediate earth-shattering situation arose. Yet as they neared the tower, traffic seemed to unconsciously thicken. The two men looked at each other, silently thinking in tandem: something's wrong. Turning down a cross street and going around another way, fire trucks and ambulances shoot by the vintage sports car. With a short nod between them, Banner slammed his foot on the gas.

What meets their eyes, unsurprisingly, nearly causes Bruce to crash into a neighboring vehicle and turn forest green. The tower, which had been one of the first things repaired after Loki's invasion, had a gaping hole in its side. Burning torrents of flame gushed out like blood from a grisly wound. Bruce simply stops the car, off the street and in front of the bustle of firemen, hospital personnel, and SHIELD agents surrounding the formerly glorious building. Natasha and Clint appear right beside the automobile—one in their civilian clothes and the other in their suit—with faces set with stony expressions.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph..." Rogers murmured breathlessly in utter shock, looking at loss for words.

Stark was on that level.

Tony Stark is not afraid of death; it never scared him in the first place. But his hesitance to it, like with most things in the genius' life, is not because of some compromising emotion. It is, let it be said, because of what he'd leave behind.

Pepper is his business' saving grace, the one who created order in his chaotic world and made sure it would never fail at the most inopportune moments. Rhodes is his primary friend back in Malibu, and has been probably his first real friend since the beginning. Happy is his loyal driver, bodyguard, and boxing buddy back home. Stark Industries is his family's brain child, and that company still had so much to accomplish before—great, rich and powerful—Tony Stark kicked the bucket.

Other than that, the man is too damn stubborn to die. His death is supposed to end with spectacular flair, all the bells and whistles beside a monstrous boomfor the finish. No tragedies, no accidents, and sure as hell no hostile kidnappings by terrorists to the desert. Either way, whatever Tony had seen within those brief seconds of chaos was probably the biggest backfire with his tech yet.

Groggy and disoriented, Tony slid his chocolate eyes open. They flashed shut as bright sunlight stabbed at his pupils, incrementally widening again to adjust to the light. His lungs greedily took in crisp, clean oxygen. The man's body felt just as scorched as it had been when he crashed his Mark I suit into the desert dunes, especially his left shoulder and his upper arm. It stings like a bitch! Stark's body, from what he could discern, was simply a pulsing sore. It contrasted with the ground beneath him, which was both damp yet... Dirty?

Tony realized, after blinking a few more times, that he was staring at a rich blue sky with outreaching canopies appearing in the borders of his sight.

Turning his head, the billionaire found himself in a crater that was questionably of his own making. A moderately deep crater in dark earth it was, with him firmly in the center. The edges of his impressive hole was littered with branches. It seemed the gap in the canopies he'd been staring up through was actually made by him. Interesting. Stark strained his muscles, inching up from the ground into a sluggish crouch, and from there stumbling into a hunched upright position. Throughout the whole procedure, his upper arm and shoulder were screeching at him in utter defiance. Glancing at the source of pain, Stark noted that an unhelpfully large amount of blood gushed from what looked like a roughly-cut tear jammed full of metal shards. It was simmering in his raw flesh, and the smell almost had him gagging. Burnt skin and singed hair was a disgusting combination. The rest of Tony's figure was covered with glass fragments or cuts left behind by similar materials. On the moist earth around him were the remaining pieces of debris, clumped together in places like festering welts. Ugly, and not desired.

With a bit of a struggle, Tony Stark maneuvered his way out of his personal hole, stumbling a few times with his bare feet over the uneven terrain. The landscape around him was nowhere near any type of advanced civilization, and clearly not anywhere in the United States. The trees were wrong.

Great, thought the billionaire sarcastically. Out of the country again, injured, and without people... At the least, decent people.

The situation, in all honesty, put Stark on the alert; or as alert as someone injured at his age could be. Though he would never admit it to anyone, his hypersensitivity to his surroundings could be blamed upon his captivity in the Middle East. That, and the fact he had an unfortunate mixture of PTSD and latent childhood trauma. The billionaire didn't really like to think about all that depressing bullshit, and decided a long time ago that his sharp instincts came from being a superhero in a technologically-advanced, full-body suit of armor. Pepper told him such a decision was called denial. His response? That's a river in Africa, Pep, not a problem that involves me.

Speaking of which, was that one of the variations of the Mark V folded up in a crater of its own a few yards away?

At a painstakingly slow pace, Stark carefully made his way over to the second, visibly smoking crater. As he moved, glass bits shook off with each jerky movement. Where's that Crown Royal when you need it? The man bumped his shoulder into a nearby tree, gruffly intaking a sharp breath at the searing pain that surged from the bloody injury. Skittering away, Tony found himself putting a hand on his shoulder, supporting the injury as he hunched over. Tilting forward to gaze down at the nicely folded up 'suit-in-progress' Mark V he had been experimenting with, he took stock.

JARVIS had not given the unfinished mechanical masterpiece his trademark gold and red paint job, which slightly disappointed the childishly selfish billionaire. But, on the bright side, it was much more inconspicuous with the unpolished silvery surfaces that made it appear to be but a huge hunk of scrap metal with a lightbulb mixed in. It was vaguely shaped like a suitcase. A really high-powered self-sustaining suitcase, with a lightbulb that could energize his suits indefinitely.

Maybe, just maybe, Jarvis can contact the Tower and get me a ride, thought Stark. After all, almost all his personally-owned tech had JARVIS, especially his suits. Absently he touched his right ear, feeling the wireless bluetooth that somehow stayed intact. The man's blood smeared on the object as his searching fingers felt around it, clicking the small button on the side of the earpiece.

"Jarvis?" He spoke hoarsely, his vocal chords somewhat abused from recent events.

"Hello, sir. It appears the the newer backup suit modeled after the Mark V has crashed, and its radius scans tell me you have also. Your shoulder should be attended to at the soonest convenience."

Tony rolled his eyes. His AI could really be a complete bother at the worst of times. "Thanks Jarvis," he stated dryly, "Do you know where we are? Because this sure as hell isn't New York."

Those rich brown eyes of his glanced about as the billionaire carefully picked his way down to the collapsed suit, grasping at the handle and easily lifting it with his good arm. Surprisingly, it didn't burn his hand.

"I cannot connect to any available satellites or nearby wireless devices to use for observing basic NORAD telemetry. My programming is confined to the suit at this time, leaving my observances with a stunted scanning range of about 100,000 meters, approximately 62.4 miles, in a full circular radius."

That concerned Tony Stark even more than his current position of being in the middle of fucking nowhere. JARVIS, an artificial intelligence of his own design, capable of hacking into the most complex systems all around the world, could not even keep in touch with a wireless cell phone... Let alone one measly satellite? Something was extremely wrong, and all he had at his disposal were the torn clothes on his back, the injuries that followed, a bluetooth headset, and one backup suit. No way of knowing where he was, and no way of contacting the other members of the Avengers. The thought was not at all comforting to the billionaire.

"Jarvis, scan the area in a detailed sweep. Is there any type of town or city nearby?"

There was a pause. "A very large settlement is located 13.89 miles away from your current position. Scans read the entirety of the structures within and around its protective walls have been built with solid rock originating from the southern rock face of a high mountain range. I have detected over ten thousand life signs behind those walls."

The man nodded, his gaze stopping at the sight of tumbled and visibly-wrinkled clothes thrown haphazardly about. Walking over, Tony noted that they were clearly expensive to make. Musty too, but looked like it would all fit his general size well. A bit baggy around the middle maybe, but at least they look nice… For a Renaissance Fair that is. At that comical moment, the billionaire looked back and forth between his tattered AC/DC shirt and jeans to the old-fashioned piles of fabric with big brown eyes. Much like an immature teenage girl undecided about a new outfit, really. Things seemed to be both improving and failing in his ludicrous opinion, and the clothes were just too coincidental for his taste. Yet so was the fact he woke up not far from his newly manufactured backup suit with an intact bluetooth in his ear.

But Tony's desire towards tending to his wounds and overall cleanliness won him over to the musty piles of cloth. It was a meticulous procedure, one which JARVIS took priority over. The AI made it his mission to point out every injury and sharp object littering Stark's body using his scanning abilities from the unfinished suit. If the man had a mirror, he would notice that he looked like complete shit before he had even tried to carefully wipe his face of any dirt that covered it. Slowly, he wrapped his shoulder with a makeshift bandage out of parts of his favorite shirt (He saved enough of it so he could still have the awesome picture of a robot man to do something with... Maybe frame it?).

The dusty clothes ended up being alright, to say the least. They were extremely comfortable, actually, though Stark thought he looked positively ridiculous.

If the stout man had to describe his appearance to his teammates, it would be that he looked like "Leonardo Da Vinci gave me a call and decided to donate part of his personal emo wardrobe to me." The clothes were baggy, as he noted before, and dyed in variations of dark charcoal grey or a deep russet red. There were no puffy shoulders, or frilly-milly lace. Just solid flannel fabric, with an obviously complex weave. A few patterns, embroidered white flowers and cherry red birds, danced around the collar and the sleeves. The pants—if you could call them that—were more like breeches than pants. The waist on them was too big, leaving Tony to use the belt that had once been for his jeans. Thankfully, the shirt had long sleeves, so he could easily hide his expensive but custom-made Omega wristwatch as well as his horribly wrapped-up injury. Stark felt he was dressed up like a nicely clothed hobo than a comfortably unaware billionaire genius. Just factor in the fact he had to somehow carry his suitcase-suit about fourteen miles to some city that sounded otherworldly and preposterous, and it might just make up for it.

So with a sigh, Tony Stark began his trek barefoot.

About fifteen minutes in, he swore on the grave of his father (which often wasn't worthy enough, in his opinion, to be sworn upon under any circumstance) that he would never walk barefoot outdoors again. The suit was also getting heavy for his good arm, and that left him to take his jeans and tie them in such a way that they became backpack straps to shoulder. Two hours after that, he found a horse trail on the border of the forest, leading Stark across a very flat plain, with some sort of city in the distance that seemed all too fantasy-like for the average man. The jeans rubbed against his wound now and again, causing Tony a little pain, but he didn't whine. No the time to be a bitch, he thought absently while he trudged along. Nope, not today. Ten minutes following, Stark abruptly stopped.

The city was in clear view, along with the sight of the faint horse trail leading up to it. Just as JARVIS had said, it was made literally out of the mountain. Its pale stone walls shone brightly in the faint light of the day, towers and spires reaching higher into the sky than Tony thought possible; at least, in the sense that it was a standing question whether people could actually breathe in the thinned air of such high elevations. Some could adjust, but it was still an effort no matter how one looked at it. The city, as magnificently huge as it was, looked like an uneven layered cake. Each 'level' gutted out slightly, suspended over the level below for about a hundred yard distance, homes and businesses cluttering each one. The top seemed the less jammed, but still extensive.

Tony Stark was both shocked and surprised. His face was almost as it usually appeared: calm, sarcastic, and holding that attractiveness that was often written about in magazines like Vanity Fair. But there were subtle differences. His brows were raised, his mouth scrunched up slightly, and his extremely intelligent chocolate eyes minutely widened. It gave the man a somewhat childish and innocent look of astonishment as he blinked owlishly at the sight of the city not far from his place on the horse trail.

"Jarvis," said the billionaire, his voice light, "I think we're not in Kansas anymore."

His AI made a noise that sounded like a very human huff of tiredness. "I believe we never were, sir..."