Age Of Magneto

If You Give An Inventor A Project ...

K's gift to the X-Men was loaded with more intel than what Scott could sift through easily. And while there was a ton of information on the mutants that had been detained, there was also an extensively well maintained record of what had become of every mutant that had passed through their doors - Steve and Scott had agreed on one thing above even breaking up more camps: the sentinel manufacturers had to be shut down.

For some reason, the politicians hadn't realized that putting more sentinels out there to try and capture Magneto and his supporters wasn't going to work as long as they kept using copper wiring. The plastic bodies were fine - but their coding hadn't changed yet and Erik already knew how to reverse the settings to target non-mutants.

With this information laid out in front of them, they knew exactly where they had to go to shut it down. It was a genius spot, really - in the far outreaches of the Australian outback, hundreds of miles from civilization. But in spite of having a plan in place, it was going to be a few weeks still before they could launch their attack. And for more reasons than Scott was happy with, too.

If Scott was being honest, he was looking forward to a solid break from the old Stark mansion - the one that had once housed the Avengers headquarters before Tony had the tower built, and he supposed, was once again the Avengers headquarters. At first it had been fun walking through the place, but after accidentally running into a few too many obstacles where Stark's AI security system had abruptly announced that he wasn't authorized to access one area or another, Scott was ready to move on.

It wasn't that he was ungrateful for Tony's hospitality, it was just that it was a solid reminder of the thin separation that still existed between the Avengers and the X-Men - or at least between Tony and everyone else. The lab being off limits had made sense, and in an odd way, Scott completely understood when Jarvis had quietly told him early one morning that the entire wing that had once been the Stark family's bedrooms were off limits - and still in the same condition they were when Howard and Maria died. It wasn't something he'd expected out of the famed billionaire, but it was such a concrete display of actual grief that it was hard to ignore.

And that, Scott could understand. He eased up on Tony when he realized that was at least part of what his restrictions were about. The other part ... the other part was a constant reminder that Tony was still the top weapons developer in the world - and that had Scott a little on edge. He had no idea what kinds of munitions were stored on site - or in Tony's lab. The fact that Tony was letting little Peter join him down there had him a little concerned, but ... after Tony had gotten Peter started it was clear the kid was enjoying himself.

Scott had to laugh when he caught Peter taking apart Tony's toaster at the kitchen table, his face screwed up in concentration as he carefully laid out every part - all while Jarvis seemed to ignore the situation with a quiet smirk on his face as he drank his tea nearby.

Of course, there were other issues that had cropped up - and since the X-Men were with the Avengers, they found out a lot faster from SHIELD that the sentinels had pinpointed the Blackbird's heat signature, so they could be more easily tracked. Until of course, Tony had offered to upgrade the jet a little bit.

It was the first time that Scott would get a chance to see the man at work- and of course, he insisted on being there for his plane's upgrade. So he wasn't expecting to find that Stark's private hangar was filled with blaring music when he arrived with Logan to pitch in. He didn't have any idea what it was Tony had in mind, and he'd thought it would have been a nice distraction from all the stress ... but ...

Crates full of who knows what were lined up on either side of the blackbird, and it wasn't until Scott walked around the first stack that he realized that Tony had already started. Without him.