1965-05-10 - Green Meets Iron
Summary: Jen Walters meets an ambitious Riri Williams!
Related: None
Theme Song: None
riri jennifer-walters 


Getting this thing on is not an easy process by any reasonable stretch of the imagination and it's only exacerbated when done alone. The powerup sub-routine by itself takes thirty minutes and that's ''after'' bolting together joints and access points at the shoulders and lower back.

This is not a rapid response sort of armor, really rather like a ghetto Iron Man, so it's fitting that Harlem is going to be the maiden voyage. Clomping along noisely on the roof of an condemned tenament, Riri does a few last minute diagnostics with a worried glance at the power read-outs that are like gauges on a automobile.

"Alright.. guess I can't keep stalling.." She murmurs and clicks the drab, primer gray helmet onto the bulky ugly mismatched metal armor and finishes up the last of the boot-log with a worisome frown.

"Please don't blow up, please don't blow up…"


"The charges were completely vacated," Jen says, reassuring the small family on the stairs of their walkup apartment. Four in total— mother, father, two daughters, and they seem to be clinging to the father with relieved adoration.

"Miss Walters, I don't know how to thank you enough. I'll get extra shifts, I'll pay you back as soon as—"

The green lawyer uplifts a hand, shaking her head. "No. I said pro bono, and I meant it," she says, in a tone that brooks no rebuttal. "You've got enough on your plate. Get your family affairs settled. Get your job back. And remember to call me if /anyone/ gives you a hard time," she says, pointedly.

There are more hugs and handshakes and she walks down to the street, making sure her briefcase and purse are in proper order. It's then that Jen hears the sound of rocket propulsors chugging to life, and squints skywards. She puts a hand to her brow, shading her eyes, and squints at the rooftops.

"…is the amateur rocket leage meeting?" she inquires, of no one in particular.


So far so good.

The safety checklist keeps assuring the coils are containing and focusing the propulsion at an acceptable level. The information clicking along in green dialog on a black screen where the helmet's ''eyes'' should be.

Those test fires light up the sky above that building like rockets firing witht he heavy woosh of burnt ozone and propellant. A highly volitile mixture that requires a lot less per burst than would just about any aircraft on the planet.

"Alright let's get some lights, I can't see anything." With a few tweeks of the power levels the screen comes on in a dull technicolor recording of the outside world. The fact that she's talking to herself is more to keep her calm from the rush of excitement than any need to voice it. Nobody's listening.
"It all looks good.. Huh.. and I didn't blow up."

That is a decided plus. Riri kneels down to check the generator she pulled up here to charge the suits primary battery core, then pulls the cable free. "Time for a test flight." Palms up, she fires them right to left to make sure the finger mounted controls are properly alienged.

"Now would be a good time for a groovy catch phrase.."


There are a few people staring skywards, and Jen is right there with the rest of them. The emissions from Riri's amateur rocketry is anything but discreet, and a good crowd has assembled on the sidewalks to watch her first attempt at spaceflight.

"Is that safe?" a querulous old woman asks, wagging her cane skywards at the rooftop as the exhaust plumes herald the rise of the rocket suit.

"It looks like Iron Man!" a child chimes in.

"Don't be stupid, that armor's the wrong color!"

"And he doesn't use fuel rockets," Jen adds, absently. "At least not for takeoff."

She whistles in surprise as Riri starts to rise up into the air.


The act of controlling her hover is a lot more complicated than Riri had initially calculated for. Her hands are in constant motion as the heavy armor starts to rise higher above the rooftop lit by the intense orange glow of the rockets propelling her. "This thing is getting crazy hot.." The thermo is bucking with each burst into the orange and beads of sweat are starting to roll down her forehead inside the, only slightly, insulated suit.

"Have to look into some kind of liquid coolant." Adding this to her mental checklist, the off color, poor man's Iron Man finally stablizes and starts to move forward with a turn of her feet and palms. Slow and easy, she hovers out over the crowd and turns her helmet down to look at them..

"Well, this was a lot less discreet than I thought, but I should have known better." There's something about engineers, specifically genius engineers, that comes equipped with an ego the size of the armor they've built. "Guess we should give them a show?"

After a deep breath, Riri kicks the tire and rockets upwards on firey trails from her palms, feet, and two exhaust ports on her back.

"WHOOOOOOA!"


There's a smattering of applause and some loose cheers as Riri lifts off into a glorious arc. Even Jen Walters, on the ground, admits to being impressed. It's visibly NOT the Iron Man armor, and that sort of compact flight isn't easy to pull off.

"Shee-zow," someone remarks, shaking their head in amazement as Riri pulls off the ground. "Seems like everyone's got a suit of armor these days," he remarks.

"Looks like we won't need you around for our neighborhood bruiser," an elderly woman tells Jen, teasing her gently. Jen laughs, flashing pearly white teeth in a grin, and hugs the (much) smaller woman carefully.

"Hey, y'know— this is what America is all about," Jen remarks. "Independent inventors, innovation… breaking barriers."

"I just hope they know how to land," she admits, a few beats later.


That's always the hard part.

Especially in a test flight.

Riri regains control of the run away flight and rights herself into a hover far enough above Harlem she can almost see the bridge… Which is made all the more beautiful by the fact that she built the suit that's allowing her to see it.

"Wow…" She manages in temporary awe-struck stupor until she realizes that she only put enough fuel in the reserves for the shortest of possible test flights. She didn't want enough combustable propellant onboard to level the neighborhood afterall.

"Alright, maybe not so fast going d- SLOWER SLOWER!" The throttle kicks and the armor is wooshing around in a loop above the building like she's drawing a firey zero in the sky, then angles down towards the street and the crowd of onlookers.

With sweat pouring down her face, the young woman yanks back on her hands forward and brings her knees up to stop her momentum dead a hundred or so feet above the crowd. Then, ever so slowly, almost TOO gently, lowers down to the sidewalk.

Then drops the last four with a heavy ''CLANK'' of alloy-metal on concrete.

Head turning slowly with wide eyes hidden behind the dark face-plate at all the people staring wide eyed at her. "…uh… Sorry.. I hope I didn't wake anyone?"

She sounds young. Like way too young to be as big as that armor suggests that she is.


The crowd backs up a few prudent paces as Riri descends, jets sputtering with fire and a huge chunk of ambulatory steel spraying heat and exhaust sounds.

This gives her a wide berth to land, though Jen Walters casually maneuvers herself to the front of the crowd as Riri lands. Not that the armored figure is threatening— but it's someone wrapped in steel launching unregistered rockets in Harlem. Can't be too careful.

Her neat brows arch in surprise at the sound of a feminine, immature voice behind all that steel, and she tilts her head warily at Riri.

"Just Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, and you probably set off alarms as far south as Boston," Jen remarks, with a wry candor. "Y'know. Five boroughs, not a big deal. I, uh… what are you? Amateur rocket league?" she inquires, with a convivial tone. "Pretty impressive setup there."


The armor is.. barebones and has weld burns in some areas, but is probably pretty terrifying because of it. Just drab angry grays and heated metal glowing a light orange now that it's cooling.

The girl inside, however, ruins any image of it being threatening by fidgeting. Scratching at the side of the bulky neck with a clank as she goes through a series of nervous gestures. Like shifting her weight from one foot to the other as Jen explains exactly how big a miscalculation her discreetness actually was.

"Yeah…" She manages to sound sheepish, while encased in armor.

"I.. I have no idea why I thought nobody would notice. That's just silly… but this thing is hard to mo-" She shakes her had and waves a hand, clearly not wanting to bore the crowd which, thankfully, still seem impressed despite her subpar social graces.

"They have one of those?!" Amateur rocket league, "I mean here in Harlem." Bobbing her head.

Both hands reach up to click open the latches on either side of her jaw. The helmet rises up off her sweat drenched face, hair twisted up beneath a red bandana is going to require a lot of love later tonight. "I'd totally join that. There is one right?"


"You tell me, Commander Shepard," Jen retorts, with an easy, teasing grin. "I'm just a lawyer and aeronautics is pretty far out of my purview."

She gives the armor an admiring walk around, looking more than mildly impressed. It looks crude, sure, but… crude in all the right ways. Functional, if not precisely aesthetic. And it /flies/.

"So, what's up? Did you jack an arc reactor from Stark?" she inquires of the younger woman, her strong alto carrying easily over the hiss-whine of cooling exhaust ports. "Are you, like, an intern or something there? I don't know anyone else flying portable armor in New York— or on most of the eastern seaboard, offhand," she tells Riri.


Riri smiles at an older woman who comes up to greet her, then looks back to Jen, shaking her head. "No, I didn't steal one… I built one. Kind of.. I built the.. can we…" motioning at the people, "I mean, I'm all for public appreciation, but…"

She doesn't really want the attention, by the darkening of her already sweaty cheeks, "I found parts.. and I watched news broadcasts. I saw him once.. I've never been to his facilities though." Have to worry about how much of what she's saying is some sort of corperate crime.

Too young for prison.

"It's not really one of his reactors. At least not in the same way two different engines are the same engine even if they kind of sort of, maybe a little, work the same. Mines twenty years behind anything he'll build…"


"Uh-huh," Jen says, looking thoroughly unconvinced by Riri's attempt to dodge the question— though it might be the girl's shifting embarassment that she's picking up on. The crowd disperses slowly, realizing no celebrity is going to descend to shake their hand or engage with them.

"Pretty impressive, anyway," Jen allows, before it sounds like she's hurting Riri's feelings. "If all you can manage is short hops, you're doing better than a lot of those old serial novels. I thought we were gonna get flying cars in '41, and here we are in the sixties and I still have to flag a cab to get anywhere."

"What's your name?" she inquires of Riri, curiousity getting the better of her.


"You don't believe me?" Riri blinks and looks a little struck by that, "I did build it… I mean seriously, if this thing was Stark approved do you think it would look like it wa-" She taps a metal finger against a turned hip, "That's from a chevy nova… I have a chevy nova welded to my butt.."

Her chin juts out a little, trying to decide whether Jen is intentionally teasing her. One eye squinting. "We do have flying cars, though. Well, flying people.. and just earlier I met a man from a different planet… plus you're green." Pointing, not in any way rudely, even if it is because she pointed it out, "And I might be a hypocrite for saying that, but I kind of feel like we're breaking ground on some all around level hypocracy.."

Both hands pointed down at the ground with a whole lot more sass than was even remotely required.

She's defensive. "Riri… my name is Riri.. You're not going to arrest me are you? Seriously, I didn't steal the suit."


Jen purses her lips, trying to suppress a grin at Riri's attempt at cheeky objection. "I think that in a world of infinite possibilities, there are better odds that you hijacked some Stark tech than that you built this out of a busted up Nova and the contents of your kitchen coffee maker."

"Fortunately for you, like I said— I'm a lawyer. Not a cop. You look like you're probably a better engineer than listener, though, so no harm done."

"Jen Walters," she says, extending a business card to Riri. "I'll give you a nickel's free advice though— Stark has patents up the Hudson on the Iron Man armor. You should tread pretty carefully when it comes to replicating his designs. He's got some crackerjack lawyers on his team who aren't afraid to haul you to court and confiscate what they see as 'stolen' technology."


Riri takes the card and looks down at her armor for a pocket, then just slips it into the open neck portion with her head tilted back so it slips in by her chest. "I guess, yeah…" Frowns are the order of the day and she's got no shortage of them. "I honestly just wanted to see if I could get it to fly… I mean, half building it was the ends not the means."

Her whole demeanor shrinks the more Jen goes on about Tony and his lawyers, "You th-.. I mean if he thought I was trying to sell it, sure, but… I mean I.." Still defending herself outside of the court room, "Maybe I should put it away and forget about it. I'd say I'd give it to him, but it's not his, but it isn't his. Never was his. So I'll just destroy it."

Mind made up, even if with genuine sadness, "At least I got to fly once, anyways. I'm glad they got to see it too." Jutting her chin at the dispersed crowd, "They needed to see one of them doing something one of ''them'' can do." Her head bows Manhattan-ward.

"BUT! If I ''doo'' need a lawyer, at least I know one now."


Jen eyes Riri speculatively, weighing some things mentally. The lawyer in her wants to make a conservative statement, but there's something plaintive about Riri's position and sad reluctance to destroy her new invention.

"Look, there's a big grey area between patent infringment and fair use," Jen tells Riri, making up her mind a little impulsively. "If you built this on your own— I mean, you worked backwards from a working design to a concept of your own design, you're in a good place. There's no law against reverse-engineering a concept, just from duplicating existing work."

"Besides, I think Stark could stand to come down a few pegs, and there's a little delicious twist in him getting upstaged by a girl working in an uptown mechanic's shop and whipping up her own version of the Iron Man armor."

"If you /do/ get any guff from Stark, you let me know, okay? Least I can do is help make sure the founding member of the Harlem Aviation Society doesn't get grounded on her first flight."


Riri disposition changes sharply towards the sky with Jen's redirect, "Yeah, I thought so! I read up on it a little and, it's like Henry Ford and every other car company on the planet. He doesn't build it, we're still being carried around in shopping carts pulled by poop trains." Just that easy, she really didn't want to destroy the armor.

Not even a little bit.

"Besides, I ''want'' to meet him. I'm not saying he's my idol, he's not, but he's pretty high up there on the spectrum. So that would be groovy." The sweat has not stopped pouring down her face, even without the helmet. Which is largely why she removed it in the first place.

"hah, Harlem Aviation Society, I dig it. Thanks Ms. Walters, I will. I don't plan on making any bigger a deal than I already did tonight." Hopefully next time she'll have worked out the bugs. Some of them anyways.

"If you ever need your car fixed or want to discuss quantum theory or something, but right now I'm in desperate need of some water and power-wrench." She mouths after, ''This thing is hot.''


"Maybe find an old Packer and strip the air conditioner out of it?" Jen inquires, eyes sparkling mirthfully. "Or throw some ice in a bucket while you're in there."

"Good luck to you, Riri. Definitely keep doing… whatever it is you do. But take it from a lawyer, you want to get out ahead of regulations and registrations," she advises her. "When it comes to burueacrats, permission /is/ better than forgiveness." She smiles and waves farewell, then flags down an idling cab and gets into it. The shocks creak alarmingly and the vehicle pulls into traffic, Jen chugging along with it.


"Yeah…" Riri nods understanding sheepishly, "I didn't think it would work until it did.. now I guess I should probably.." She doesn't finish it. How is she even going to talk to Tony Stark? Doesn't matter. She'll figure it out. She built an iron man suit for crying out loud, of course she'll figure it out.

"Thanks again, Ms. Walters." Waving a big metal hand at the departing lawyer, then she too departs. First to the roof to collect her equipment, then back to the shop where she's storing this monster. Already doing alterations in her head.


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