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"Fuck" Tony muttered, forgetting his comm manners, this was usually the moment that someone poked fun at Cap but they were all thinking the same thing. S.H.I.E.L.D. had really messed up this time and they would pay for it if any of the avengers were still in one piece after this. 'Somehow' they had opened up a portal, where to nobody knew but it must have been directly underneath the largest army in the whole damn universe. There were hundreds of droids pouring out of the gaping whole in the middle of the S.H.I.E.L.D. basement and no way of stopping it, what's worse was the radio silence from every department, it was like the droids cut off every signal in and out of the room. Only their comms were still connected and not even Tony knew why. Tony blasted a few droids into some of the filing cabinets that lined the wall. With a crash hundreds of top secret files were thrown throughout the room displaying all of the top secret information and scattering top secret Manilla folders on the floor.
"They keep coming!" Cap stated the obvious.
"We can't stop all of them!" Hawkeye joined in.
"Can you hold them?" Tony asked.
"What are you planning?" Nat asked correctly unconvinced.
"I'm going to stop this"
"Stark whatever you are planning, don't" Hawkeye said as he casually shot an arrow through five droids. Tony flew towards the portal to get a look at the other side. He reached out a hand towards it but as soon as it made contact it threw him backwards.
"Fuck" Tony repeated. "Jarvis, call everyone from S.H.I.E.L.D. and put me through to the first one who picks up."
"Yes sir" Jarvis replied the same to this request as the last twenty seven times that Tony asked. Tony blasted a large group of droids that were coming towards Nat and took a moment to assess the situation. Hulk was in the corner shredding the droids as quickly as they swarmed him but his big hands were already bleeding. Thor was basically swinging his hammer in a circle around himself effectively blending any that came near him, Cap was kind of just throwing himself and his shield at anything that came within leaping distance of him, he was taking some pretty serious blows but was still fighting hard. Nat and Hawkeye were fighting back to back, Hawkeye took out all of the overhead targets while Nat took on the ones closer to the ground, they were spinning around each other in order to get to their targets, they were very in sync but there were so many droids it was impossible for them to not be forced to retreat a bit further away from the portal. Tony was running on 50% battery, this was the new and improved battery too, it should be able to withstand a full week of fighting without a single recharge. He was flying above the ground blasting whenever someone looked a bit over run, so constantly.
"Sir" Jarvis piped up breaking Tony's concentration and causing him to allow a droid to ram him.
"Give me some good news Jarvis" Tony replied, he heard an unexpected amount of exhaustion in his voice as he picked himself off the ground and flew back up to regain his position.
"Well sir no one has answered yet"
"Keep trying" he tried to keep his voice calm but it was useless, he yelled the words at Jarvis, his voice cracking and breaking the whole way. This fighting was futile, for every one destroyed two more came out of the portal.
"Sir" came Jarvis voice again "Leo Fitz on the line for you"
"Put him through" Tony beamed 'thank you Jarvis' he thought 'you got me a good one'
"Hello?" Fitz asked.
"I need you to send a massive electric pulse into the basement, fry every circuit down here" Tony demanded, he had no time for small talk.
"But won't that-"
"Do as I say or let these things destroy the world, your choice" with that Tony hung up, there was no sense holding on the line for the list of reasons why that was impossible and a bad idea, he needed him to do it. "I've called in backup" Tony informed the team, telling them what backup was definitely wouldn't help anything, but letting them know that it was coming might help them continue fighting.
"What is it?" Natasha wasted no time.
"I don't care what it is, when is it getting here?" Hawkeye replied before Tony could say anything.
"Soon" he said hoping that Fitz would follow through, he'd buy Fitz a whole workshop if it would make this go faster.
The fighting continued until hope of backup was nearly gone.
"What is your plan Stark?" Cap asked.
"Yes when is this 'help' getting here?" Thor chimed in.
"Soon" Tony said trying to keep any hope alive, his battery was at 25% now and he knew that they had been fighting for much longer than any of them were prepared for, Tony looked around again; Hulk had resorted to kicking the damn things out of the air, Cap was throwing his shield mostly now and had retreated closer to Thor. Both of them were bloody... *all* of them were bloody, Nat and Hawkeye were now in a corner, no longer spinning around eachother, just fighting the one direction of droids, 'Nat must be out of EMP's' Tony realized because she had resorted to stabbing and shooting.
--
Tony woke up with the slightest memory of a bright light and a throbbing everything. He hurt from head to toe and could barely open his eyes. So instead he let them stay closed while he tried to remember what happened between the battle and now. Suddenly realizing his predicament his eyes shot open and he sat up. He immediately regretted this. The pain in his head was splitting, the room was spinning, he almost blacked out again. He felt hands pushing on his shoulders softly, not that his arms needed much convincing to collapse.
"lay down idiot" a voice commanded. Tony forced his eyes open again to see Nat sitting beside him looking like she had gone a few rounds with a herd of hungry lions. She smiled weakly down at him trying to make her face reassuring.
"Agent Romanov get back into bed you need to give yourself time to heal" Simmons gently pushed her into the bed next to Tony. 'She must really be hurt' Tony noted after she allowed herself to be laid down.
"What happened?" Tony tried to ask, it ended up more like "whhhahha" but it managed to get her attention.
"And you" Simmons said shaking her head and tutting disapprovingly "you are lucky to even be alive" Tony groaned at her. "Eloquent rebuttal" she muttered as she walked away. Tony tried his luck at sitting up again, it went considerably better this time; he managed to stay up for a full four seconds. He decided that sleep would be a good idea seeing as his vision was already fading out and he was finding his eyelids to be irrefutably heavy.
--
When Tony came to again the pounding in his head was nearly gone and so was the throbbing. This time he got a chance to look around; he was alone in a room with five empty beds. He looked himself over taking off bandages as he went but stopped dead when he saw his arc reactor. It was completely different, it was all circles and rectangles. He knew that the electric pulse would definitely kill his suit and probably kill his old one but he never realized that it would be irreparable, nor did he ever imagine that someone else would make a new one for him. He had electric burns around the arc reactor and anywhere that his skin came too close to the metal. 'I'll have to add more insulation' Tony noted. The rest of his body was sore, battered and bruised but relatively unharmed. He stood up and stumbled out of the room to find who had his old arc reactor, to see if it was still able to be salvaged.
"Sir you really should be lying down!" Simmons said annoyed, Tony resisted the urge to laugh realizing that every other avenger probably stumbled out of medical when they felt that they could.
"Is everyone okay?" Tony asked ignoring her advice.
"Yes they are fine, back to bed please"
"Where's Fitz?"
"I'll send him to your bed"
"Jemma! I'm fine! What I really need is to know what's running my arc reactor right now and how much damage the shrapnel caused." Simmons backed down and pointed Tony in the right direction. "Thank you" Tony bowed his head slightly in her direction as he walked away. He walked quickly ignoring the tight and painful muscles in his legs.
"Jemma how's-" Fitz jumped when he realized that the footsteps coming around the corner belonged to the object of the sentence.
"What's this?" Tony asked lightly tapping the arc reactor. "Was the other one irreparable?"
"No, Mr Stark" Fitz was trying to seem cool and collected but in the face of his childhood hero he really couldn't do much but stammer.
"So? Where is it?" Tony asked trying not to seem too intimidating thinking that he had scared Fitz by appearing.
"Well... Sir the arc reactor wasn't irreparable but.."
"But what?"
"Your heart was" Simmons walked around the corner to save Fitz from embarrassing himself. Tony raised an eyebrow. "Your arc reactor was off for too long, the shrapnel has been pushed through your heart and I wasn't able to fix it and-"
"and I had been working on a pump" Fitz found his courage "to replace a heart, it took a few alterations but it should do the job"
"I see" Tony said quietly thinking.
"I made you a copy of the blueprints" Fitz held out a USB drive "I thought you might want to know what it is and it's a bit hard to reverse engineer something that is keeping you alive so..."
"Thanks" Tony said breaking out of his thought and grabbing the blueprints. He began walking towards the exit.
"Where do you think you're going?" Simmons asked incredulously.
"Home" Tony said giving her a wink and trying to smile.
"You need to stay here! We still aren't finished running tests on the pump" Fitz responded before Simmons could.
"I'll run the tests" Tony offered. "You can come by tomorrow and run the tests!" He added to their disapproving stares.
"Okay" Fitz said. "But-"
"Great" Tony smiled and left before Simmons started lecturing them both on why this was a bad idea.
--
Tony opened the car door and smiled, finally back at the tower.
"I'll park Lola in the garage then I'm coming in, I want to check up on everyone." Coulson said.
"Okay" Tony responded even though Coulson had already pulled away. He walked slowly up to the doors and allowed Jarvis to do a full body scan as he walked into the tower.
"You're back!" Cap pulled him into a tight squeeze nearly knocking Tony out again.
"How are you?" Tony asked absent-mindedly following Steve.
"I'm fine" Rogers gave a genuine smile.
"Good" Tony realized too late that he was walking into a trap.
"Surprise" Nat smiled. There was a huge cake on the dining room table that matched his new heart. Tony couldn't help but smile.
"Let us feast like kings" Thor boomed from the head of the table with a knife already in hand.
"So how's the new one running?" Hawkeye asked to be polite but he ended up trying to appear interested as Tony launched into his usual pattern of techno-babble. Luckily for Clint Tony stopped when Coulson walked in.
"Hey! How's everyone doing? I wouldn't have to ask if your files from medical were complete but it seems that you all 'disappeared' before you were discharged" Coulson raised an eyebrow at the room and the team started laughing. Coulson would try to get them to stay in medical until they were discharged but he'd rather them come and leave early than not come at all.
--
After 'dinner' Tony inspected the blueprints. He already had a running list of improvements to make. "This is the problem with Mark one's" Tony told Jarvis (half the time he was sure that he only gave Jarvis a voice so he wouldn't be talking to himself) "there is always so much to fix! I mean you wouldn't call it mark one if you weren't sure that a mark two was coming. Although to be fair mark threes aren't all that great either... There's always still bugs... Mark six, that's where it's at! I mean if you want the epitome of form and function wait for the mark six ya know?"
"Yes sir" Jarvis responded.
"Which mark are you Jarvis?"
"Three sir"
"...right. I mean it really depends on the project, sometimes you only need three or four..."
"Yes sir"
"Anyway this will be a new challenge I guess" Tony inspected the outside design in a mirror, it actually was quite elegant, sort of reminiscent of the his first but more dramatic, he liked that. There was a circle in the center which was surrounded by a ring of rectangles which in turn was surrounded with another ring of larger rectangles. Tony liked it, he was impressed by Fitz's design, despite the list of improvements it was really good for a mark one, although Tony would never admit that to Fitz, just like Fitz would never admit that that design was actually mark five.