Tony Stark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starknaked) wrote2012-07-28 09:30 pm
starknaked) wrote2012-07-28 09:30 pm
Taxon Application
YOUR NAME: Will
PERSONAL JOURNAL: mythotica everywhere
E-MAIL: takesafterhim@gmail.com
AIM: takesafterhim
CHARACTERS IN TAXON:
Josef Kostan || loveawkward
Azkadellia || azoftheoz
CHARACTER NAME:
Anthony Edward “Tony” Stark || starknaked
CANON: MCU – Marvel Cinematic Universe
MEDIA: Movies
BIRTHDAY/AGE:
CANON POINT:
Near the end of Avengers just as Tony has done his part to save the world.
Tony has diverted the missile, saving the world and destroying those trying to destroy the Earth. Having pushed the suit beyond its capabilities, he passes out and plummets to the Earth. Instead of being saved from that rather harsh and destructive landing, Tony wakes up in the welcome room, still in the suit and utterly confused.
WHY THIS CHARACTER AND CANON POINT?:
Tony Stark, especially as portrayed by Robert Downey Jr, is such a fantastic character for playing in panfandom games. He is a man with a troubled past that does haunt him more than he lets on. Yet, on the surface, he is outgoing, outspoken, loud mouthed, and ready to take on anything. He can be an asshole, even if a rich one so he gets away with more than he should and he’s aware of that. In truth, Stark is a brat, but one with a heart of mostly gold. Well, not gold but worth a damn sight more based on rarity and technology.
A man rife with sarcasm and snappy comebacks, Stark is a great character for getting out there and starting roleplay; someone that can interact with nearly anyone just because he is Tony Stark and believes everyone should want to interact with him. Not to mention he isn’t afraid to leap before he looks, getting involved is basically second nature to him.
Rarely one to let anything hold him down, he’ll be willing to get into the thick of things, seek answers, help others and, in the end, work hard for answers because Stark is not someone to let the truth go ignored. Not that he’ll be able to find it but the idea of him fighting with their alien hamstery overlords by trying to dismantle and study things like the tablet and hatch amuses me, though I see these attempts coming with rather troublesome results to be honest.
I really feel that Tony is an ideal candidate for a game with so many different types and beings that he can poke at, prod, question and taunt – all for the sake of science and knowledge, of course. Or so he’ll claim.
Bringing him in from this point brings Tony in at a point where he’s learned a bit more of how to play well with others, as well as being caught up in a sense of purpose (whether he admits it or not) that would be missing now that he is in Taxon. A drive that he will now have to direct towards other things.
I think it would be a good place for him to be, finding himself loosed on a world he can study and without currently having Pepper, Jarvis or Fury to try and keep him in line.
Watching him choosing between the man he’s been, the one he is on the path to becoming, and watching as he finds himself caught between his own personality and this new world is intriguing to me.
PROGRAMMED POSSESSION:
This is the player’s desire; with understanding it might be too much. Fully willing and ready to change it to merely the suit but…
With his arrival point, I would like to see Tony wake in the suit, battered and half broken and battled scarred. No connection to Jarvis and currently not functioning. He would find the tablet showing a dot as well. It would lead to the battle broken and nearly destroyed Stark Building. I see it rather like giving him a giant box of scraps from which to try and rebuild his life.
I admit, I worry this is a bit of cheating, since they are technically two separate possessions, but as the movies have shown the suit needs technology to strip him from it, and while neither would be functioning at the time, it would lead to rp with him having to admit to needing help, as well as fixing and working on both the suit and the building.
If too much though, I would say the suit and the suit alone :D
HISTORY:
Born as the only child of Howard and Maria Stark, Tony was a precocious child from an early age. Raised by a mother caught up in her benefits and charities, Tony began life looking to his father for direction. It was a poor choice as Howard – a man who had once been the sort of suave and rakish man that Anthony would one day grow up to be – had changed in the intervening years since he had been unable to find the plane containing Captain Steven Rogers after his fateful crash to save the world.
The result is a young boy who learned that acting out got him more attention than behaving did, even if that attention was often times negative. The result was a boy who was the class clown, the troublemaker, all the while learning how to put things together in a new way, in exciting ways, in ways that others hadn’t thought of before. All because he had so much time to himself.
Tony Stark was a young boy who grew into a man that knew two things: how to perform best for maximum attention, and how to build nearly anything from practically nothing. At four he created his first circuit board. By six, he had built from leftover parts his first engine. There was little that Tony’s mind couldn’t master when it came to building and creating in the world of weapons and electronics.
At seventeen, Tony graduated summa cum laude from MIT but it was a bright and shining moment before one that would shadow Tony’s young adult years. Shortly after his graduation which Howard could not make the trip to attend, both of Anthony’s parents were killed in a car accident due to faulty brakes. As Tony was still under the legal age of consent, Howard’s good friend Obadiah Stane took over the helm of Stark Industries as the premiere weapons producer in the world.
Tony might not have been running the company but he was the face of his father’s legacy. A well dressed, alcoholic face that was oft seen with a pretty girl on one arm and a lowball glass in the other. It was that face that made an appearance in Afghanistan to show off Stark Industries latest weapon, a high tech system of Tony’s own brilliance called “Jericho”. As they were returning from the demonstration by way of humvee convoy, the entire convoy came under attack. Trying to scramble to safety, he found himself facing a missile. One created by his own company.
The shrapnel from the missile shredded Tony’s chest and left him on the verge of death. It was only the help of another captive that kept Tony from dying before he even had a chance at a glimpse into how his life was crumbling. With the help of an electromagnet, Stark survived though just barely, his entire life held captive by the magnet keeping the metal out of his heart. Ordered to recreate the Jericho missile, Tony agreed and yet he used the time to build a miniature of his own arc reactor, a device that would do for him what the electromagnet was doing to save his life.
The suit he built as well allowed him to escape, though the man that saved his life was killed in the process though Tony did manage to destroy their cache of his weapons. Crashing in the desert, he was finally found by military copters and he was able to return to the States as a hero. A hero, who upon his return, made the announcement that his company would no longer manufacture weapons.
That became a turning point in Tony’s life. Fighting with the board to be a better man. Fighting Stane when he learned that he had been aware of just who they were manufacturing weapons for. And then fighting for his own life when the very device he created to save him from certain death began poisoning him slowly but surely from the inside out.
As his health deteriorated, Tony managed to ruin much of his reputation and his friendships with his own actions as he began to face the reality of his own mortality. Including alienating the one person to always stand by him, Pepper Potts, and nearly destroying the company he put into her capable hands.
As death became imminent, Stark took a meeting with Director Fury, learning his assistant was actually a spy and having a temporary stop gap measure applied to slow the poisoning. Between that, and a clue from Fury, Stark was able to find an answer and with the help of his own home built particle accelerator, he created a new element to power his arc reactor and the suit.
With a new lease on life, Tony not only managed to stop the ones trying to destroy him and his company, but he managed to save the world with only minimal – most of a city – damage with the help of Rhodey in his own suit.
Consulting for SHIELD, Tony put himself into building his newest monument to his favorite thing. Himself. The Stark Tower was a massive building that rose to the heavens with his name in bright lights across the top. Bright lights powered by the world’s first fully sustainable power source.
What should have been a celebration turned into an invasion by one Agent Phil “No Agent isn’t his first name” Coulson, recruiting Stark to help handle things with a stolen cube that could well be the end of the world. What began as research turned into Tony suiting up and helping Captain America to temporarily defeat Loki, the new criminal mastermind in town who had stolen the Tessaract to begin with.
Once Loki was safely secured, without much thanks to the interference of the Asgardian’s brother Thor, Tony found himself on board SHIELD’s helicarrier along with Natasha, the ever annoying moral pillar of Steve Rogers, as well as Dr Bruce Banner who Tony immediately sets out to annoy and tempt in a thinly veiled attempt to see if he can make the man shift forms while in the air.
Of course, much of his bad jokes and constant snarking attitude are an attempt to cover up many things, including bugging the ship and finding an in to speak to Banner about how Stark wasn’t afraid of the other guy, and wasn’t afraid of Banner’s control either though he thought Banner was more than he was.
All of this educational programming on the part of Stark and his mistrust of Fury – which was well placed when they learned the plan had been to weaponize the Tessaract themselves – was interrupted by the return of the teams wayward assassin, the at the time possessed Clint Barton. The resulting attack on the helicarrier split up the forces but allowed Tony to come to a conclusion in trying to stop Loki.
Loki was as big a diva as Tony Stark himself and had planned to utilize Stark’s own monument to his own ego as a means of using the Tessaract to open an interdimensional rift to allow the forces of the Chitauri to overrun and attack New York. While Stark might well be a volatile, egomaniacal megalomaniac, he learned too how to work as a team and what mattered most in life.
Choosing to give his own life to stop the entire island from being destroyed, Tony diverted a nuclear weapon to travel upward through the dimensional portal, flying with it into another realm. Unable to reach Pepper in those last minutes in an attempt to say goodbye, Tony closed his eyes and let go as the suit died and he plummeted back through the portal to the Earth below.
PSYCHOLOGY/PERSONALITY:
Apparently I'm - what was it? - volatile, self-obsessed. And I don't play well with others.
Tony Stark is, in a nutshell, an egotistical and privileged brat with enough money and prestige to back up his mouth and his actions. At least most of the time.
The only child of a distant father and a doting, though not overly affectionate, mother, Tony spent much of his childhood working to gain attention for his actions. Yet it was those same actions that left him on the other side of the chasm emotionally from his father, acting out in obvious ways in an attempt to get love and attention and not realizing that each act further pushed him away from a man seeking out the greatest hero he’d ever known.
That coldness that was not Tony’s own fault but spawned by his own inability to recover anything more than the Tesseract led Tony to attempting to win over his father’s love through smart comments, silly jokes and a larger than life personality that blossomed through his childhood and into the adult he would become. An adult who still did not have the most acceptable of personas, but carried enough money and charm to make that change from class clown to billionaire playboy.
As a teen, Tony learned that the class clown routine that had served him well as a child did little for him as he rushed headlong into manhood. It was through high school and into college that Tony learned charm and flirtations were bound to get him farther than jokes, but sometimes the person we are is entire influenced by who we have been. The result was a man who laid on the charm with a heavy hand, flirted outrageously and yet was unable to resist turning sarcasm and snide entitlement into an art form.
Heavily influenced by the way society reacts to the triple threat combination of good looking, rich and intelligent, Tony grew to become a man that knew his place in life – and that place was at the top, getting what he wanted. For Tony there is no such thing as not getting his way, only a need to find out just what he has to change to get what he wants. At least that is how he led his life until a near death experience, and the constant threat from the shrapnel in his body, did as much as it might to change his view.
Nearly dying didn’t stop Stark from being the playboy billionaire with a sharp tongue and quick wit. Instead it merely allowed him new avenues of exploration for both his intelligence and his audience for his sometimes selfish, often self-amusing, shenanigans that can include pushing the limits of those around him when it comes to humor – and their own personal shortcomings.
To the world at large, Tony is a man of means who is as flashy as the suit he wears and takes the world head on. Not one to back down from a challenge, he oft leaps before he thinks though most often when the welfare of others is involved. He is brash, witty, reckless and a hedonist; a man that lives life by his rules and doesn’t accept that his rules aren’t the governing body in the way things are done, whether in the demands to turn his suit over to the government, or remembering that his goodwill gift might well be toxic to the one receiving it. He sees the world as his playground, and he is king of the hill.
While the personal persona is not much different, there is a side that many never see. The side of a man that does truly have a heart, even if it is kept in a glass jar; he’s just had a stunted enough emotional upbringing to not realize when he’s asking too much or not giving enough. That doesn’t stop him from caring for those around him, especially those that he’s let into his life as more than just the employees and contacts they seem to be.
Beyond the entitlement and privilege, Stark is a man that has learned to look at the world in a new way but not as most would look at it. Whereas his philanthropy before was a means of tax deductions and positive publicity, the near death experience encouraged Stark to take a long hard look at many of his actions. While not a pacifist, he works to facilitate peace rather than fund war, and seeks ways to better the world and the environment such as clean energy sources. That desire to do more, to protect and avenge rather than destroy, does not stop him from allowing his sometimes dangerous sense of humor and slow burning anger to take charge as he sees fit.
And Tony almost always sees fit.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Without the suit, Tony’s abilities are that of a man who is in fairly good health – if we discount his liver – who has been involved in a handful of combat situations. Most times, without the suit, he is quicker to use his wits and tongue than he is to involve himself to hand to hand combat.
That wit is part of a greater than average intelligence, leading to Tony being branded a genius – a title he himself encourages. Brilliant in his own right, he also has a first class education. His intelligence allows him not only to know when to let others run his company, but to create the technology for the full size arc reactor. It was that knowledge that allowed Tony to save his own life when he created a smaller, portable version of the reactor that continues to keep shrapnel in his body from piercing his heart.
With the suit, Tony has the ability to fly within the suit’s capabilities, including close quarters maneuverings and jet boosters for speed. The suit is capable of absorbing electrical energy, as well as dispersing it in plasma blasts. Those blasts are also available without an added boost, though without the force and distance. With the suit, Tony also can sustain damage from blasts and falling, as well as being strong enough to deflect bullets and explosions to about the strength of an anti-personnel launcher.
ARRIVAL POST:
The call failed. The missile was aimed straight for their attackers, if all went well they would be closing the portal behind him and the call had failed. The last contact Tony would have with Pepper, the last thing she would have, would be the legacy of the Avengers doing what they could to stop Loki and a single legend that wasn’t enough but he could hope would convey so much more.
1 call missed
The screen before him flickered and then faded, dying out even as Tony himself could feel that familiar tightness in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he had died. He knew what it felt like. It felt just like this as he lost feeling in his hands and feet, as his skin grew cold and then felt gone as if he was just light and soul in a metal suit.
The light of the nuclear bomb exploding bathed him in an orangey red light that he couldn’t feel through the protective suit, even if there was no power to keep it running. In his mind, he was speaking. One last speech from Tony Stark even as he closed his eyes and let go, feeling the weight of gravity suck down upon him as if siphoning his very soul. Yet, even as his lips moved, there was no speech, no words of grandeur. Just his lips moving, barely saying the words out loud.
“I love you.”
---
Tony came too with a gasp, bolting upright.
No. Bolting upright had been the goal. The result was jerking against the still “dead” Iron Man suit, slamming his brow against the lifted visor and managing just enough movement that he fell off whatever he was laying on and landed on his side with a clank and a clunk. That hadn’t exactly been his plan.
“Ow,” he muttered, laying there and staring at a pedestal beyond which he could make out the edge of what might be a door but seemed to be currently closed. “JARVIS, online,” he muttered, not noticing the tablet atop the table. Not yet; more focused on the fact he had received no answer from the suit. From the very heavy suit that had no online systems to power the hydraulic systems he’d internalized.
“Jarvis?”
Despite the fall – that he remembered vividly – he hadn’t expected to hear nothing in return to his inquiry. Wriggling and shaking his hand, he managed to get one glove off. Jerking away the other, he worked to undo the front of the chest plate without any of the electronic equipment, and the high tech internal gadgetry, that usually made stripping so much easier than it had once been.
“I’d settle for anyone at this point,” he said, looking up at the mechanics above him, frowning as he tried to determine just where he was. “Hello? Pepper? Uhmm, Fury?” Was he in SHIELD quarantine? “If this is prison for saving New York, I’m really not going to apologize,” he pointed out. “I demand a phone call. And a scotch on the rocks, while you’re at it.”
Suddenly the front of the suit opened around the inset for the arc reactor, though he personally had to pry it further opens than a mere crack. Grunting as the metal dug into his fingers at the joints, face scrunching up with the effort.
“Okay, fine. I apologize,” he lied with a roll of his eyes. “Now give me a hand getting out of this!”
ADDITIONAL SAMPLE:
“One joke about percentages and she walks out with… HIS NAME’S AGENT,” he hollered at the elevator, not as if either of them could hear him at that point; though someone could.
“Actually it’s Phil. I processed his paperwork; I should know.”
Tony started at the sound of another’s voice but was strong enough to hold himself to not squeal at the sound of Fury’s voice behind him.
“Welcome. Let yourself in,” he said, moving to the bar set into the wall. “Oh wait, you already did,” he said, looking to where Fury stood by the floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the city. “Scotch?”
The look he received was withering and Tony only poured himself one, watching the SHIELD director as he moved closer, looking over the screens that Stark still had opened to reveal the others being courted for the Avenger Initiative.
“All it took was a true threat,” Fury asked, though there was little hint of a question to his tones.
“Ah-ha. Don’t think that just because your pet delivered these and took my CEO with him when he left that it means I’m agreeing to your little game. Call it professional curiosity,” he said, stepping down from the raised bar area as he took a sip.
“I would have thought the possibility of speaking with Banner face to face might be the tipping point.”
“Let’s call it a point in your favor,” he allowed with a short nod. “Just a point.”
“And him,” Fury asked, moving his hand to touch one of the screens.
“Hey! Hands off my toys,” he said, even as Fury gave it a quick touch, expanding the monitor that showed Steve in the room where he worked out, smaller screens on the side showing him being found in the ice as well as footage from the original experiment that transformed him. Tony made a bit of a face, not quite rolling his eyes though the same disdain was there. “What about him?”
“You can’t say he plays a role in you turning down SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative?”
“I’m saying he plays a role in being a popsicle, no more, no less. He’s a genetically altered man who is old enough to be my grandfather. Your point?”
“Your father spent years trying to find him after Rogers crashed his plane into to save the world.”
Tony did roll his eyes then, gulping down a huge slug of his scotch. “My father spent most of his life ignoring his son while mourning the loss of a science experiment,” he corrected, moving his hand over the monitor showing Captain Rogers and minimizing it to a mere hand span’s size. “Did you think I wasn’t aware of that?”
“What you’re aware of, Mr. Stark, is in your head to determine. I’m just here to tell you the truth. Your country needs you.”
“My country needed me to stop making weapons, and I did,” he snapped, hand waving across air, over the monitors, and with a small squelch and a flash of light, they minimized to nothingness. “My country needs to stop playing with alien technology it has no idea how to control.”
“They won’t know how until they try.”
“When my father told me that, I blew up the kitchen,” he pointed out, setting his glass down on the table with a hard clink.
“Listen,” Stark said, raising a hand toward Fury, palm out and flat. It could have been a placating gesture but in the end, it was downright telling him to stop. “Your man just left and I haven’t had time to look at the details. You’ve made your pitch before and trying to play the “I knew your father” card is going to get you nowhere. If, and that’s an if as big as this tower but if I decide to join your little sports team then that’s on my terms for my merits because I chose to. Not because you think you can reverse psychology me about Howard.”
Picking up his glass, Tony downed the rest of the scotch without looking away from Fury.
“Good night to you then, Mr. Stark,” he said, this time using the elevator though, for all Tony knew, it was to a secret helipad on his own roof that Stark didn’t know about.
He stayed silent until the doors closed before slammed the glass down on the table again.
“Jarvis!”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
“I need everything you can find on the super soldier serum and the experiments my father conducted after. Also everything on the Tessaract.”
“Do you want files on Mr. Loki as well?”
“No. Screw him for now. But the others, I want them. I know Banner and Natasha but this other kid. What do we have on him?”
“Mr. Barton? I will see what I can find, Sir.”
“Good. Do that. Oh, and Jarvis?”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
“Find out how the hell SHIELD overrode my own damn security and hid it from you and close the damn breech in my security. I don’t want them in here unless I let them in.”
PERSONAL JOURNAL: mythotica everywhere
E-MAIL: takesafterhim@gmail.com
AIM: takesafterhim
CHARACTERS IN TAXON:
Josef Kostan || loveawkward
Azkadellia || azoftheoz
CHARACTER NAME:
Anthony Edward “Tony” Stark || starknaked
CANON: MCU – Marvel Cinematic Universe
MEDIA: Movies
BIRTHDAY/AGE:
CANON POINT:
Near the end of Avengers just as Tony has done his part to save the world.
Tony has diverted the missile, saving the world and destroying those trying to destroy the Earth. Having pushed the suit beyond its capabilities, he passes out and plummets to the Earth. Instead of being saved from that rather harsh and destructive landing, Tony wakes up in the welcome room, still in the suit and utterly confused.
WHY THIS CHARACTER AND CANON POINT?:
Tony Stark, especially as portrayed by Robert Downey Jr, is such a fantastic character for playing in panfandom games. He is a man with a troubled past that does haunt him more than he lets on. Yet, on the surface, he is outgoing, outspoken, loud mouthed, and ready to take on anything. He can be an asshole, even if a rich one so he gets away with more than he should and he’s aware of that. In truth, Stark is a brat, but one with a heart of mostly gold. Well, not gold but worth a damn sight more based on rarity and technology.
A man rife with sarcasm and snappy comebacks, Stark is a great character for getting out there and starting roleplay; someone that can interact with nearly anyone just because he is Tony Stark and believes everyone should want to interact with him. Not to mention he isn’t afraid to leap before he looks, getting involved is basically second nature to him.
Rarely one to let anything hold him down, he’ll be willing to get into the thick of things, seek answers, help others and, in the end, work hard for answers because Stark is not someone to let the truth go ignored. Not that he’ll be able to find it but the idea of him fighting with their alien hamstery overlords by trying to dismantle and study things like the tablet and hatch amuses me, though I see these attempts coming with rather troublesome results to be honest.
I really feel that Tony is an ideal candidate for a game with so many different types and beings that he can poke at, prod, question and taunt – all for the sake of science and knowledge, of course. Or so he’ll claim.
Bringing him in from this point brings Tony in at a point where he’s learned a bit more of how to play well with others, as well as being caught up in a sense of purpose (whether he admits it or not) that would be missing now that he is in Taxon. A drive that he will now have to direct towards other things.
I think it would be a good place for him to be, finding himself loosed on a world he can study and without currently having Pepper, Jarvis or Fury to try and keep him in line.
Watching him choosing between the man he’s been, the one he is on the path to becoming, and watching as he finds himself caught between his own personality and this new world is intriguing to me.
PROGRAMMED POSSESSION:
This is the player’s desire; with understanding it might be too much. Fully willing and ready to change it to merely the suit but…
With his arrival point, I would like to see Tony wake in the suit, battered and half broken and battled scarred. No connection to Jarvis and currently not functioning. He would find the tablet showing a dot as well. It would lead to the battle broken and nearly destroyed Stark Building. I see it rather like giving him a giant box of scraps from which to try and rebuild his life.
I admit, I worry this is a bit of cheating, since they are technically two separate possessions, but as the movies have shown the suit needs technology to strip him from it, and while neither would be functioning at the time, it would lead to rp with him having to admit to needing help, as well as fixing and working on both the suit and the building.
If too much though, I would say the suit and the suit alone :D
HISTORY:
Born as the only child of Howard and Maria Stark, Tony was a precocious child from an early age. Raised by a mother caught up in her benefits and charities, Tony began life looking to his father for direction. It was a poor choice as Howard – a man who had once been the sort of suave and rakish man that Anthony would one day grow up to be – had changed in the intervening years since he had been unable to find the plane containing Captain Steven Rogers after his fateful crash to save the world.
The result is a young boy who learned that acting out got him more attention than behaving did, even if that attention was often times negative. The result was a boy who was the class clown, the troublemaker, all the while learning how to put things together in a new way, in exciting ways, in ways that others hadn’t thought of before. All because he had so much time to himself.
Tony Stark was a young boy who grew into a man that knew two things: how to perform best for maximum attention, and how to build nearly anything from practically nothing. At four he created his first circuit board. By six, he had built from leftover parts his first engine. There was little that Tony’s mind couldn’t master when it came to building and creating in the world of weapons and electronics.
At seventeen, Tony graduated summa cum laude from MIT but it was a bright and shining moment before one that would shadow Tony’s young adult years. Shortly after his graduation which Howard could not make the trip to attend, both of Anthony’s parents were killed in a car accident due to faulty brakes. As Tony was still under the legal age of consent, Howard’s good friend Obadiah Stane took over the helm of Stark Industries as the premiere weapons producer in the world.
Tony might not have been running the company but he was the face of his father’s legacy. A well dressed, alcoholic face that was oft seen with a pretty girl on one arm and a lowball glass in the other. It was that face that made an appearance in Afghanistan to show off Stark Industries latest weapon, a high tech system of Tony’s own brilliance called “Jericho”. As they were returning from the demonstration by way of humvee convoy, the entire convoy came under attack. Trying to scramble to safety, he found himself facing a missile. One created by his own company.
The shrapnel from the missile shredded Tony’s chest and left him on the verge of death. It was only the help of another captive that kept Tony from dying before he even had a chance at a glimpse into how his life was crumbling. With the help of an electromagnet, Stark survived though just barely, his entire life held captive by the magnet keeping the metal out of his heart. Ordered to recreate the Jericho missile, Tony agreed and yet he used the time to build a miniature of his own arc reactor, a device that would do for him what the electromagnet was doing to save his life.
The suit he built as well allowed him to escape, though the man that saved his life was killed in the process though Tony did manage to destroy their cache of his weapons. Crashing in the desert, he was finally found by military copters and he was able to return to the States as a hero. A hero, who upon his return, made the announcement that his company would no longer manufacture weapons.
That became a turning point in Tony’s life. Fighting with the board to be a better man. Fighting Stane when he learned that he had been aware of just who they were manufacturing weapons for. And then fighting for his own life when the very device he created to save him from certain death began poisoning him slowly but surely from the inside out.
As his health deteriorated, Tony managed to ruin much of his reputation and his friendships with his own actions as he began to face the reality of his own mortality. Including alienating the one person to always stand by him, Pepper Potts, and nearly destroying the company he put into her capable hands.
As death became imminent, Stark took a meeting with Director Fury, learning his assistant was actually a spy and having a temporary stop gap measure applied to slow the poisoning. Between that, and a clue from Fury, Stark was able to find an answer and with the help of his own home built particle accelerator, he created a new element to power his arc reactor and the suit.
With a new lease on life, Tony not only managed to stop the ones trying to destroy him and his company, but he managed to save the world with only minimal – most of a city – damage with the help of Rhodey in his own suit.
Consulting for SHIELD, Tony put himself into building his newest monument to his favorite thing. Himself. The Stark Tower was a massive building that rose to the heavens with his name in bright lights across the top. Bright lights powered by the world’s first fully sustainable power source.
What should have been a celebration turned into an invasion by one Agent Phil “No Agent isn’t his first name” Coulson, recruiting Stark to help handle things with a stolen cube that could well be the end of the world. What began as research turned into Tony suiting up and helping Captain America to temporarily defeat Loki, the new criminal mastermind in town who had stolen the Tessaract to begin with.
Once Loki was safely secured, without much thanks to the interference of the Asgardian’s brother Thor, Tony found himself on board SHIELD’s helicarrier along with Natasha, the ever annoying moral pillar of Steve Rogers, as well as Dr Bruce Banner who Tony immediately sets out to annoy and tempt in a thinly veiled attempt to see if he can make the man shift forms while in the air.
Of course, much of his bad jokes and constant snarking attitude are an attempt to cover up many things, including bugging the ship and finding an in to speak to Banner about how Stark wasn’t afraid of the other guy, and wasn’t afraid of Banner’s control either though he thought Banner was more than he was.
All of this educational programming on the part of Stark and his mistrust of Fury – which was well placed when they learned the plan had been to weaponize the Tessaract themselves – was interrupted by the return of the teams wayward assassin, the at the time possessed Clint Barton. The resulting attack on the helicarrier split up the forces but allowed Tony to come to a conclusion in trying to stop Loki.
Loki was as big a diva as Tony Stark himself and had planned to utilize Stark’s own monument to his own ego as a means of using the Tessaract to open an interdimensional rift to allow the forces of the Chitauri to overrun and attack New York. While Stark might well be a volatile, egomaniacal megalomaniac, he learned too how to work as a team and what mattered most in life.
Choosing to give his own life to stop the entire island from being destroyed, Tony diverted a nuclear weapon to travel upward through the dimensional portal, flying with it into another realm. Unable to reach Pepper in those last minutes in an attempt to say goodbye, Tony closed his eyes and let go as the suit died and he plummeted back through the portal to the Earth below.
PSYCHOLOGY/PERSONALITY:
Apparently I'm - what was it? - volatile, self-obsessed. And I don't play well with others.
Tony Stark is, in a nutshell, an egotistical and privileged brat with enough money and prestige to back up his mouth and his actions. At least most of the time.
The only child of a distant father and a doting, though not overly affectionate, mother, Tony spent much of his childhood working to gain attention for his actions. Yet it was those same actions that left him on the other side of the chasm emotionally from his father, acting out in obvious ways in an attempt to get love and attention and not realizing that each act further pushed him away from a man seeking out the greatest hero he’d ever known.
That coldness that was not Tony’s own fault but spawned by his own inability to recover anything more than the Tesseract led Tony to attempting to win over his father’s love through smart comments, silly jokes and a larger than life personality that blossomed through his childhood and into the adult he would become. An adult who still did not have the most acceptable of personas, but carried enough money and charm to make that change from class clown to billionaire playboy.
As a teen, Tony learned that the class clown routine that had served him well as a child did little for him as he rushed headlong into manhood. It was through high school and into college that Tony learned charm and flirtations were bound to get him farther than jokes, but sometimes the person we are is entire influenced by who we have been. The result was a man who laid on the charm with a heavy hand, flirted outrageously and yet was unable to resist turning sarcasm and snide entitlement into an art form.
Heavily influenced by the way society reacts to the triple threat combination of good looking, rich and intelligent, Tony grew to become a man that knew his place in life – and that place was at the top, getting what he wanted. For Tony there is no such thing as not getting his way, only a need to find out just what he has to change to get what he wants. At least that is how he led his life until a near death experience, and the constant threat from the shrapnel in his body, did as much as it might to change his view.
Nearly dying didn’t stop Stark from being the playboy billionaire with a sharp tongue and quick wit. Instead it merely allowed him new avenues of exploration for both his intelligence and his audience for his sometimes selfish, often self-amusing, shenanigans that can include pushing the limits of those around him when it comes to humor – and their own personal shortcomings.
To the world at large, Tony is a man of means who is as flashy as the suit he wears and takes the world head on. Not one to back down from a challenge, he oft leaps before he thinks though most often when the welfare of others is involved. He is brash, witty, reckless and a hedonist; a man that lives life by his rules and doesn’t accept that his rules aren’t the governing body in the way things are done, whether in the demands to turn his suit over to the government, or remembering that his goodwill gift might well be toxic to the one receiving it. He sees the world as his playground, and he is king of the hill.
While the personal persona is not much different, there is a side that many never see. The side of a man that does truly have a heart, even if it is kept in a glass jar; he’s just had a stunted enough emotional upbringing to not realize when he’s asking too much or not giving enough. That doesn’t stop him from caring for those around him, especially those that he’s let into his life as more than just the employees and contacts they seem to be.
Beyond the entitlement and privilege, Stark is a man that has learned to look at the world in a new way but not as most would look at it. Whereas his philanthropy before was a means of tax deductions and positive publicity, the near death experience encouraged Stark to take a long hard look at many of his actions. While not a pacifist, he works to facilitate peace rather than fund war, and seeks ways to better the world and the environment such as clean energy sources. That desire to do more, to protect and avenge rather than destroy, does not stop him from allowing his sometimes dangerous sense of humor and slow burning anger to take charge as he sees fit.
And Tony almost always sees fit.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Without the suit, Tony’s abilities are that of a man who is in fairly good health – if we discount his liver – who has been involved in a handful of combat situations. Most times, without the suit, he is quicker to use his wits and tongue than he is to involve himself to hand to hand combat.
That wit is part of a greater than average intelligence, leading to Tony being branded a genius – a title he himself encourages. Brilliant in his own right, he also has a first class education. His intelligence allows him not only to know when to let others run his company, but to create the technology for the full size arc reactor. It was that knowledge that allowed Tony to save his own life when he created a smaller, portable version of the reactor that continues to keep shrapnel in his body from piercing his heart.
With the suit, Tony has the ability to fly within the suit’s capabilities, including close quarters maneuverings and jet boosters for speed. The suit is capable of absorbing electrical energy, as well as dispersing it in plasma blasts. Those blasts are also available without an added boost, though without the force and distance. With the suit, Tony also can sustain damage from blasts and falling, as well as being strong enough to deflect bullets and explosions to about the strength of an anti-personnel launcher.
ARRIVAL POST:
The call failed. The missile was aimed straight for their attackers, if all went well they would be closing the portal behind him and the call had failed. The last contact Tony would have with Pepper, the last thing she would have, would be the legacy of the Avengers doing what they could to stop Loki and a single legend that wasn’t enough but he could hope would convey so much more.
1 call missed
The screen before him flickered and then faded, dying out even as Tony himself could feel that familiar tightness in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he had died. He knew what it felt like. It felt just like this as he lost feeling in his hands and feet, as his skin grew cold and then felt gone as if he was just light and soul in a metal suit.
The light of the nuclear bomb exploding bathed him in an orangey red light that he couldn’t feel through the protective suit, even if there was no power to keep it running. In his mind, he was speaking. One last speech from Tony Stark even as he closed his eyes and let go, feeling the weight of gravity suck down upon him as if siphoning his very soul. Yet, even as his lips moved, there was no speech, no words of grandeur. Just his lips moving, barely saying the words out loud.
“I love you.”
---
Tony came too with a gasp, bolting upright.
No. Bolting upright had been the goal. The result was jerking against the still “dead” Iron Man suit, slamming his brow against the lifted visor and managing just enough movement that he fell off whatever he was laying on and landed on his side with a clank and a clunk. That hadn’t exactly been his plan.
“Ow,” he muttered, laying there and staring at a pedestal beyond which he could make out the edge of what might be a door but seemed to be currently closed. “JARVIS, online,” he muttered, not noticing the tablet atop the table. Not yet; more focused on the fact he had received no answer from the suit. From the very heavy suit that had no online systems to power the hydraulic systems he’d internalized.
“Jarvis?”
Despite the fall – that he remembered vividly – he hadn’t expected to hear nothing in return to his inquiry. Wriggling and shaking his hand, he managed to get one glove off. Jerking away the other, he worked to undo the front of the chest plate without any of the electronic equipment, and the high tech internal gadgetry, that usually made stripping so much easier than it had once been.
“I’d settle for anyone at this point,” he said, looking up at the mechanics above him, frowning as he tried to determine just where he was. “Hello? Pepper? Uhmm, Fury?” Was he in SHIELD quarantine? “If this is prison for saving New York, I’m really not going to apologize,” he pointed out. “I demand a phone call. And a scotch on the rocks, while you’re at it.”
Suddenly the front of the suit opened around the inset for the arc reactor, though he personally had to pry it further opens than a mere crack. Grunting as the metal dug into his fingers at the joints, face scrunching up with the effort.
“Okay, fine. I apologize,” he lied with a roll of his eyes. “Now give me a hand getting out of this!”
ADDITIONAL SAMPLE:
“One joke about percentages and she walks out with… HIS NAME’S AGENT,” he hollered at the elevator, not as if either of them could hear him at that point; though someone could.
“Actually it’s Phil. I processed his paperwork; I should know.”
Tony started at the sound of another’s voice but was strong enough to hold himself to not squeal at the sound of Fury’s voice behind him.
“Welcome. Let yourself in,” he said, moving to the bar set into the wall. “Oh wait, you already did,” he said, looking to where Fury stood by the floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the city. “Scotch?”
The look he received was withering and Tony only poured himself one, watching the SHIELD director as he moved closer, looking over the screens that Stark still had opened to reveal the others being courted for the Avenger Initiative.
“All it took was a true threat,” Fury asked, though there was little hint of a question to his tones.
“Ah-ha. Don’t think that just because your pet delivered these and took my CEO with him when he left that it means I’m agreeing to your little game. Call it professional curiosity,” he said, stepping down from the raised bar area as he took a sip.
“I would have thought the possibility of speaking with Banner face to face might be the tipping point.”
“Let’s call it a point in your favor,” he allowed with a short nod. “Just a point.”
“And him,” Fury asked, moving his hand to touch one of the screens.
“Hey! Hands off my toys,” he said, even as Fury gave it a quick touch, expanding the monitor that showed Steve in the room where he worked out, smaller screens on the side showing him being found in the ice as well as footage from the original experiment that transformed him. Tony made a bit of a face, not quite rolling his eyes though the same disdain was there. “What about him?”
“You can’t say he plays a role in you turning down SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative?”
“I’m saying he plays a role in being a popsicle, no more, no less. He’s a genetically altered man who is old enough to be my grandfather. Your point?”
“Your father spent years trying to find him after Rogers crashed his plane into to save the world.”
Tony did roll his eyes then, gulping down a huge slug of his scotch. “My father spent most of his life ignoring his son while mourning the loss of a science experiment,” he corrected, moving his hand over the monitor showing Captain Rogers and minimizing it to a mere hand span’s size. “Did you think I wasn’t aware of that?”
“What you’re aware of, Mr. Stark, is in your head to determine. I’m just here to tell you the truth. Your country needs you.”
“My country needed me to stop making weapons, and I did,” he snapped, hand waving across air, over the monitors, and with a small squelch and a flash of light, they minimized to nothingness. “My country needs to stop playing with alien technology it has no idea how to control.”
“They won’t know how until they try.”
“When my father told me that, I blew up the kitchen,” he pointed out, setting his glass down on the table with a hard clink.
“Listen,” Stark said, raising a hand toward Fury, palm out and flat. It could have been a placating gesture but in the end, it was downright telling him to stop. “Your man just left and I haven’t had time to look at the details. You’ve made your pitch before and trying to play the “I knew your father” card is going to get you nowhere. If, and that’s an if as big as this tower but if I decide to join your little sports team then that’s on my terms for my merits because I chose to. Not because you think you can reverse psychology me about Howard.”
Picking up his glass, Tony downed the rest of the scotch without looking away from Fury.
“Good night to you then, Mr. Stark,” he said, this time using the elevator though, for all Tony knew, it was to a secret helipad on his own roof that Stark didn’t know about.
He stayed silent until the doors closed before slammed the glass down on the table again.
“Jarvis!”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
“I need everything you can find on the super soldier serum and the experiments my father conducted after. Also everything on the Tessaract.”
“Do you want files on Mr. Loki as well?”
“No. Screw him for now. But the others, I want them. I know Banner and Natasha but this other kid. What do we have on him?”
“Mr. Barton? I will see what I can find, Sir.”
“Good. Do that. Oh, and Jarvis?”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
“Find out how the hell SHIELD overrode my own damn security and hid it from you and close the damn breech in my security. I don’t want them in here unless I let them in.”