My Avenging Heroes

This is the Mandarin?

When they woke up, they stretched apart from each other, unaware of how they had slept. When they woke in the car, they were confused at the stuff around them and the environment they were driving through.

"Where are we?" Todoroki asked.

"On our way to Miami," Tony said, "That's where J.A.R.V.I.S. says he found the Mandarin."

"Stateside?" Yaoyorozu asked, "He's been in the United States all this time?"

"Apparently so. Are you kids in for helping me take him?"

"Absolutely," they both said.

Several minutes later, they arrived at a massive compound. They made their stealthy way in and began dispatching guards. Tony was on a warpath while Todoroki and Yaoyorozu simply incapacitated them. After a few minutes, they made their way at long last to a bedroom. Tony ripped the covers off of the bed.

To reveal two hookers. Todoroki and Yaoyorozu turned away while Tony stood in shock. Then they heard a toilet flush. All three hid.

"I wouldn't go in their for 20 minutes," said a voice nobody recognized.

They all slowly made their way out of hiding as he spouted a fact about fortune cookies. When Tony got his attention, he was... his face...

"He can't be him," Todoroki said, "there's no way someone so idiotic could possibly be a master terrorist."

"Is this some ploy?!" Yaoyorozu asked, "Some trick to put our guard down?"

"You're not they guy," Tony said, holding a gun to the man, "you're not him. Where is he?! WHERE?!? WHERE'S THE MANDARIN!?"

"Hey," the guy said, "whoa, whoa, whoa! He's here, but he's not here! He's here, but he's not here."

"What, you're a stand-in?"

"Like an understudy, what? No."

Todoroki formed fire in his left hand and almost put it to his face.

"Don't hurt the face," the guy said in panic, "I'm an actor!"

After shooing the two hookers out, the guy explained: his name was Trevor Slattery, he was under the delusion he was playing a terrorist and the attacks never happened, and he worked for some man named Killian. Tony was still grilling him, but Yaoyorozu and Todoroki were in complete disbelief. As he was still talking to him, Yaoyorozu was struck in the back of the head by something. Todoroki saw her begin falling and nearly called out her name, but he was struck as well. Both of them blacked out.

They came to in a completely different room cuffed to beds that were standing on their ends by zip ties. The room was big and empty with three open entrances without doors. In the room with them was a man with blonde hair combed back.

"You know what I find fascinating," he asked Todoroki and Yaoyorozu, "about the human condition? We never stop chasing perfection. Whether it be to make a computer system so flawless viruses are a thing of the past or a world without war, we seek to perfect what is probably un-perfectable."

"What are you getting at?" Todoroki asked.

"You two," he continued, "would probably be considered the closest we have to perfect people. Well," he gestured to Todoroki, "aside from that burn on your face or mismatched eye and hair color, but otherwise, *scoff* ideal specimens."

"We're just kids not from around here. Maybe if you looked elsewhere, you'd find equals or even those who could surpass us."

"Oh, I wasn't just talking about your looks. Your genes. You two, and those eighteen that came with you in New York; I have my ways of knowing, you are all the next step in human evolution. But even then. You still have that one imperfection."

He rolled three orbs on the floor that displayed holograms of two brains. One was labeled Shoto. The other Creati. They zoomed into the same areas on the brain. A slot that almost looked like a black hole.

"One place that is destined to be upgraded, have something placed there, and yet... it isn't."

"You're Killian, aren't you?" Yaoyorozu asked.

"Aldrich," Killian replied, "please. I'll give you an hour or two to think about a proposition: join my team, take Extremis, and become complete, become... perfect. Or I'll just have these guys kill you, and we'll ask your friends in the Stark Tower."

What the holograms did next caused their blood to run cold. The holograms merged and showed the rest of 1-A just chilling in front of the TV at Stark Tower, watching another episode of Avatar.

"Leave them out of it," Todoroki said.

"That's up to you. As I said, I'll give you two a couple hours to think it over. In the meantime," he put on a suit jacket and gathered the orbs projecting the hologram, "I have a plane to catch with someone waiting for me, and a man I need to give desperation to."

He left, smirking at the scowling death stares of Yaoyorozu and Todoroki. There would be no way they'd join him. After he was gone, they looked at the two guards there.

"What about you two?" Todoroki asked.

"What about us?" Asked a guard.

"Did you two take Extremis?" Yaoyorozu asked.

The other guard scoffed, "No. That stuff's a fight between body and substance, and if the body rejects it completely, kaboom."

"But what about perfection?" Todoroki asked, testing out the movement restrictions on his right foot.

"Listen, we're just paid to guard and, if need be, shoot you," the first guard said, "we're not here to debate perfection."

Yaoyorozu noticed Todoroki's movement.

"I just have one more question," she said, glancing at Todoroki, "what's your cold tolerance?"

Todoroki swept his right foot on the ground, covering one of the guards in a thick layer of ice. Yaoyorozu created a cannon from her hand and fired it at the other guard. The payload, a thick piece of rubber, slammed into his head and knocked him out. Todoroki quickly froze the zip ties on his right, while Yaoyorozu made razor blades on her wrists and cut through hers. Todoroki broke the frozen ties and melted through his others while Yaoyorozu cut the ties on her feet. There was clamoring outside the room. After they shed their clothes to return to their hero costumes, Todoroki got into a ready position while Yaoyorozu created a pair of clubs. Many armed guards came running in, and Todoroki and Yaoyorozu ran towards them. The center entrance was made slick, causing everyone in it to fall over. Yaoyorozu began fighting against the people as they began getting up, smacking the clubs into their heads and knocking them out.

The entrance closest to the two guards who were already incapacitated began to fill with noise. Todoroki filled it with fire. After knocking out the last incoming guard, Yaoyorozu went to the final entrance and created a cannon. A big man began making his way down the hall, charging. Yaoyorozu fired it, sending him flying back into the men behind him.

"We're clear," she told Todoroki.

He picked her up, and they slid out of the room. They had pressing matters at hand. They had to destroy whatever Extremis was made of and make sure that they couldn't threaten them with their classmates again.

Only one more chapter in the Iron Man 3 portion of the story. And I have plans for them. Don't worry, they're good plans.