"Sterns, if I was you, I wouldn't want to piss off someone with my connections," Aldrich grinned, his fingers flexing in his pockets. The leader of AIM barely held himself back from responding with some deal of metaphorical heat… but soon he felt an oozy cool make way through his body. So Aldrich left it to merely leaning in close to the smaller man, glaring at him from under a pair of sunglasses.
"Now, now," Captain Blonsky stepped between the two geniuses, forcing Killian to meet his eyes in a brutal staring contest. "Let's not get into any misunderstandings here. We're just here to ask some questions and then we'll get out of your hair."
Aldrich continued to smile, leaning back, and opened his arms wide. It was a position that left him open to attack if the Marine felt it was necessary. But Blonsky was a hashdash Captain America, while Aldrich Killian was now the Perfect Extremis Subject. There was no way the other man stood a chance.
So Aldrich kept his defenses low, not a lick of concern for his safety.
"All right hit me."
Sterns took a notepad out from his disgustingly cheap jacket, his hands searched around his other pockets for a pen for so long that Blonsky was forced to give the man one of his own.
"We've noticed a connection between the victims and a trial that your group ran a few months ago-"
"Sterns, as always your research is behind the times," There was no small amount of glee Killian took in correcting the arrogant ass of a sorry excuse of a teacher. Couldn't even research things with SHIELD's database. "Our trials continue, in fact, we're about to launch into full-scale production, with a line of volunteers going a mile long."
"Oh, well, see I'm only concerned about your old test subjects, not your new ones. From what we can tell, the subjects had made a full recovery and weren't expected to have any further complications."
"That's right," Killian smiled, feeling so proud of his work. "The more injured among them even regained lost limbs. Truly extraordinary results."
"All this from… unlocking the power of the mind? Sorry, but it sounds like snake oil to me."
He laughed, his recent improvements let him take such remarks against his greatest achievement in stride. There was so little time, and with Brainiac backing him the man couldn't see how these two fuck nuggets could stop him.
So let them make jokes while they can.
"It's far more than just the power of the mind, it's the untapped potential of the human genome. Just look at what that Alien freak is capable of. The man looks no different from you or me but can do so many things. That's the sort of power Extremis unlocks. The true power of the human condtion."
For a second, there was a gleam in Blonsky's eyes. Killian recognized it… as greed.
"What do you think an Extremis subject would match Lugh?" Blonsky asked, his greedy eyes disappearing into a grim mockery. "The guy bench presses aircraft carriers."
"No, no, " Killian chuckled. "It was merely a point of comparison. We probably won't see anything to his scale for centuries. As Humanity continues to evolve, so should our potential."
Though Lugh's current advantage against their men was something they needed to… correct. Brainiac already had a few plans to distract the man, but Aldrich was sure he could modify them to kill the blue fuck.
"But gentlemen, I doubt that you've come just to ask me questions you could get from a file?"
Blonsky smiled.
"It's just that we were wondering if anyone would want to sabotage your work? Because otherwise, we've no connection between these bombings. Other than that they were in one way or another part of the military."
Killian tapped his chin, putting on a show of frowning at the soldier while thinking. Of course, the truth of the matter was there wasn't a single organization that wanted this project shut down, there were dozens. Removing the military capabilities of the project, Extremis would remove the Opioid industry completely… hell the health industry would be fucked over.
Don't need medicine, won't need a doctor. Bad for their business.
"You might want to look into the Sacklers, they would love to see this entire thing fall apart to keep their money pouring in."
Aldrich never liked that entire family anyway. A bunch of backroom pussies.
(Patrick Doyle Same Day New York Bulletin)
The same outfit I'd gone to dinner in, I was still wearing it. I rather enjoyed suits, the dinner was just a good excuse for me to continue wearing one.
So I slid into the office with the sort of rushed walk you'd expect to see from a man who needed to get to the bathroom before an accident happened. Not that was going on here, I was instead here to take stock with the boss himself.
"Mr. Ellison is busy in a meeting," His assistant stopped me as I reached the door. I could never remember this woman's name, but given the number of insults against everyone she mumbled under her breath during the day, I wasn't too concerned with learning her name. On the other hand, I was concerned about her spitting into drinks she'd been asked to get. "You can wait here till he's ready."
"He's alone in the room."
"Phone Conference."
Even though Ellison's door had a large window on it, I used my powers to just take a look at the room in its entirety. I made sure to keep myself from listening in, a harder task than one would expect, but from visuals alone, I could tell the man was talking to someone. And with no one around it was clear that the Assistant woman was telling the truth. In fact, I could tell from his expressions that this was a calm conversation. Ellison's face was red, he was about three steps away from either smashing his phone into pieces or screaming into the receiver. It seemed private.
So I stopped peeking and sat down on a stool next to the door.
This was somewhat dangerous to my mental health as it let me ruminate with my thoughts. Which were generally mumbled, jumping from two points of importance to the world. The first was what Jim had said in the restaurant, that Louise was my girlfriend. It wasn't true, it wasn't even something that I had thought about before.
I would've dismissed it entirely if Louise's heart hadn't elevated at the words. It wasn't clear to me if it was because she didn't want to hurt my feelings by denying it hard… or if she was hoping that I wouldn't deny it in front of her parents. I just wasn't good at reading the girl.
So I wasn't sure how to deal with that…
If it wasn't for the second thing on my mind, I would've stayed around to discuss the issue with her… probably. The Mandarin's actions were disturbing in a way I would've never expected of him. Not that the comic Mandarin wasn't capable of mass murdering but… the man was nowhere near so competent looking. The performance alone made me take this guy as a great threat in intellect at least. If he had his rings… well, then I'd need to be extremely careful when dealing with him. Back-up was a reasonable idea, but so would hitting the guy from space with a meteor would be my opening strike.
You don't fuck around fighting someone with magical rings.
This wasn't even counting if he had super minions. People like the Grey Gargoyle, who could turn a man to stone by touch… or… other members of his little team from the Iron Man Animated series… I'm going to be a hundred percent honest here. I don't remember that show all that well, especially that first season.
Regardless of that, I was here to explain that I would be starting early. So Ellison needed to ring up our man in the area so they'll know to expect me. Arriving early could spook them… apparently. I'm recognizable enough that I'm not sure how they would confuse me with someone else but that wasn't my call.
Still, the area was unfamiliar to me as was the culture. It was also the chief area that the Mandarin was operating in. So it was important for me to get my foot in the door as quickly as possible. Without any misunderstandings, I could start to shut this Mandarin down. While making a story about how highly trained Soldiers managed it because I'd never give the man the pleasure of being taken down by me… unless I had to.
"He'll be seeing you now," The Assistant's bitch face highlighted the weird amount of hate I'd quickly developed for a woman I couldn't even remember the name for. But I had more important things to do than dwell on this woman so I entered without any verbal snap against her.
"Doyle, I'm glad to see you come in early," Ellison's hands were tapping against the table with an odd beat, Either he had a song stuck in his head or he needed to work out the nerves that meeting moments ago had given him. "We need to talk about… the situation with the Mandarin."
"You've read my mind, sir," I said sitting down in the chair in front of his desk. "I needed to talk to you."
I felt sorry for the man, dealing with being owned by a bunch of rich douches was a hard time for any paper before the internet, but with the internet, we weren't pulling in the advertisements for money anymore. And we weren't selling anyway near the same amount of issues anymore. So Corporate was constantly coming down for more sales despite the falling market for it.
My inclusion on the staff was a boost to sales, but money folk always wanted more money, so record sales only meant they wanted to break even those records. As if we could infinitely multiply our sales. Madness.
"So… I know that you were looking forward to the new… posting," Ellison stopped and started the sentence with a larger chagrin on his face."... and I was thinking… that maybe… but they… the stockholders… " I didn't know we had stockholders rather than owners. "...thought it would be a bad idea… so I tried to explain how it wouldn't matter because you don't need a plane to get there..."
He continued for a few moments. It didn't take a genius to know what he was about to say. It would take someone incapable of pointing out a tree in a forest not to guess why he was so nervous about telling me. Probably had something to do with the large frown on my face. Knowing what I was capable of, I was no doubt a scary fecker of anger. Even if I wouldn't hurt a fly… if they weren't trying to invade New York or open up a portal.
"... and they didn't listen. So I'm going to have to take away the offer as a foreign correspondent. And while… his threat is open like this: they want you gone. I tried, I damn well tried to get them to see reason. Even said I'd quit… but they said if I did that they'd sell the entire paper and fire everyone else too.
As he finally said it, I couldn't help but feel a surge of annoyance. Not just at the Mandarin somehow spooking the Paper's financial backers so much to lose my good posting, but also at the time it took for the man to say it. I've never ever so much as shown the man a hint of aggression, this level of fear annoyed me. Not only those things, but the entire situation enraged me, this remotely hadn't even been anything I'd involved myself in. The Mandarin just… targeted me of all people?
…
But I didn't act on this. I refused to yell or scream. Instead, I took a breath through my nose and let it out my mouth.
"I understand, there's a worry that the Mandarin will take my job here as you all backing any conflict between me and him. They don't want to be targets and the Paper shouldn't be a target unnecessarily."
Ellison sagged in relief.
"I'm glad that you're not angry over this," He said, tapping his pen against the table. I wanted to leave, find somewhere I could push all my anger into. Maybe I'd go out and start throwing some of that giant ocean garbage pile into the sun? What stopped me from doing that was I could tell that I had that Ellison had more to say; "But let me ask you a question… how good is your friendship with Stark? You spend a lot of time hanging out in that Tower of his?"
"Not particularly? We've not spent all that much time together since the Brainiac Attack."
It wasn't odd, we all had our own shit to deal with. In the Tower Currently was just Dr. Banner and Dr. Ross. The two love birds were slightly sickening to watch interact in some ways. I suppose having stayed on the run for so long, they were finally letting loose with each other. It was perfectly fine, but it made hanging out there odd.
And I just didn't like being a voyeur.
"That's too bad," Ellison grimaced. "See, the entire call I couldn't help but think… Stark wouldn't be afraid of this sort of attack. He wouldn't care about the backlash in readership loss, man could tank any losses. Stark even has the resources to defend us from attacks physically. Hire a bigger security detail."
"... and he did start up his own media side business, Stark News. It would go well… just I'm concerned that I've already asked a favor from him. Secret shit that I need help with… and I'm not working for Tony Stark."
That seemed to surprise my now-former boss more than a bit.
"What? We all got our own egos," I informed him, standing up from the chair. "I've got other avenues to explore in the meantime… " Trailing off, a thought came to me. "I can use you as a reference right?"
That brought a lot of laughter from the man while he took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. Eventually, he calmed down, I had almost felt insulted till he smiled and spoke once more;
"Of course, you can. Not that I think you'll need it. Who doesn't want a goddamn superhero working for them… crazy shits."
Still, this meant that I was free from work… It also meant that I was out of a solid income. From what I recall. I would be paid for a while, at least two weeks. It was meant to cover me while I looked for a new job, but I would use it for other reasons.
At least that was the thought… and then I got a call from Ben.
(Colonel James Rupert "Rhodey" Rhodes: Pentagon 2009 May 30th)
"I like being War Machine," Rhodes complained. "It's a streaking name. It tells people to expect heavy firepower"
"Colonel, there's nothing shameful with the new name. It's to help rally the troops," Was the response back to him. "In light of the Mandarin attacks, it was thought that America needed a new icon to push us forward."
"I didn't say I was ashamed?" he replied, quivering a single eyebrow while staring at the man. "Why did you think I was?"
The other man coughed, ignoring the question while mumbling something under their breath. Rhodes couldn't catch it, but the Colonel took note of the man's blush.
"Anyway, we've already contracted AIM for your upgrades."
"I'm not sure how comfortable with all this I am given what happened with Hammer Industries and their modifications to my suit. Some of those weapons… just flat out didn't work."
"I understand the concern," The Pentagon representative held his hands up. "That's why we've selected upgrades based on already proven technology. Your missiles will work this time, I guarantee it. We've already tested it all."
"Iron Patriot though? It sounds like someone smashed my Cap and Stark together," Rhodes complained, "Speaking of, why are we doing this? We have Captain America."
"No, SHIELD has Captain America and they're more multinational than we like. So the President wants our own private American Patriot."
…
"And you spent all of four seconds on adding Iron to that?"
"The President gave us this name."
Author's Note: So I should make clear here as my last author's note sort of... fucked up what I meant.
So on LouiseXPat... Doyouis? Paouis? Whatever on this ship, it wasn't that this was meant to be the moment that they're made boyfriend/girlfriend but rather the start of any romantic tension between them. I'm not dumb enough to just... force something from platonic friendship into fluffy shit of true love.
Whether it'll stick to the whole fic? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that would be telling.
Anyway, on this chapter itself. Pat has gone from "this man is dangerous." to "Fuck this guy. I've been fired." And honestly, Pat will do more in revenge for this than take down the "Mandarin". Rich folk tend to have committed a number of crimes."
There's a bit about Iron Patriot here. Who was an element I frankly never understood in the movie? This is why the conversation is so short. Like dude... you have Captain America? What is he not returning your calls?
Was Steve Rodgers ghosting the US Government?