Chapter 20 Looking for the right koalafications

Thankfully the drive from whatever forsaken plain of grass we had ended up in after going 'hyperspeed' to the outskirts of New York City went fairly smoothly. However, instead of the twelve hours me and Sterns had spent trying to get to Burstein, this time the trip took two days, because I was being paranoid and insisted we kept to the side roads and avoided all major points of civilization.

Either S.H.I.E.L.D. had backed off after seeing me shrug of bullets like they were nothing, running through a wall and totalling a vehicle without any visible effort only to jump into a jet-propelled truck, or they were simply biding their time.

Still, the relative quiet had given me the time to calm down a bit and actually start using that super-smart brain of mine to its fullest potential.

Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. now knew what I looked like (what all of me looked like) which would make hiding in the shadows even harder than it had been so far, but it also gave me an opportunity if I was bold enough to take it.

I could step fully into the public eye.

Repeat the whole 'I am Iron Man' thing that Tony had done.

There would undoubtedly be back-lash from some parts of the community (apparently my appearance was enough for people to label me a demon back in Africa) but for the majority of the masses I would be something exiting and new.

For the companies that I was trying entangle in my intricate web, I was a living proof-of-concept.

Let S.H.I.E.L.D. tire itself out, trying to puzzle together a file over me, only to look on in a stupor as what they had so painstakingly tried to gather will be made obsolete when the whole world knows more about me than they do now after I've gone public in a few months.

If only I could see the look on Fury's face.

But if I wanted to pull that off, then I needed to be more than just a curiosity for the masses. I needed to be seen as important, both to the world in general, and to them personally, because of what I could offer them through my company.

Which mean that I needed someone who was experienced with the business world.

Sure, I could probably read every book on finance in the world and figure out how to set up a successful company on my own, but that would take time, because while I could easily absorb knowledge about business, I had absolutely no experience in it.

And Loki's invasion was getting closer and closer every day, so I really didn't have any time to waste trying to build up my business-savvy.

No, better to just outsource my problems to someone experienced in that field, leaving me with more time to improve myself and gather even more minions- uhm, I mean allies.

Yeah, allies.

Still, none of my plans could be set in motion before I was actually in New York, due to needing to find some people first and set up a proper workshop for my two scientists.

When we reached the outskirts of New York City, I had Sterns drive off-road into the underbrush of a small forest, where we covered Oliver in a tarp that I had Sterns and Burstein make while I had been driving these last two days.

A combination of camera's and LED's made sure that the truck became nearly invisible, and as it was hooked up to a small (but more importantly, a silent) generator it would stay hidden for months if need be.

Then I sent out Burstein with a back-pack filled with cash (our reserves, which consisted of all of our savings and what I made from Klaue, were starting to dip somewhat but not yet worryingly so) and told him to visit a second-hand car dealer and buy any car spacious enough that we could ferry our equipment from the truck to whatever workshop we'd end up establishing within New York itself.

While it would've saved us a lot of effort and time, driving Oliver into New York was out of the question, as S.H.I.E.L.D. would have eyes on us in minutes, and while I had decided that I'd stop running from them, I still wasn't ready to challenge them out in the open.

Burstein returned in under two hours in a Chrysler Voyager, which while not the most prestigious of cars, would at least get the job done, which was all that mattered really.

Our first destination was the storage unit me and Sterns had worked out from, what seemed so long ago now. We had stripped most of it down when we left, but for now it would do as our temporary staging area.

Once more I sent Burstein out as our errand boy due to him being the most human looking of us (I really needed to gather more minions, I couldn't just keep pulling scientists away from their work in order to fulfil chores) with the assignment of getting us a warehouse without too many questions asked.

As we could easily supply our own power, it only needed to have a water-supply, and if it could all happen off the books then all the better.

Leaving the nervous scientist to go broker a deal in some of the seedier parts of New York made me uncomfortable (a part of that was also annoyance due to the fact that I just knewwe'd get screwed over with the price as Burstein had absolutely no concept of haggling), but it had to be done, since Sterns couldn't go into public just yet, while I was too busy with my own assignment.

I was going to recruit our next team member.

Phineas Mason.

The Tinkerer.

The construction worker who had managed to rip apart Chitauri tech and repurpose it for his own needs, working out of an illegal workshop.

Yeah, that guy was definitely on my list of scientists to employ and enhance.

Taking what I had learned from my attempt at recruiting Burstein, as well as the fact that I just knew this guy would drool at the sight of advanced tech I had at my disposal, I decided to wait until nightfall and then pay him a visit in my armour.

Though I would refrain from repeating my ill-fated horror-monster shtick, as a precaution against lactose-related shenanigans.

Finding Mason was a little more difficult than finding Burstein had been (for one, Phineas' last name was a lot more common than Noah's) but he also didn't have a Facebook page.

Interesting thing about Facebook, it never got big enough to really dominate the social media market like in my home universe, meaning that even if I had the capital to invest in stocks (which as an orphan, I most certainly hadn't) investing in companies like Facebook or the like (Apple was likewise just a name amongst many others, instead of a technology giant) would have been useless anyway.

The other problem with actually finding where Phineas lived was that even when I finally found his profile page (on a site which hadn't existed in my old universe, the closest thing I can compare it to is some sort of 'grown-up' version of MySpace) he hadn't been so accommodating as to list his home address.

Still, using my increased intellect (and just plain ol' common sense) had led me to find Bestman Salvage, the company where he and Adrian Toomes worked at (who did have a profile page on Facebook, though his only friends were his wife and daughter and it hadn't been updated in 5 years).

Finding their personnel registry had been somewhat more difficult, but honestly after breaching the labs of Wakanda (for which I had to learn an entire new programming language from whatever I could puzzle together from Killmonger's dad's notebook) hacking the files of a salvage company was child's play.

As I was busy tracking down my next target, while Sterns was salvaging what he could from the equipment we'd left behind in the storage shed (some of it had become obsolete by now with what we had in Oliver's trailer, while some of it would need to be disassembled completely before it could be moved) Burstein returned to us, a massive grin on his face.

A short drive later, and I could understand why.

Apparently Burstein had the same idea about his bartering skills as I had, and instead decided to use that to his advantage. Walking into the office of a local real-estate agent that had warehouses for sale, he simply went up to the office of the man in charge, planted his back-pack on his desk and opened its zipper.

Within three hours, we were down two-thirds of the content of the bag I had given Burstein (which amounted to a little under 10.000 dollars), but we had gained a warehouse near the docks in return.

It wasn't the newest building (or even the cleanest, really) but there was one massive advantage to it, besides the great amount of space it offered.

It was completely off the grid.

It had water, electricity and even gas, but instead of being hooked up to the local networks, it leeched its power from a dozen surrounding ones, which effectively meant that we paid no bills, and as far as the government was concerned, this building didn't use any power at all.

The last time they had even bothered to check this part of the docks was nearly twenty years ago now, so it was unlikely we would be noticed before we were ready to burst onto the world-stage of international business.

But Burstein had immediately bought it after laying his eyes on it for another reason entirely.

Lining one wall of the ground floor were some monumental vats suspended on a solid looking brickwork frame, which seemed to be capable of tumbling, much like a concrete mixer you sometimes see at construction sites.

Pushed against an adjacent wall were basins in the floor, their edges ground smooth by decades of use.

What kind of use was completely lost of me, though I could see that Sterns was starting to cotton on.

Unable to contain his excitement, Burstein blurted out why he had chosen this particular facility based on the barrels and the basins.

"This used to be a tannery!"

At my nonplussed look, he elaborated.

"For making leather!"

"I know what a tannery is for, Noah. What I don't know, on the other hand, is what on Earth we need a tannery even for. We're going to be a technology and pharmaceutical company, what use is making leather gonna be?"

Rubbing his hands excitedly, Burstein had a triumphant smile on his face as he explained.

"Do you know how expensive Kevlar is?"

"240 dollars for a five yard roll, give or take, if you talking about the heavy-duty sort that is." Sterns immediately rattles off, causing me and Burstein to turn towards him in surprise.

Shuffling uncomfortably at mine and Burstein's weirded out looks, the egghead half-heartedly tries to defend himself.

"What? We do get shot at more often than average, you know. Or is even recommended, for that matter. I thought it couldn't hurt to look the stuff up."

Shaking off the weirdness of his fellow scientist, Burstein continued.

"Right. But do you know how much a similar amount of leather costs?"

"Between 40 to 60 dollars, depending on what sort of cow it's made from."

Again, me and Burstein turned to look at Sterns, who was nearly blushing this time.

"Look, sometimes I just keep clicking through on Wikipedia when I get bored all right?"

Putting my friend's weird habits out of my mind, I looked at Burstein instead.

"Right, leather is cheaper than Kevlar. Not really a surprise, and honestly I'm still not really seeing how it is in any way relevant to us?"

"Because you are more durable than Kevlar!"

Sterns was the one who cottoned on first.

"You want to use the procedure we used on Michael to make bulletproof leather?"

With an enormous grin on his face, Noah placed his fists on his sides in triumph, happily nodding at Sterns incredulous question, even as I pinched the bridge of my nose with a sigh.

"Noah?"

"Yes Michael?"

"We are in New York City."

"Yes?"

"Where the hell are you gonna get cows from?"

"… Ehrmm"

After assuring me that he would look into how to procure untreated bovine hides in amounts that our estimated production would be able to handle, I started moving what was left in the storage unit to our new warehouse (after thoroughly cleaning house), while Sterns was doing the same with the stuff left in Oliver's trailer.

Though I had to put my foot down when Sterns proposed to make the entire truck invisible and drive it here.

This is a movie-based universe, there is literally no way in hell that the narrative would either let that go off without a hitch (a flicker of the light, right as some spunky cop is looking in the truck's direction, setting up a cop-centric storyline) or without letting it fall into enemy hands (a bit falls off and is found by Hydra, who manage to reverse engineer it and then spring it on me without any warning beforehand).

We were going to do this on a basic level, and hope our shenanigans stayed under the radar of the Narrative (which I'm half-convinced has to be an actual deity in this universe, right?) so we won't suddenly be saddled with S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents carrying cloaking technology.

They were worrying enough already without the ability to become invisible.

It took all of a week to completely clear the storage unit out, scrub it down, and then cancel the rent, after which I destroyed the false identity I had created when I first rented it. Sterns was done with ferrying our equipment from the truck to our new base in roughly the same amount of time, and so we all got to actually turning the empty warehouse into a proper laboratory/factory, while we refurbished some of the offices on the second floor as our living quarters.

At the moment it was just a couple of chairs and an old television I had managed to get off the internet for cheap, as most of us were so absorbed in our projects that we barely made us of the new quarters other than to occasionally sleep or finish off some left-over pizza.

Using my part of the laboratory (which was mostly focused around my suit and the tech from Hammer, as that was easiest to reverse engineer to a mass-producible level) I finished up my search of Mason, finally getting his home-address from the files I had hacked from Bestman Salvage.

Which led to me standing on the roof of the building across from the modest apartment where Phineas Mason lived on the following night, thankful that the heavy cloud cover made me blend seamlessly with the surrounding darkness.

Even though I was a Marvel fan in heart and soul, feeling like Batman made me want to cackle out loud.

Which would be counteractive to the whole stealth-thing I got going on, so I just hunkered down and waited for the Tinkerer's arrival.

And waited.

And waited.

And then I had to wait some more.

Until after a stake-out of nearly four hours, at two in the morning, a worn down Smart car pulled up to the curb, an exhausted Mason stepping out, and shutting the door behind him, turning to walk up the steps to his small home.

Which is when I jumped from my perch.

I didn't use any of the repulsors in my suit, due to the fact that they would've made too much noise and light. Instead, I used the raw strength of my body, which proved enough to propel me across the entire street, actually overshooting Mason himself (my original plan had been to land behind him, but it seemed I had underestimated my strength).

You know that feeling you get in your stomach when you're really high up an you look down?

That feeling rose up in me when I was at the apex of my jump, and I looked down and realized that the ground was getting rapidly closer while I was hanging unsupported in the air at twenty feet and with nothing to catch my fall.

It was like going bungee jumping without a rope.

And then I crashed to the pavement with a heavy thud, the tiles of the pavement cracking slightly underneath my booted feet. The noise was louder than I had wished it to be, but it was still a lot softer than using my repulsors would have been, so I would just have to roll with it.

Rising slowly from my classically heroic three-point landing (mostly because I had needed to catch myself due to the sheer range of my jump catching me by surprise), I dramatically turned around, ready to give my recruitment pitch-

"Nope! Nope, nope, nope!"

-only to see the back of one Phineas Mason as he high-tailed it out of here, putting on a surprising amount of speed for a man of his size.

I blinked a couple of times in surprise, before annoyance rose within me, and with it the familiar Extremis-fuelled heat. I quickly slammed a lid on it though, due to the fact that because some of my enhancement actually multiplying each other's effects, the temperatures I could reach if I wasn't careful were enough to completely destroy my suit.

Still, that didn't mean that I would just allow my prey to slip through my fingers like that.

Ahem, I mean ally of course.

"OI! Get back here!"

And I blasted off as well. Now, while Mason certainly wasn't slow, I on the other hand was fast enough to make Usain Bolt (who interestingly enough was an Olympic champion in this universe as well) look like an elderly person with the worst case of arthritis in the history of mankind.

So within a couple of seconds (and a beautifully executed vaulting jump over a parked car which I was quite proud of honestly) I slid to a stop in front of the fleeing Mason, who turned on a dime and made to run away from me again, before I snagged him by the collar.

"Look, if you'd just listen-"

"Don't punch me!" Mason begged, even as he whipped around, fishing something from his baggy jeans and spraying me in the face with… pepper spray?

For a moment we just remained motionless, me holding the fat man by the scruff of his neck, as he looked at me with wide eyes and a flushed face as the capsicum-filled liquid slowly dripped from my full-face helmet.

"Really?" I asked in a flat voice, though my annoyance was unmistakable.

"Sorry?" Mason hedged carefully, and I just gave an annoyed sigh as I wiped my faceplate off with my other hand.

"Why run like that anyway? I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Man, I was there during that whole mess at Harlem. I'd like to see you do any different than me, after you've gone through something like that and then one night something big and scary comes dropping from the sky right in front of you!" the tinker responds heatedly, though I can still see that he's somewhat scared of me.

I consider his words for a couple of moments, before I give a slow nod.

"Fair enough I suppose. Sorry for scaring you like that I guess."

And with that I release my grip on the back of his shirt, though I'm ready to chase him down when he tries to run again. However, it seems that my advanced armour has finally registered with the fat man, and I can see his eyes light up with interest as he fully takes in the suit of advanced technology strapped to my imposing form.

"Woah… I didn't realize Stark was selling his toys again…"

"He doesn't."

"Wait… you're saying you made this?!"

At his incredulous tone, I merely grin and give a confirming nod.

"Yep. With my own hands and smarts, in a storage shed I rented a while ago. But now I want to make more. A lot more. You heard about Wakanda, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, they are this country in Africa, right? They pretended to be all poor and stuff, but actually they're like, really rich and have really sweet tech?"

Once again I nod, before I lean in a little closer, my voice a secretive whisper.

"I got my hands on their designs, and the smarts to figure it all out. I can replicate, hell, I can improve their stuff, but I need more people to do it. You in?"

He's clearly interested, I can tell. He's probably dying to play around with advanced technology that has been hidden from the world for millennia. Still, he isn't entirely swayed, whatever loyalty he has to Toomes most likely holding him back.

It seems like I'll need to sweeten the deal.

"I can make you smarter as well. Smarter than near anyone really. You'd be one the same level as Tony Stark himself and the like."

His interest is replaced by wariness and disbelief at my wild claim, but I'm not worried about losing him as I reach into a satchel on the side of my belt (Sterns kept on insisting that it was a fanny-pack. It wasn't. It was a highly respectably satchel, end of discussion) and retrieve a small notebook, which I patiently hold out to him.

Eventually his inborn curiosity overcomes his worry and he takes the booklet from my hand in a quick, jerking motion. Opening it to the first page, I can see his eyebrows furrow in concentration as he reads the scribbles on the first couple of pages.

Looking at me in askance, he's clearly wondering something, before he blurts out his question.

"These look like… plans of some kind. But it's nothing like I've ever seen before…"

I'm honestly somewhat surprised. On those pages were outlines for the machinery of the new pincers on my back (which were folded neatly against my frame, as they would only serve to freak out Mason even more if I had them extended), as well as the slew of programming that went into each part of the arm in order to have them to respond smoothly to my every thought.

Given the fact that they were a mash-up of Stark and Wakanda-tech which was then put through a simple cipher of my own design, I had certainly not expected the tinker to get so much from the pages at merely a quick glance.

Giving a short nod, I started explaining.

"In there are plans for advanced technologies, as well as the next step in programming. Now, I'm sure that given a couple of years or decades that you'll probably decipher most if not all of it. But here's my proposition. You read through that and come up with a viable design of your own based on those plans within the week, and I'll not only see it put into production, I'll also introduce you to technology that would make this seem like the plans to a Lego-set, and more money than you can spend in your entire life."

Clearly the offer of money and advanced tech has rekindled his interest, but as his eyes fly over the schematics in the notebook, I can see apprehension rise on his chubby face.

"A week? That's… that's impossible. If I had more time then sure-"

"No exceptions. One week, or the deal is off."

"Look, I'm telling you, I can make this work, but not in a week."

"As you are now, no you cannot. But-"

And with that I reach into my satchel (shut up Sterns) again, and withdraw a capped syringe, which I present to Mason, who seems reluctant to take it.

"-but when you're as smart as Tony Stark, well then it would turn it from an impossibility into child's play."

He's clearly sceptical, eyeing the syringe warily.

"Really? That stuff in there is supposed to make me as smart as Stark?" he asks in a dubious voice.

"Well, it might also turn out to make you smarter."

And that clearly increases his interest again, and for good reason. Stark might be the most prolific genius on earth, but he isn't the smartest (for one, Steven Hawking also exists here, and he seems to be even more of a genius than his alternate counterpart, judging by his books I read after my mental upgrade, due to them being undecipherable to me before Sterns boosted my intellect).

Still, the people that could boast to be smarter than the scion of Howard Stark could be counted on one hand, and to be among them was almost a bench-mark in the scientific community.

To be offered such a prestigious position all in a single shot, honestly, I could only see very few scientists actually turning such a proposal down.

Clearly the heavy set construction worker wasn't one of them (then again, he wasn't a scientist in the first place, he was just scary smart) as he took the syringe with trembling hands.

"One week, Phineas Mason. Return to me in one week, and you shall have your part of the treasures of this world. The address is in the back of the notebook."

And before he can protest, I bend at the knees, powerful muscles bulging underneath my reinforced cargo pants and then I'm off, clearing the row of houses on the side of the road in a single bound, and I've disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Using parkour to get from Mason's neighbourhood to the area near the docks where my base of operations was stationed (and man, parkour became awesome when you could make leaps of nearly thirty feet at a time, combined with the reflexes, balance and grace of a cat) it took me roughly twenty minutes to arrive, and as I entered through the door at the back (which merely looked worn-down, but was actually equipped with advanced biometric security), I was greeted by an exited Sterns.

From where I was standing in the hallway, I could see Burstein snoring away on the couch of our 'living room'.

"Well? How did it go?"

Giving my friend a smug grin, I merely chuckled.

"I think I hooked him. Gave him a small amount of tech and software to figure out, as well as the syringe with Brain Booster. I even added an incentive to make him use it too; if he doesn't, then he won't be able to join our group, but if he does, then he gets even more tech to play with and all the money he could ever ask for."

"You really think it was a good idea, just giving him the Boost straight off the bat, without making sure he works for us first?"

"Give it a few days Sam, and he'll be knocking our door down, begging us to let him join the group."

Sterns remained somewhat sceptical, but I was proven right when three days later (two days earlier than I had expected) there indeed was a knock on our door, the security camera's showing the exited form of Phineas Mason.

When I opened the door for him, Burstein and Sterns behind me, Phineas didn't even say a word, merely stepping forwards, holding the notebook out for me to take with a huge grin on his sleep-deprived face. I quickly flipped through it, and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head as I took in the thick script that lined every square inch of every single page in the booklet.

Closing it after quickly reading through what appeared to be an exoskeleton based on the blueprints of the pincers and even what seemed to be reverse engineered parts from what he remembered seeing from my armour, and passing it to Sterns behind me, I let out a grin at the Tinkerer before me.

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Mason."

Fun Fact: Neal Tennant, the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys, was an editor at Marvel's U.K. office in the late '70s