Hard Wrought Iron<br/><br/>Morgan Stark was at her favorite elevation on Earth- 10,000 feet above [REDACTED BY SHIELD] Afghanistan in a United States Air Force operation. But unlike her famous father, it wasn’t in an iron suit, with only advanced nanotechnology between her and the sky. No, for the past four years as a reservist, she’d flown for six tours of duty and thousands of hours in a F-A/40 Stalker fighter jet, bombing the crap out of the Ten Rings.<br/><br/>The Ten Rings was a terrorist organization run by the elusive Mandarin and thought decimated by Tony Stark after he escaped their capture in the Mark 1 Iron Man suit. Afghanistan had finally started to know a semblance of peace with their fall. That was, until the Superhuman Registration Act and the Civil War gave them an opening to announce their existence once again with a series of car bombings in New York timed to coincide but not in direct coordination with Wilson Fisk’s deadly ambush. And they were out for revenge.<br/><br/>Since then, they’d conquered half of Afghanistan in an unholy alliance with the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda and had started to spread cells in war torn Syria, Iraq, Libya, and even far flung countries like the Philippines and Argentina. This had caused the UN Security Council to send UN Peacekeeping Forces, in conjunction with SHIELD and a coalition of international forces ranging from the US to Russia to China, on a mission to crush the Ten Rings once and for all.<br/><br/>Several of Morgan’s friends had died in New York on that fateful day, and so she had signed up to enlist. It helped that the Air Force would get her in shape and put some distance between her and her father.<br/><br/>Tony and Pepper, ever the loving parents had, of course, strenuously argued against it that same night. However, Tony eventually caved to his little Squirt when she agreed to train to use a Mark 51b suit he’d been developing for her since she was five, and keep it with her on her mission even though she didn’t plan on using it. She did manage to extract a promise never to meddle in what that mission was so that she would never appear to be receiving special treatment. However, it annoyed her that he ended up using his contacts to make sure that her plane had a direct connection to Stark Industries’ satellite network, was armed to the teeth, and came preinstalled with a state of the art copy of Jarvis called, imaginatively enough, Jarvis II.<br/><br/>“Ma’am, coming up on the target now,” the AI warbled in its trademark British accent as the aircraft approached, making that first word sound like “mum.”<br/><br/>“Alright, Raptor Leader to Raptor 2 and Raptor 3,<br/>prepare the presents, over,” Morgan said over the intercom to the two other F-A/40’s on her left and right flanks.<br/><br/>“Acknowledged, Raptor. Presents wrapped,” Raptor 2 said.<br/><br/>“Balloons are on deck and ready to surprise on your signal,” Raptor 3 said, barely suppressing a giggle as they descended to 1,000 feet to deliver their payloads.<br/><br/>“FIRE!” Morgan screamed, upon which three GU63 50,000 pound bunker buster missiles obliterated the cave entrance, which then collapsed the entire western face of the mountain, sealing any terrorists who weren’t killed inside.<br/><br/>“I detect no remaining life signs in the upper cave complex,” Jarvis II said plainly.<br/><br/>“Hear that, Morgan? Er, I mean, Master Sergeant Stark! The fat robot sang,” Raptor 2 whooped.<br/><br/>“Drinks are on-!” Raptor 3 started to say. Suddenly, a boulder hurled at lightning speed took out his plane in a fiery inferno before he had time to launch any defenses. All that could be heard on the radio was his dying screams.<br/><br/>“Fuck this shit! I’m out of here!” Raptor 2 yelled and then ejected just before a second boulder smashed his plane too.<br/><br/>“What the hell is going on, Jarvis?” Morgan demanded as she pulled up hard on the stick to avoid a third rocky missile.<br/><br/>“Ma’am, it appears to be a man severely mutated by gamma radiation,” Jarvis II explained. “With bony spikes,” it clarified.<br/><br/>“Whatever it is, it ain’t leaving here alive. Firing everything we have! Hang on, Dave!!!” Morgan yelled as her comrade descended to earth in his parachute, subsequently emptying her entire air to surface missile payload at the monstrosity.<br/><br/>It just grinned at her with contempt as it stood standing among the crater, and then she peed a little when it roared and jumped at her with inhuman height. However, Morgan managed to pull away with a barrel roll and then rocketed back up to 10,000 feet to avoid any further attacks by her bestial opponent.<br/><br/>“I was afraid this might happen,” Morgan sighed. Her father had warned her about the possibility of fighting metahumans, especially if they were anything like Dr. Banner. “But I can’t leave a man behind...”<br/><br/>Tony was going to lord this over her for a while, but Morgan had no choice.<br/><br/>“Jarvis, activate Cinderella Protocol.” God, her father had the stupidest names for these things.<br/><br/>“Are you sure, ma’am? You strictly told me...”<br/><br/>“I know what I fucking said. Just do it, and then get Dave the hell out of there before he reaches the ground and that thing grinds his bones to make its bread.”<br/><br/>“Understood. Ejecting pilot in three...two...one...” Jarvis counted down.<br/><br/>Once Morgan was soaring through the sky, pieces of her suit flew themselves out of her plane and wrapped around her body until she could no longer escape her legacy.<br/><br/>“Pilot ejected and safely suited up. Engaging auto-pilot,” Jarvis said as Morgan plummeted to the ground at Mach 1.5.<br/><br/>When the punch connected and the not-Hulk went soaring away, Morgan dealt with her own hard landing’s impact on her ribs and so did not know where her assailant had gone to. She only realized it a second too late as it grunted, “Puny Stark girl! I will have head on wall!” and punched her into a rock.<br/><br/>“Oh...fuck, I’m definitely gonna need an ice bath tomorrow,” Morgan groaned. But a minute later, as the beast charged at her like an enraged bull in the arena, she knew what she had to do.<br/><br/>“How does this thing work again?”<br/><br/>Despite her genius level intellect, Morgan did not know these suits inside out, like she would’ve liked her father to believe.<br/><br/>“C’mon, c’mon...”<br/><br/>There! The arc reactor on her chest opened, and a massive repulsor blast, along with thousands of bullets and micromisssiles from her other armaments, finally slowed the creature’s advance by forcing it to shield its head.<br/><br/>Jarvis’s voice appeared in her head, declaring, “Airman David Braddock is safely on a medical gunship.”<br/><br/>“Then I think it’s time to phone home.”<br/><br/>“I’m sorry, Morgan, but that could lead to your death. I am prohibited by my programming to...”<br/><br/>“Override code 3000!” Morgan grunted just as the monster jumped at her, pinned her to the ground, and started wailing on her with its fists that were starting to crack her glass. Finally, her dad’s schmaltzy words were good for something.<br/><br/>Thirty seconds later, a tungsten rod fired by a Stark Industries satellite from orbit five miles above the surface whistled through the sky and landed directly on the thing’s back, pulverizing its spine, creating yet another crater, and leaving two tons of extremely dead gamma monster on top of Morgan. Her suit was definitely banged up, and she would need, like, all the Band-Aids (with cartoon characters on them, of course), as well as a cheeseburger, but Morgan managed to roll it off of her.<br/><br/>“Hey, Madam Secretary,” Tony said. Morgan muffled her groan of discontent.<br/><br/>Only it wasn’t really her father. It was that stupid party trick of his where he’d send and control an empty Iron Man suit to communicate with her without ever having to actually, y’know, be there.<br/><br/>“Hi, Dad,” Morgan sighed.<br/><br/>“You might kill your poor mother when she hears about this,” Tony said, “but maybe she’ll forget about all that when she’s kissing your boo-boos. Your uh...lots of boo-boos.”<br/><br/>“Ugh,” Morgan said as they both flew up, carrying the corpse for analysis by SHIELD as Jarvis II tagged along. “So, what now, oh father mine? Am I grounded for life, or several lifetimes?” she then asked sarcastically.<br/><br/>“If by that, you mean that I had lunch with the President and you’re being ultra grounded at Avengers Tower, then yeah.”<br/><br/>“For what?”<br/><br/>“You wanted to be a soldier so bad? Well, your country needs you, soldier.”