Chapter 27) – Welcome to the Party

After Mara had taken half a minute to catch her breath - and for her body to reach equilibrium after its supply of rocket fuel had been cut off - she was about to raise her hand to contact Natasha when the spy herself contacted my host first, "Well, well, well, aren't you 2 effective little scrappers. I'm not reading any active drone signatures in your vicinity, good work."

Raising a hand, from the stage floor, Mara held it against her communicator, "Damn right we are. Those drones put up a better fight than I thought they would though. I really need to get May to work on my stamina and technique. How's Tony's side of things?"

From the tone of Natasha's reply, it was clear that she was slightly smiling on the other side of the call, "I'm sure she'll be happy to train you into the ground, you don't have to worry about that. For Tony's side, after I reset Colonel Rhodes's suit so that he regained control, they had a showdown with the remaining drones that weren't destroyed while Tony was flying around the Expo putting people in danger. They finished up a couple of seconds ago, which is why I contacted you. All of the drones are decommissioned, but there's still 1 active signal and its heading for Tony and Rhodey in the Oracle dome. The signal only just entered the Expo perimeter, and since Vanko wasn't here at Hammer Industries when I infiltrated, I think he's the signal."

Sitting up from her spread-eagle position, Mara asked, "So you think he's got his own version of the Iron Man suit? Seems easy enough, I'll make my way over there now. Do I have permission to kill the target? Going off the previous time, it's too risky to keep him alive."

As my host stood up from her seated position, Natasha replied, "How you deal with the target is down to your discretion. As long as Stark and the Lieutenant Colonel survive, you can deal with the situation as you see fit."

Rippling my form to remove the dust and debris that had attached to it, I restored the head part of our suit form so that we were complete again and pressed on the communicator so that my host could respond to the Black Widow, "Good shit. I'll see you shortly Nat."

Natasha only sent through a quick, "You too." While we exited the stage to locate the Oracle dome in question.

Once we had spotted the gigantic structure, we crouched down to prepare our leap.

Muttering to ourselves, "Maximum effort." We launched into the air towards the dome.

While we were in the air, we noticed that the dome had glass panes between the interwoven metalwork making up the frame of the dome.

Predicting which pane we would smash into, we sent 1 of the hair tendrils ahead of us to smash the glass just before we passed through it.

Falling to the ground inside the dome, we impacted the grassy floor purposefully not distributing the entirety of the force of the landing. With the ground caving in at our landing, we also bent our knees slightly and hunched our back in a semi-superhero landing.

Tony was a show-off, but Mara was still a show-woman at heart and loved to look cool where possible.

As the dust from the collision settled, we straightened our knees and back to reach full attention.

When we looked forward, towards the metal men, we were greeted with multiple gun barrels and missile tips aimed at us.

Amused at their reaction, we said, "Well this is certainly a warm welcome, but I hate to break it to you; those won't work. Believe us, the drones tried. Since we're here, and they're not, you can imagine what happened to them."

Tony was the first to lower his arms, in both senses of the word, while Rhodey kept his up as he questioned his best friend, "You know this thing Tony?"

Sighing, the Iron Man replied, "Haah, Yeah. Despite how she currently looks, that's Mara who you've met before."

Not lowering his weapons, Rhodey did a double take between the Iron Man and us, "That's, Mara?! What happened to what she was wearing earlier?"

We stepped out of the cracked ground and walked over to the armoured pair as Rhodey finally lowered his weaponry, "Everything we wear is a part of our abilities. This form is the strongest and most natural for us. The appearance we had at the Hammer presentation limited our strength but made us less… horrifying in the eyes of the public."

Adapting well to the situation, Rhodey seemed to quickly get used to our appearance, "Yeah I can see why. Well, I don't care what you look like as long as you're on our side."

Sporting a face splitting smile towards the military man, we responded, "Naturally."

Unfortunately for Rhodey, the front he had put up immediately dropped as he commented, "Just don't smile, please. I'm gonna have nightmares of that for a week."

The instantaneous change in attitude made us chuckle aloud as Tony re-joined the conversation, "Cool, we're all friends now. Can we get back to the task at hand? We've got an incoming vindictive Russian, so could we-"

Cutting Tony off was an armoured suit impacting the ground on the opposite side of the dome to us. The landing also had significantly less force than ours did, so it didn't crack the ground, and the suit only bent down slightly before standing upright.

Both of the Iron men aimed their weaponry at the new arrival, just like they had with us.

Opening up the helmet of the suit, the newcomer revealed themselves to indeed be Ivan Vanko and not just a modified drone, "Good to be back."

As Tony and Rhodey looked at each other, we spoke to the Russian, "Vanko! So nice of you to make it. Welcome to the party."

Instead of replying to us, Whiplash showed why he was known as such. He crossed his arms over his chest and then threw them out to his sides as whips stretched out from his hands.

However, rather than the singular whips that the Russian had used previously in Monaco, the whips instead had multiple, thinner, tails almost as if to copy the tendril hair we used.

Staring towards us, Vanko confirmed our suspicions, "I take inspiration. Is good improvement."

Talking out loud to ourselves we exclaimed, "So that's why the other drones didn't have whips. You kept them all to yourself! Talk about selfish."

Taking a step forward to start the fight, we were stopped by Rhodey who put his arm out in front of us, "Don't worry, I got this. Got something special for him - called the Ex-Wife."

Just the name alone was enough of a reason for Tony and us to lock eyes in concern.

A panel on Rhodey's left shoulder lifted up and a tiny missile started to spin up while beeping. As the back of the missile was lit aflame, it fired at Vanko… and bounced off his suit causing no damage at all.

Tony found the situation funny and started chuckling, while we asked the War Machine, "Is that how it's supposed to be used? Does it need to be fired with more power or does it need a longer charge-up or something?"

Realising his mistake from our questioning, Rhodey replied, "Shit. Now that you mention it, Hammer did mention that it was a bunker buster. It probably isn't designed to be fired from a close distance."

Resting a hand on the man's shoulder, we 'consoled' him, "Don't worry about it Rhodey. Performance anxiety is quite common, or so we've been told. It's completely understandable you'd forget how your own weaponry works in a life-or-death situation."

Looking at us, Rhodey commented, "Har har, very funny. I get it, I fucked up, but do you really have to rub it in?-"

Turning away from us, and towards the laughing billionaire, he continued, "-And you can stop laughing as well, Tony. It's not that funny."

Finally having enough of the comedy show, Vanko used that exact moment when Tony was pre-occupied to launch his attack. Spinning both of the whips in his hands, he raised an arm into the air and slashed down with it.

The action caused the whip in his hand to do the same as it impacted the ground and would have hit all of us if we hadn't dodged a fraction of a second before the attack landed.

Immediately sobering up from his laughing fit, Tony went on the offensive. His metallic shoulder sections parted slightly, and he fired micro rockets at the Russian's still exposed head.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem that Vanko was willing to go down that easy as the helmet of his suit encased his head, preventing the rockets from doing any damage due to their lacking firepower against the armoured target.

Also testing out if his weaponry worked, Rhodey aimed his minigun at Vanko and shot a burst of bullets at him. Needless to say, he got the same results as Tony's micro missiles when the bullets just bounced off the armour.

Taking the 2 Iron Men's failure as an invitation, we advanced towards Whiplash to engage in close combat.

Sidestepping to the right we dodged a vertical whip, before we slid on our knees along the floor, while leaning our upper body backwards, to dodge a horizontal slash aimed at our torso.

Using our hair tendrils to push us up from our knee slide, we returned to our running position and took a couple of steps to get us into striking range.

After the battle with the drones, we were fairly confident in our abilities. So, when Whiplash didn't react to prevent our attack, we thought it was because he couldn't.

Regrettably, our overconfidence was soon thrown back into our face.

As we threw out a fist, aimed at Vanko's stomach, the panels of his suit parted slightly, and small metallic rods protruded out all over the armour. The rods themselves were not an issue, but were the carriers of the issue.

Within the split second that the rods took to protrude out, the electricity from the whips flowed back along the rods completing the circuit and creating an interwoven electrical coating over the armour.

Since we had put quite a bit of force into the punch, it was too late to stop it.

We tried to redirect it, but still ended up brushing along 1 of the electrical channels. The slight contact forcefully separated the bond all along the outside of our right forearm and seared Mara's skin underneath.

"AAAAHH!!"

Since my creation, I had never felt pain. Klyntar's as a species don't have pain receptors and therefore have no concept of pain.

But the bond between myself and my host being forcefully separated due to the heat of the electricity gave me a clear indication of what pain must feel like for humans.

This was only emphasised further when the feeling being transmitted from Mara's burnt forearm was similar to what I was experiencing.

Not getting hung up on our feelings, we jumped backwards to where Tony and Rhodey were stood in order to dodge an electrically charged knee from Whiplash.

Landing between the 2 Iron Men, Rhodey asked, "Are you good? That sounded like it hurt."

Looking over the forearm, I spread my form back down it to begin healing the damage done to my host's skin and muscles. At the same time, Mara began to flood our connection with controlled rage as we replied to the War Machine, "Nah… We're royally pissed."

With the damage to Mara's arm healed relatively easily, we planned to go straight back on the offensive. Albeit a lot more careful about any additional hidden surprises Vanko may have had in store.

Jumping over a horizontal whip, it became apparent the attack wasn't even aimed at us. The multi-tailed whip latched around Rhodey's torso as Vanko pulled the whip towards himself and brought the War Machine along with it.

Tony, seeing that his friend was in a tough spot, launched himself towards Whiplash and shot his hand repulsors at the Russian's hand. Evidently trying to somehow disable the whip that was slowly eroding away Rhodey's armour.

Since the Iron Men were in close proximity to Vanko, we couldn't rely on our sonic shriek - which was what we planned to attack with after close combat had been prevented.

Still trapped within the multi-whip, Rhodey fired whatever weapons were available to him at the Russian. Tony continued to focus on the hand that held the multi-whip Rhodey was trapped in, and Whiplash tried to entangle the Iron Man with the multi-whip in his other hand.

Deciding that just hanging back and doing nothing would get us nowhere, we scanned the armour Whiplash was wearing for any un-electrified areas so that we could re-join the fray.

Slipping into the shadows that the dome created, we made ourselves as low as possible so that we could circle around Vanko in order to get a full picture of his armour.

A full 360-degree view was unnecessary as the armour was essentially mirrored down the middle.

Therefore, once we made our way around Vanko's back, we had a full picture of the armour's electrical defences – the only thing that constituted as a problem for us, that we were aware of.

Not needing to think about what we had seen for very long, we focused on the suit's helmet. Vanko's electrical weave covered his torso and limbs, but his head was left un-electrified.

This could have been a trap to lure us in, but it also could have been due to constraints in the design of the suit. For example, having electricity so close to the head could have been dangerous, or increasing the range to cover his head reduced the potency of the current.

Either way, we had to do something. Even if it was a trap, we figured that it would distract Whiplash for long enough that Rhodey could escape his capture or Tony could break him free.

Rather than imitate an animal's features to use as weapons, we decided to imitate a hunting technique. More specifically, it was the hunting technique of Felidae – cats.

Still low to the ground, we grabbed onto the ground with our hands, digging into the dirt and rock with each finger. We then pulled the rest of our body back, thus stretching our arms completely straight while building tension in them.

When our arms were stretched to their limit, we dug our feet into ground and raised our buttocks into the air to add tension to our legs as well.

Not immediately launching ourselves, we waited for a good opportunity, just like the Felidae would during their hunts.

After nearly a dozen seconds, such an opportunity presented itself.

Rhodey had managed to break himself out of the multi-whip, but instead Tony had been caught, and it didn't take long for Vanko to recapture the War Machine with how damaged his suit had become.

As both Iron Men tried to pull away from Whiplash, he was stuck in the middle of a tug-of-war and unable to move from his position.

We realised that if we waited much longer for a perfect opportunity, rather than the good chance that was presented to us, the other 2 combatants would probably become decommissioned. That meant that if our attack failed, we would be fighting an uphill battle, alone.

Fortunately, we got lucky with our attack.

Vanko was too focused on the 2 Iron Men to realise that we were still lurking around and so wasn't looking to find us.

On top of that Tony seemed to have spotted us, presumably with his scanning technology, during his struggle with the multi-whip. That in and of itself wasn't particularly noteworthy, but for once Tony showcased his intelligence to benefit us.

As we launched ourselves from our stalking position, at Vanko's back, Tony turned his head in the opposite direction to us and called out, "Mara, now!"

This caused the Russian, who was looking back and forth between Rhodey and Tony, to stare straight in front of himself out of reflex, and made it impossible for him to see us in his peripheral vision - which was a possibility when he was looking at either Rhodey or Tony.

Within a heartbeat we had our arms outstretched ahead of us and our hands open, perfectly on target to grab the prize.

Not even getting the chance to realise that the callout by Tony had been a misdirection, we grasped both sides of Vanko's helmet with our hands.

Making sure that we didn't mess up our manoeuvre, we dug our sharp-tipped fingers into the metal helmet so that we directly grabbed his head.

Using the momentum of our leap, we twisted our body slightly so that we flew over Vanko's right shoulder. That's not to say we let go of his head.

Once the majority of our body was in front of Vanko, we aggressively twisted our body, snapping Whiplash's neck 180-degress and ripping his head off.

Landing on the ground and digging our feet into it to nullify our momentum, we held the Russian's helmeted head in our hands while his body stayed stood up, not yet having registered that it had been beheaded.

Remembering the commitment I had made to myself when Mara was fighting the drones, I pulled Vanko's head from the bottom of the helmet and stuffed it into our mouth.

We crunched on the bone and shredded the muscles with our maw as the blood that remained in the Russian's head spilled out down our chest. Only caring about the brain of the enemy, we mutilated anything that got in our way.

While we were munching on the cranium of the villain, Tony and Rhodey had a much easier time removing themselves from the multi-whips with the head of the snake gone.

When they had finally unravelled themselves, the Iron Men turned to us with Tony saying, "Don't you think you could have done that earlier Mara? And don't tell me you did what I thought I saw you do with the head."

Since we had already 'eaten' Vanko's brain, we looked the Iron Man dead in the eyes as we spat out the fragmented bone of the cranium to the ground in front of him, before putting on a face splitting smile.

Grimacing at the sight, Tony sighed, "Haah. That's what I was afraid you did. Now I'll also be having nightmares for a week."

Rhodey also joined in on the conversation with the exact same expression on his face as Tony, "I would say welcome to the club, but I think mine will be longer than a week now. I thought I had seen some shit, but that's just straight nightmare fuel."

Giggling at the familiar comment, we joked, "You're the second person to call us that. Maybe we should genuinely consider making it our name?"

With the Iron Men both shaking their heads at our comment, we transitioned out of our suit form and into the agent form, without the facemask. Since the agent form would be without the mask, I could un-eat Mara's head for the transition as it had felt like forever since I last performed her favourite part of our suit transformation.

Once the head part of the suit was removed, Mara lifted her hand to her ear to contact Natasha, "Nat, it's Mara. Target is down. I presume that's mission complete?"

The Black Widow immediately replied, "Correct, Mara. Good work today. Rendezvous with May at the main pavilion for debrief. You can leave the clean-up for the other agents."

As I completed the agent form transition, Mara affirmed that she heard the instruction, "Understood. Good work as well, Nat."

Looking towards the Iron Men, Mara informed them, "Well that's me finishing for the day. You 2 want to come along for the debrief or you got other plans?"

Tony was the first to respond to the invitation, "I need to check on Pepper. J.A.R.V.I.S. didn't find her through the Expo's security system, so I assume she isn't around here."

Rolling her eyes Mara sighed, "Haah, of course you do. Nat said she warned her of an attack so she should have returned to the jet she arrived on or be in a nearby hotel, or something. Just call her instead of looking for her through security feeds. Oh, and make sure to properly apologise for the strawberry thing if you want to get back into her good books."

Rather than give a snarky or sarcastic reply, Tony nodded his head at my host once as he responded, "I will. Thank you for the advice."

Shivering at the genuinely appreciative tone, Mara retorted, "Ergh, don't do that again. I got goosebumps from it. Go back to snarky Starky."

Doing exactly as instructed, the Iron Man replied, "The woman that munches on heads like she does to her popcorn is the 1 bothered about getting goosebumps."

Glad that she got what she wanted, Mara exhaled, "Phew, for a second there I thought you'd been hit in the head too hard. Glad to know I was mistaken. Now get going, Loverboy. You've got a doghouse to crawl out of."

Not needing to be told twice, Tony flew into the air in his damaged, but still mainly functional, Iron Man suit to go and reunite with his girlfriend.

Turning to face Rhodey, the War Machine answered before Mara could ask for a second time, "I'll return to the Air Force base. We'll have to get some engineers to remove all this Hammer tech since I have a feeling breaking a terrorist out of prison and giving him full control of a drone manufacturing project, goes against a government contract. Thanks for your help, Mara. Couldn't have done it without you."

Nodding towards the Colonel, my host said, "Always happy to help. Was nice working with you, Rhodey."

Mirroring the nod, the War Machine also took to the sky, but in a different direction to Tony.

[Let's get this debrief over with, El. I need a nap after all that exercise.]

Retracing the way we arrived at the Oracle dome, Mara began her stroll back to the main pavilion as I restored the facemask of the agent form to hide her identity.