3. Crashland (Let's Hit the Ground Running)

The stale air in the room was one of the signs that maybe something was off. It was so off from the cool air conditioning that Stark Industries preferred to use, instead being hot and dry. Even the bustling city outside felt wrong, too close and too loud.

Slowly, the bundle on the floor stirred. It sat up, groaning, scraps of cloth falling off of it to reveal a certain human inventor. Tony blinked in the darkness, unable to make out any shapes. Confused, he felt the softness that surrounded him. Not quite sure where he was, Tony decided to take a risk.

"Friday, lights," he requested. He expected the ceiling lights to light up, but that didn't happen. Instead, the repulsor on the palm of the gauntlet obligingly lit up, bathing the room in a lightly blued light. It revealed a ramshackle room, filled with old junk and two piles of rags. The pile he was burrowed in was more than twice the size of the other one, just ten feet away. As he observed it in confusion, it twitched. Alarmed, Tony reflexively brought up his hand and aimed his repulsor, ready to fire.

A scaly head poked up, teeth bared and snarling at the colored light.

It took a moment, but Tony remembered the previous day.

"Oh, hello, Gil." Tony stopped and mentally repeated the words again. That wasn't right... Gil? ...Gris? "Gis, my mistake."

"Ghrakhowsk Tony," Gis acknowledged, moving from his spot but keeping an eye on the gauntlet. Was Gis a 'he,' or was he an 'it?' Actually, for all Tony knew, Gis could be a female.

Ghrakhowsk... was that alien for 'hi?'

"Ghrakhowsk Gis," Tony tried, only to get snarled at for his troubles.

"Sham'julamba ghrakhowsk!" it said, slamming its fists on the floor violently. "Tony gwa Ghrakhowsk!"

"Okay, okay!" Tony blurted out hurriedly, because he definitely wasn't going to die tonight. Or day. Whatever. "Ghrakhowsk doesn't mean 'hi,' got it." It took a pleading look before Gis calmed down, stalking over and plopping down next to him. The reptile eyed the gauntlet but didn't ask for it. Feeling a surge of respect at the restraint, Tony held out the hand inside the gauntlet.

"Go on, I bet you're curious. All these flying cars, but you guys don't have flashlight-gloves," Tony joked while silently praying that his hand wasn't going to get ripped off.

Gis prodded the gauntlet, running its hands up and down the smooth metal. While it did this, Tony took the time to examine it (him?). Dull, green scales colored its back, while its chest, face, and neck bore brown scales. At different places around those areas, the brown scales almost seemed a bruised purple. Now that he wasn't actively trying to pretend he wasn't enthralled at the sight of another sentient species, Tony realized the alien looked...young, for a lack of other words.

Free from its self-assigned bodyguard duty, Gis had a curious tilt to its head as it fumbled with the interlocked titanium-gold alloy. Gis seemed unfamiliar with its own fingers and arms, as if it had just had a very large growth spurt. The limbs were long and gangly in a way that screamed 'teenager' if one actually looked. The long limbs and hint of lean muscles suggested that the alien had once been well-fed, but the muscles had long since started to atrophy. The 'nest' that Tony had slept in had been otherwise unoccupied through what passed as night. Due to these observations, Tony suspected that the alien had been orphaned, not abandoned, just a handful of weeks prior.

Due to a lack of a... larger chest area... on the humanoid, Tony felt safe to assume that the alien was a male, not a female. He mentally compared the excited Gis to Peter when shown a new gadget. Despite Gis and Peter's similarity, strength-wise, Tony eventually decided that Gis was more like Harley. After all, where Gis pulled a knife at their first meeting, Harley loaded a gun. It was a potato gun, but still...

A metallic screech broke through his thoughts and Tony looked up to see a very guilty Gis holding the pinky of the gauntlet.

"This place?" Tony asked, glancing at the run-down building Gis led him to. "Looks promising," Tony agreed, peering through the dust-coated window to see piles upon piles of metal scraps and broken gadgets. "Definitely my sort of place."

Tony pushed the door open and walked through, ignoring the discordant clangs the metal bits hanging on the back of the door made. An alien who Tony assumed owned the shop hurried over at the noise. It had a trunk that was much shorter than an elephant's trunk, though it was also framed with downward-pointing twin tusks.

And of course Tony knew not to stare; he had manners, after all. He wasn't uncivilized. Then again, he never thought he would ever be in such a situation.

It, well, presumably a he, seemed to ask Tony a question, to which he politely coughed at. When the alien finally spotted Gris, it started shouting at him, nasal huffs punctuating each breath.

Alarmed, Tony watched as it stormed over and raised a hand to strike the smaller alien. Tony darted between the two. "Hey, hey! Whoa! None of that, now," Tony yelled, rushed, as he narrowly stopped the other alien from cuffing Gis over the head.

Evidently surprised, the other alien looked between Tony and Gis, talking to Gis in what seemed to be the most common language around. Gis answered, the other alien said something else, and the two of them looked at Tony and started laughing. They were friends. Tony scowled.

"Hey, I went through all that trouble to save you," Tony huffed, offended. He was ignored as the two aliens started chatting once more. Constant glances at him made it clear what the topic of their conversation was.

Deciding Gis was reasonably safe for now, Tony headed between the scrap piles, looking for something to help FRIDAY. When he returned with a wire basket filled to the brim with cables, aluminum, random knick-knacks he felt the urge to take apart and examine, and a miniature, broken tablet of some kind, the tusked alien scowled and headed over. Tony blinked.

"Oh... right. You want payment for all this." Tony felt foolish for forgetting that he was currently penniless. He wondered if they carried out his will, back at home, yet. Probably not. If they wanted to, they'd have to find it first. Tony had given it to DUM-E a couple weeks back, and he was positive his eldest creation didn't know the significance of that fireproof envelope. Eh, not his problem anymore.

He lugged his stuff over to a large worktable that ran along the back wall, eyeing the many projects that lay there. "I don't suppose you accept labor?" He prodded at the objects, mentally taking them apart and putting them together. He could do this. Probably.

"Let's see..." mused Tony, sorting through all the junk. "Burned wires... this one's disconnected... hmmm, think I can fix this..." He picked up a huge motor-like part, turning it over in his arms. "No idea what this is... Oh, cool... no, wait..." Tony pulled off one of the gadgets that hung on the wall, clicking it on. It vibrated in his hand. Not sure what use a vibrator would be, he turned it off and grabbed the next item. This time it was familiar. He flipped the hammer expertly in his hand.

"Nice balance," he approved before setting it aside. He quickly identified a screwdriver, bolts, and a small, odd washer. "Now, if this is what I think it is..." Tony plucked a tool with a tapered head and pressed a button on its handle. Sure enough, the blowtorch turned on. A very special blowtorch that was more like a laser than a burst of flame. "Now this is what I'm talking about!"

Tony picked up what looked like a circular radio, though open, with its innards trailing out. Holding a pair of tweezers gently between his fingers, Tony manipulated a blue wire between the tongs. He looked back up to the owner of the shop to see if it would stop him.

The elephant alien hesitated. Perhaps sensing master blacksmith at work, it decided to stand aside and let him work.

And Tony worked.

Tony was a man possessed. It felt like he was in a trance. Every move was smooth and automatic, every thought at lightening speed. His stress melted away. Every bit of anger, every spark of resentment evaporated with the bass pounding of his hammer that melded with a song only he could hear.

He finished project after project under the amazed eyes of his two-alien audience.

Shattered metal covering plates were removed and wielded back together, heated up and hammered together so smoothly, it looked as if the cracks were there for aesthetic purposes.

Cases were cracked open so broken screens could be removed, the glass melted back together into a seamless whole. Clumsy dents were coaxed out of plates, unsightly scorch marks and scars bluffed. Wirings and circuits were curiously followed, only for Tony to decide the whole thing was obsolete, disconnecting the entire thing and rewiring it from nothing but

scratch and memory. Fingers danced over malfunctioning drones, searching for a flaw that prevented them from working properly.

Droid chips were plugged into the now-fixed tablet. Alien coding fell open before his hands and mind, their secrets in plain sight to him. The symbols, so like the zeros and ones from earth, just made sense in a way nothing else did.

When the first droid came online, Tony was too far away to feel surprised at how much more sentient it was than anything Pym or Hammer or anyone else made. Like FRIDAY, it too had its own form of life. For the first time since becoming stranded in this new world, Tony removed FRIDAY's gauntlet, giving it to the droid. Upon realizing the armor it held in its hands was also had a mind, the droid began conversing with FRIDAY in beeps and clicks, and various tones of 'Boss.' It seemed like robo-speech was universal.

Some time after that, Tony became aware that Gis had left. Actually, he only noticed when a warm, salty smell filled the room and Gis came in from the entrance with some meaty slop in a carton. Tony waved it off to the side, too busy to eat at the moment. The elephant alien had just carted over some more projects. Tony accepted them without a backward glance.

-I know guys with none of that worth ten of youHours later, when Tony reached for the next project, he was met with nothing but air. He blinked and felt around again. Still nothing.

Wait, no there was something, he picked up a squared bowl with... was that meat on it? Tony picked up the fork and speared the mystery meat. It gave a small wobble, as if it was still raw. Just to make sure it was actually food and not, say, the solidified engine oil he had once taken a bite of on accident, thinking it was Jell-O, Tony gave it a discreet sniff. Definitely,

well, most likely, edible. He ate it.

Tony turned back to the table. It took a moment for him to reach awareness, but Tony realized that he finished fixing all of the projects. "Friday, did I just go on another three-day work binge?" Tony asked, internally cataloging his collections of aches and pain and deciding that yes, it was definitely three days' worth of hunger pangs.

FRIDAY signaled an affirmative.

"I'm sorry, baby girl, I didn't mean to leave you all alone," Tony crooned.

"Apologies - Sir - Think - Count - As - Good - Discussion," the silver droid interrupted.

"What?" asked Tony.

"Me - I - Good - Talk - FRIDAY," the droid said, seemingly frustrated.

"Oh, of course," Tony realized. "I didn't mean to imply you didn't count. I completely forgot I fixed you. I'm sure you were a worthy conversation partner for FRIDAY. How much did she teach you?"

"Apologies - Repetition?"

"How much did FRIDAY teach you?" Tony said slowly and clearly.

"Little." Tony considered this. Robots seemed to strive for perfection, so 'little' could stand for anything between 'about a hundred words' to 'elementary school comprehension level.'

"Could you please ask your owner if I could have a job?" Tony asked plaintively.

-I know guys with none of that worth ten of youTony was a businessman. He once coaxed a small melting factory from another business, then convinced the manager to buy it back at twice the cost. Tony knew how to talk and sell his ideas. Unfortunately, he had to first know how to talk to sell his ideas. Body language and a game of charades couldn't quite get the meanings across, and the first time he forgot and started talking in English out of sheer loneliness, the human trying to buy some parts merely gave him a disdainful look and turned his nose up.

Ketolin - his new boss - quickly realized that, though charming, Tony had to expand his vocabulary a lot more before he could even be considered a competent salesman.

The days fell into routine. True, Tony still wasn't sure how long whatever counted as a 'day' was; after all this time, he still hadn't seen the sun. He had caught sight of a large, astrological body in the sky though. Speckled and clouded, he could often see it looming in the sky like an overseer, ominous and dangerous.

Still, he got up whenever Gis nudged him awake. They would walk together to Ketolin's shop, though most of the time, Gis would split off and keep walking. Tony would have multiple 'breaks' throughout his work shift, though he worked straight through them. It baffled his boss, but KS-04, the droid Tony repaired, was unable to either comprehend or convey the fact that Tony was used to working way too long. Whenever Gis returned and entered the shop, Tony considered his shift over and clocked out. In the three hours before they would go to sleep, Tony would use his credits to buy dinner for himself and Gis. Whatever time was left over, he spent exploring the alleys around his new home and making friendly with the natives.

Outwardly, FRIDAY was completely fine. The vibranium-coated titanium-gold plates were as sturdy as they had always been. Inside was a different matter. Tony had put a thin layer of plastic over all the internals after Wanda came into the scene. 'Magic' usually clung onto natural materials, the more organic, the better. Wanda, Strange, and the other magicians could throw about heroes clad in cotton or leather with ease. Metals were purified from their natural forms, and therefore a lot harder to manipulate, though still possible. Plastic, though? It was completely unnatural, causing deflecting 'magic' with ease. Tony used a starlite, miracle plastic that could withstand a stunning amount of heat. He didn't like the fact that heat

somehow got through and was planning on asking FRIDAY what happened.

Seriously. The starlite was still there, completely fine. How did all these wires burn out?

Yes-and-no questions were his new bane of existence. Throwing out outlandish hypotheses about what happened at home was no fun without his girl to rip them to shreds. To say the truth, he was pretty certain of what would happen. Steve might be a Brooklyn kid, but New York was Tony's city. The New Yorkers were Tony's people, and they would stand up for him, even when he gave up on himself. Wanda wouldn't be getting out unscathed.

For his part, Ketolin all but gave him free range of the shop. It was clear the creature had no idea how to run a mechanics shop. Sure, the elephant-like alien could convince customers to buy just a little more than they needed to, root out 'junk' from competitors' stores, and knew his way around a search engine, but his mechanical expertise stopped at taking stuff apart.

Though parts could fetch a fair price, they found that Tony's repaired mechanics earned quite a bit more.

In the space between little shipments of trashed gadgets, Tony had little gaps of spare time, which he filled questioning KS-04 to try to learn the alien language (It wasn't working that well. He was pretty sure something got mistranslated; Gis gave him a strange look every time he said goodbye), trying to fix FRIDAY, and taking apart electronics in hope that he could

find something to help FRIDAY.

Occasionally, he worked on a radio that Ketolin let him have. Normally, radios received radio waves, but he was trying to do something different with this one. The waves it would be tracking wouldn't be radio waves. It would figure out where this galaxy was, relative to the Milky Way.

Sometimes, Tony was given commissions. He couldn't read the detailed instructions left behind, but he could look at blueprints and semantics and guess the purpose of each part. With his eidetic memory, Tony could still remember all the different pieces necessary for a 'speeder bike.' Sorting through the inventory gave him a good grasp of what and how much the shop held; he knew that there was enough parts. All he needed was time.

Tony always inwardly panicked each time Gis parted ways with him at the store. He had nowhere to go, and if Gis left him, Tony was mildly certain he'd die on the streets. He had explored the blocks around Gis's hovel, and what he found wasn't encouraging. There were no police men or peacekeepers of any sort, so crime ran rampant. The pollution and litter caused diseases and Tony felt his life expectancy draining every time he took a breath. It was almost guaranteed that he would see a dead body every other time he left the apartment.

Strangely, it seemed that Gis was every bit as wary of Tony leaving him. Sometimes, when Tony finished repairing a gadget and looked up, he saw Gis walk past. Tony ended up propping a small hand mirror against the corner so he could catch the reassuring sight of Gis checking in on him.

Despite feeding the alien dinner every 'day,' the reptile wasn't getting less thin. In fact, Tony was becoming more and more certain that the meal he ate with the alien was the only meal Gis ate every day. If Gis had skin, Tony was willing to bet that his face would look gaunt by now, but the malnourishment was hidden by scales.

Tony didn't know what to do. Gis ignored Tony's attempts to buy him breakfast and pretended to not understand when Tony used the limited, broken speech that he had KS-04 teach him.

The only thing Tony could do was hope FRIDAY had an answer.

-I know guys with none of that worth ten of youThe casing closed with an ominous click. The antenna that Tony had inserted nearly three days ago had to be moved to the other side of the gauntlet to make space for FRIDAY's new additions. It rankled that he had to admit it, but it was a mistake. Tony had done the best he could, but the few data chips in the glove were small, not meant to encompass the entirety

of the magnificent being that was FRIDAY. This wasn't the true FRIDAY. FRIDAY was on SI servers. What he had was a copy of about a tenth of her matrix. Even so, she was his righthand girl and Tony would never abandon a single part of her.

He had to remove a chip that was completely fried by the journey through the portal, replacing it with alien ones. The circumference of the gauntlet around the wrist and elbow had increased by half an inch each. Tony had taken it apart and ringed it with as many chips he could find and repair before covering it up with armor again. More protection would need to be added, but he had to see if it worked first.

What Tony did with it, he had always wanted to do back on Earth. However, AI-phobia, brought on by the Terminator series, had Tony restricting JARVIS's coding to seem like less of a threat, once he was discovered due to a loose-lipped assistant and Obie. FRIDAY was kept offline.

After JARVIS's death, Tony had made sure FRIDAY had the coding, too. That time, it wasn't society's influence and mob mentality that forced his hand.

It was Tony's own fear.

At first, Tony knew he didn't create Ultron. Ultron was an alien sentience that took control of some of his technology and absorbed part of the ULTRON project's programming to gain control of its' wide reach. However, with Sovokia calling for his blood and the Ex-vengers' accusations every time he stepped out of the lab, Tony had started believing it himself.

And his little girl paid for it.

Unable to trust himself and his work, Tony had placed failsafe upon failsafe, imbedded brick walls and kill switches into every branch of her coding.

In doing so, he crippled his little girl.

She never faulted him for it, taking the coding and burying it into hers every time he hesitated. Looking back, Tony felt ashamed.

This time, in a world with AIs on every block, looking out of every shop, Tony was determined to do right by her. This time, FRIDAY would be free.

Tony had coded the bare basics of what he could remember of FRIDAY's matrix. He could have just inserted everything he knew about FRIDAY, but that wasn't the goal. Tony believed that FRIDAY had the right to be what - who - she wished to be, not what he wanted her to be. As such, the codes he inserted were to be used as scaffolding. FRIDAY would use them, rebuilding her matrix around them. FRIDAY's core coding would still be there, but she would be the architect of everything else. She would be her own person. At least, that's what Tony expected (hoped) would happen.

He had run well over the suggested number of simulations on the two differing pieces of hardware, but FRIDAY should be able to overcome the inherent differences in technology. It took him a bit more than triple the amount of time it should have, but he didn't want to accidently cause a glitch or delete some of what made FRIDAY, FRIDAY.

"Friday?" Tony asked wearily, removing his goggles and running a hand through his greasy hair tiredly. FRIDAY had been silent for days now, and he couldn't help but worry as several moments passed. He placed a hand on the table, leaning forward. Unfortunately, this action caused his elbow to knock his radio off the table. Tony looked at the broken pieces in barelyconcealed devastation.

Just as he was about to yell in frustration, the arc reactor in the gauntlet hummed with power. "Here, boss!" FRIDAY chirped. "We have much to discuss."

"That's never a good sign," Tony muttered. To his surprise, FRIDAY giggled. "That sounded like a giggle. Did you just giggle?"

"KS-04 showed me how to link to the net," FRIDAY chattered excitedly. "There are a multitude of planets and moons capable and currently supporting life! Hundreds, thousands, millions!" The gauntlet vibrated slightly with FRIDAY's enthusiasm. "Boss, you are currently on a moon called Nar Shaddaa. A single city stretches over its entire surface. It is filled with gambling rings, cartels of all sorts, bounty hunters, and many illicit merchandises that cannot be found in other cities, due to the large presence of a criminal underworld. Your roommate is a male adolescent of the species Saurin, subspecies of Trandoshan. They are known to be rather aggressive, due to their warrior culture."

Tony blinked as FRIDAY continued to supply more and more information about everything they came across in the time since they arrived. She must have been on what passed for an internet around here ever since he installed the antenna.

A slow, fond smile grew on his face as his initial surprise drained away. His girl's eagerness reflected his own when given a challenging piece of technology, though it was clear FRIDAY preferred information to tech. This inquisition, the ability to strive to learn and the want to know more, was what separated his baby girl from even the droids found in this world. She was one-and-only, and Tony wouldn't have her any other way.

"That's amazing, Fri," Tony said when she paused after a particularly long sentence, a habit she picked up from him. "I suppose you also learned the languages around here?"

"Of course, boss," FRIDAY answered, already knowing what he was going to ask. They fell together like two pieces of a puzzle. "Galactic Basic Standard, commonly shortened to Basic, is the most prevalent language in the Galaxy. It is composed of..."

So Tony took the day off, sat back, and learned. He had taught himself thermonuclear astrophysics overnight when the need called for it and was perfectly able to fight off an alien invasion the very next day. A language? He was already multilingual. Research has found that the more languages you learn, the easier it would be to pick up another. In other words, this would be a piece of cake.