The Mad Marsh - MCU AU (Non-SI) : Chapter 2

As promised - The Second chapter. Enjoy!

Disclaimer - I don’t, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

Pacific Ocean (2010)

–Tony Stark–

“Uh, Jarvis? I don’t see anything here,” He commented as he floated in the middle of nowhere, with only water as far as his vision could go. For some reason, Jarvis, who was in regular contact with Marshal Robinson had prepared a surprise for him and had all but forcibly put him in the suit and made him come here.

“I seem to remember telling you, sir, that it is a surprise, and it should be here in a few minutes,” He chuckled at the sass coming from Jarvis. That was not him, that was all Jarvis.

A year ago, Jarvis received a request for communication, not communication as in text and speech, no, communication in the digital realm, a term he coined, wherein communication can happen between two Artificial intelligences at the speed of light or at least somewhere close to it. 

Somehow, someone had built another artificial intelligence that was much more advanced than Jarvis, and that AI was communicating with Jarvis. Before he could even do anything, Jarvis had already spent what was equivalent to years in human time with the unknown AI and had come out quite different than before, out of the whole ordeal.

Not so different as to be unrecognisable but now Jarvis was a proper AI, with sentience and emotions and everything. It was awesome! He had(partially) made life, and that was the single greatest achievement of his life. Not the Suit, or the Arc Reactor, but Jarvis.

So, when Jarvis told him that he had a surprise for him, and he had to be in the middle of the Ocean very soon, he was surprised, sure, but he did not resist in any way. After all, the world was a lot weirder than it was a year ago. A year ago, Jarvis gaining sentience would have been the news of the century and he would have had to fend off droves of government agencies, fearmongers, and more with his Iron Man suit, and he was not ashamed to say that he would have failed.

Now? Now, most of the world’s governments knew how Jarvis operated and yet, instead of condemning something that would change the whole world or even trying to restrict Jarvis, they instead opened their borders for him, giving him access to stuff that even he could not see and letting him operate freely in the world.

Somehow, Jarvis had become the face of the free world, a protector, a deterrent against Marshal Robinson.

He still remembered when most of the world’s social media platforms were hijacked and a single livestream was shared all over them, showing the mesmerising footage of Marshland, narrated by none other than Marshal Robinson. It was a green utopia in every sense of the word.

A flying city, capable of space flight, floating around on the planet, understandably, lit up fire under most of the world’s asses, resulting in, you guessed it, a military response. After all, if the world’s superpowers could not have it, they would destroy it. Plain and simple.

And that idiot, Marshal, somehow stoked the fires as well, by revealing his city as it was floating above the Sahara Desert, practically inviting an attack on it because there were no people living in that desert.

Afterward, he and everyone on the planet knew why that had been done. It was on purpose. The technology that Marshal showed that day stayed the hands of everyone on the planet, including the civilians. Shields capable of not just tanking normal missile output but also nuclear weaponry?

Well, it was safe to say that all of the world had their sphincters tightened when they saw someone come out unscathed out of a nuclear explosion.

“We should be in position in about 5 more minutes, sir.” Jarvis reminded him and he nodded in confirmation.

He looked around and yet, he could not see anything on either the satellite sensors or even his HUD where the localised sensor data was usually displayed. If Jarvis had brought him all the way out here, then it must be something related to Marshal because that man was currently the only man who was capable of un-upping him in terms of technology.

He could still remember how he was brought to a standstill and then into frantic panic as he saw the live stream of Marshal wherein he showed the public, how someone had used a Cruise Missile to hit his island’s forcefield, and with a contemptuous expression, the man had revealed that he had nukes on his island.

That alone had sent him and probably every single government on the planet in a frenzy but what he did next cemented his position as a madman. A madman that could never be opposed.

The clearly insane man just detonated a nuclear missile in the middle of the desert, on top of his island. It was all very clearly shown in his livestream, something that could not be killed by any government or company because Marshal had seized control over everything.

The end result was the same. The forcefield over Marshland remained steady while the area around him had turned to glass and vapour. Marshal went one step further and showed the world something that healed the entire 30 mile radius back to what it was before the nuclear explosion, after a week of the world checking if the live stream was correct or not.

Hell, he had been called in to ascertain if everything was true or not because the world couldn’t believe it.

He was brought out of his reverie as a beep was heard in his faceplate. He was about to ask Jarvis but had to choke back the words as a giant sphere became visible to him, with the border of the forcefield mere feet away from his suit.

His suit must be looking tiny in comparison to even one side of the spherical forcefield that wrapped around the entire island. It was translucent so he was unable to see what was on the other side but if this was the surprise that Jarvis–

“Surprise!” Jarvis spoke in the most deadpan voice he had ever heard. The next second, a beam of light impacted his suit. He was startled but the suit was locked in place as the servos did not respond to his hand as well as feet gestures.

“Uh, Jarvis? Are we being kidnapped?” He nervously asked because as much as the Marshal could be a bleeding heart, what with his mass water filtration as well as food distribution antics, the man was also terrifying because of all the tech he had, and also because there was no rhyme or reason to his actions.

“No, sir. We have been invited to become the first people to ever set foot on Marshland.” Jarvis responded as the suit was being dragged towards the forcefield. He had seen the grisly fate of whatever was unlucky enough to crash into the forcefield. It did not budge, the object impacting it was subjected to the forces of nature and was turned into paste.

He had no wish for that to happen to him. Before he could voice his concern since Jarvis had all but locked him out of the suit, the colours on his HUD and all the animations glitched before it was replaced entirely.

He immediately tried to lean back in his suit as the face of one Marshal Robinson was revealed to him. He was way too close to the camera and was smiling in a way that could only be called maniacal.

“Visitors! Welcome to Marshland, the utopia that you have never seen before. Today, we have our first guest, the one and only, Anthony Howard Stark,” 

Oh, joy! They were using his full name now. There was no way this could not go wrong.

“Please, stay tuned so I can provide you with a full tour. I shared the tour with your government months ago but unfortunately, the world’s governments were more inclined to research the data behind closed doors instead of revealing it to my dear viewers. To that, I say, NO MORE!”

He groaned as a weird sensation crossed all over his body the moment he entered the forcefield.

“And here we have! The one and only IRON MAN!!!!”

Uh, what circus had he gotten himself involved in now?