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It took Tony 3 months to escape the caves, the armor was a god send but also took a toll on his fragile body. Ho Yinsen didn’t make it, Tony made it but not wholly his left foot had been damaged even more. In the hospital recovery it had been amputated to avoid sepsis and loss of more of his leg. Didn’t matter anyways he'd been unable to feel anything below the waste. Doctors said it was psychosomatic.
The fact that obie ad hired people to take him out still hurt. It hurt so bad that his weapons were out their illegally. While he couldn’t do much bound to a wheelchair, he couldn’t even feel his legs. Aggravated and annoyed with himself for failing to land mark one decently enough where he didn’t pinch all of his collective nerves. He couldn’t even pee normally right now the doctors had said that function would return once the swelling went down.
Didn’t help, the phantom limb was wholly unexpected and not appreciated and the fact that foot prosthetics were terrible gave Tony an outlet to work on while he gathered the evidence to put Stane behind bars. Or so he thought as he opened up several folders from the usb stick Pepper had given him, that indicated that Stane had been selling under him for a long time and there were several large cashes of his weapons world wide.
If he were to build a suit it would be nigh impossible for him to manage, right now. There was hope maybe with some VR that Tony would be able to once again pilot the armor but for now he was stumped as he worked on this. While placing ideas for when SI stopped producing weapons like he planned. He’d dip his engineering prowess into the prosthetics market finding the most expensive of items still lacking in looks and use.
How to get over there and discreetly destroy the caches though? He’d been working on a repulsor boot thinking maybe he could use that as a prosthetic for a bit, Dum-e was there helping him, or trying to.
“Stop you're destroying it!”
Dum-e made a small weeep beep and then rested his claw on Tony’s shoulder.
“If I needed you to destroy something i would ha-ve…”
Tony paused, and brought his hand up to pat the claw on his shoulder.
“Actually buddy I have a better idea. We need to get my weapons of the market and they need to be destroyed.”
Tony pulled up a blank schematic and worked on covering dum-e up in armor. Loading up some dum-e appropriate weapons something that will destroy the weapons quickly so his bot child could travel efficnetly.
“J, you’ll need to be on this too,”
Dum-e was tilting his camera at the holographic of him covered in armor with a reactor in his base. There were a few excited beeps when Tony added something that looked like a fire extinguisher. The flight mechanics would be similar to what Tony had been working on.
Dum-e was very recalitrent in hoving more than a foot off the ground. The bot didn’t seem to enjoy being high off the ground. Though his control was very good and seemed to enjoy using the repulsor tech to further evade Tony in the lab. Especially when he found a new blender, Jarvis seemed to be indulging the bot and Tony found himself smiling a bit more.
The first raid in gulimera went off without a hitch Jarvis took care of the people and Dum-e annihilated the weapons. With tranq dart that icapacitated the men leaving them in the hands of the villagers, without any of the weapons. He felt they would receive the right justice, Dum-e was pretty proud. The route back was over cast and Dum-e took to flying closely over the ocean on his way back. Avoiding any routes Tony knew to be covered by the airforce.
Two more raids after that people started to get suspicious, Tony watched the infiltrated dark web as accusations started to fly and smaller cache owners started to recede from the area. That and Tony suspected obie was getting bolder he’d made a house call a day earlier but Tony had let Jarvis mislead him. Sir was out having lunch, or something Tony wasn't sure; and felt no reason to dwell on it.
Dum-e went out to the larger caches left and in one journey destroyed half a dozen in south america. That was mostly Jarvis’s doing though the AI had trangulated the responses on one of the infiltrated boards and knocked them off in one swoop. Things were feeling pretty good for Tony who, had burned himself on his thigh but discovered that he could feel his thighs again. The burn was treated but he started trying to walk.
Clumsily of course, refusing a walker at first. Crutches he accepted more readily. He was using them to get around and was actually resting on the couch after one walk around his house feeling winded and then he couldn’t feel anything. There was Stane standing over him with some weapon he’d made, not realizing it had been manufactured.
Stane was natering on about nothing in particular Tony was having a very hard time grounding himself in the now, finding his living room looking like cave walls, the inkling that Jarvis might have been compromised. Watching his godfather remove his arc reactor from his chest and leave, as Tony used his arms to pull himself down to the lab. Were Dum-e in a partially assembled armor retrieved the reactor on his desk and attached it with use of the gauntlets and Jarvis in the suit.
A few minutes later he was scrambling up and assembling the rest of the amor on dum-e. Worried about something Obie had said.
“Dum-e please go save pepper.”
Dum-e beeped and flew off toward SI, following Jarvis’ hunch on where they could be. Tony carefully flooded several government websites with the information on Stane and the weapons dealing and even the contract to kidnap and murder him.
While he watched the feed from the suit on Dum-e, they’d found Pepper on the roof of the old buildings the one that held the big arc reactor. The building was in poor repair, Tony suspected it was because Stane had been diverting cash flow for years on different projects. Dum-e was weeping at Pepper but when Jarvis spoke she seemed more relaxed.
The screen tilted violently and Dum-e shoot off into the air arm spinning wildly, while screaming. Tony had seen that move before it was Dum-e favorite, though he’d never seen it used in a fight situation. The hulking armor that Stane had gotten made powered by his own arc reactor was incredibly slow against Dum-e.
Jarvis reported that the firepower was much higher, and so was the armor. Stane was monologuing while he held dum-e down with one massive hand pinning the strut to the floor. Tony watched helplessly as Dum-e sheriked but then made a comical beep then boop and ignited his base that had tilted up into stane’s face and fired up his thrusters.
Stane fell backwards heavily and through the roof into the arch reactor that peper had turned on. Dum-e flew Pepper back to malibu, and seemed very pleased that he’d saved Pepper. Beeping and booping while doing a shimmy dance in the armor while Pepper was both crying and scolding Tony for not letting her in.
It had been stupid of Tony to try and keep his friends out, as soon as peper heard the whole story she was on the phone with Rhodes. Tony leaned over the counter table on his crutches as he dealt with Rhodey’s well meaning dress down, smiling a bit. When his friends supported his ideas on how to move SI off weapons.