armored adventures au where Gene doesn't out himself and Tony never gets revealed and the Avengers officially happen so s3 is just constant identity shenanigans

/Yakkety Sax intensifies/

write it

I will read

oof hello

👀

so season one but in college

is what you're telling me

concept: Fury and Howard both know, but Tony doesn't know that they know

Tony: "dad we should bankroll the avengers"
Howard: /already doing so, on the DL/ "oh? why?"
Tony: "because.... I'm a.... big fan........?"
Howard: "sure son whatever you want" I can't believe I sired this moron
Tony: nailed it

none of the avengers really even know who tony is except vaguely as their sponsor's annoying kid

meanwhile, Fury, sitting in the background with a perfect poker face: this is the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life

oh my god

meanwhile, gene: someone notice me

Oh God.

I need this

I need this NOW. Give it to me!

lol

/grabby hands

OH Y GOSH THOUGH LIKE

Ikeep thinking of different ways this could go AMAZINGLY wrong

Do it

Do iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

- an ultron scenario where Tony creates an evil rogue ai that commits mass atrocities but of course "iron man" has nothing to do with it

so tony's juggling all this crushing guilt while trying to calm the team down from flying the quinjet into stark tower and arresting the fuck out of Tony Stark

Lol

and rhodey and pepper are on private comms trying to talk tony down from letting them

rhodey's like "I swear to god tony if you blow your cover and try to turn yourself in right now you're going to make this 100000x worse and I'm going to kill you myself"

- Iron Man does some engineering wizardry on a mission and soon after Tony Stark releases some new tech that's obviously based on it and suddenly the avengers are all like 'holy shit tony stark is stealing iron man's inventions and getting rich off of them, This Will Not Stand"

then fury has to keep a straight face while being like "uhhhh no we can't confront the starks about this because. I say so. national security or something. reasons"

I NEED THIS

so instead they go to Team Iron Man and are like "look guys we know SI is exploiting you and getting rich off of Iron Man's ideas and not giving him any credit, but we've got your backs, we don't need the starks' money, we'll go rogue if we have to"

and tony has to be like "ahahaha yeah, what an unfortunate situation buT LET'S UH nOT DO ANYTHING HASTY it's fine i'm fine let's forget this ever happened okay guys??"

bonus points for the popular fic trope of everyone thinking Iron Man can't take the armor off because he has some kind of major injury or disability and is physically dependent on the suit

so the avengers immediately assume Iron Man is allowing this because Tony's essentially extorting him by threatening to take away the suit/his life support

Oh no

how many different contrived scenarios can I come up with to make the avengers hate tony and love iron man

delightful chaos

popcorns all of this

plus, like, imagine the rare instances when tony has to interact with the avengers as Tony

like they're his friends but they don't know it's him so it's all like

tony sidles up to steve all "hey man I'm uh. a big fan you're really cool" and steve's just

MURDER GLARE

Tony: =c

- comics civil war can't happen because tony can't exactly advocate for registration when his entire life is a big huge secret identity lie lmfao BUT imagine... mcu civil war

where we assume bucky killed maria

D:

but instead of zemo stirring shit cap just finds bucky and brings him back and goes "hey guys here's my murder boyfriend, he's an assassin but he feels bad about it, can he be on the team" and the avengers are like "uh yeah sure ok"

team bonding, etc, etc, maybe bucky and iron man hit it off and are pals BUT THEN steve goes to iron man one day and he's like

"hey iron man we're friends and I trust you and I need your advice. so here's the thing. I have this big secret, it's kind of a bad one, and I know we all think the starks are assholes but I'm feeling kind of conflicted about this. bucky totally assassinated howard stark's wife."

and tony's like "...........excuse me, i have to go do a murder"

Chatvert and I talked about Bucky being responsible for Tony's Moms death!

now I'm trying to remember all the stuff we talked about with different secret identity options for Gene

if he doesn't reveal himself in s1 how does he keep up the lie

I think we figured the only way that works is if he feels bad about all his nonsense and just... memory-wipes howard before returning him

and then of course he feels bad about that because it's a terrible thing to do and he's a dumb bitch

I think I like these aus as separate though

Secret Identity Mandarin and Secret Identity Iron Man

otherwise tony finds out that bucky killed his mom AND that gene kidnapped his dad and has been lying to him for years and that's just too much nonsense for one au

"fuck this, I hate you all, I retire"

but I kind of dig Gene floating around the periphery of all of this

so his relationship with tony follows the normal canon trajectory but he's sort of on a redemption arc and tony's basically said "okay you can stick around and help out if you keep your mouth shut, you're on probation"

which means the avengers know about the mandarin but they have no idea who the fuck he actually is or why the fuck he keeps showing up but Iron Man vouches for him so they're like "okay??? I guess?? wtf?"

OH

OR

Tony and team iron man and howard know about Gene being the Mandarin

but Fury doesn't

so tony's trying to keep gene's identity secret too ahahahaha

maybe gene is redeemed enough that howard is willing to not strangle him on sight and he and tony are low-key dating

identity drama

relationship drama

murder drama

a soap opera venn diagram

I'm telling you, I need this

Shut Up And Take My Money GIF - Find & Share on GIPH...

sobs I'm so slow and I never finish anything tho

I'm really bad at fic

The entire concept fills my heart with joy and gladness

Identity Shenanigans okay so I did a little snippet

as usual, a context-free excerpt from a completely random point in the middle of everything

feel free to comment

oof

tony is a moron

Tony is a moron...

But I luff him anyway

the next section is him crying to team iron man and all of them going "I don't know what you expected"

Really, Tony, what did you expect?

leave me comments because i crave validation

btw for anyone new to my googledocs, "comments" means any manner of stupid commentary and nonsense your heart desires, Bartimaeus style

we have fun here

i will when i'm done with all the shit i gotta do

/comments. Dammit, now I want to RP Tony and Buck

I'm a bad person

It's A Good Ship, Brent