Chapter Text
"Tony, Sam, you got incoming," Rhodey says over the comms. "Leave the cable and get out."
JARVIS's bright red alert on the Heads-Up Display of Tony's Iron Man armor agrees with Rhodey, but Tony Stark is a genius and knows every skyscraper-sized Jaeger in his Shatterdome from the inside out—he built them from the ground up. If Nat and Clint are to beat the Category-3 Kaiju they're fighting, their Jaeger, Black Hawk, needs this arm working to get them all out of this alive. If they can't hold the Miracle Mile, then it'll be a miracle if the Kaiju doesn't get the ten miles to shore and start stomping through the city.
"Good thing I'm done, then," Sam tells Rhodey. "Falcon disengaging."
Tony finishes securing the cable and flits through the metal gap in the Black Hawk's torn side to see that the Kaiju he's dubbed Tigershark—for its gray and orange coloring, fins, and razor-sharp claws and teeth—has abandoned its assault on Asgardian Fury, which is now on its knees half-submerged in the Pacific Ocean, and is swiping a clawed, leathery paw at Black Hawk that's definitely going to hit Tony like a human swatting a gnat if he stays to weld the gap closed.
Or if he doesn't move within the next half second.
The arm will work now, though.
Tony jets away from Black Hawk and spins gracefully through the creature's massive claws like it's a choreographed aerial dance and not a risky maneuver that probably would've killed any of his Iron Legion had they tried to do the same.
"You can punch it now," he says into his comm as he speeds out and up and up to get some cloud cover, ascending toward the circling monitor helicopters buzzing like flies overhead so their scanners can feed fight data and visuals back to LOCCENT. The choppers are small and agile enough that the pilots can usually stay out of the line of fire. Maria's pit crew cargo plane, on the other hand, is less maneuverable and weighted down by Jaeger repair materials. No way is Tony leading this monster back there, where Rhodey, Sam, and Carol are probably pulling out supplies to get Thor and Loki's Jaeger back on its feet.
Below him, he hears the scream of claws on metal echoed by those of Natasha and Clint as the blow to their Jaeger translates to physical pain on their neurally linked bodies. Tony knows better than to check on them—they can't afford to be distracted while they're fighting for their lives, and billions more are depending on them to win this fight.
Tigershark's sleek skyscraper body roars past Tony. Its gargantuan bulk sucks in the air around it and jerks Tony with it.
Black Hawk's damaged but now-functional arm pulls back to strike, the crackle of electricity around its wrist showing Nat and Clint are charging to punch with their Widow Bite. It'll electrocute the Kaiju with enough charge to power pre-Kaiju War San Francisco. Tony has yet to see a Kaiju that hasn't stunned long enough to kill with the blade that will punch out of Black Hawk's fist when the hit lands.
But the Kaiju opens its mouth, and it's too close to the Conn-pod where his friends are housed like Pinky and the Brain in the Jaeger's robot head. The Widow Bite needs more charging time, and they don't have it.
Tony does some split-second calculations.
And speeds after the Kaiju.
His comm immediately explodes with people telling him to turn right back around and get out, and JARVIS is blaring red alerts at his face through his HUD, but when Tony tells him to charge the unibeam, his AI does.
Tony can't take on a Kaiju—he's not a Jaeger pilot even though he desperately wants to be, and he's not stupid. Anything he does to Tigershark will feel, at best, like a wasp sting on its tough hide. But his unibeam can cut through steel like butter, and while his armor doesn't have enough power to slice through an entire Kaiju, it's got more than enough to blind a Kaiju in one of its vulnerable eyes.
For the second time in his life, Tony finds himself body to giant, malicious eyeball with a Kaiju.
He doesn't think about his parents, his mom. The home he'll never get back, and the fear that replaced it.
He fires right into that huge reptilian eye and thinks, Fuck you.
The Kaiju changes targets with a roar.
Well, it's definitely distracted now, he thinks to himself, and gets the hell outta Dodge.
The Kaiju shoves Black Hawk away and opens its giant maw to swallow Tony whole, rage in every one of its five remaining eyes—
Then shudders, freezes, and wails as Black Hawk's finishing move hits and his friends slice Tigershark in half from the sternum up.
"Signature's out. It's dead," Rose announces from her giant mission control console in the Shatterdome's LOCCENT. "Good job, everyone. Come on home."
Cheers erupt over the comms. Tony watches the Kaiju's bisected bulk crash into the waves and its blood stain them Kaiju blue with vicious satisfaction.
"Thanks for the assist, Tony," Natasha says, panting a little.
"Thanks for not letting it eat me," he replies with a jaunty salute, and heads to Asgardian Fury to assess the damage and get it hooked to the transport choppers that'll fly it back to the Los Angeles Shatterdome they all call home.