Alexander Vergilus was one of the youngest billionaires in the world, owing most of those assets to Vergtech, the multi-billion dollar weapon and defense platform corporation he had founded when he was 18.  Now 25 years old, he lived the life of Stark, who incidentally was a major competitor.  Alexander didn't mind keeping a low profile when it came to such things though.  Let Tony Stark get most of the fame and recognition... Vergtech's products were superior.  He knew it and so it was like water off a duck's back.  He had nothing against Stark.  There was that ugly feud between the two of them over that "Maxim" model a few months back, but the media really made more of it than it was.  Water under the bridge.<br/><br/>He had been using Vergtech to secretly fund the creation of a suit of powered armor that was going to be in all ways superior to the "Iron Man" armor.  He had even done what no one else had been able to do and perfected a miniaturized cold fusion system.  So far there had been bugs but he felt the suit would in the end outperform Stark's suit in every way.  His tech would be the way of the future.  Alexander had managed to test his suit out on a group of villains called the Wrecking Crew recently... a group of magically enhanced thugs who had given the Mighty Thor pause and despite his armor having some nasty dents in it afterward he had defeated them fairly quickly.  Such power at his fingertips!  He would have to make sure it didn't go to his head as it had for Stark on a few occasions he had researched.  The key word in the creation and use of the Black Starfire armor was "secret, so when Nick Fury of SHIELD came to his estate and asked him to use that suit to help investigate a strange phenomenon in space, he was more than a bit perplexed.  How did SHIELD know about his suit?  Fury had just smirked and told him it was his business to know.<br/><br/>Still, after getting over his distaste of his privacy having been invaded, Alexander agreed to help.  SHIELD instruments had detected something odd just past Jupiter... something powerful.  He in his armor would escort a shuttle with a squad of SHIELD agents to find out just what it was.  Looking back, Alexander wished he hadn't agreed to this... it had been a relatively long ride to Jupiter, taking about 5 hours with the shuttle's thrusters.  He knew his armor could go faster but he needed to keep the same pace as the shuttle.  When they arrived, he couldn't help but be a bit awed.  He was one of only a handful of people to see Jupiter this close in person.  It really was a massive, breathtaking view.  That sense of awe was fleeting however, as he saw the source of the strange phenomenon.  It was like space was the surface of a body of black, starfilled water and something had caused some sort of vortex, which crackled with energy.  His sensors were flipping out, registering severe gravitic anomaly as well as an unknown energy emanating from within.  What was worse, he watched in horror as the vortex expanded and as the gravity intensified, the shuttle began to be pulled inside... but the vortex was only about half the size of the shuttle!  Selflessness overriding logic for the moment, Alexander rocketed to try and help but could in the end do little but watch as the shuttle was crushed and forced through the vortex.  Now caught in the oppressive grasp of the vortex himself, he kicked his thrusters to maximum power, but could not escape the miniature event horizon.  He felt himself wrenched inside and as he was drawn into the abyss, he saw something at the center of the singularity... what appeared to be a small purple crystal.  Targeting sights homed in and he prayed that this would do it.  With his last bit of effort he blasted the crystal with everything he had... he saw it shatter and then his world went white as he felt himself hurtled back, tumbling through space.<br/><br/>When he regained his senses, he found himself in deep space, Jupiter nowhere in sight.  He saw a red sun in the distance but nothing else but distant stars.  He frowned and did a systems diagnostics... damage was only at 4%.  Good, he could deal with that.  He activated his sensors and did a long range sweep.  According to the sweep, there was a small planet about a million miles away.  He couldn't tell if it was habitable but it was better than nothing.  He kicked in his thrusters and shot off through space toward the unknown planet, reaching it in about 45 minutes.  Once he got closer he could see through his sensors that it seemed to be a hostile environment.  High temperatures of upwards of 600 degrees and winds ranging up to 160mph.  Not somewhere you'd want to spend a summer.  Here was the weird thing though.  Not only were there multiple alien ships in orbit around the planet, his sensors detected a patch of about 100 square miles on the northern hemisphere of the planet that didn't have the severe temperatures and high winds.  In fact, as he rounded the planet in orbit himself, he could see that the patch looked odd.  Image magnification... times 10... times 20... he saw that the "patch" was actually somehow terraformed, surrounded as it were by 16 massive alien generators that seemed to keep the interior of the area from adverse environmental effects.  In the center of the patch of safe land was a city, also of alien design.  His armor's sensors suddenly picked up an incoming transmission in the "Galactic Common Tongue" according to his universal translator... the device translated what he heard into English almost instantaneously.  The voice belonged to a gruff man as far as he could tell.  It said simply...<br/><br/><strong>"Welcome to Skarr".</strong>