Fic: Human Resources (X-Men/Iron Man, PG)
Oct. 9th, 2011 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaTitle: Human Resources
Fandom: X-Men movieverse, Iron Man movieverse, X-Men comicsverse cameos
Words: 3,700
Characters: Tony Stark, Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Forge, JARVIS, Squirrel Girl, Stacy X, Fantomex, Noriko Ashida, Cannonball, Emma Frost, Henry McCoy, Wolverine, (and cameos by Black Cat, Sunspot, Alison Blaire, Warren Worthington III, Storm, Rogue, Iceman and Colossus.)
Rating: PG
Summary: The word is down from the Avengers Initiative: Tony isn't pulling his weight in recruitment.
Notes: Marvel Movieverse has a very fluid continuity, but this is set after the events of X3, Iron Man II and Thor. Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lilacsigil for the beta. Written for templemarker in the 2011 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
xmmficathon, for the request X-Men Films (any)/Iron Man, Tony Stark visits the School for Gifted Youngsters
The meeting was, as usual, held in a dingy warehouse in a derelict industrial estate. Tony was glad he had installed his own security on the Spyder or he wouldn't be parking it here, where the air was thick with old, burned diesel and the walls had turned multicolour with tags.
"I'm guessing that since Coulson is here, we have a proper agenda and all the stuff people like him bring to meetings like this," Tony said as he strode towards the circle of lights. "The first thing on that agenda had better be 'Splash Mr Stark's tax dollars around and get a decent place for headquarters.'"
"Actually, no," said Coulson. "The first and only item on the agenda is recruitment policy." He held up a clipboard; it did indeed have only one listing, and beside it was a big red tick.
Coulson had come back from New Mexico with a great tan and an inflated sense of his own importance. Tony rolled his eyes. He really needed a drink, but these meetings were notoriously dry. Still, bring enough military types together and there's going to be a pot of coffee somewhere. From her seat, Natasha indicated behind her, and once Tony was out of the lights he could see the table with cups and a percolator. A man with a compound bow slung across his shoulder offered him a donut from a half-depleted box. Tony shook his head, and took his tepid, sour coffee back to the circle.
Nick's seat was the head of the circle, despite the geometrical impossibility of that fact. "You're not pulling your weight in recruitment, Tony."
Tony paused with the cup halfway to his lips. "I'm not pulling my weight in recruitment? What about Coulson, here? He's wasting time and clocking up a massive carbon footprint with his stupid hard copy agendas."
"Agent Coulson performed satisfactorily in New Mexico." Nick did not offer details, and that just made Tony itch to know more.
He raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Well, if it's performance that's in question, I promise I'll blow Coulson out of the water." He slid his gaze surreptitiously in Coulson's direction, but the man did not lift his eyes from the clipboard. "Or, you know, in the water. Whatever your preference."
Nick watched him stonily. The silence drew out.
Tony resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. "Well, what about Natasha? Doesn't she have something better to do than come to meetings like this?"
Natasha smiled and flung out an arm, snagging the thigh holster of the man with the compound bow. She dragged him into the circle of light. He stood there with an affable grin on his face, despite the way he was dripping with lethal weapons..
"I recruited him," said Natasha. The man gave Tony a cocky salute, stuffed half a donut in his mouth and chewed open-mouthed with a cheerful grin.
"Tony, it's well known you have contacts in the mutant vigilante underground." Nick spread his hands in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture. "All we're asking is for you to bring some of those contacts to the table."
"What do you mean, I have contacts in the…" Tony scowled at the circle of faces. "Wait, who have you been talking to?"
"That's classified. But we do have this photo of you and Black Cat." Nick held up a grainy black and white image.
Tony gave himself one second to admire the photographer's angle - he was looking fine that day - then it was time for self-defence. "Come on, we don't know she's a mutant!"
Everyone in the circle tilted their heads to the left to better take in the arrangement of legs and arms in the photo.
"Well, you don't have to be a mutant to do that," said Natasha, thoughtfully.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She amended her statement. "But it would help."
Lights flicked across the cracked and broken windows of the warehouse as choppers came in to land. Nick pushed himself out of his seat and leaned far into Tony's personal space.
"Get out your little black book, and get to work."
He left Tony pressed up against the back of the cheap plastic chair and strode out of the warehouse, silhouetted by the spotlights. Coulson hurried after him, laden with airport luggage and a briefcase. The guy with the bow sauntered behind, and after blowing a kiss in Tony's direction, Natasha joined him.
Tony sat defiantly in the warehouse, glaring at the floor, while the choppers took off. When he got back to the car, the Spyder was covered in leaves and an inch of dust.
---
Tony's little black book was a little black phone. The first contact was one he hadn't called since college. Those were the days, when your best friends had names with numbers in them, and they found the best unprotected intelligence online.
Like many of those college friends, Forge lived in a trailer - a bunch of trailers, actually - and his driveway was lined with IEDs. Tony circled above the huddled complex of shielded portable buildings: there was more than one modified Stark device buried in the dusty ground. It was flattering. Forge only tinkered with the best.
"Magnetic field detected," JARVIS stated calmly.
Tony scrolled through the readings, then dismissed the warning. "Levels are too low to be dangerous; it's probably just a body scan of some sort. Forge is fantastic with the biotechnology. Still, kind of hasty to randomly MRI visitors."
"Yes, how irrational to take offence at your low-altitude recon flight, sir." Red lights flickered on, and JARVIS' droll voice took on a note of urgency. "Field strength increasing!"
Tony fell out of the sky, plummeting downward. JARVIS shrieked binary nonsense in his ear as systems flared on and off in confusion. Fortunately the inertial negation kicked in just before impact, and Tony came to rest splayed across a satellite dish like a bug on a windshield. He couldn't move. The magnetic field held the suit rigidly in place.
"I don't know whether to offer you a beer or dissect you." Forge spoke while looking down the sight of a rifle. The stock, tucked neatly into his shoulder, was wood but the barrel was wrapped with wire and circuitry. Tony didn't need his systems online to tell him that it was some kind of ray-gun. Ray-shotgun. Forge loved the classics.
"Honestly, I'd rather have the beer, if it's all the same to you." The suit's voice transponder was still working, so the flippant comment came out in Iron Man's robotic tones.
Forge leaned over Tony's body, and popped the visor. He had no trouble identifying the safety release in the armour, because that's what Forge did: figure out how tech worked, then make it work better. And work for him.
"What are you doing here, Tony? I don't like surprises. Or visitors. Surprise visitors - I hate those most of all."
Tony heaved against the magnetic force. "Can we talk? I mean, can you let me up so we can at least talk? I feel like a fridge magnet here. I feel like I should have a take-out menu tucked under my ass."
Forge stepped backwards, and the servos in his leg hummed with the motion. "Fine. But you better behave yourself."
They sat on flaking iron lawn chairs - Tony settled himself gingerly in the suit - and drank beers from bottles that beaded with condensation the moment Forge pulled them from the tiny outdoor fridge. There was a little professional chit-chat: Tony admired the way the pressure sensors in Forge's prosthetic hand gauged how tight to grip the bottle. Forge asked a few idle questions about the hand repulsors.
"I'm working for a group called the Avengers Initiative," Tony started with his spiel. "We'd love to have someone with your talents on board."
Forge took a long pull from his beer. "Where were you last year? When Alcatraz went down?"
"Wait, what? Why would I have anything to do with that?" Tony frowned in confusion.
"Did you know Worthington?" Forge's face was terrifyingly casual.
"Well, I mean, yeah. I know him. We worked together on a transdermal stimulant delivery system a few years ago." With the visor up, he had no defence against the Texas heat and he was having trouble keeping up with these rapid segues.
"And how do you feel about Worthington's cure? When you come recruiting mutants, you better have solid answers about this stuff."
Tony tipped the bottle up and swallowed while he thought. "I think that some people genuinely wanted the Cure. I think you're never getting that genie back in the bottle. I think it's a damn good thing I never got my hands on it, because I'd have weaponised it much earlier and more effectively than the government managed to do. I wouldn't do that now. Weapons were what I did back then, but I've changed."
Forge took Tony's beer away, and hooked a finger in the chin plate, pulling Tony close. "Go away, Tony. I'm not going to join your cause. I don't trust the people who sent you and I don't trust you to ask the right questions of their motivations."
---
Forge was obviously in some mutant networking group - probably on Facebook - because Tony's little black phone rapidly became useless. Allison Blair's agent refused to pass on his calls. Henry McCoy was somehow always out of the building whenever he dropped into the UN building; Tony was beginning to suspect that he was literally scampering away over rooftops to avoid him. Emmanuel Da Costa's son had had a pretty spectacular on-field manifestation as a teen, but apparently it was the middle of the polo season and Roberto had team commitments. It was rumoured that Worthington's son was a mutant, but after Forge's warning, Tony didn't dare approach him.
Things started to look dire. There was that girl he met in Vegas - how many of Tony's stories started like that? - but Stacy spat in his face and accused him of genocide. Tony nodded, wiped his face, and left.
There was Fantomex - they met in Monaco, once. Tony cleaned him out at the blackjack table, then spent a night dealing with police when it turned out most of the chips were counterfeit. Tony wasn't exactly sure Fantomex was Avengers material, but he was getting desperate, so he arranged a rendezvous. They met on the roof of the Louvre, where Fantomex planted a kiss soundly on Tony's lips and told him in that charming fake accent to kindly go fuck himself.
In Central Park this morning, when Tony went for a run, Squirrel Girl loped up to him, punched him hard in the arm, burst into tears, and ran away.
Now, in a diner in Mutant Town, Tony scrolled through his list of contacts, and wondered if the waitress with the lion tail was smirking because she spat in his coffee, or if that was just the feline twist of her mouth. His finger hovered over the entry for the Xavier School. It was prime recruiting territory, in theory: they were basically raising kids in a paramilitary training camp, and nobody was more au fait with mutant abilities than the X-Men. He'd tried the number before this whole Avengers thing, out of curiosity and a deep-seated need to get to know more about the women of the team. Weird stuff had happened whenever he called that number. He'd hit dial, he'd hear the phone pick up at the other end, and then he'd hang up and order a pizza. Or catch a cab to Hoboken. Or give his shoes away and walk barefoot on the sidewalk. It was a clear message: don't mess with the Xavier School.
Tony toyed with the coffee spoon while he scrolled on his phone, spinning it over his thumb and catching it again. He understood why these particular mutants were reclusive. Xavier had tried a policy of openness, and that had brought nothing but destruction. Now, when someone said 'mutant', people thought immediately of the rubble and bodies scattered across Alcatraz. Xavier was gone, half the people he'd brought into the public eye were dead, and Tony didn't blame them for wanting a little security. And yet, if there was one thing that Tony understood, it was that you can't put knowledge back in the box: once it was out, your best strategy was to own it, and make it work for you. Maybe the Avengers Initiative was a way for the mutants at the Xavier School to do just that? People knew they existed. People weren't going to forget that.
A metal gauntlet slammed down on the table, and Tony jumped. A teenage girl with punky blue hair glared down at him. Her forearms were encased in metal to the elbow; Tony wondered vaguely whose work they were. He didn't recognise the specs.
"Uh, is this some kind of cosplaying thing? I mean, that's very flattering, but I'd appreciate a little breathing room." He edged his chair back a little. There was power arcing between each metal fingertip.
"Yes, every Japanese girl with blue hair is cosplaying." The girl sneered and flexed her fingers until sparks rained down from them. "Got any more racial stereotypes you want to explore?"
"Nope," said Tony. He extinguished the smouldering napkin in his untouched coffee.
"Good, maybe you're smarter than they say. This is for you." She threw an envelope down on the table top, then she stomped to the counter, collected a large and frothy coffee drink and left the diner.
"This day," said Tony. "It couldn't get any worse." He reached for the envelope and gingerly opened it. The paper was thick with a linen finish, embossed with the Xavier School crest. Elegant handwriting in peacock blue flowed across the page.
Darling, please stop harassing mutants in the street. You're making a terrible fuss. This is the kind of conversation decent people like us should have behind closed doors.
Come up to the school; I promise you can keep your shoes.
Emma
---
This time, he made his way to Salem Center without mysterious diversions. The town itself was a little eerie. Nobody looked up at the towering building on the hill. When he stopped for gas, there was no mention of the school, or even of mutants, despite the colour wrap-around on today's Bugle which proclaimed the 'Mutant Menace' to be the downfall of civilisation. As he paid, Tony was discomforted by the glazed expression on the attendant's face.
The gates to the school were open, though, which was a good sign. From here, the school looked just like any other private school in the area: ivy-covered, wishing desperately that it were Hogwarts or some Anglophile crap like that. Tony moved the Spyder slowly up the gravel-covered driveway, then skidded to a stop when something buzzed the car, something that was apparently part kid and part rocket. The boy zoomed past, then rocked backwards on his own jet-trail, hovering above the gravel to take a second look at the license plates. Tony shielded his eyes against the glare, and watched the boy's eyes narrow at seeing 'Stark 11' emblazoned on the plates.
Just as the boy pointed his ass in Tony's direction, presumably to blister the enamel on the car and also Tony's face, the kid fell out of the sky, fire extinguished. He lay on the smooth emerald turf, clutching at his temples and swearing up a storm in a West Virginian drawl.
Tony hesitated a moment, then opened the door of the car to check the boy was okay.
*Sam will be fine; he's just rethinking his approach to political protests. It's probably safer if you come straight up to the house, Tony.* The telepathic voice was cool and brittle inside his head, like the clink and slide of ice cubes in a glass. At the top of the stairs, in pristine white, Emma Frost stood waiting.
Tony had inherited his Hellfire membership, and his memories of time at the club were very hazy. He remembered Emma - vaguely - though he couldn't remember many specifics. He'd seen her naked, he thought, but who hadn't he seen naked inside those doors? It was always uncomfortable, the moment when you realised you might have slept with the person in front of you but you were too drunk to recall the details.
As he climbed the stairs, Emma laughed and patted his hand. "Trust me, if we had, you'd remember." She took his arm and tucked it under hers, turning for the door. "Now, stop thinking about what Nick Fury could do with a kid like Sam on his team, because you're going about this all wrong. "
Emma's office was filled with people. The tall black woman with the white hair he knew as Storm, but had no clue about her civilian identity. Doctor Henry McCoy had finally deigned to meet with him, and perched neatly on the windowsill like a big blue raven. The hairy guy scowling in the corner with his arms crossed, that had to be the Wolverine. Tony wished suddenly for his armour. The others he didn't recognise: a brunette with a stony gaze and a streak of white hair, a man made of steel bands, and another who smoked like a block of dry ice. All of them looked seriously pissed.
Tony took a deep breath, and rallied his self-confidence. He was Tony Stark. These were people who dressed like refugees from American Gladiator and used codenames at the dinner table. He could do this. He'd faced down worse audiences than this.
"Okay, people. It's pretty clear to me that you have some serious concerns, and that I've blundered into some sensitive subjects," he started. "But I'd like to think we can find some common ground here."
The room seemed to loom down on him, though nobody moved.
Emma held up her hand for silence. "Please, Tony, stop. You're so dull when you're lazy. And it's disappointing, because I know you can do better."
"You're wasting our time, Stark." The Wolverine leaned forward from his corner. "Use your brain, and stand up for yourself. If this organisation is pushing you around, there's even less reason for them to treat us well."
"Wait," said Tony. "I'm not your spokesman, here. I make a lousy advocate, unless it's an advocate for a dissipated lifestyle. Which, seeing as this is a school, I hope that's not what you're looking for."
McCoy shot out an incredibly long arm and caught him by the collar, dragging him unwillingly close. "You'll recruit us, then, but you won't stick your neck out to protect us?"
"That's not what I mean!" It came out much more shrill than Tony intended, but that was probably the pressure on his throat.
McCoy let him go, brushed down the front of his suit where it had rumpled, and propped him up in the middle of the room. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us what you mean, exactly."
"Ah," said Tony and cleared his throat. "Well, I can see that there are good reasons for you to be concerned about SHIELD and other such government organisations. I can see that." He scrambled to put his thoughts in order. It felt like weeks since he'd really used his brain, but adrenaline was a wonderful motivator that way. "And, I'm impressed, by the way. You all pulled together, Forge got me blacklisted, the X-Men analysed me and neutralised me as a threat. That's fantastic. That's a level of threat neutralisation that we - and I'm talking about the Avengers Initiative here - can learn a lot from. One day. Not today. The Cure, and Alcatraz, that was disastrous. I want to have the kind of team that can prevent that from ever happening again. Maybe, when there's a little trust between us, we can work together on that."
He slumped against a chair, suddenly exhausted, but the mood of the room had definitely lifted. Normally, in situations like these, he'd be cynically congratulating himself on selling the product. Somehow, though, he couldn't quite convince himself that he'd pulled anything over these people.
"That's more like it. You really have to stop listening to people who tell you you're a dilettante," said Emma. "Go in to bat for us, and maybe we'll be there when you need us. That's all we want. Can you do that, Tony?"
Tony looked around the room, at the people who had faced down the potential destruction of their species, and nodded. "Yeah. I think I can."
---
The next thing he knew, he was in a bakery in Hoboken, with a bear claw and a cup of cheap coffee.
"God damn it!" It was really bad coffee, too.
"Stark!" Nick Fury's face was a complex mix of confusion and extremely restrained anger. In one hand was a jelly filled donut which dripped on the floor. The other hand held a knife, low and partly concealed in his sleeve. "I was in a meeting! In the Pentagon!"
"Yeah, about that," said Tony. "I think we've been called into another meeting. We need to talk. About the Avengers Initiative."
"Keep your mouth shut, this area isn't secure," said Nick. He pitched the donut into the trash, and hauled Tony to a table.
"Listen," said Tony. "No, really, Nick. Listen to me. I've figured out something about helping people. You can't get to the people who need help most if they're terrified of you. So we need to lay down some kind of charter for this thing. We need to make sure - make really, really sure - that nobody's going to be using us as a weapon."
Nick grinned and relaxed in his chair. "Nice to finally have you on board, Mr Stark. Let's make this thing work." He reached across the table and took the bear claw. After a moment's consideration, he tore it in half and threw the other half back to Tony.
Fandom: X-Men movieverse, Iron Man movieverse, X-Men comicsverse cameos
Words: 3,700
Characters: Tony Stark, Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Forge, JARVIS, Squirrel Girl, Stacy X, Fantomex, Noriko Ashida, Cannonball, Emma Frost, Henry McCoy, Wolverine, (and cameos by Black Cat, Sunspot, Alison Blaire, Warren Worthington III, Storm, Rogue, Iceman and Colossus.)
Rating: PG
Summary: The word is down from the Avengers Initiative: Tony isn't pulling his weight in recruitment.
Notes: Marvel Movieverse has a very fluid continuity, but this is set after the events of X3, Iron Man II and Thor. Thank you to
lilacsigil for the beta. Written for templemarker in the 2011 xmmficathon, for the request X-Men Films (any)/Iron Man, Tony Stark visits the School for Gifted YoungstersThe meeting was, as usual, held in a dingy warehouse in a derelict industrial estate. Tony was glad he had installed his own security on the Spyder or he wouldn't be parking it here, where the air was thick with old, burned diesel and the walls had turned multicolour with tags.
"I'm guessing that since Coulson is here, we have a proper agenda and all the stuff people like him bring to meetings like this," Tony said as he strode towards the circle of lights. "The first thing on that agenda had better be 'Splash Mr Stark's tax dollars around and get a decent place for headquarters.'"
"Actually, no," said Coulson. "The first and only item on the agenda is recruitment policy." He held up a clipboard; it did indeed have only one listing, and beside it was a big red tick.
Coulson had come back from New Mexico with a great tan and an inflated sense of his own importance. Tony rolled his eyes. He really needed a drink, but these meetings were notoriously dry. Still, bring enough military types together and there's going to be a pot of coffee somewhere. From her seat, Natasha indicated behind her, and once Tony was out of the lights he could see the table with cups and a percolator. A man with a compound bow slung across his shoulder offered him a donut from a half-depleted box. Tony shook his head, and took his tepid, sour coffee back to the circle.
Nick's seat was the head of the circle, despite the geometrical impossibility of that fact. "You're not pulling your weight in recruitment, Tony."
Tony paused with the cup halfway to his lips. "I'm not pulling my weight in recruitment? What about Coulson, here? He's wasting time and clocking up a massive carbon footprint with his stupid hard copy agendas."
"Agent Coulson performed satisfactorily in New Mexico." Nick did not offer details, and that just made Tony itch to know more.
He raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Well, if it's performance that's in question, I promise I'll blow Coulson out of the water." He slid his gaze surreptitiously in Coulson's direction, but the man did not lift his eyes from the clipboard. "Or, you know, in the water. Whatever your preference."
Nick watched him stonily. The silence drew out.
Tony resisted the urge to squirm in his seat. "Well, what about Natasha? Doesn't she have something better to do than come to meetings like this?"
Natasha smiled and flung out an arm, snagging the thigh holster of the man with the compound bow. She dragged him into the circle of light. He stood there with an affable grin on his face, despite the way he was dripping with lethal weapons..
"I recruited him," said Natasha. The man gave Tony a cocky salute, stuffed half a donut in his mouth and chewed open-mouthed with a cheerful grin.
"Tony, it's well known you have contacts in the mutant vigilante underground." Nick spread his hands in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture. "All we're asking is for you to bring some of those contacts to the table."
"What do you mean, I have contacts in the…" Tony scowled at the circle of faces. "Wait, who have you been talking to?"
"That's classified. But we do have this photo of you and Black Cat." Nick held up a grainy black and white image.
Tony gave himself one second to admire the photographer's angle - he was looking fine that day - then it was time for self-defence. "Come on, we don't know she's a mutant!"
Everyone in the circle tilted their heads to the left to better take in the arrangement of legs and arms in the photo.
"Well, you don't have to be a mutant to do that," said Natasha, thoughtfully.
Everyone turned to look at her.
She amended her statement. "But it would help."
Lights flicked across the cracked and broken windows of the warehouse as choppers came in to land. Nick pushed himself out of his seat and leaned far into Tony's personal space.
"Get out your little black book, and get to work."
He left Tony pressed up against the back of the cheap plastic chair and strode out of the warehouse, silhouetted by the spotlights. Coulson hurried after him, laden with airport luggage and a briefcase. The guy with the bow sauntered behind, and after blowing a kiss in Tony's direction, Natasha joined him.
Tony sat defiantly in the warehouse, glaring at the floor, while the choppers took off. When he got back to the car, the Spyder was covered in leaves and an inch of dust.
---
Tony's little black book was a little black phone. The first contact was one he hadn't called since college. Those were the days, when your best friends had names with numbers in them, and they found the best unprotected intelligence online.
Like many of those college friends, Forge lived in a trailer - a bunch of trailers, actually - and his driveway was lined with IEDs. Tony circled above the huddled complex of shielded portable buildings: there was more than one modified Stark device buried in the dusty ground. It was flattering. Forge only tinkered with the best.
"Magnetic field detected," JARVIS stated calmly.
Tony scrolled through the readings, then dismissed the warning. "Levels are too low to be dangerous; it's probably just a body scan of some sort. Forge is fantastic with the biotechnology. Still, kind of hasty to randomly MRI visitors."
"Yes, how irrational to take offence at your low-altitude recon flight, sir." Red lights flickered on, and JARVIS' droll voice took on a note of urgency. "Field strength increasing!"
Tony fell out of the sky, plummeting downward. JARVIS shrieked binary nonsense in his ear as systems flared on and off in confusion. Fortunately the inertial negation kicked in just before impact, and Tony came to rest splayed across a satellite dish like a bug on a windshield. He couldn't move. The magnetic field held the suit rigidly in place.
"I don't know whether to offer you a beer or dissect you." Forge spoke while looking down the sight of a rifle. The stock, tucked neatly into his shoulder, was wood but the barrel was wrapped with wire and circuitry. Tony didn't need his systems online to tell him that it was some kind of ray-gun. Ray-shotgun. Forge loved the classics.
"Honestly, I'd rather have the beer, if it's all the same to you." The suit's voice transponder was still working, so the flippant comment came out in Iron Man's robotic tones.
Forge leaned over Tony's body, and popped the visor. He had no trouble identifying the safety release in the armour, because that's what Forge did: figure out how tech worked, then make it work better. And work for him.
"What are you doing here, Tony? I don't like surprises. Or visitors. Surprise visitors - I hate those most of all."
Tony heaved against the magnetic force. "Can we talk? I mean, can you let me up so we can at least talk? I feel like a fridge magnet here. I feel like I should have a take-out menu tucked under my ass."
Forge stepped backwards, and the servos in his leg hummed with the motion. "Fine. But you better behave yourself."
They sat on flaking iron lawn chairs - Tony settled himself gingerly in the suit - and drank beers from bottles that beaded with condensation the moment Forge pulled them from the tiny outdoor fridge. There was a little professional chit-chat: Tony admired the way the pressure sensors in Forge's prosthetic hand gauged how tight to grip the bottle. Forge asked a few idle questions about the hand repulsors.
"I'm working for a group called the Avengers Initiative," Tony started with his spiel. "We'd love to have someone with your talents on board."
Forge took a long pull from his beer. "Where were you last year? When Alcatraz went down?"
"Wait, what? Why would I have anything to do with that?" Tony frowned in confusion.
"Did you know Worthington?" Forge's face was terrifyingly casual.
"Well, I mean, yeah. I know him. We worked together on a transdermal stimulant delivery system a few years ago." With the visor up, he had no defence against the Texas heat and he was having trouble keeping up with these rapid segues.
"And how do you feel about Worthington's cure? When you come recruiting mutants, you better have solid answers about this stuff."
Tony tipped the bottle up and swallowed while he thought. "I think that some people genuinely wanted the Cure. I think you're never getting that genie back in the bottle. I think it's a damn good thing I never got my hands on it, because I'd have weaponised it much earlier and more effectively than the government managed to do. I wouldn't do that now. Weapons were what I did back then, but I've changed."
Forge took Tony's beer away, and hooked a finger in the chin plate, pulling Tony close. "Go away, Tony. I'm not going to join your cause. I don't trust the people who sent you and I don't trust you to ask the right questions of their motivations."
---
Forge was obviously in some mutant networking group - probably on Facebook - because Tony's little black phone rapidly became useless. Allison Blair's agent refused to pass on his calls. Henry McCoy was somehow always out of the building whenever he dropped into the UN building; Tony was beginning to suspect that he was literally scampering away over rooftops to avoid him. Emmanuel Da Costa's son had had a pretty spectacular on-field manifestation as a teen, but apparently it was the middle of the polo season and Roberto had team commitments. It was rumoured that Worthington's son was a mutant, but after Forge's warning, Tony didn't dare approach him.
Things started to look dire. There was that girl he met in Vegas - how many of Tony's stories started like that? - but Stacy spat in his face and accused him of genocide. Tony nodded, wiped his face, and left.
There was Fantomex - they met in Monaco, once. Tony cleaned him out at the blackjack table, then spent a night dealing with police when it turned out most of the chips were counterfeit. Tony wasn't exactly sure Fantomex was Avengers material, but he was getting desperate, so he arranged a rendezvous. They met on the roof of the Louvre, where Fantomex planted a kiss soundly on Tony's lips and told him in that charming fake accent to kindly go fuck himself.
In Central Park this morning, when Tony went for a run, Squirrel Girl loped up to him, punched him hard in the arm, burst into tears, and ran away.
Now, in a diner in Mutant Town, Tony scrolled through his list of contacts, and wondered if the waitress with the lion tail was smirking because she spat in his coffee, or if that was just the feline twist of her mouth. His finger hovered over the entry for the Xavier School. It was prime recruiting territory, in theory: they were basically raising kids in a paramilitary training camp, and nobody was more au fait with mutant abilities than the X-Men. He'd tried the number before this whole Avengers thing, out of curiosity and a deep-seated need to get to know more about the women of the team. Weird stuff had happened whenever he called that number. He'd hit dial, he'd hear the phone pick up at the other end, and then he'd hang up and order a pizza. Or catch a cab to Hoboken. Or give his shoes away and walk barefoot on the sidewalk. It was a clear message: don't mess with the Xavier School.
Tony toyed with the coffee spoon while he scrolled on his phone, spinning it over his thumb and catching it again. He understood why these particular mutants were reclusive. Xavier had tried a policy of openness, and that had brought nothing but destruction. Now, when someone said 'mutant', people thought immediately of the rubble and bodies scattered across Alcatraz. Xavier was gone, half the people he'd brought into the public eye were dead, and Tony didn't blame them for wanting a little security. And yet, if there was one thing that Tony understood, it was that you can't put knowledge back in the box: once it was out, your best strategy was to own it, and make it work for you. Maybe the Avengers Initiative was a way for the mutants at the Xavier School to do just that? People knew they existed. People weren't going to forget that.
A metal gauntlet slammed down on the table, and Tony jumped. A teenage girl with punky blue hair glared down at him. Her forearms were encased in metal to the elbow; Tony wondered vaguely whose work they were. He didn't recognise the specs.
"Uh, is this some kind of cosplaying thing? I mean, that's very flattering, but I'd appreciate a little breathing room." He edged his chair back a little. There was power arcing between each metal fingertip.
"Yes, every Japanese girl with blue hair is cosplaying." The girl sneered and flexed her fingers until sparks rained down from them. "Got any more racial stereotypes you want to explore?"
"Nope," said Tony. He extinguished the smouldering napkin in his untouched coffee.
"Good, maybe you're smarter than they say. This is for you." She threw an envelope down on the table top, then she stomped to the counter, collected a large and frothy coffee drink and left the diner.
"This day," said Tony. "It couldn't get any worse." He reached for the envelope and gingerly opened it. The paper was thick with a linen finish, embossed with the Xavier School crest. Elegant handwriting in peacock blue flowed across the page.
Darling, please stop harassing mutants in the street. You're making a terrible fuss. This is the kind of conversation decent people like us should have behind closed doors.
Come up to the school; I promise you can keep your shoes.
Emma
---
This time, he made his way to Salem Center without mysterious diversions. The town itself was a little eerie. Nobody looked up at the towering building on the hill. When he stopped for gas, there was no mention of the school, or even of mutants, despite the colour wrap-around on today's Bugle which proclaimed the 'Mutant Menace' to be the downfall of civilisation. As he paid, Tony was discomforted by the glazed expression on the attendant's face.
The gates to the school were open, though, which was a good sign. From here, the school looked just like any other private school in the area: ivy-covered, wishing desperately that it were Hogwarts or some Anglophile crap like that. Tony moved the Spyder slowly up the gravel-covered driveway, then skidded to a stop when something buzzed the car, something that was apparently part kid and part rocket. The boy zoomed past, then rocked backwards on his own jet-trail, hovering above the gravel to take a second look at the license plates. Tony shielded his eyes against the glare, and watched the boy's eyes narrow at seeing 'Stark 11' emblazoned on the plates.
Just as the boy pointed his ass in Tony's direction, presumably to blister the enamel on the car and also Tony's face, the kid fell out of the sky, fire extinguished. He lay on the smooth emerald turf, clutching at his temples and swearing up a storm in a West Virginian drawl.
Tony hesitated a moment, then opened the door of the car to check the boy was okay.
*Sam will be fine; he's just rethinking his approach to political protests. It's probably safer if you come straight up to the house, Tony.* The telepathic voice was cool and brittle inside his head, like the clink and slide of ice cubes in a glass. At the top of the stairs, in pristine white, Emma Frost stood waiting.
Tony had inherited his Hellfire membership, and his memories of time at the club were very hazy. He remembered Emma - vaguely - though he couldn't remember many specifics. He'd seen her naked, he thought, but who hadn't he seen naked inside those doors? It was always uncomfortable, the moment when you realised you might have slept with the person in front of you but you were too drunk to recall the details.
As he climbed the stairs, Emma laughed and patted his hand. "Trust me, if we had, you'd remember." She took his arm and tucked it under hers, turning for the door. "Now, stop thinking about what Nick Fury could do with a kid like Sam on his team, because you're going about this all wrong. "
Emma's office was filled with people. The tall black woman with the white hair he knew as Storm, but had no clue about her civilian identity. Doctor Henry McCoy had finally deigned to meet with him, and perched neatly on the windowsill like a big blue raven. The hairy guy scowling in the corner with his arms crossed, that had to be the Wolverine. Tony wished suddenly for his armour. The others he didn't recognise: a brunette with a stony gaze and a streak of white hair, a man made of steel bands, and another who smoked like a block of dry ice. All of them looked seriously pissed.
Tony took a deep breath, and rallied his self-confidence. He was Tony Stark. These were people who dressed like refugees from American Gladiator and used codenames at the dinner table. He could do this. He'd faced down worse audiences than this.
"Okay, people. It's pretty clear to me that you have some serious concerns, and that I've blundered into some sensitive subjects," he started. "But I'd like to think we can find some common ground here."
The room seemed to loom down on him, though nobody moved.
Emma held up her hand for silence. "Please, Tony, stop. You're so dull when you're lazy. And it's disappointing, because I know you can do better."
"You're wasting our time, Stark." The Wolverine leaned forward from his corner. "Use your brain, and stand up for yourself. If this organisation is pushing you around, there's even less reason for them to treat us well."
"Wait," said Tony. "I'm not your spokesman, here. I make a lousy advocate, unless it's an advocate for a dissipated lifestyle. Which, seeing as this is a school, I hope that's not what you're looking for."
McCoy shot out an incredibly long arm and caught him by the collar, dragging him unwillingly close. "You'll recruit us, then, but you won't stick your neck out to protect us?"
"That's not what I mean!" It came out much more shrill than Tony intended, but that was probably the pressure on his throat.
McCoy let him go, brushed down the front of his suit where it had rumpled, and propped him up in the middle of the room. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us what you mean, exactly."
"Ah," said Tony and cleared his throat. "Well, I can see that there are good reasons for you to be concerned about SHIELD and other such government organisations. I can see that." He scrambled to put his thoughts in order. It felt like weeks since he'd really used his brain, but adrenaline was a wonderful motivator that way. "And, I'm impressed, by the way. You all pulled together, Forge got me blacklisted, the X-Men analysed me and neutralised me as a threat. That's fantastic. That's a level of threat neutralisation that we - and I'm talking about the Avengers Initiative here - can learn a lot from. One day. Not today. The Cure, and Alcatraz, that was disastrous. I want to have the kind of team that can prevent that from ever happening again. Maybe, when there's a little trust between us, we can work together on that."
He slumped against a chair, suddenly exhausted, but the mood of the room had definitely lifted. Normally, in situations like these, he'd be cynically congratulating himself on selling the product. Somehow, though, he couldn't quite convince himself that he'd pulled anything over these people.
"That's more like it. You really have to stop listening to people who tell you you're a dilettante," said Emma. "Go in to bat for us, and maybe we'll be there when you need us. That's all we want. Can you do that, Tony?"
Tony looked around the room, at the people who had faced down the potential destruction of their species, and nodded. "Yeah. I think I can."
---
The next thing he knew, he was in a bakery in Hoboken, with a bear claw and a cup of cheap coffee.
"God damn it!" It was really bad coffee, too.
"Stark!" Nick Fury's face was a complex mix of confusion and extremely restrained anger. In one hand was a jelly filled donut which dripped on the floor. The other hand held a knife, low and partly concealed in his sleeve. "I was in a meeting! In the Pentagon!"
"Yeah, about that," said Tony. "I think we've been called into another meeting. We need to talk. About the Avengers Initiative."
"Keep your mouth shut, this area isn't secure," said Nick. He pitched the donut into the trash, and hauled Tony to a table.
"Listen," said Tony. "No, really, Nick. Listen to me. I've figured out something about helping people. You can't get to the people who need help most if they're terrified of you. So we need to lay down some kind of charter for this thing. We need to make sure - make really, really sure - that nobody's going to be using us as a weapon."
Nick grinned and relaxed in his chair. "Nice to finally have you on board, Mr Stark. Let's make this thing work." He reached across the table and took the bear claw. After a moment's consideration, he tore it in half and threw the other half back to Tony.