Chapter Text
Most people do not have a single point in their lives that they can look back on and say “That! That’s where it all went wrong!”
Tony sincerely hopes that this isn’t going to be that moment for him.
He’s taken every precaution he can think of, programmed multiple, redundant fail safes, and re-watched every sci-fi movie he can think of that deals with the relevant philosophy.
If he can at all help it, he won’t be one of those scientists that gets so preoccupied with whether or not he can, that he doesn’t stop to think if he should.
“Uh, why is there a poster of Jeff Goldblum taped to the acetylene tank?” James asks, scratching his head.
“Because Pepper lives in D.C. now and I need somebody to keep me accountable,” Tony says, like duh, how had he not guessed that... “I tried taping it to DUM-E, but it kept getting snagged and ripping Jeff in half.”
“Right... I guess that charge on our card for six Jurassic Park posters wasn’t a fraud then...”
“Hey, I may not be a billionaire anymore, but being CEO of SI does come with a paycheck in the millions,” Tony points out.
“I ain’t complainin’... But you’re going to need to explain it to Buck yourself, ‘cause I ain’t takin’ that bullet for you,” James grins.
Tony hangs his head.
“Ok, ok, fine. I’ll be right there. Fri, lock down this code while I’m gone. And I mean in every way. Total seclusion from anything that might even resemble a nanobot. If this somehow goes active and the apocalypse starts while I’m in the middle of having an argument with my boyfriend over fan memorabilia, it’s on you, you hear me? I will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat if these things start replicating without my say so, are we clear?”
“Clear, Boss.”
“I thought we weren’t using the “R” word, sir...” JARVIS says drolly, as if in his sister’s defense.
Tony scrubs his hands over his face.
“...We aren’t. Don’t make me mute you, J.”
“Define, ‘make’, sir...” JARVIS sasses back, making Tony smile and shake his head.
The thing is, he is pretty confident that he’s done this right, that there’s no way the nanobots could ever get stuck in “self fabrication mode”, as he calls it. They can’t develop a mind of their own, because his mind is their mind. Except for when Friday’s mind is their mind... But he trusts his baby girl to never go rogue just as much as he trusts JARVIS not to. Which is more than he trusts himself not to, if you want to nitpick...
Both of them have a better understanding of life and of death than he could ever have hoped to program into them, because of the things they’ve experienced. Being murdered by Ultron for JARVIS, and for Friday, the less terrifying but still impactful implications of her “missed” sync opportunity.
“Alright, be good, kiddos, we’ll pick this back up in the morning.”
“Yes, Dad,” both AI’s chorus at him sarcastically.
But Tony wouldn’t have it any other way.
<//>
He almost feels like he should grab a physical keyboard and hit “Enter” when the time comes, but in the end he just shakes himself and says, “Ok, Fri, do it.”
The two nanobots they’ve isolated from the rest of the network spring to life.
They build a nanobot.
That nanobot sits inactive, not connected to any network, an empty vessel waiting for a command as the original two build another one.
Tony breathes a sigh of relief. Then he grins happily. “It’s working, Fri, holy shit...”
“What’s workin’, doll?” Bucky asks curiously as he’s getting ready for work.
“Oh, uh, Friday and I programmed the nanobots to build nanobots, and, so far, it seems to be working perfectly,” he explains, gesturing toward the screen. He has the container where the nanobots are working magnified on a screen at like a bazillion percent.
“Wouldn’t it be faster if the ones they made helped too, you know, afterward?...” Bucky says, pointing to the inactive ones just sitting there.
“It would, but ‘fast’ isn’t always best. That kind of thing can get out of control real quick.”
Bucky raises an eyebrow at him.
“Ok, say I gave you a penny one day, and then on day two I gave you two pennies, and then on day three I gave you four pennies, and I doubled it every day after that, et cetera et cetera. How much money do you think I’d be giving you at the end of oh, say, thirty days?” Tony asks him, wagging both his eyebrows in return.
Bucky snorts and says, “I don’t know, a couple hundred bucks, maybe?”
Friday helpfully brings up a graphic to back what Tony’s about to say.
“Actually, you’d have $5,368,709.12 at the end of thirty days. That’s the power of doubling,” he says solemnly.
“But that’s a bad thing, with the nanobots?...” Bucky asks, not quite understanding the full scope of the problem.
“Friday?” Tony prompts her.
“To put the issue in scale, there are 83,612,736,000,000 nanobots within a cubic meter. And Boss currently has approximately 116 cubic meters of nanobots at his ready disposal. That’s over nine and a half quintillion nanobots...as a starting point...”
“Oh,” Bucky says elegantly.
“Oh, indeed,” Tony echoes.
<//>
“So, confession time,” Tony says, eyeing Carol as seriously as he ever eyes anyone, “I may have actually shown Peter, Parker that is, not Quill, uh, how the nanobots work?... But it was while we were still in space, way before I knew that the rest of the universe would apparently hold earth to that Ko Treaty thing, so, um, yeah... Sorry not sorry?” he winces apologetically.
Carol takes a swig of her beer before answering him.
“Wow, you actually bought that too?” she says, her tone clear that she’s laughing at him even though she’s not, you know, physically laughing. “Huh, I thought you were supposed to be smart...”
“Uh, yes? Wait, did, did you make that up?” Tony asks, positively aghast.
“Not so much made up as...stretched the truth,” Carol admits, raising an eyebrow at him. “Terra wouldn’t really be bound by the pledge of some guy who claimed rule over a whole bunch of ‘uninhabited’ sectors of space a few thousand years ago, especially not if Terra was determined to actually be under ‘self rule’ now. But the Trotors did sign back then, while claiming to rule this part of the galaxy, so...”
“Don’t all planets start out ruling themselves?” Tony quips.
“Not if they’re colonized and didn’t contain intelligent life beforehand,” Carol comes back with right away.
Rhodey snickers and takes a swig of his own beer.
“I’m actually pretty sure there were humans on this planet 3000 years ago...” Tony points out, because now that he thinks about it, that doesn’t really make sense...
“Look, intelligence is a gradient, right? So when you’re making these kinds of designations, determining what meets the criteria for ‘intelligent’ life, you have to have a cut off somewhere. The fact of the matter is, for a long time, Terra didn’t make the threshold,” Carol says with a shrug, “So even if someone else hadn’t claimed this quadrant, you still wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to enter into any intergalactic treaties ourselves anyway.”
“Harsh. But what about now? Will we be required to sign the treaty within a certain time frame or what? I’m just asking for a friend...” Tony says fake-casually.
Carol gives him a flat, yet slightly amused look.
“Actually, Terra still doesn’t meet the requirements for being considered ‘self ruled’,” she informs them, talking over Tony when he starts to complain, “Even though it is recognized that it contains intelligent life now, you’ve never come together as one people, never had one governing person or body for the whole planet. Until that happens, you can’t be expected to sign or uphold any treaties.”
Tony pouts.
“Why are you poutin’? That’s a good thing, means you ain’t in trouble,” James says, kicking Tony’s ankle gently.
“Oh. Good point. ... So what are everyone’s plans for the weekend?” Tony says, changing the subject with an obviousness that somehow still manages to be smooth.
“I have a meeting with the Accords Council,” Rhodey sighs, because it can’t be helped.
“I have to head back out on patrol. There are several outlying planets that I haven’t checked up on in a while,” Carol says, giving Rhodey’s hand a squeeze.
“I’ll probably sleep in, then help Buck go through the sale ads,” James tells them, smiling at the domesticity of it.
“And I’ll probably be fucking Bucky while James sleeps in, then I’ll really sleep in after that, and won’t clip coupons,” Tony smirks.
That flat look is back on Carol’s face.
But without the amusement.
Tony fidgets under the weight of it.
“You know, I liked it better when you were lying under oath for me, not judging my lifestyle choices... And the effect of that stare is somewhat lessened by the fact that Rhodey's sitting in your lap, though, just so you know. Ok, I lied, it’s not lessened at all and I am suitably terrified,” Tony corrects himself when Carol raises an incredulous eyebrow at him.
She just shakes her head fondly though, half a smile tugging at her lips as she says, “Terrified enough to get me another beer?”
Tony hops up out of James’ lap with a mock salute and exaggerated eagerness as he says, “Definitely.”
<//>
“I ain’t mad,” Bucky prefaces the conversation with, “But why did you charge a night’s stay at the Mandarin Oriental for tonight, if we were just going to sleep here?...”
“Oh. That wasn’t for us,” Tony says, twisting around in Bucky’s arms, “That was for Sour Patch and Brass Tacks, so they could have some nice alone time before she heads off planet... Why? Did...did you want to go stay in a fancy hotel for a couple nights?” Tony asks with a grin when Bucky buries his face in Tony’s shoulder and blushes.
“Maybe...”
<//>
A couple months later, Tony is giving an honorary lecture at MIT when JARVIS halts his presentation and a klaxon sounds from his phone.
“Proximity Alert Triggered.”
Tony blinks.
“How clo-”
“Unknown vessels are in the exosphere, sir. They are not responding to our attempts to communicate. Defenses are being deployed immediately.”
Tony looks up at the sea of young faces in front of him and says, “Everyone remain calm...but I have to go.”
The suit is already surging around him. He takes to the air and blasts through the nearest window, with no time to worry about falling glass.
“Any word from the Accords Council yet?” Tony asks as he heads straight for the upper atmosphere. He can see little dots all over the sky that must be the spaceships. They’re probably too small for people on the ground to have noticed them yet, but they will soon...
“Not yet. There are over a thousand alien ships detected around the earth. They must have some sort of cloaking ability, sir. Neither Friday nor I detected them until they were already here, even with the newly upgraded sensors.”
“Ok, you work on coordinating things with the Council, Fri and I will take the nanobots up and give them a little show of force,” Tony says, determined.
“On it, Boss. The nanobots are already away.”
“Sir, we are being fired upon. New York, Wakanda, and Kamar-Taj have all been targeted,” JARVIS says urgently.
“Shields?” Tony asks, kicking the suit’s repulsors into overdrive. The ships grow larger in front of him as he gets closer.
“We were able to use the nanobots to deflect the hit here, and Wakanda’s shields seem to be holding, but Kamar-Taj was unable to raise their defenses quickly enough. Sorcerers are on the scene now, but they took heavy damage.”
Tony is already punching through the atmosphere when the alert comes through from the Council to assemble defenses.
“Yeah, these guys obviously aren’t here to establish trade...” Tony mutters to himself.
“War Machine and the Vision have been deployed, sir,” JARVIS informs him.
“That’s it?” Tony asks incredulously, because hello, fleet of alien invaders.
“Everyone else needs to be able to breathe to fight, sir.”
“And let me guess, the Guardians aren’t on planet right now?”
“No, they departed a few days ago.”
“Ok, if these guys are just going to show up and start shooting, we’re dispensing with the pleasantries too,” Tony decides. He forms the nanobots into a giant spike and impales the nearest ship. Then he pulls mentally, and they expand outward, rending the ship to pieces. He uses the nanobots to give the pieces a little push too, like he’s sweeping them out of their atmosphere, to make sure they don’t have a chance to fall to earth and land on anyone.
The alien fleet responds by firing on the planet and him.
“Fri, we’re going to need more nanobots. A whole lot more nanobots,” Tony says as he dodges. He can feel that some of them were destroyed by piercing the way that he did. “Release the locked ones on the ship and use them to deflect as many of those lasers as possible. Most of the earth doesn’t have a way to defend against this.” He keeps destroying as many ships as he can with the nanobots, but there’s just too many of them...
Back in New York, the spaceship they took to go after Thanos dissolves completely where it’s parked, the few items left behind by its former inhabitants falling to the ground as a silver cloud of nanobots races toward the sky.
Friday spreads them out and uses them as a virtually living shield between the attackers and the earth, keeping to the troposphere as much as possible since there’s still not enough to go around. She’s able to deflect a good 75% of the blasts over populated areas, but the hits landing in the ocean she lets go through by necessity. Every time they deflect a blast, a few more nanobots go offline.
“Boss, it’s still not enough!” she says, sounding worried.
“Incoming, sir, Russian ballistic defense systems have been engaged,” JARVIS tells him.
While Tony is swooping around a laser blast, he hazards a look at the earth. “Please tell me they’re not nuclear...” he says, knowing that much radiation released into the atmosphere would literally doom them all. “It’s a little early in the fight for the ‘if we can’t have it no one can’ strategy.”
“No, sir. I was able to... dissuade their use of them. Tangentially, President Putin wishes me to inform you that he will be having words with you about ‘how far you are up their ass’ when this is all done...”
“Well, pencil him in for something that works with James’ and Bucky’s schedules too,” Tony says with a grin as he destroys another ship, “I don’t do my polyamory negotiations without all members being present.”
Tony is briefly distracted by the feed JARVIS pops up on the HUD, showing the Russian missiles having no effect on the ships. They explode against some sort of force field barrier before being able to make contact.
“J?”
“It appears the nanobots are able to slip through the shields where conventional weapons are not.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Boss, we’re down to 60% coverage,” Friday’s voice sounds strained, “Hits are getting through to more populated areas now.”
“Damn it. We aren’t going to win like this...” Tony mutters, his mind racing. “Tell Rhodey and Vision to pull back, have them land.”
“Tones? I hope you have a plan, because Vision’s mind beam is the only thing able to hurt them on our end,” Rhodey says after he gets the order. The two of them are too far away for Tony to get a visual on, but he trusts them to trust him.
“Don’t I always, Platypus?”
“Let me rephrase that, I hope you have a plan that doesn’t involve you sacrificing your dumbass.”
“Not my ass that’s going to be sacrificed this time, Honey Bear, but thanks for your concern,” Tony says as he retreats back to the thermosphere. “Friday, give me control of the lockboxes over the arc reactors, worldwide.”
“...Be careful, boss,” she says as the transfer goes through.
Tony can feel the web of them in his mind, not perfectly spaced around the globe, but close enough. “Divert the nanobots acting as a shield to my command on my mark,” Tony says, hovering just above the mesosphere now.
“Rhodey, Vision, are you clear?” Tony asks, though, now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure Vision would actually be in danger, since he’s made of vibranium...
“Clear,” they both radio in.
“3, 2, 1, mark,” Tony says without preamble.
As soon as Friday hands the shield over to him, Tony drops defenses and makes every single nanobot rocket outward, as if caught in an explosion.
Because if there’s one thing the former Merchant of Death understands better than anything else, it’s the damage that can be wrought by shrapnel.
The enemy immediately stops firing, because their systems are now Swiss cheese, and every single ship starts to break up and float away from the earth, carried by the residual force of the nanobots slamming into them.
The alien fleet is completely destroyed.
Tony’s basically destroyed his entire stock of nanobots to do it, but hey, what’s a little total annihilation between enemies?
“Note to self, figure out how to detect cloaked ships ASAP,” Tony says with a sigh. He decides to take a lap or two around the earth after that, to make sure none of the larger chunks of debris get caught by their gravity and pulled in. You know, the ones that are big enough to not burn up completely upon entry.
“Sir, sensors are picking up another ship emerging from behind the moon,” JARVIS says just a few minutes later.
“Hostiles?” Tony asks, diverting his flight path right away.
“It appears to be a larger version of the ships that just attacked, sir,” JARVIS informs him worriedly.
“Damn it. How could you let me forget about the mothership, J?” Tony says, attempting to joke but falling flat.
“I apologize, sir,” JARVIS says, far too seriously.
“Not your fault, J,” Tony says hurriedly. “Remind me later to install a sensor array on the dark side of the goddamn moon.”
“I have penciled it in after your meeting with President Putin, sir.”
The mothership fires on earth, from much farther away than the other ships did, but with a larger laser.
Tony is seriously considering letting the few remaining nanobots that he has replicate while he asks JARVIS where that blast was aimed.
“Wakanda, sir. Princess Shuri indicates that their shield cannot withstand another hit of that magnitude.”
The mothership is already charging up for another blast.
“J, tell James and Bucky that I love them, ok? I love all of you,” Tony says.
He doesn’t wait for a reply.
Tony breaks the suit up into a billion pieces, hurtling them at the mothership with the ferocity of a cornered animal, and he falls.
He keeps his eyes open for as long as he can, smiling to himself even through his wind-whipped tears as he watches the mothership get decimated.
“Earth 3, aliens 0,” Tony cackles to himself as he plunges to his death.
Well, he has a kind of vague hope that maybe someone with flying super powers might be close enough to catch him, but, hell, he doesn’t even know what part of the earth he’s over right now... All he knows is that a fall of this height would be too much for even extremis to heal.
The last thing he expects is for his sight to be obscured by a cloud of red mist, his limbs buoyed and his body eased out of its free fall.
The panic that had been riding him hard slowly falls away, and a few minutes later, Tony sees the tops of buildings come into view beside him. He’s slowly lowered to the ground, his back connecting softly with some grass and flowers and stuff.
Tony takes a deep, slightly shaky breath, just basking in the relief for a second, and also trying to determine if he wet himself during the fall, or just landed in a puddle...
Wanda stands over him a moment later, blocking out the sun as she looks him over.
“Thanks,” he says inadequately.
She offers him a hand, helping to pull him up. Then she glances at the sky, at the trails being left in it as bits of broken spaceships burn up in the atmosphere.
“No, Tony. Thank you,” Wanda says sincerely.
He nods, like it was no big deal.
“So, where are we right now?” he asks, looking around at the people starting to clap for him being alive. He gives a few waves to the crowd.
“Prague.”
“Huh. Lucky you happened to be here.”
“Not luck,” Wanda says with a smile as Pietro is suddenly standing beside her, “We were actually in Sokovia when JARVIS sent out the distress call for anyone who could catch you.”
“I did not see that coming,” Tony says solemnly before Pietro can even open his mouth.
While the three of them are laughing a little too hard, a civilian approaches them with her cell phone held out in front of her.
“Sorry to interrupt, but, I posted a video of you landing onto my Twitter, and now this guy named JARVIS took over my phone? He said to tell you he’s sending an old suit for you?”
“Thanks kid,” Tony says, giving her a smile, “And J, give her back her phone.”
“Of course, sir. As soon as I am able to establish contact with you by another means.”
“Here, you can use my phone, JARVIS,” Wanda says, pulling it out of her pocket.
Tony accepts it with a smile. “You know, you should change your name from the ‘Scarlet Witch’ to the ‘Helpful Witch’ ...” he suggests.
Wanda smiles at him kindly and says, “Don’t push your luck.”
<//>
They’re able to salvage part of the alien’s computers from the wreckage in space. It takes a few weeks for them to crack their coding and language, but it’s worth it once they do.
Apparently, they considered their attack on Terra to be a preemptive strike, thinking that Tony couldn’t possibly have enough nanobots at his disposal to be a real threat yet. And they didn’t want to have to deal with Terra once it was. A real threat, that is.
Of course that only spurs Tony into making ten times as many nanobots as he’d had before.
Not that he wants people to think of earth as a threat, but he’ll be damned if he lets the universe think they can just walk all over them.
<//>
“I can’t believe the entire ship was made of nanobots,” Brunhilde shakes her head as she watches the arm wrestling competition going on between Thor and Bucky.
“Wait, the entire thing was?” Bruce asks with a frown, “So that means...”
“I could have jettisoned Rogers into the cold void of space at any time with merely a thought?... Yep.”
<//>
Bucky’s frugality has been wearing off on him, but Tony does still buy a new suit to wear for the press conference where it will be announced that the governments of earth have come to an agreement.
From now on, Tony will be the first line of defense in all things extraterrestrial. The Accords will still be in place of course, but it’s become abundantly clear that the friendly forces all want to deal with him anyway, and he’s the only one with the force to deal with the unfriendly ones.
As part of that, they’ve also allowed for the fact that he may have to enter into agreements or understandings with groups of aliens without being able to consult the rest of the world first. And they’ll abide by his judgement.
“Really, J?” Tony had said when he’d heard about that part for the first time, “And which countries actually agreed to that up front?”
“...All of them, sir.”
<//>
When Carol finally gets back from her extended patrol, she doesn’t even comment on the debris field still being cleared from around the planet, or the nanobot production going on like gangbusters at the Tower...
“Sorry that took longer than planned. After they heard what happened here, Xandar called a preliminary council meeting that I had to attend.”
“Sounds tedious,” Tony says, deciding to keep it casual if she’s going to. “By the way, the earth was almost destroyed. But I handled it.”
“I heard,” Carol says, “By the way, the Xandar delegation will be here in about a week. But I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Really? Xandar? They haven’t shown any interest in trade with us before...”
“That's because they’re not coming to trade, Tony,” Carol says with a smirk. She claps her hand on Tony's shoulder as her smirk becomes a knowing grin. “There’s a treaty you need to sign.”
THE END