Prompt#332 –If you can’t beat them- Room for Improvement - Tekia – Exalted/the Avengers

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Room for Improvement
Fandom: Exalted/Iron Man
Prompt: If You Can’t Beat Them…
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: After falling into a trap, the first order of business it to find out where you are. But, if where you are makes no sense, then what are you supposed to do? Traveling to the future is easy, just fall asleep, right? Waking up to a whole different world is harder. Luckily, Tony Stark can adapt to any environment.

They were nowhere near as fast as Iron Dust, and that was something Tony filed away for later. Just imagine if he could put that speed, from inside himself, into the armor. And that brought about another thought of what he could do with his armor and his Essence mixed together. Mindlessly following White Song, he turned his thoughts inward and began pushing and pulling his Essence, learning how to make it not only flow as he wanted it to, but to work with his armor. To make his armor a part of himself and to make his armor better than ever before.
Not unlike a new upgrade, only this armor was damaged physically and quickly becoming a mishmash of pieces held together with spit and talent.
He didn’t know how far they traveled before White Song finally slowed their pace to a brisk walk and raised a golden brow at him. “Having fun?”
He grinned. “I learned something new.” He held out his armored arm and the jade gauntlet folded back, exposing his bare hand to the cool air. He shivered and made the armor return to shield him. “It’s only the jade that responds to my Essence, though.”
She nodded. “That’s why it’s called a magical material. Only the five respond to Essence.”
“I knew that,” he said, thoughts already elsewhere as he flexed his fingers, one at a time. “I’m thinking that I should try to make the whole armor out of jade.”
When White Song didn’t say a word, he glanced up and grinned at her expression. “What? Can’t you just see me in jade armor? Like that guy from the Hunt. His armor was all jade, wasn’t it?” He threw his arms out wide and followed as she kept walking, her head shaking at his words. “Only, mine would be so much better looking. His was bulky and looked annoying. Pretentious.” White Song snorted.
“Jade is not your favored metal.”
“Jade is not a metal at all,” Tony corrected. He dropped his arms to his sides, leaving the gauntlets hidden away under the armor, his fingers tingling with the cold, but not necessary cold themselves. It was more as if he was aware that it was growing colder, but it didn’t bother him. “It’s a rock. How does it conduct Essence?”
She shrugged. “It is the way of Creation. There are five magical materials, and jade is one of them. But jade is not for you. Perhaps we can find you a suit of armor made out of orichalcum.”
Tony screwed his face up in thought. “Yeah, that’s gold in color. I can work with that.”
White Song shot him a look over her shoulder. “Red and gold, hum? Those are your colors?”
He grinned. “But of course.”
“You’ve never seen your anima, have you?”
He blinked in surprise. “Anima?”
White Song stopped walking and turned to face him, her hands on her hips. Her head tilted to one side and she considered him a long moment before she spoke. “Iron Dust surely told you about the types of Essence you can use.” Tony nodded. “Then you should know that when you use the Essence in your immediate area, your aura reflects your Essence and blooms in a great display of colors.”
Tony’s eyes went wide and he pointed back the direction they had come. “You mean like what Iron Dust did, when he started glowing yellow.”
She nodded once, curt, then turned on her heel to resume the trek through the forest. She kept glancing up through the trees, as if she was hoping to catch sight of the air boat and Iron Dust.
Tony followed her gaze, something in his gut twisting painfully. Surely Iron Dust got away and was well ahead of them. He wished he had access to satellites and he could make JARVIS locate Iron Dust just so he could keep an eye on him. The man was powerful, of that, Tony had no doubt, but not knowing was something that Tony wasn’t quite able to accept. His fingers twitched in the cool air with the urge to set to a keyboard and type away.
He wasn’t a huntsman, nor was he a tracker, so he hoped White Song knew just what they were doing. He could only hope that she had caught their pursuers’ attention long enough for Iron Dust to escape, and then lost them while they were fleeing for their lives.
Finally, finally, they stopped to rest, Tony leaning heavily against a thick tree trunk while White Song drank deeply from a skin that he hadn’t seen her acquire. He wasn’t tired, not even winded, and it made him grin, thinking about how he could probably show up Steve with his new endurance.
Something made White Song snap up to attention, her head turned in the directing they had come from, head tilted not unlike a deer listening for the hunter. Tony licked his lips, heart once more pounding loudly in his ears. When she made no further movements, Tony dared, “What do you hear?”
She held up a hand, palm out. “Hush.” Her eyes were searching the shadows, her whole body tense. He pushed away from the tree, balanced on the balls of his feet as he waited for her signal, whatever it may be. She turned to him.
“We can’t win this fight. He’s good.”
“Who is it?”
She scowled. “Our hunter, of course.” She jerked her chin toward the nonexistent path they hadn’t been following. “The Wyld Hunt is upon us.”
Tony’s heart stilled long enough for him to clutch at his arc reactor in panic. Then it was thudding in his ear louder than ever before. “So quickly? How did they catch up with us?”
Her lips were thin and her eyes had changed from the bright vibrant blue to some muted yellow/brown mixture with a cat’s slit in the middle. “Iron Dust said it, didn’t he? There’s one of his kind with them.” She turned abruptly away, marching through the trees, slapping aside low hanging branches. “He’s good. Very good. And he is not going to let us go.”
Tony quickly followed. “What are we going to do? We can fight.”
“We can’t beat them.”
“Then what do we do!” Tony hissed, too conscious of how loud his voice was in the silence of the forest around them. He should have been paying more attention to their surroundings. The forest sounds had dropped off a while ago, and that must have been what had alerted White Song to the danger.
She didn’t stop walking as she grinned at him over her shoulder. “We trick them.”
Tony stumbled to a stop at her words, at a loss. She walked up to a tree and gazed up the length of the trunk to where it disappeared behind a thick cover of leaves.
“How?”
“It will be harder without Iron Dust at our side, but I think I can make do with what I have.” She reached into a pouch at her hip and pulled something small out. She pressed whatever it was into the tree and nodded once to herself. She then turned about to face him. “You’re going to have to go up there.” She pointed up.
Tony tilted his head back to gaze up at the distance. “Sure, we’ve done that before in practice.”
“And you made a good friend, didn’t you?”
“And we nearly died because of the Hunt then, too.”
“Good times.”
“Yeah, good times.” He looked back at her, caught her gaze and felt his brow wrinkle with worry. “We’re not separating, are we?”
She shook her head. “No, we can’t. Go up there, let the trees hide you, and I’ll have my fun with the Hunt.” He opened his mouth to protest. “No, that’s what we are doing. Now, get up there.”
How he wished for weapons that he could use. Sure, he had a few knives and even a short sword that had been strapped to his hip since they had left the city, but he really, really wished for a repulsor or even a gun. He closed his eyes tight enough that pain shot through his temple. Who would have thought that he would ever wish for a weapon after Afghanistan?