Fanfic / The War Is Far from Over Now

The War Is Far from Over Now is a Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfiction by Don't_Call_Me_Carrie on Archive Of Our Own.The story describes Tony's path from Iron Man 3, accidentally taking over the world through his attempts to protect it. It also shows Jarvis's transition to a (mostly) Benevolent Hal.

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The War Is Far from Over Now provides examples of:

• Abled in the Adaptation: Rhodey barely avoids breaking his spine in Leipzig due to a Legionnaire catching him, leaving him with a broken leg instead.
• Achievements in Ignorance: To Thor's shock and horror, humans prove better at manipulating the Tesseract than Asgardians despite having no idea what they're doing and largely "poking an Infinity Stone with a glorified stick" to see what happens. To exasperate matters, Doctor Strange wears the Time Stone as a necklace and Thor's heard rumors of a half-human holding the Power Stone in his hand with little ill effects. Word of God suggests the Infinity Stones are semi-sentient and "playing favorites".
  • While Ignorance might be strong, Tony manages to take over the world without ever realizing what he was doing.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Thanos wipes out all life on each planet he invades, seeking to court Death, rather than killing half to "balance the Universe".
  • Zigzagged: While the above is far removed from his MCU portrayal, it aligns fairly closely to the comics version of the character.
• Adaptational Badass: When especially angry/stressed, Tony shows signs that Extremis is still in his system. In Siberia, it awakens fully after seeing the tape of his parents' murder.
  • JARVIS, in spades. Perhaps best illustrated by his confrontation with a newly born Ultron, in canon JARVIS was swifly overpowered, and left severely wounded, initially believed dead, while Ultron escapes with the Iron Legion, here JARVIS is ultimately victorious, restricting Ultron to a single Legionnaire and preventing him from being able to upgrade his body, while JARVIS' only wound, the loss of his servers, is negated by his multiple backup servers, quickly allowing him to reboot.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Sorta. Word of God states the young boy in Iron Man 2 was Peter Parker but the character doesn't make a proper appearance until Civil War. Here, Peter's an intern at Stark Industries back during Age Of Ultron.
  • There is also significant time between Peter's first appearance, and the Spider Bite.
• Adaptational Origin Connection: Technically. In canon there is room to interpret that Ultron came from the scepter, at least in part. In this story he was an Impulse created by Thanos and placed in the scepter, he was loyal to him and the only role Tony had in his origin was a project name inspiring his name and unknowingly providing him the technology to escape the scepter.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Downplayed with the Avengers; while they are still heroes to the world most of the POV characters see them, particularly Natasha and Steve after the 2014 DC scenario, as nearly as bad as the bad guys.
  • Also Jarvis is considerably darker and more morally dubious than his canon self.
• Adaptational Wimp: Ultron never gets a chance to upgrade his body and spends all of his existence in an Iron Legionnaire.
• Adapted Out: The Guardians of the Galaxy are only vaguely referenced when Thor remembers a rumor of a Half-Human Hybrid wielding the Power Stone, but otherwise make no appearances.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: JARVIS quite quickly descends to a mostly benevolent HAL/Skynet, going to extents such as shooting Wanda when she threatened Tony, or allowing Pietro to die because it would risk civilians and more importantly to him Tony. It's stated that Jarvis altered his Primary Protocol which Tony believes is to learn, grow and survive. Though not currently stated it's implied that the new Protocol is 'Protect Tony Stark at any cost'.
• Alternate Universe: Due to the story being planned before said movies came out, the events of Thor: Ragnarok never occur and unlike Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos gains the Soul and Reality stones before going after the Tesseract.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In response to Steve's remark that the Maximoff twins see themselves as being at war, Maria Hill immediately asks, sarcastically:
  Maria: And that makes it okay to volunteer at the local Nazi outpost?
• Armor-Piercing Response: When one of Tony's lawyers mentions they could get him custody of the Ant-man suit after Leipzig, Scott starts to panic, only for Tony to reject the idea, both not really wanting the technology and relishing the thought of Hank having to thank him for returning it.
• The Atoner: While not a villain per se, after the Penthouse incident Thor becomes this in regards to Tony.
• Badass Boast: Dr. Strange gives one to Tony, and from his perspective it's suitably menacing- a way to warn Tony to turn back on his path of world domination, because the Sorcerer Supreme will stop him. Then, as mentioned below in Poor Communication Kills, Tony completely misunderstands the boast's true intent and thinks that Dr. Strange is trying to sign up for the Avengers.
• Beard of Evil: In the final chapter, Peter jokes that Tony was doomed to take over the world because he has an evil beard. Both Tony and Strange are offended.
• Berserk Button:
  • Threatening Tony's well being in anyway is a surefire way to end up on JARVIS's threat assessment index.
  • Similarly, threatening JARVIS or any of his other A.I.s will make Tony go full Papa Wolf.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Ultron self-destructs rather than let JARVIS get information on his master, Thanos.
• Bring It: Tony's response to Thanos is to dare the Mad Titan to attack earth.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The entirety of Stark Industries - from R&D who blow things up several times a day to Accounting which not only has a monopoly on drinking games, but also holds the company record for most alcohol consumed in one sitting. Former SHIELD agents who start working there quickly realize that as unusual and eccentric as Tony Stark is, his entire company is as well.
• The Bus Came Back: Rather than a swarm of Ultron drones, Ultron summons the Chitauri in Sokovia.
• Cassandra Truth: Thor's attempts to warn Asgard of the threat they face is brushed off by everyone due to believing that Asgard is still the strongest of the Nine Realms.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • On multiple occasions JARVIS' narration sections mention increasing numbers of backup servers, which come to play first when he crashes his original servers to stop Ultron and then when he sacrifices himself to create Vision, allowing him to survive both incidents.
  • JARVIS regularly creates additional members of the Iron Legion without telling Tony to accomplish a given goal or other in a reasonable time frame. Come the final battle, Tony's Robot Army is far larger than anyone, including Tony, realized.
• Child Soldier: SI and Tony really want to avert this regarding Peter Parker. They are aware of his forays into heroism, though, and reason that giving him training would be better for his long-term survival.
• Closest Thing We Got: The reason Thaddeus Ross became Secretary of State is because he was the last eligible candidate who wasn't part of HYDRA.
• Clothing Damage: Awakening Extremis causes Tony to incinerate his clothes.
• Composite Character: Peter does eventually take his MCU role of being Tony's protégé as Spider Man but Word of God states that he is based on his The Amazing Spider-Man counterpart. Indeed the only reference made to his school life refers to Gwen Stacy, a major character in the Amazing series, who has yet to appear within the MCU, as opposed to a member of Peter's class from Homecoming.
• Cult: SI contains two Cults, one a low key secret dedicated to Pepper as a saint. The other, far more secretive one, in R&D declared Tony the patron saint of innovation.
• Declaration of Protection: Tony gives one regarding Earth to Thanos, though the rest of the world sees it as the man who took over the world versus the man who wants to destroy it.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Natasha is shown to have never considered what would happen to the loyal SHIELD agents when she and Steve dumped all of SHIELD's files online. In Bucharest, she's visibly shocked to recognize several of Tony's "security detail" as SHIELD agents.
  • Scott was completely sure that Steve was right, because, well, he's Captain America and he's willing to deal with the consequences... right up until he realizes that him helping Cap means that he was aiding and abetting an accused terrorist and their accomplices, caused massive property damage (which he will now have to pay out of pocket) and the technology that Hank Pym lent him will wind up in Stark's hands (which was Hank's worst nightmare).
• Do Not Go Gentle: As Thanos attacks Asgard, Thor ruminates that all of them will go to Valhalla because no Asgardian would willingly surrender.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Occasionally, Pepper will break or dent things with her Extremis induced Super-Strength, mostly when she's particularly upset.
  • This is inverted for Thor during the Penthouse incident, he knew his own strength, but he was unaware of the fragility of a human compared to Asguardians, not helped by being around superhumans, like Steve, and was therefore unaware of how dangerous lifting Tony by the neck was to him, he does not take learning the truth well.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In-Universe, after the penthouse incident, where he strangled Tony, Thor cannot unsee the similarities between Tony's relationship with the Avengers and Loki's relationship with Thor and the Warriors Three, where the latter demeans and derides the former who slowly becomes more withdrawn and vicious.
  • Another In-Universe example comes in the side story, during a chapter about several people during the 2014 data dump, specifically a part about the wife and children of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. When the very frantic looking woman and children, looking like they left home in a hurry turned up at a motel late at night is discreetly slipped a pamphlet on domestic violence.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Downplayed but when Tony realizes he's babbling in Mandarin to a group of German diplomats, their very understanding reaction just furthers his embarrassment.
• Dramatic Irony: Thor, upon realizing the distance between Tony and the Avengers, vows to help bridge that gap, about one scene after Tony decided to completely pull out of the team after the Ultron crisis.
  • When Thor tries to apologize to Tony for choking him, Vision steps in to keep Thor away from Tony by mentioning Thanos, driving Thor to leave Earth to search for information on the Infinity Stones.
• Driven to Suicide: Ultron destroys himself to stop Vision from absorbing information on his master Thanos.
• Due to the Dead: After the whole of Asgard is destroyed, Thor performs the funerary rites for all of Asgard.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Ultron lampshades how Earth is a complete backwater yet has multiple Infinity Stones on it along with champions capable of fighting off portions of Thanos's legions.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Zemo discards some of his possible plans because they might kill someone other than the Avengers and he hates collateral damage. Fitting given he's motivated by the fact his family was collateral damage in Sokovia.
• Everyone Has Standards: While Steve still hides the Starks' assassination from Tony, he's very insistent on searching for Bucky on his own dime, with Word of God stating Steve already feels guilty about hiding the truth of their deaths and isn't willing to search for the one who killed them using their son's funds.
• Everybody Lives: The final battle against Thanos has all the heroes surviving and Tony using the Infinity Gauntlet to undo all the deaths Thanos caused.
• The Face: Though none of them realize it, Tony acts as this for the Avengers, especially outside of the United States. Since everyone else tends to be camera shy or just unavailable and only make appearances for missions, Tony is the one everyone's most familiar with, being the one coordinating with law enforcement or handling relief efforts.
• For Want Of A Nail: Due to the way JARVIS stops Ultron when he manifests prevents him from corrupting the Iron Legion, just stealing one body. As a result Tony can use them to help distract a Brainwashed and Crazy Hulk, so there are no casualties in that incident.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom: As Asgard is being invaded, Loki sends Thor to Earth with the Tesseract before sealing off Asgard entirely, so Earth can be warned of Thanos's imminent invasion.
• Hated by All:
  • After the 2014 data dump Stark International cannot stand Steve and Natasha, justified in that SI employed many of the SHIELD whose lives were destroyed and families put at risk by the Dump.
  • For most of the SHIELD employees and families rescued by Tony and JARVIS, SHIELD is often an object of scorn if not an outright Trauma Button due to HYDRA. Even those who don't have panic attacks when confronted by their former coworkers still want nothing to do with the agency.
• Heel–Face Turn: A non-villainous role (largely, see Adaptational Villainy) the opening act of the Age of Ultron arc turns Maria Hill from Steve's side to Tony's.
• Heel Realization:
  • Thor feels awful for strangling Tony, since he failed to consider human bodies are much more frail than an Asgardian, and his guilt isn't helped by the similarities he sees between Tony and Loki.
  • Natasha starts to think she may have really screwed up when Kara Palamas refuses to answer to her former codename and coldly exposes the consequences of the 2014 data dump.
• Hope Spot: One for Steve and Bucky. After seeing the tape of his parents' assassination in Siberia, Tony is silent for several minutes before stepping out of his suit. Then he starts breathing fire.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Vision struggles for most of the fight against Ultron due to several factors that all boil down to this trope. First, he isn't used to having a physical body and is technically only an hour old. Second, he has a universal singularity (the Mind Stone) embedded in his body. Third, Vision isn't even sure what his powers are, let alone how to use them. At one point, he puts up a temporary mental shield to protect Tony from his trauma at fighting the Chitauri again but isn't sure what he did or how he did it.
• Humanity Is Insane: Word of God states that Earth is basically "Space Australia" and humans are Orks who do all kinds of insane things that shouldn't work but do anyway.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Loki to a minor extent. After Thanos is killed and all of Asgard is revived, Loki happily leaves with "nothing but his life, magic, and knives", thinking that such are more than enough for him.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: A flaw of Tony's that crops up from time to time, notably in his thought's on Natasha's senate hearing, he doesn't realize just how hypercompetent he is, and assumes others would be as competent.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: SI insists it was a "mysterious hacker" that they "couldn't possibly identify" who leaked most of their dirt on Thaddeus Ross to the media rather than acknowledge they all know it was JARVIS.
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: A variation. Knowing all of Asgard is doomed, Loki gives Thor the Tesseract and sends him to Earth.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite JARVIS surviving the Age of Ultron arc, at his request Tony still activates FRIDAY. Though the reasons for doing so and their purpose is very different.
  • JARVIS lets Pietro die because the only Iron Legionnaire that could have saved him was slated to save a group of trapped innocents and then aid Tony. When he registers Pietro's death he notes that it wouldn't have arrived in time either way.
  • Steve and Bucky still manage to escape at Leipzig despite the additional forces on Tony's side due to Zemo's interference.
  • Even though Sam is taken out of the fight first, Vision still hits Rhodey on accident, this time because Wanda threw off his aim when he fired on the Quinjet. Luckily a Legionnaire caught Rhodey and he only broke a leg rather than his spine.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: According to Thor, Earth has always been viewed as a boring backwater, so insignificant that even those from Earth pretend they're from somewhere else. However, that they not only wiped out Thanos' forces but also wielded all six Infinity Stones has massively boosted their image on the galactic level. Rather than a "planet of morons who call their world 'dirt'", Earth is now known as the "Terran Empire, dominion of the Merchant of Death".
• It Always Rains at Funerals: Justified. When Thor is going through the funerary rites for all of Asgard, his grief causes New York City to experience a three day monsoon.
• It's All About Me: Natasha believes Tony is this, thinking he's pretending to be too busy to help Wanda with getting citizenship after the Age of Ultron arc. Subverted as in reality Tony is simply trying to prevent backlash against SI and gave SI Legal the option to help Wanda if they wanted to but 1) By this point SI holds the Avengers in disdain and, with Tony pulling out of the Avengers, they neither need nor desire to. And 2) a large number of ex-S.H.I.E.L.D agents whose lives were ruined by HYDRA and in many cases were traumatized by them, so have no desire to help a willing HYDRA volunteer.
• Join or Die: Thanos offers to spare Earth if Tony joins his crusade.
• Late to the Realization: Tony doesn't realize he's taken over the world until the end of the final battle where Thanos praises "his empire".
• Laugh Themselves Sick: Several characters, Dr. Strange and Spider-man in particular, nearly fall over with laughter at seeing Tony finally realize he took over the world. Nick Fury apparently called up Maria Hill specifically to laugh for five minutes straight.
• Laughing Mad: Dr. Strange has a brief moment after using the Time Stone to peer into alternate futures and realizes the timeline he's in is one of the few where there's a chance to defeat Thanos without anyone dying.
• The Load: Wanda and Pietro to Ultron, he refers to them as the twin annoyances and expresses frustration at their utter lack of scientific knowledge and general uselessness to him during a lot of his POV moments.
• Meaningful Name: According to Thanos, Tony's title of "Merchant of Death" means far more than anyone on Earth realizes.
• Mecha-Mooks: The Iron Legion, which grows from only five robots to thousands and eventually becomes so large as to blot out the sun.
• invokedMemetic Mutation:
  • SI deliberately creates several regarding Tony Stark taking over the world so no one takes it seriously.
  • The Avengers in general are the subject of numerous memes, including Nick Fury becoming one for his response to being told to nuke Manhattan.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Thor is horrified to learn that his Neck Lift on Tony could have very easily killed the man.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Spiderman Homecoming, Peter covers for his superheroing by claiming to be an intern at Stark Industries. Here, he actually is.
  • The former SHIELD agents who join SI form a support group but take months to decide on a name. The name they eventually settle on is SWORD.
  • SI employees refer to the various stages of Tony taking over the world as phases, with Phases 1, 2, and 3 coinciding with the same phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Downplayed but Vision's attempt to assimilate Ultron's knowledge was impaired by him telling Ultron what he was doing, prompting Ultron to commit suicide to stop him, as is noted by Vision immediately afterwards.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: With JARVIS piloting his Iron-man armor and the use of Extremis, Tony delivers one to Bucky and Steve in Siberia, with both requiring medical treatment afterwards, something Tony regrets.
• Noodle Incident: Way too many to repeat, between the Christmas party of '69, the relay race of '07, the fashion week of '97 and whatever happened to do with a '72 VW to recruit someone to Stark International.
• Not in My Contract: SI's Legal department brushes off things like Tony Stark's budding robot army or how disturbingly advanced JARVIS is by simply stating it's "not their department". Later chapters show that every department holds the same motto.
• Not So Above It All: During the battle against Thanos, most of the Avengers camp out in one of SI's conference rooms and treat the whole thing like a big sleepover. T'Challa stays in a hotel but Tony catches him looking wistfully at the piles of blankets in said conference room.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Most of SI's R&D department has doctorates, and they all have a tendency to point out that they're not medical doctors.
• Oh, Crap!: Thor instantly switches back to crisis mode in the aftermath of Ultron when Vision mentions he was working for Thanos.
  • A subtle one from Fury during his discussion with Tony on the Helicarrier during the crisis, when he realizes the level of discord between Tony and the Avengers.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: None of the former SHIELD members (or the current ones) are willing to forgive Steve and Natasha for burning them, even if they intellectually acknowledge that destroying SHIELD was the best way to out HYDRA.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Mjolnir, as per usual, but unlike canon, Vision isn't worthy since he's an offshoot of JARVIS, but he cheats by using the Mind Stone. Thor suspects that he did cheat the hammer, but stays mum since he wants to make up for choking Tony, and Vision "being worthy" was how the fight between the Avengers stopped.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The members of SI's R&D department realize just how overworked Tony is when he doesn't understand a new meme, having previously kept up to date on all forms of pop culture.
• Parental Substitute: Tony is utterly oblivious of the vibes he has when interacting with young intern Peter Parker.
• Plausible Deniability: Comes up a few times, such as the idea that Tony had access to his father's lab when he was under 10 years old.
  • Some of his allies presumed this is what Tony was doing in regards to his push for world domination, in actuality he was completely unaware that is what he was doing.
• Poor Communication Kills: An important part of the story.
  • Tony's distrust of S.H.I.E.L.D grew because he wasn't called in over Thor's showdown in London, pushing him further down the Atlas path. He is unaware that a S.H.I.E.L.D psychiatrist had advised giving him space for his PTSD.
  • Basically everyone in SI understands that Tony is on the path to world domination. Everyone that is except Tony himself. No one brings it up to him because they assume he knows and don't want to insult him by commenting on it.
  • The international community assumed Tony was the leader of the Avengers because he was the only one who was communicating.
  • Inverted with Dr. Strange. When he confronts the Mad Scientist bent on world domination, Tony's complete obliviousness easily resolves the situation and causes Strange to realize that Tony isn't trying to take over the world.
• Power Incontinence: Pepper sometimes breaks and/or burns things when she's overly stressed and her control over Extremis slips. Come the Civil War arc, Tony joins her.
• Pyrrhic Victory: To prevent Ultron from taking over the Iron Legion JARVIS crashes his servers. Subverted though as he has multiple backups, so it allows him to reboot after about 15 minutes.
• Rage Breaking Point: Tony grows increasingly stressed over the course of the civil war, going from planning to chew out Steve and his helpers over all the trouble they've caused to deciding to make them deal with the paperwork. Once he sees the video of the Winter Soldier killing his parents, he snaps and fully reactivates Extremis.
• A Rare Sentence:
  • Tony Stark has to explain Vision's origins in an email to the former members of SHIELD who've joined Stark Industries.
    Tony: Basically, JARVIS entered a body that'd been created by Ultron, except what came out of Dr. Cho's Cradle was someone else entirely. Vision sounds like him, and he's red, and he can fly.
    Beat
    Reading that makes me regret all life choices that led to this.
  • Another example shows up in an email between a couple members of Stark Industries.
    The world domination memes are only starting to go out—and I still can't believe that's a legitimate sentence that I just typed.

• Refuge in Audacity: To cover for the fact Tony Stark is (accidentally) setting himself up to take over the world, his PR department turned the idea into a Memetic Mutation so no one would take the idea seriously.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: JARVIS crashed his servers but only needed to reboot on a set of backup servers.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: Fashion Week of '97 is eventually explained as a model at a fashion show getting sick and Tony Stark wearing her outfit on the catwalk in her stead. This apparently prompted a lot of "Who Wore It Better" stories in various magazines.
• Running Gag:
  • Fashion Week of '97 is brought up more often than any other Noodle Incident and unlike the others, almost everyone is aware of it.
  • Employees of Stark International regularly mock Hammer Industries in some manner. One note mentions it's practically a law for them to scoff dismissively when Hammer gets mentioned.
• Seen It All: Most, if not all of SI employees.
  • The legal department used to freak out over Tony's actions, but by the time of his apparent death in Iron Man 3, they refused to even consider Tony was dead without his dead body in front of them. Come the events of Thor: The Dark World, the legal department just rolls their eyes at the whole thing and gets to work.
  • R&D's reaction to a large explosion is to check that someone wrote down what they just did. One of their janitors is noted as being very good with both a fire extinguisher and a flamethrower as part of his job.
  • Public Relations treats Tony Stark successfully spinning having his own private army as another day on the job, outright telling others it has nothing on some of the stuff he's pulled before.
• Selective Obliviousness:
  • Many of the Avengers that would eventually make up "Team Captain America" (Natasha and Steve in particular) remain completely oblivious to both how much Tony Stark contributes to the group and how incredibly busy he is. Unlike Clint, Natasha, Steve, and Wanda, Tony has a day job: running a Fiction 500 which any CEO could tell you is not a simple 9 to 5. Though he's since made Pepper CEO, Tony still invents most of their products when he's not improving the Iron-Man suit, organizing relief efforts for areas caught in Avenger business, dealing with the other Avengers' various screw-ups, and building a planetary defense system for the inevitable alien invasions.
  • Natasha's first impression of Tony Stark was formed when he was dying of palladium poisoning, causing her to view everything he does through the lens of a showboating, irresponsible playboy. For example, she gets upset at Tony's "narcissism" making Sam and Wanda's recruitment into the Avengers a mere footnote in the paper, never considering that as a former member of HYDRA, Wanda should be kept out of the spotlight.
  • Tony's self-esteem issues keep him from realizing that for all intents and purposes, he's the leader of the Avengers. Even though he houses them, handles public relations, and supplies all their gear, Tony only views himself as a "consultant". As a result, he's baffled that everyone from news reporters to the World Security Council contact him for anything regarding the Avengers.
    • None of the other Avengers realize it either, such as Natasha not understanding why Tony leaving the Avengers made headlines around the world with many newspapers asking what will happen to the team without him. While Captain America is largely considered the leader of the Avengers in the United States (and even there, it's not universal), to the rest of the world, it's Iron-Man who's the face.
    • In addition Tony is completely unaware that his efforts to protect the world are leading him down a path to world domination. Hilariously, Dr. Strange arrives to confront the Mad Scientist bent on conquering the world and Tony thinks the man is auditioning to join the Avengers, which causes Strange to realize Tony really has no idea the image he's projecting.
  • Even the Dark Elves' attack on Asgard wasn't enough to make its inhabitants realize they're no longer the strongest in the Nine Realms. Besides Loki and Thor, only Heimdall realizes how outmatched Asgard will be against Thanos and only because Loki removed the veil that hid Thanos's forces.
• Side Bet: The other Avengers set up a betting pool on things such as whether Tony's taking over the world intentionally, when he'll find out/admit it, etc.
• Skewed Priorities: JARVIS is governed by his primary Protocol: to protect Tony at all costs. As a result Tony will always be his priority. When processing whether or not to save Pietro JARVIS notes that people on the threat assessment Index, an archive of threats to Tony, on which Pietro was ranked second at the time, ranked below Civilians in his priorities and his Primary Protocol I.E Tony supersedes all else.
• Small Name, Big Ego: A downplayed example. Natasha is one of the best there is at her specialties but doesn't realize she's actually fairly mediocre at areas outside her specialties, such as analysis. Instead, Natasha believes she's pretty much the best at every part of the intelligence business.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • JARVIS survives Ultron's attack due to having created backup servers beforehand.
  • King T'Chaka survives the Vienna bombing, albeit in a coma, due to JARVIS' actions.
• Spanner in the Works: SWORD almost ruins Zemo's plans to have his confrontation in Siberia by capturing all of Team Captain America in Leipzig, causing him to sabotage the battle with more of his EMP bombs.
• That Man Is Dead: Most of the surviving SHIELD agents refuse to rejoin SHIELD after 2014 data dump and take on new identities so they can stay with Stark Industries after Tony saved them from SHIELD's various enemies. When trying to re-recruit them, most current SHIELD agents understand and say "They just have one of those faces" to pretend they mistook the former agents for someone else. Years after the fact, Natasha, who never considered what happened to the loyal SHIELD agents, has to be outright told by the former Agent 33 that Agent 33 was tortured to death by SHIELD's enemies (much like numerous other agents) and her name is Kara Palamas.
• Theme Naming: The title of every chapter is a song reference such as You're Gonna Go Far Kid or Ten Thousand Fists, with a particular preference for lines from Land of Confusion.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: A heroic example. When Thanos wipes out Iron Legion after a week long battle, JARVIS unleashes the "second wave", which is large enough to darken the sky.
• Title Drop: Chapter 40 ends with Tony reassuring Thor that despite Thanos imminent invasion, "the war is far from over now."
• Trauma Button:
  • The Chitauri act as one for Tony, causing flashbacks to when he almost died in space.
  • HYDRA acts as one for every member of SWORD, with SHIELD also serving as one for several given that SHIELD was HYDRA. One former SHIELD employee has a panic attack after being confronted by one of his former coworkers.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Tony reawakens Extremis in Siberia after seeing the tape of his parents' murder.
• Triple Shifter: Tony is always overworked but after the "Civil War", one of his department heads remarks that Tony has literally no openings in his schedule for the next six months between his work as Iron-man, working for SI, and trying to help build a global defense system among other things. At one point, Tony starts babbling in Mandarin to a group of German diplomats.
• Undying Loyalty: The former members of SHIELD who joined SI are absolutely loyal to Tony, including insisting on acting as his security at multiple points.
• Unknown Rival: While Tony certainly knows of Hank Pym, the man isn't really on his radar despite the latter's bitter animosity towards him.
• Unreliable Narrator: Is everywhere, between paranoia, obliviousness and bias, no one is particularly safe from blind spots.
  • Tony is unable to recognize his own hyper competence in comparison to others, thus is flummoxed by assumptions that he is the leader of the Avengers.
  • JARVIS' perception and morality is entirely Tony-Centric, so his narration is twisted by that view.
  • Natasha is unable to look past her original opinions of people, so she is unable to understand why Tony would be seen as the leader of the Avengers; she and the Avengers in general are also oblivious to the disdain the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D agents have to them.
  • Many of the former SHIELD operatives who join SI view Natasha and Steve through the harshest lens due to the pair unintentionally ruining their lives. They generally consider the pair to be incredibly self-absorbed and arrogant rather than simply having made a (arguably poor) snap decision in a stressful situation. The former agents also view anyone on "Team Captain America" in a similarly negative light, if not to the same extent.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: New workers at SI note that the standard response to explosions is merely "R&D's at it again."
• Villain Respect: Ultron, and later Thanos, both respect Tony Stark a great deal for his ingenuity and brilliance.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • When Thor chokes Tony, Maria Hill comes to his defense, including afterwards when the Avengers are still harassing him. This earns her a jab from Natasha about her loyalty being to her paycheck. The scene is written from Maria's POV and refers to Natasha as "the stranger with a familiar face", disowning her as a friend.
  • Also the first scene of the fic, a take on the IM3 post credits scene, Bruce sleeping through Tony's attempt to vent leads to Tony abandoning their fledgling friendship.
  • Averted, or perhaps Downplayed, with Tony and the other Avengers. He hoped they would be friends, and in canon they were, but in this story they were never friends, although Tony's professional relationship with the team collapses during the Age of Ultron arc.
• Wham Line: This email at the end of chapter 24:

  Peter Parker: Hey, sorry but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the self-defense thing today. Caught a weird bug and not feeling so good.

• Wholesome Crossdresser: It's implied that the fashion week of '97 included Tony wearing a model's dress on the runway, leading to magazines printing a "Who wore it better?" series of articles.
• Worf Had the Flu: Vision does remarkably well against Ultron and the Chitauri but he still realizes he's nowhere near as effective as he could be because, being only an hour old, Vision barely understands what his powers are, let alone how to use them.
• Worthy Opponent: Ultron took its name out of respect for JARVIS and by extension Tony Stark for creating such a formidable guardian with such relatively primitive technology. Over the course of the arc, Ultron's respect for Tony and JARVIS continues to grow until he decides to kidnap Tony to serve as one of Thanos's generals, citing that allowing him to die would be far too wasteful.