Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes | Closed

[houseparty]

WHO: High Chancellor Stark and Pepper Potts
WHERE: The White City
WHEN: Following the Gala
WHAT: Iron Man welcomes Rescue to TWT. Technically that's true.
WARNINGS: Language, identity crises, tragic reunions...



The White City still shines at night, bright enough to see over the black waters of the Gulf, a neon jewel rising as a symbol of hope, or perhaps a shout of sheer defiance to its silent neighbor: due east, the rest of Florida lies dark and dead under the canopy of the Deathdome, the Porter at the ruins of that far coastline running ceaselessly as latecomers are steadily drawn into this world, strangers soon to make their way across the globe. A weather alert pings in his HUD, the satellite images of some nameless storm churning far out in the Atlantic, projected to hit land in a handful of days with no one alive to meet it. In the past they might have sent imPorts to disperse them if the Porter risked a direct hit, before they learned the dome devoured everything, even the massive, deathly vortex of a hurricane.

Stark does have things to do, really, more than clearing his head through this impromptu flight. There's always the endless list of action items to accomplish prior to a Synod, tasks to see to the bitter end, whenever that truly happens. Rey will strike when she sees fit, and he must be ready for her.

...okay, seriously. Enough dicking around.

He feels it ahead of the alarm of sensors as he returns to land, the murmur of a system in the distant vicinity, a system he knows as surely as himself- and doesn't, all the same, bright and chatty amid the streamlined cacophony of electronic input. There's a suit of armor out here, touring the bright skyline, and it isn't one of his. The four Legion droids that flank him shoot forward at a thought, thrusters burning:

Intercept.

Comments

[efficacy]

The city might somehow be even more grand at night, sprawling and gleaming like a pearl in the darkness, but Pepper can't appreciate its beauty now. Not with about a million other more pressing things crowding at her. She should be home now, in the ravaged vestiges of Earth after Thanos' devastation upon it. She'd left a confused, teary-eyed Morgan in Happy's care with a breaking heart, pinky-promising the girl she and daddy would be back as soon as they could. She'd donned the suit Tony had made her, and followed the Master of Mystic Arts named Wong through the portal he'd opened only sometime earlier in the middle of the cabin's yard. And now... this. This insane reality television parody on steroids.

It's a complete nightmare.

Pepper doesn't know what she hopes to accomplish, taking to the skies like this; hoping for the suit's analytics and radars to give her some idea, any, as to how to find a way back where she belongs. She can't raise FRIDAY, but at least the HUD and the suit's systems still work the way they're supposed to. She's preoccupied running another analytics cycle when the HUD suddenly flashes a proximity alert. Five approaching from her six, fast-- no, Pepper realizes. Giving chase.

"Oh, come on," she mutters. Hostiles? She doesn't think so, but... can't be too sure. Barrel-rolling gracefully to avoid a spire of a skyscraper, Pepper kicks up the thrusters and takes up higher in a blur of silver and indigo, her heart hammering. She can't risk collateral damage, if this comes to a confrontation. The bogies are on her trail still and she deploys the energy displacer sentries from the suit's back unit, the separate pieces twirling around her as she loops around, the air brakes at her back flaring and thrusters firing as she throws her arms and legs out to decelerate quickly. Hovering in place now, she waits, the HUD honing in on the approaching forms and scanning them as the sentries around her form a uniform piece, ready to fire at her will.

Drones? No, they look like.... Pepper draws in a sharp breath. "What...?"