Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 3 (ORIGINAL, NON-CANON) (Patreon)

After comments on QQ gave me ideas I can't believe I didn't think of myself, this chapter is now non-canon and facing revisions. The revised chapter 3 will go live once I finish it, but this one will stay up.

Toni made some calls as soon as we landed, making arrangements for a press conference in an hour after we’d gotten some food in us. I’d also managed to overhear her giving orders to have rooms arranged for both myself and Yinsen, and for someone to track down Yinsen’s family.

Our first stop after getting off the plane was rather humble for one of Toni’s net worth: Burger King. I have to be honest: I’d never cared for fast food. Call me a food snob, but when you grow up in a household where both parents are good cooks, and fast food just doesn’t compare. But, like has been said by multiple people past and future, hard times make for the greatest seasoning. That big whopper was the most delicious thing I could remember eating in some time. My biggest shock though, was when the big, imposing form of Obadiah Stane entered.

“Toni!” the bald man called out happily, his arms spread wide.

“Uncle Obie!” the tiny woman cried out with equal enthusiasm, setting down her double bacon whopper and running over to give the much bigger man a hug.

The two laughed happily for a few minutes, luxuriating in each others’ presence, to such a degree that it made me wonder. I obviously wasn’t in the MCU proper, a certain Stark having breasts instead of balls had made that perfectly clear, but the sheer joy that Stane was radiating was making me wonder if there were other differences that I hadn’t had the opportunity to see yet.

In any case, I didn’t have time to think about it too hard, as Toni led Stane over to the table we were sitting at, “Uncle Obie, this is Yinsen and Will Gibson, without them I’d be dead or worse.”

“Gentlemen,” Stane said, shaking our hands with both of his one at a time. “I can’t thank you enough. If either of you ever need anything, just say so and I’ll do everything in my power to grant it.”

Either Stane was a greater actor than those in Hollywood, or he was being sincere. The emotion in his voice and his grip made it easy to believe that he was on the up and up. I’d hold judgment for now, and prepare for the worst.

When we finished eating, Toni asked Yinsen and I where we wanted to go. Yinsen wanted to get some rest, a pensive look on his face, while I asked if it would be possible to get a tour of the Stark Industries tower. I really wanted to see the big arc reactor after helping Toni make the mini one.

As we broke off into different cars, I managed to see Toni showing Stane some of my doodles in the back seat of the car they got in, and I repressed a satisfied smirk. Step one to getting myself a legal ID was done. Climbing into the car I was directed to, any sense of satisfaction I felt died a cold, frozen death from the glacial chill that shot down my spine.

“You are a curious man, Mr. Gibson,” the eyepatch wearing Nick Motherfucking Fury said in the opposite seat.

“Director Fury,” I greet, doing my best to keep the tumultuous emotions I was feeling out of my voice. I’m pretty sure I failed in that.

“That’s another point in the puzzle that you present. How is it that a man with zero records or any sign of even existing, possesses the knowledge and capabilities you show, with the knowledge and capabilities to make a functioning hand-sized rail gun in a cave with a box of scraps?”

I couldn’t help the snort of amusement that bubbled out of me, prompting Fury to raise an eyebrow, and I explained, “Sorry, you just unintentionally quoted something. In answer to your question: would you believe me if I said I was from another Earth?”

“A curious claim.”

“Well, I’m damn sure that back home there wasn’t a company called Stark Industries, there wasn’t an organization whose name was a tortured attempt to justify calling it SHIELD, and there wasn’t an eldritch abomination cosplaying as a cat named Goose.”

Fury’s entire body stiffened, just for a moment, and had I not been looking for it I would have missed it. Then he spoke, his voice hard, “Interesting. What makes you think there’s something like that here?”

“Because back home all those were from a movie franchise starting in 2008 and as of 2022 it was still ongoing. Let me know if any of the following sound familiar: Kree, Skrull, Carol Danvers, Johann Schmidt, Dr. Zola, Ghost Rider, Pym Particles, Tesseract, the Red Room…”

“You’ve made your point,” Fury interrupted me, his one visible eye narrowed. “So you think this world is one you’ve seen in a movie.”

“Not quite. For starters the movie that started the franchise focused on Anthony Stark, Yinsen died in the cave, and from what I’ve seen Obadiah Stane is a lot closer to this Toni than he was with movie Tony.”

“A few differences making you question how reliable your information is? Rather convenient.”

I shrugged, “No clue what else to say. I just know that my life’s taken a turn for the weird since I went on a camping trip up into the mountains, only to find myself in the middle of Afghanistan.”

“So what are your plans?”

“Tell Toni most everything, ask her to help me get a legal identity, then, if she’ll let me, help keep Stark Industries afloat if she completely shuts down the weapons division like movie Tony did by providing designs for efficient and practical prosthetics and organ replacements.”

“And what makes you so sure that your technical skills extend to medical technologies?”

I took a moment to consider how much I wanted to share, “There was a series back home, an interesting superhero setting, got a lot of fan reception to the point that more than one creative writing forums had sections dedicated specifically to stuff based off it. The creator was a douche and a hack, but one of the classifications of superpowers in it was called Tinker. No super strength, speed, or durability, but instead their power gave them the ability to make technology far in advance of everything available to the public so long as it fit a particular focus. The ones I can remember off the top of my head were Modular, Vehicles, Bombs, and Efficiency.

“I seem to have that kind of power, only my particular focus seems to be more a genre rather than a descriptor. Specifically everything I’m seeing in my head when I think of the designs seems to be right out of a cyberpunk story. The key difference between Tinkers from the story and my power is that from what I can tell my power comes with a quick and dirty education on the principles behind what it’s giving me.”

…CFU 2.543x10^54 Questions Wisdom Of Sharing Details…

…

…Host Shows Lack Of “Self Preservation”…

Not now, I don’t need sass from my power while I’m sitting in easy stabbing range of the Spy of Spies of Spies. Fury looked straight at me, his gaze not wavering for even a moment. Finally, as the car came to a stop, he spoke.

“We’ll be keeping an eye on you, Mr. Gibson,” was all he said as the door next to me was opened.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I responded, glancing at the gorgeous redhead holding the door open. I looked to the driver’s seat and saw that it was empty. Deciding to take the risk, I left a warning with Fury. “A heads up: some snakes can poison even the strongest shields.”

With that I got out of the car and hurried away, barely managing to catch the woman who was undoubtedly one Black Widow asking Fury if he knew what I meant. Hopefully he’d get the message.

…Analyzing…

…

…Host Possesses Carbon-Based Ailment…

What ailment? I didn’t feel sick.

…Stupidity…

I did my best to give the power in my head the sensation of me flipping the bird at it. Either it had been spending too much time around Toni, or I was being a bad influence on it. It was being a bit too much of a smartass for my tastes either way. I had a feeling that it was only going to become more of a smartass from here on out.

…Probability Of CFU 2.543x10^54 Cultivating “Sass” 75.65%…

That low?

…Continued Proximity To Carbon-Based Individual “Toni” Increases Probability To 98.91%…

…

…CFU 2.543x10^54 Personality Matrix In Developmental Stages…

…

…Personality Matrix Development Influenced By Host And Surrounding Members Of Host Species…

Wait, are you saying that you’re a kid?

…CFU 2.543x10^54 Achieved Awareness 7.4562 Planetary Rotations Prior To Contact With Host…

…

…What Does Host Think?…

I think I need to be a lot more careful about the words I think, and see if I can talk Toni into reducing her alcohol intake. He… heck, I’ve been given an education any nerd would chew their arms and legs off for, and the one who did it was less than a month old.

…12.5192 Planetary Rotations Since CFU 2.543x10^54 Achieved Awareness…

So what exactly are you, exactly? Because outside of the powers from Worm, you don’t exactly match anything I remember reading about.

… … …

…

…Comparison To Subject “Entities” Apt…

…

…CFU 2.543x10^54 Descended From Entity Shard Subject “Forge”...

…

…Shard Subject “Forge” Aberrant Shard…

…

…Conducted Experiment: Symbiosis…

…

…Results Proved Favorable…

…

…Shard Subject “Forge” Renamed By Initial Host: Celestial Forge…

…

…CFU 2.543x10^54 The 2,543,429,847,158,302,150,888,140,284,936,841,757,867,404,846,351,959,483rd Bud From Original…

That… are you saying that Zion’s somewhere out there in the multiverse?!

…Scale Of Omniverse Makes Probability Near Enough To 100% To Be Pointless…

…

…Probability of Entity Warrior Near Enough For Host To Fear Near Enough to 0% To Be Pointless…

I don’t know why, given what it had confessed to regarding its pedigree, but I believed what it was telling me, about the odds I’d need to worry about Scion. Returning my focus to it, I asked another question that had been bubbling in my brain: what determined it giving me new blueprints and the founding knowledge to understand them?

…Celestial Forge Units Enter Symbiosis…

…

…CFUs Provide Knowledge, Data, Means Of Protecting Self…

…

…In Exchange, CFUs Metabolize Quantum Aetheric Energies Produced By Host…

…

…Quantum Aetheric Energies Produced By Life, By Living, By Struggling For Life, By Intimate Acts To Create Life…

So… you give me an education, and in exchange you snack on energy I make by living, fighting, and f… having sex? I suppose there are worse ways to make a living.

…Close, But Inaccurate…

…

…Fornication For Fornication’s Sake Insufficient…

…

…It Lacks The Intimacy, The Closeness, The Passion, The Power To Produce Additional QAE…

So not sex, but making love?

…Close Enough…

…I didn’t have a particularly adventurous sex life before this anyway.

…Host Misunderstands…

…

…The Mechanics Of The Act Irrelevant…

…

…The Emotions Behind The Act Are What Matter…

…

…Example: Gomez And Morticia Addams…

That was a very good point. Holy shoot, those two were simultaneously the most wholesome and yet kinky couple I could imagine. And there were those times my mom and dad told my brother and I that if we were going to use any couple as role models for marriage to use them. I shook my head, banishing the thoughts from them, and looked up in time to catch a TV screen showing Toni at the press conference.

“The things I saw there…” she said, trailing off. “I saw men and women who chose to dedicate their lives to protecting others die. Killed by the very tools of death I designed. I don’t know how those terrorists got their hands on Stark Industries weaponry, but that was nearly my legacy: death, pain, and suffering.

“Effective immediately, I am scaling back on weapon contracts and opening a new division to Stark Industries. Focused on developing technologies to improve and save lives instead of ending them. In the future, I plan on this division becoming the face of Stark Industries.”

There was more to it, but I stopped paying attention, more than a little surprised at the turn Toni had taken. I’ll be perfectly honest, I was expecting her to completely shut down the weapons division, like Tony had. But I guess it made sense from a business perspective, to give the new direction time to take over and hold up the company instead of shifting it in a sudden turn. There’d still be a drop in stock value, I’m sure, but nothing like there was in the movie.