Pepper's Counterattack

Pepper Potts/Rescue

"Get them into the panic rooms!" Pepper shouted as she ran towards her office, clenching a hand to her ear. "Jarvis is opening the main armories, Happy will distribute weapons. I want everyone to move to the higher floors, use the emergency elevators! I want every suit on and fighting. Send the call out to our assets in the city."

"Already done, Miss Potts. Three of our allies are making their way at speed."

Pepper entered the office, a wall opening as she walked up to it. "How about Fitz?"

"He has a side-project he is planning to use. It was supposed to be for a comic-con he and a few of the others would go to."

"Comic-con!?" Pepper spun around. "Is it even combat capable!?"

"Very. As I said, it was a side-project. While it was made for fun, Mr. Stark and he worked to make it a true weapon of war."

Confused, but taking his word for it, Pepper entered the wall that had opened, turning around. Behind her, the Rescue armor came forward. Piece by piece wrapped around her, until she was wearing her full armor.

"Miss Potts, you have no need to fight yourself," Jarvis said, a hint of worry in his voice. "I can have a security unit arrive at your office. And the office itself has a panic room. You will be safe."

"Tony isn't here, Jarvis," she said grimly. "And when he isn't, New York still needs someone to help. Today?" a violet helm wrapped around her head, her eyes coming alight, the face of the helm matching the grim resolve on her own face. "That's me."

She stepped out and headed for the window, Jarvis opening it up. "Jarvis, guide me to them.

"Yes, Miss Potts."

Pepper flew out of the office and went spinning through the air. Her HUD guided her to a lower floor. Inside, three men were highlighted, standing outside of a panic room. Based on how one was standing, it looked like he was placing an explosive on the door.

Pepper aimed for the windows of the floor, flying for them. She fired at the glass as she came in, a repulsor blast shattering the windows. She flew in, flipping over to land on her feet, sliding across the marble floor. The room beyond was one of their offices, set up with cubicles all across the area. At, At the end, three Hydra soldiers were gathered around one of the Stark panic rooms. She didn't know if the strange explosive they were using could blow off the door with it's blue highlights and strange green liquid.

She didn't take the chance.

She fired a blast at one man, the repulsor blast sending him spinning into a wall behind him. To her surprise, the other men spun around and fired at her. They were so fast! They didn't even seem scared! To her worse surprise, the bullets that hit her were surrounded in some kind of energy. They smashed into her with more force than any of the gangsters or thugs of New York had been capable of. She staggered back from then, wincing.

"Armor integrity down 3.4 percent," her HUD said helpfully.

Pepper fired a desperate blast at another soldier. He ducked under it, rolled, then tossed a grenade at her. The explosion deafened and blinded her. She staggered back, wincing.

More bullets struck her as she staggered. Her HUD continued to count down her armor's integrity. Pepper grit her teeth.

She wasn't used to this. She wasn't a fighter, not really.

One of the soldiers attacked her, rushing out of the smoke to hit her in the side of her head with a fist carrying what looked like electric bracers. There was a buzzing sound as the electricity surrounded her head, sending spurts of energy crackling along her armor.

"Gah!" Pepper spit out in pain as the blow somehow got through her armor, agony snapping across her cheek.

She came back around and instinctually snapped her fist out the way Happy taught her. Her fist smashed through his helmet, sending him tumbling through the air like a spinning top. She fired another blast as he spun, hitting him in the gut with it.

The sight of him crumbling invigorated her. She charged into the final man, ignoring the bullets bouncing off her armor. He tried to dodge. She grabbed him by the arm and spun around before tossing the man towards a cubicle, the man going through it in a cacophony of sound.

Pepper looked around. For just a moment, she felt a surge of excitement at the sight of the knocked out bodies. She forced it back by reminding herself that more people needed help.

"Jarvis, what's next?" she asked the AI as she floated up before angling towards the windows.

"Our assets have met up and are on one of the lower floors, where most of the civilians retreated to. They need assistance against superhuman opponents. Hydra is attempting to break into Mr. Fitz's labs on that floor."

Pepper followed the highlighted route and flew out of the tower. She went twisting around the building, noting the police gathered around the bottom, the helicopters floating around it. The Violet Avenger spun around to aim for the windows, and front flipped to slam her booted feet into the windows, the repulsors on her feet shattering them. Inside, chaos reigned.

The room was covered in destruction. What had once been a clean and well designed laboratory was now a room of broken glass, destroyed computers, tables and desks destroyed by the chaos.

A red suited figure flipped over a set of glass windows, tossing the baton in his hand at an opponent across from him. He landed, the red lenses in his eyes flashing in the light, spun around to catch the baton as it bounced back to him, then ducked next to desk, dodging a stream of bullets before rising up to smash his fist into a Hydra man that Pepper's armor registered as a Centipede soldier.

The soldier barely responded to the punch, returning it with a superhumanly fast strike. The red-suited man took the blow across his face. Pepper almost gasped at the sight of blood spurting from his mouth.

Then the man grinned through blood-stained teeth. The next three seconds was a flurry of blows, the Centipede soldier unable to respond. It was like he was suddenly fighting someone inhuman. A demon. The soldier fell. And Daredevil moved on to the next person.

At the forefront, two men and one woman were battling it out. The woman had green skin and misshapen limbs, her face twisted like a Picasso painting. She was smaller than She-Hulk, weaker clearly, but still powerful. The green woman slammed a fist into her opponent's stomach, the man grunting in pain.

Her ally, a large Centipede soldier, punched the man on the face.

The large Black man in the yellow shirt grit his teeth. Clenched his fists. Then he rushed in. The green woman tried to punch him, but he parried it aside, hit her with a blow to the stomach that lifted her off the floor, then followed with an elbow to the nose that shook the entire room, sending her flying back thirty feet. Then he ducked around another punch from the Centipede soldier, then hit him with a one-two combo, the pairs of blows knocking the super-soldier out. Luke Cage spat out a bit of blood and raised his fists.

The final person was hiding in cover, a Brunette woman about Pepper's height, looked so much like a civilian in her scarf, shirt, and leather jacket, that Pepper was about to pick her up and get her out of there, especially when another soldier came around the cover.

Until the pissed-off looking woman grabbed the soldier's gun, ripped it out of his hands, and shattered it with a single twist. Then she grabbed him by his armor and tossed him upwards, the man slamming into the ceiling with bone-crushing force. Then Jessica Jones grabbed him on the way down, spinning around to toss the soldier at his friends.

Pepper went in, firing her repulsor quickly. The blue blasts sent Hydra soldiers tumbling. Jessica and Daredevil followed in her wake, using her as a distraction to begin ripping through the soldiers, while Luke acted as his own distraction.

"So you're Stark's fucktoy?" Jessica asked Pepper as they fought together.

"Wha-" Pepper stalled, looking down at Jessica. "No! I'm his girlfriend!"

"Same thing," Jessica grabbed a paperweight and tossed it, the heavy metal object sending a soldier flying.

Pepper grit her teeth. "Jarvis, remind me to do something terrible to this woman after this!"

Following up that statement, Pepper aimed her unibeam towards Jessica. The brunette's eyes widened when the circle in her chest began to glow. Jessica ducked. And Pepper fired a powerful blast of energy into the green-skinned man behind her, sending the massive man flying back into the wall behind him.

"What the fuck!?" Jessica said, flustered.

Pepper hid her amusement easily. "He was sneaking up on you."

Jessica gave her a glare, then a small smile of acknowledgment.

Together, the four superhuman fighters ended up in front of the panic room the Hydra soldiers had been trying to fight their way into. Luke cracked a man's helmet apart with a punch. Pepper blocked bullets on her chest before blasting a wave of energy outwards. Daredevil flipped over to smash down on top of a man before laying into him with dozens of vicious punches. Jessica tossed a computer like a bullet, sending a Centipede soldier to unconsciousness.

But there were a lot. Pepper's suit began to get scars. Daredevil was beginning to pant in exhaustion, his armor scored in the chest. Jessica's cheek gained a bruise, her eye blacking from when a Centipede soldier got her with a punch. Luke was unharmed on the surface, but he clutched his ribs when he could.

Just when they were about to be overwhelmed, the doors behind them slid open. Pepper looked back in panic. Had Hydra somehow opened the doors!? There was a sound. A 'Clank. Clank. Clank.' The sound echoed.

And an armored giant stepped out, as large as the Hulk in size. The helmet he was wearing had yellow eyes glowing with an ethereal light, set in a face with a grill of sorts where the mouth should have been. On one massive shoulder pauldron was the silhouette of a white dragon on black. On the other, a blazing flame. On a green painted chest, a skull with wings glimmered in the light. The massive armored man set his stance. Then he lifted the cannon in his arms.

The main body of the gun was as large as his chest. The barrel was the size of his fist. It looked like it should have been used by a tank, not a man. A loud whine, piercing and painful, filled the air.

Pepper and Luke pulled Daredevil and Jessica to the ground.

And the gun began to fire. The bullets that came out were analyzed by Pepper's HUD the moment they came out, her suits AI analyzing them. No, not bullets. Explosive shells the size of 1.00 calibre bullets.

They fired towards the Hydra soldiers around them. And most of them clearly missed. Whoever was in the suit, they had terrible aim. The bullets hit the walls, the floor, tore through desks, shot apart computers.

But with them surrounded as they were, and the amount of bullets coming out of that car engine sized gun, they didn't need good aim.

The bullets hit a Centipede soldier in the chest and exploded inside him. A Gamma-Hydra took dozens of bullets, the sheer shower of them exploding across his skin sending him to the floor. A man in black armor screamed as his legs were taken out.

Pepper watched in horror as the formidable army of soldiers tried to run away.

That was when Jarvis struck.

The sound of repulsors was followed by dozens of suits flying in through the window. The familiar visage of Iron Man on each of the suits, they began shooting at the retreating Hydra soldiers. The armored green man with the gun accidentally shot two of the suits, destroying one and blowing the arms off another before he stopped.

It was over with that.

Pepper rose to her feet, staring at the sea of destruction before her. Dead bodies, holes in the concrete around them, blood covering the floor and walls. She swallowed, disgusted. "Well… Thanks for the help, but I wish you had been more… subtle. And didn't turn my floors and wall into a cratered mess."

She looked behind her.

The armored man, once so intimidating, was now on his knees, the large gun he'd been carrying in Luke's very confused arms. His helmet was tossed aside, and he was vomiting relentlessly. He glanced up at Pepper, revealing Fitz's all too small and human face inside the armor made for a giant.

"I… I just…" he stared at the bodies before him, sweat across his face, eyes shaking.

"Turned them into chunky salsa?" Jessica said.

Fitz spun around and vomited again. Luke elbowed Jessica who winced.

"Fitz," Pepper walked over, kneeling next to him. She awkwardly rubbed his back, only to realize the massive armor he was wearing was making it so that she was just scratching metal on metal. "It's okay."

"Miss Potts," a suit walked over to her, speaking in Jarvis' voice. "I hate to intrude, but there are more invaders."

"He's right," Daredevil lifted his baton, looking around in an odd manner. "I can hear them running through the halls."

Pepper held in a curse. "Fine. Fitz, you going to be okay?"

The pale-faced scientist swallowed awkwardly, breathing like he'd just run a marathon. "No… But it doesn't matter," he got to his feet in a whirr of sound, walking over to Luke and grabbing his gun. In the panic room, several scientists and civilians poked their scared heads out. "I-I-I'll protect them," he stuttered. "You go save everyone else."

"You sure?" Luke asked kindly, the large man meeting Fitz's eyes. "I can stay."

Fitz swallowed. "...You know, Mr. Stark and I made this thing for fun. Just to see if we could make something crazy for comic-con. And this gun," he hefted it in demonstration. "Was only for realism. We wanted to use it on a shooting range. But I'm glad I had it, now," he seemed to firm. "Astartes may not be heroes. But they do protect people."

"We have to go," Daredevil said, cutting them off.

"Yeah, let's go," Jessica glanced at Fitz. "See ya, Iron Hulk."

"Salamander, actually!" Fitz said, though he sounded more nervous than anything.

Pepper rested a hand on his shoulder. They shared a look. After a moment, he nodded. Pepper smiled, then turned to follow the others, Jarvis' suits following.

"I will remain with you, Mr. Fitz," one suit said to Fitz.

"Thanks," the scientist swallowed. "...You won't mind if I throw up again? The smell is just-"

"I would not blame you," Jarvis said kindly.

Fitz sighed in relief. As he did, Jarvis sent a portion of his mind outwards. To another battlefield, halfway across the world