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[madeofsocks]

 
the AU VERSE IDEA meme

In your top level comment, describe an idea for an AU you have. It can be anything from a couple of words ("High fantasy AU!" "Jill dies instead of Jack!") to the most teal of deer describing how you see this AU playing out. Do not leave your comment blank. Feel free to include multiple prompts/ideas!

Now go around tagging other people whose AU ideas intrigue you. Plot further, or just fire right in with a starter tag for a thread in that verse.

????
Profit

Comments

Tony Stark | MCU | OTA

[nottheworstthing]

1. Pacific Rim AU. Because literally every fandom needs one, and the idea of Tony building jaegers makes me happy.

2. It's still in cinemas, so I'm going to type this one up elsewhere and link it so as not to spoil the three people left who still haven't seen the movie. Horrible depressing CA:TWS AU idea here.

3. Avengers AU: the arc reactor doesn't protect him from the scepter, and Loki is able to successfully mind-control Tony. I am fully on board with taking this as angsty as it will possibly go, up to and including the others having to kill Tony (bonus points for moment of horrible clarity where he gets to realize what he's done just before he dies)

4. BYOAU. Shoot me a PM if you have other ideas, I fucking love AUs.

Re: Tony Stark | MCU | OTA

[leavelolalone]

[Would you like a Phil for your horribly depressing yet awesome WS AU. I also have a Bruce if you would like a Science Bro, a Steve or even a Loki. Take your pick!

[nottheworstthing]

[...I kind of want all of them >_> Coulson? They can be everyone's-pissed-at-us-for-pretending-to-be-dead buddies. Or Steve would work too. Whichever one you're feeling, really, I can roll with it :) ]

[leavelolalone]

[I'll do Phil and Bruce to start and then if the other guys wanna toss themselves into it they will! Let me know if you need me to change anything about this scene. I am assuming Tony could find Providence Base easily enough]

The two men trudging through the Canadian wilderness couldn't have been more different. One was covered from head to tow in cold weather gear, while the other skinnier slightly taller man was dressed in a heavy jacket, jeans and a loose fitting shirt with no gloves or hat. "It's sinful how much you don't feel the cold Doctor Banner," Phil Coulson commented with a weary chuckle.

Bruce Banner echoed the chuckle with equal amounts of weariness if not more. "I can always add a dose of radiated blood to your alien mix Phil," he joked. "No thank you," the former agent of SHIELD replied, "I still don't know what that stuff did to me so lets not add to it."

The two men were coming back from a risky trip to New York were they dug through the ruins of Stark Tower looking for anything that could be of use to their base. There hadn't been much left which they had expected, it really had been more of a trip to mourn their fellow Avenger then a supply run really. That's part of the reason they had made most of the trip back to Providence base in silence.

As they reached their goal, Phil went completely still. The automated weapons should have asked them for identification by now. The fight to take back the base had been a long hard one and he feared an attack by Hydra sooner then later now that Talbot and his forces were gone.

Slowly, carefully Phil waved Bruce behind him and triggered the hidden entrance opening gun held loosely in one hand as he walked through the hallway. The base was mostly empty at the moment with his team and Hill's both off on other missions. Turning left he entered his office to see someone sitting in his chair facing the now blank computer screens.

"Turn around slowly," he barked, "hands up."

[nottheworstthing]

It hadn't been a great couple of weeks for Tony. He was dead, for one thing, which was the sort of thing that could really put a crimp in a guy's social life. The whole 'being a fugitive from their new fascist overlords' thing wasn't really doing him any favors either.

Nor, when it came to it, had the long and difficult journey to The Middle Of Nowhere, Canada. He'd done the first few hundred miles in a stolen car picked up on the outskirts of the charred wreckage that used to be New York City; most of the rest in a freight train car, and the last several days on foot through knee-deep snow. He'd been starting to think maybe he'd misremembered the coordinates of this Providence Base when the automated defenses nearly blew his head off. That would have been an annoying way to go, all of ten yards from his destination.

That had been a few hours ago now. Long enough that he was just starting to be able to feel his fingers again - that was nice, he'd forgotten how nice that was - when company arrived.

He nudged the desk with his foot, just enough to spin the chair around to face them. He was heavily bundled up against the cold, and the signature goatee had been allowed to grow out into nice thick identity-concealing scruff, but to anyone who knew him it was still obvious who he was. "'Hey, Tony, it's great to see you'," he replied sardonically, slowly and lazily raising his hands in the most half-assed and thoroughly unimpressed surrender in human history. "'Way to not be dead'. Yeah, I missed you assholes too."

He was shooting for flippant, for his usual irreverent tone, but even to his own ears he sounded beyond exhausted, weary and strained and obviously hurting. There were ugly burns on the side of his face and continuing down his neck, and his left arm was bound up across his chest in a rough makeshift sling; surviving the fall of the Tower had been no mean feat, and he'd come away from it far from unscathed.

[prizrak]

[you want terrible things with that already terrible ca:tws au you've got? everyone needs an antagonist.

also, i've got another idea, but i will pm that since it's spoilery.]

[nottheworstthing]

[Okay the internet here is useless and I can't tell if the PM I sent you in return actually sent or not, but in case it didn't: YES I WOULD LIKE TO DO THE THING. I can start if you want, but it wouldn't be sometime after I get on shift tomorrow morning]

[prizrak]

[i did get it! i'm sorry. life is busy. i would like to do the thing too. i am off tomorrow sometime after 6 and free all day sunday. hopefully i can get back to this then if that's still ok with you.]

[nottheworstthing]

[That is absolutely fine :) I'll be looking forward to it]

[beingabadass]

[Hello, would you like a worried Rhodey for #2 reunion times?

Or a Iron Man vs War Machine "I am trying not to actually kill you because you're my best friend but you're making that hard" fight for #3. I would be up for that too.]

[ofsilvertongue]

[Ahaha you have no idea how happy she's going to be when she mozies on back here and sees a Rhodey.

I'm just gonna sit and stalk the hell out of this.]

[nottheworstthing]

[DAMNIT WOMAN I WAS GOING TO TRY TO BE COOL]

[ofsilvertongue]

[#kanyeshrug #srynotsry #'cool' lol]

[nottheworstthing]

[WELL SINCE THAT ASSHOLE LOKI TOTALLY BLEW MY COVER I'm just going to come right out and say that I am screaming internally and may or may not have actually hugged my laptop when I saw this reply. God yes. All of the yes. I can't even express how much yes.

I kind of want to play everything, but for now, #2 reunion times with the "oh good you're not dead (again) STOP DOING THIS TO ME YOU ASSHOLE"?]

let me know if this is good by you, I can edit as needed

[beingabadass]

It's long enough after Tony's presumed dead that Rhodey's just about given up hope of another miracle when somebody offers him a place to go to help the slow-growing resistance. He's not sure if the delay was the difficulty in getting safe messages around, or if someone were worried he couldn't be trusted. And if it's the last one, he can't blame them, much as he'd like to. He's alive and free; that's suspicious in and of itself, and if HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD, who knows where else they might have agents.

He's not sure why he's not on the dead list either; maybe his history of being more-or-less agreeable with what the government needs from him got him put on some kind of list of people they could use. He's not complaining. It buys him time to figure out what to do and how to do it, and by the time he manages to get the contacts and get the message, he's preparing to run anyway, even without a place to head for.

Staying low-key is important, so unfortunately 'hop in the War Machine armor and don't slow down' is off the table -- too obvious, too hard to stay hidden, they've got to have the airspace near him under watch. With that restriction, it takes almost another week to make it safely to the address given, but at least he's absolutely sure nobody's following or tracking him.

"I hope you guys have somewhere to sleep set up," is the first thing he's got to say walking in, tired but more or less good-natured. The second part goes out the window in favor of shock when he's brought in and comes face-to-face with a ghost.

"Tony?"

He's going to need a second before he has anything more to say.

It's perfect!

[nottheworstthing]

So this is hardly the first time Tony's found himself missing-presumed. Afghanistan, the thing with the Mandarin...to say nothing of that little adventure in extradimensional portals and stray nukes where he actually was clinically dead for a couple of minutes there. He's got a strange talent for coming away from these things more or less in one piece.

After all that you'd think people would stop assuming before they'd seen a body. But-- yeah, he's gotta admit, the fall of the Tower was pretty spectacular. At the time he'd been a little too busy frantically attempting to get out in one piece to fully appreciate it, but he'd seen the footage later, and by then he'd had enough distance on the whole thing to be more impressed than anything else. It's been long enough now that the first desperate scramble to get out of the wreckage of the Tower, to get out of the warzone New York City had become, to find somewhere to lay low, is like a half-remembered nightmare.

Ever since he's been in deep with the resistance, working on finding a way to take down the helicarriers. The technical part isn't that hard; he worked on the designs, he knows how to cripple them. The problem is getting up there. In theory they'll never have to land again, and no conventional aircraft stands a chance of getting anywhere near them without getting gunned down. He could have done it easily in the armor - it had the kind of speed and agility they'd need, to say nothing of the negligible radar cross-section - but that ship has well and truly sailed. As far as Iron Man went, anyway. War Machine ('Iron Patriot', please) was still very much in commission, and that had been his most successful line of argument for bringing Rhodey in.

The others were wary, of course. Anyone who hadn't made Insight's list was regarded with deep suspicion. But you could count on your fingers the very few people Tony trusts completely, and Rhodey's place on that list has never wavered. He's pretty sure half the reason they finally agreed was out of fear that he'd take matters into his own hands.

Even knowing it was coming though, even having had a hand in making it happen...when the door slides open and he turns and sees Rhodey for the first time in long months, it's like going to his knees in the burning sand of an Afghan desert all over again. He couldn't have helped the smile of sheer exhausted relief that spreads over his face if he'd wanted to. It feels like coming home.

"Long time no see," he says, easy and flippant, his smile widening into a slightly manic grin. "What, no hug?"

[biochemistry]

Hi I see you have an interest in a Pacific Rim AU and wow I didn't realize how much that was something I wanted to play with until now. Wackiness and adventures doing various sciences in the Shatterdome y/y.

[nottheworstthing]

[Y. All of the Y. Perhaps early days of the Jaeger program and experiments with getting brains and computers to talk to each other? Or more movie-era and help we're getting shut down and everything is fucked?]

[biochemistry]

[Ooh ooh but either of these things sound wonderful. Whichever you wanna run with I guess?]

[nottheworstthing]

They were just rumors at first. Funding getting pulled, smaller Shatterdomes merged or shut down, budget cuts across the board. Tony hadn't been too worried about it. There's always a bit of background haggling between the PPDC countries over who pays how much for what, especially around election times; it always works itself out in the end. Even politicians aren't stupid enough to take too many resources away from the only thing standing between them and smashy, roaring death.

...or so he'd thought, anyway. Tony would not have described himself as an optimist, but well done governments of the world, you have shocked and disgusted even him.

It wasn't so bad right at first, but they're really feeling the strain now. The tech budget and staff have been brutally slashed: Tony's lost most of his department. He hasn't slept in days. The repairs to Howling Commando's left arm are still ongoing, Widow Hawk is three weeks overdue for maintenance, and that's just the things that have already gone wrong. He feels pretty safe in assuming there's another crisis waiting to pounce on him the second he relaxes.

Right now he's on his lunch break. It's sometime after midnight, but he lost all useful sense of time about 72 hours into this shift, so lunch is as good a term as any for what he's currently consuming. Which is coffee. Just coffee. Thick, black, and strong enough to wake the dead, which is essentially the service it's performing right now.

He doesn't look up when someone sits down across from him; the coffee has his full attention. But he does mutter something into his cup that might be a greeting.

Re: Tony Stark | MCU | OTA

[geriatric]

wow can I just breathe heavily all over #2.

There was a fic that was sort of around that, where it sets up the world as a big brother-ish world where shit like Zola's algorithm are active which means people are gunned down in the street if they're picked, etc. BASICALLY BAD SHIT HAPPENS.

oh i should mention I can offer steeb here or a bruce, though the bruce is way more rusty.

[nottheworstthing]

I am never going to say no to some Steve. I am 400% on board with horrible dsytopian futureverse. Let's do the thing. Up for lying-low plotting-suicide-missions La Resistance times? Unless you had a specific idea in mind.

[geriatric]

that sounds amazing :D :D I'm at work all day today but I'll be able to tag intermittently.

would you like to set something up or would you prefer I do? (also, where? I have a musebox if you don't!)

Re: Tony Stark | MCU | OTA

[wipeoutthered]

Want a Natasha and a Pepper for #2?

[nottheworstthing]

Sounds great!