Uncertain Elements

Title: Uncertain Elements
Author: Saydria Wolfe
Series: Iron Mandalorian
Series Order: 1
Fandom: Star Wars/MCU Iron Man
Genre: Time Travel Fix-it
Relationships: Jaster Mereel/Tony Stark
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Canon-level Violence, Dark Themes, Major Character Death (Tor Viszla and Montross)
Author Notes: Originally posted for November 2024 Rough Trade. There is something wrong with it, not sure but I think I might need to do a time jump between this bit and whatever I do next. I’ll figure it out…eventually.
Word Count: 1,218
Summary: Tony is blasted to the past.

 

“JASTER!”

Tony snapped open his eyes.

He was on his back in some sort of a tropical jungle; a physical impossibility from a cave in Afghanistan, he was sure.

His mind started running the calculations anyway, he couldn’t actually stop the compulsion and had given up trying decades ago. His math—which was always right—verified that any uncontrolled explosion strong enough to transport him across an entire ocean from the Middle East to the Amazon would have vaporized him at ground zero.

Which meant this was some sort of fuckery caused by the “undefined, uncertain elements” Yensen had warned him had existed in the Ten Rings’ camp.

“JASTER!” The wind seemed to carry the shout to him.

A boy’s desperate shout.

Tony sat up as well as he could to look around.

Just down the slope from him, in a rocky clearing, were some guys facing off. All of them were in armor—high tech looking armor like nothing he had seen outside of his recent creative daydreams. Two people were on one side, five were on the other.

The larger man on the two-person side pulled a gun and shot the shorter man beside him in the knee.

Tony blinked rapidly as the smaller man fell to the ground. He couldn’t get his hands to his face in the suit—it would be dangerous to even try to scrub at his eyes—because he couldn’t have seen what he thought he saw.

No One On Earth had tech that made guns shoot laser beams.

If they did, he would have it already.

Not to mention he would have already made his own, better version

“JASTER!” the desperate boy was getting closer but none of the now-six Bad Guys seemed to care.

And they had to be Bad Guys. His Honey Badger’s lectures that he had, in fact, listened to and taken in despite appearances, had more than once travelled into the area of Good Guy behavior  versus Bad Guy behavior.

Good Guys did NOT turn on their friends or people that trusted them.

Good Guys did NOT shoot the Bad Guys while they were down—they arrested them and took them to court.

These Bad Guys hadn’t shot the Lone Hero to kill yet, but the black armored guy leading the Bad Guys was certainly waving his weapon threateningly. Tony had never heard and couldn’t decipher the language they were speaking—another sign he wasn’t in Kansas anymore—but the tone was gloating and cruel.

“JASTER!”

One of the Bad Guys twitched the direction the kid was yelling from.

Oh, hell no.

Tony used the trees around himself to get back on his feet. He pumped his legs to get the rudimentary interface to power back on. He had bullets and flamethrower fuel. He’d have to give up on his dramatic exit but he didn’t need it any more. He wasn’t in a terrorist camp at this point and he was going to save the Good Guy for his kid.

One way or another.

Tony marched down the slope.

Twitchy the Bad Guy spotted him quickly but didn’t say anything. They just slunk back a bit from Boss Man in Black and started to raise their hands in the universal sign of surrender.

Boss Man in Black did not shut up until Tony placed himself squarely between him and the Lone Hero.

Boss Man tried to talk to him. In more than one language.

The second language he tried, in fact, Tony understood. It was a cobbled together language, similar to English though the languages it had mugged for its parts were different than the ones English had violated. Fortunately, Tony knew all the languages that had been forced into a single trench coat—or, at least, he knew languages close enough to the victims to count. “What are you doing, auretii?”

Okay, he mostly understood it.

“You will leave them alone,” Tony ordered. His voice boomed out of his helmet like an angry god.

A second Twitchy stepped back to join the first.

The Hero’s Betrayer said something snide to Boss Man and took himself up to hover. With. rocket pack.

Tony was entirely, unspeakably jealous of the tech, but just watching it work was a revelation and he immediately knew ten ways he could improve his own booster pack design.

He raised both his flamethrower and his cannon, underlining his order to leave the Hero alone with a clear threat.

The Bad Guys fired first. Of course.

But Tony’s shots were the only ones that mattered.

He got Boss Man full in the face with the flamethrower because the dumbass was not wearing the helmet he had clipped to his belt. He also caught Betrayer with a bullet in the rocket pack, making him explode and take another Bad Guy with him.

He was out of fuel for the flamethrower but still had bullets when the final fighting Bad Guy fell over, either dead or too injured to anything more than groan in pain.

The two Twitchies were kneeling in the rocks with their primary weapons thrown out of reach and their hands behind their heads.

The sound of boots sliding over rocks had him turning slightly. He was met with a smaller armored being that didn’t even look at him. This had to be the Kid.

A hoarse “Jaster,” from the Kid confirmed his identity.

Kid gathered up Hero Jaster into his arms. Kid pushed off first his own helmet and then Jaster’s.

“Buir,” the Kid choked.

“I’m okay,” Jaster tried, clearly hurting. “I need Mij. Call Mij, Montross damaged my comm system.”

The kid brought up his gauntleted wrist but refused to release Jaster so Jaster had to hit something on his forearm.

“Gilamar,” a rough voice spoke into the air.

“Mij, I’m down,” Jaster managed roughly. “Track Jango. I’m not walking out of this one by myself.”

Again, Tony didn’t know the language that came from the communication device, but he knew profanity when he heard it. “Does he kiss his mother with that mouth?” he muttered.

Jaster snorted a painful-sounding laugh and the cursing stopped.

“Who was that?” Mij demanded.

“My hero,” Jaster answered.

“Tony,” he supplied.

“He saved my life.” Jaster craned his neck a bit. “He killed Tor.”

“Holy kriff,” the Kid—Jango?—looked up at him in awe.

“Jango!” Jaster and Mij the Hypocrite said scoldingly.

“I mean, osik!”

“That’s not better,” Tony and Jaster said together.

“You speak Mando’a?” Jango asked, clearly taken aback.

“Not yet.” Because, where ever he was, he only had value to one person—Jaster. So he was going to learn that one person’s native language to ensure solid communication and his continued safety.

“Jango,” Gilamar said over the comm. “Elevate whatever is bleeding above his heart. Unless doing that risks his spine.”

“Montross shot me in the back of the knee.”

Gilamar hissed in shock. “We’re coming, Alor.” The line toned dead.

“Jango?” A shaking feminine voice asked.

Tony turned to see Twitchy One take off her helmet to reveal a beautiful blonde woman, a few years older than the Kid. If he had to guess, he would put the two—clearly related individuals. Cousins, maybe—at thirteen and eighteen, respectively, but not even he would put money on that.

“Arla?”

 

 

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