Post by Sonny Daye on Mar 2, 2016 18:48:07 GMT -5
By Sonny Daye
#4: New and Improved
Part 3
"Are you sure you wanna do this?" War Machine asked Iron Man.
"No," Iron Man said honestly. "But let's go. C'mon."
The duo stepped into the building. There was a sign a few yards back, sitting sturdily on the grass. The sign read "Rogers Children's Hospital".
A nurse poked her head in. "Timmy, you have a visitor."
Lying in the bed was a frail nine-year-old boy. He had no hair, and dark circles surrounded his eyes. His skin was as white as paper.
"Who?" he asked. His voice was stronger than one would think for someone in his condition.
The nurse's head sank back into the hallway, pushing the door open all the way. Heavy footsteps hit the floor as a new figure walked in.
"Iron Man!" Timmy shouted.
"Hey there, uh, squirt," Iron Man said as he walked over to the side of the bed. "Well, uh... I guess you know who I am so, uh..." He looked back at the nurse, who just gestured toward the boy, nodding her head.
"I'm Timmy!" the boy said.
"Well, Timmy, it's nice to meet you."
"That was sooo cool how you beat Blizzard this morning," Timmy said. "you just...grabbed 'im, and--yoink!--tore his suit right off!"
Iron Man was silent for a moment. Then he said, "That was pretty impressive, wasn't it?"
"Was it hard? To beat him?"
"Are you kidding me? It was Blizzard!"
Timmy let out a hearty laugh. "You're my favorite super hero, Iron Man. You and Storm."
Iron Man shifted uncomfortably in his spot as Timmy mentioned the mutant. "Uh, heh... Yep, she's...pretty cool."
"She's so hawt," the boy said in a dreamy tone.
"Well, this just got weird," Iron Man muttered. He said in a regular tone, "It was... It was nice to meet you, Timmy. Stay strong for me, okay, bud?"
"Okay!" Timmy said.
Iron Man sat on a chair beside a girl's bed. She also had no hair. Her neck was the size of a fishing rod.
"How old are you, Clara?" he asked.
Clara held up seven fingers.
"Really? Do you feel old?"
She nodded her head slightly. Her movements were so small, a naked eye could barely see it. But a bright smile was on her face.
"Yeah, I'm getting up there myself. I'm forty-two. But yeah, seven's that age where you're, like, 'Geez, I'm old.'"
She laughed in such a soft tone, Tony wouldn't have been able to hear it if it hadn't been for his sensors.
"But you've got a whole life ahead of you, you know that?" he asked.
Clara nodded again. Her bottom eyelids began to swell slightly as tears welled up inside them.
"Just... Just keep having hope, okay?" Iron Man leaned forward as he whispered, "You're life's gonna be beautiful."
A few minutes later, he was making his way through the hallways, looking for War Machine. He was a bit caught off-guard by the noisy thud sounds his footsteps were creating. It probably would have been best to just come in with the helmet on, he thought.
He found War Machine--out of his suit--talking to a nurse.
Iron Man's faceplate lifted up, revealing his trimmed beard, thick, black eyebrows, and dark brown eyes. "We... We should leave, Rhodey. Let's get going."
Rhodey narrowed his eyes. "You okay, T?"
"Yeah. Fine. Let's go." He turned away.
"Have you been...crying?"
"Oh my god, Rhodey..."
"You found me alone... Broken... Without anywhere to run... I was a failure. But you took me in. You helped me get back on my feet, and I thank you for that."
Justin Hammer's wrinkled old face stared down at Blizzard, who stood in front of him like a statue. Blizzard's suit was covered in a thin layer of frost, which nullified any light that hit it. It was definitely bigger and clunkier than the current version that Hammer had destroyed.
Blizzard continued talking. "But you made a deal with me. You wanted me to test something for you. And I did. Together, you and me created 'Blizzard.' You never said, 'Ah want you ta destroy Eye-errrn Man.' . . . Well, actually, yeah, you did, but that was something extra. That wasn't a part of the deal."
Hammer's face remained still. The few short, white hair that remained on his head was combed neatly to the side, and he was wearing a nice suit with a red tie.
"But I went with it," Blizzard continued, "because...I liked you. I thought one more favor wouldn't hurt. And I really liked the suit anyway. It made me feel...powerful. And that's when all this started. Iron Man beat me, and I got my ass thrown in jail. You bailed me out and said, 'Try again.' So I did. And I got beat again. Then you came up with a new version of the suit. And despite me getting beat by him two times already, you wanted me to try again. Well I did, and now you say that you're through with me. You see the problem here?!"
Silence.
"Now I'm back where I started! Why did you have to come after me?! Why did I have to say yes?! All the money you were gonna give me went to bailing me out. I have made zilch since you started throwing me at Iron Man!
"Iron Man... That's where all this started, huh? Why do you hate him so much? What did he ever do to you, huh? Is it because the stuff Stark makes is better than the stuff you make? Is that it? Huh? Huh?"
Tell 'im what you're gonna do to 'im.
"The stuff I'm gonna do to you... I'm gonna kill you slowly... Painfully... Intimately... You'll be begging for death's cold embrace. And I'll dangle it in front of ya, and right when you're about to grab it, I'll yank it away from ya." His arm cannons began to whir. "Let's get started, shall we?"
Without a second thought, Blizzard unleashed a cold, snowy wind from his cannons. He let out a bloodthirsty scream as he froze the office around him. The ceiling, the walls, the chairs, the minibar—everything. Under his helmet, a grand smile formed on Blizzard's face.
"You seeing this, Hammer? Isn't it beautiful?"
Now finish him. Time to make him pay.
"I'll show you, Hammer. I'll show you that I can defeat Iron Man. I'll show you that you made a big mistake. But not before I kill you."
He fired a blisteringly cold gust at Hammer. The cannons almost sounded like the roar of a sports car as he pushed it to release as much cold as possible. On and on and on the gust went, until any sign of Hammer was completely gone.
The cannons were being pushed too hard; one of them let off a violent spark.
No! No, no, no! Stop! Stop it, you idiot!
Blizzard let out a long exhale as he forced himself to power down the cannons.
He looked at the ice-covered painting in front of him. Only a self-loving narcissist would but a giant painting of himself behind the desk at which he sat. Blizzard walked up to it, and looked at it. Then—
"Gaaaaaaahhh!"
Blizzard headbutted the painting like a bull seeing red. He staggered backward; the helmet had exerted most of the force, but it still left him a little woozy.
"You... Oh, God, that hurts... You watch out...Hammer... I'm comin' for ya... And you're gonna pay."
Stark Tower
Manhattan, New York City
Tony burst into Pepper's office without even knocking. The redhead nearly leapt out of her chair.
"Jesus Christ, Tony!" she said, putting her hand over her heart. "Are you incapable of knocking? God. It's like you're—"
"Yes. Yes I am," said Tony.
Pepper's office looked gigantic. In reality, it wasn't all that big. Pepper's desk sat at the north side of the room, in front of the huge window that acted as a wall. Outside, the sun was about ready to rise, and morning was approaching. The white-painted ceiling hovered thirty feet above their heads. What made the office look so big was the lack of stuff in it. There was Pepper's desk...and that was it.
Tony's footsteps echoed as they hit the marble flooring. He walked slowly and nonchalantly as he looked around.
"Uh... Do you need anything, Mister Stark?" asked Pepper.
Tony snapped to attention, as if he'd just woke from a daydream. "Oh! Uhhh, yeah, I do, Miss Potts."
". . . Well?"
"I just... I wanna apologize for the other day. The way I was acting, I mean... It... It... Y'know what? Screw explaining. Instead, let me ask you something, Miss Potts."
". . . O-okay..."
"When did you start having feelings for Happy?"
Needless to say, Pepper was clearly astonished by such a random question. "W-well, uh... It was when—"
"Oh, by the way," Tony interjected, "don't say, 'Oh, it happened on this day in this month in this year.' Tell me what happened with you two. Tell me how the spark came." As he spoke, he slowly made his way closer and closer to Pepper's desk. Once he was done, he was standing directly in front of her.
"Wellll... There was always something between us...even when you brought all of us together to start the company those five years ago. But, for a long it was always just that—something... So, instead of confronting those feelings, we just kind of—"
"Buried them?" said Tony.
"Yeah, exactly! We just buried it all, even though we both knew it was there. I could see it in his eyes, and I bet he could see it in mine, too... But we never did anything about it. We just...let it be."
"Okay, so... When did those feelings really begin to surface?" Tony hated to repeat himself and reiterate, but he managed to brush that nagging feeling aside.
"I... Think of it as...a plant, Tony," Pepper said carefully. "After the Ten Rings kidnapped you, everybody's emotions went haywire. Happy and I were probably the most distraught. So, we found...company in each other, if...if you know what I mean."
Tony furrowed his brow and gave her an amused smirk. "Ohhhhhhh, so you two did the naughty-naughty, huh?"
"Y...yes," Pepper said sheepishly, her gaze diverting to her orderly desk.
"So—and I may regret asking this—what do plants have to do with...that?"
"Well... That's when the seed was planted."
"F***ing knew I would regret asking that," Tony muttered to himself.
"What? No! N-no, I didn't mean— Dammit, Tony! What I meant was, that's when our love truly came to fruition. But, it was still kind of an F.W.B. thing that went on for awhile. Then, one day, lo and behold, you escaped the Ten Rings and made it back to the company. When you started on your road to sobriety, that's when the feelings Happy and I had for each other—the seed—came to light."
"Wait, wait, wait. My sobriety...brought you two together?"
Pepper thought for a moment. "You know, when you put it like that, that actually makes a lot of sense."
"Oh my god, Pepper... I... I didn't know that..."
"Tony, you almost sound like as if you're sorry," Pepper jested.
"Heh... Maybe I am," he said as he made his way over to the large window. As he gazed out of it, he said, "Hey, Pepper?"
"Yeah?"
"I... I wanna be a better person. I want this whole super hero thing to stop being mostly about me. When Ho Yinsen and I made the first Iron Man armor, it was so I could build something for once... For once, it wasn't just about...destroying. It was so that I could...give back to the world. I wanted to give the people something they could point out in the sky and, as a result, feel hope. I... I wanted to be, like, a modern-day Captain America.
"Cap... I feel like I knew him, Pep. When I was little, my dad would tell me about him whenever he got the chance. It was one of the few precious moments when Dad actually felt like a dad to me. He'd go on and on about all this cool stuff Cap did, like punching Hitler in the face, or sacrificing himself to save America. And I remember thinking, 'That's what I wanna be when I grow up. That's what I wanna do.' But the dream... It... It—"
"Went away?" Pepper said.
"Got buried," he said, giving her a soft, vulnerable look. "I could've hit rock-bottom, Pep. I almost drowned myself in booze and sex. Literally!"
"Tony..." Pepper got up and stood by him, then proceeded to also watch the soft morning begin to touch New York. "As self-obsessed as you are...you're still a good person. You've been through more s*** than pretty much any billionaire ever. You do help the world. People do look up at you and feel hope. Because that is who you are, Tony."
Tony and Pepper met each other's eyes. They held their stares for what seemed like forever, but in reality, it was only about five seconds.
Pepper spoke first. "Mister Stark, I—"
"Shhh, I need to say something, Pep," said Tony. "I... I want to cover your expenses for the wedding."
". . . What?"
"Yeah, it sounds crazy, I know, but... And I know you and Happy wanna pay for it yourselves, but...I want to."
Conflict ran rampant in Pepper's eyes. She looked out the window again, her eyes darting everywhere, as if she were looking for answer that was hiding in the city.
"Pep...? Pepper, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, Mister Stark. I-it's nothing."
"Miss Potts, if there's something wrong, I can—"
"Let's just discuss it later, okay?" she asked, turning her back to him.
"Pepper, what's wrong? If you don't tell me then there's nothing I—"
"I said it's nothing," Pepper said sternly. "Mister Stark, I need you to leave. I... I have a lot of work to get done. But...thank you for coming to me."
"Uh...sure thing," said Tony. He began making his way to the door.
That Afternoon...
"You ready, Mister Hammer?"
"Yes, yes, Ah am. Now git."
Justin Hammer's assistant—one of many—ran off, leaving the old business man alone.
"Ah hate backstage-type environments," he muttered to himself. "I need ta be in front o' the people..."
"They're ready for you, Mister Hammer," said the stage manager nearby. "Break a leg. Give 'em hell."
The crowd erupted into enormous applause as Hammer made his way onto the stage. He stopped at the lectern and organized the papers his speech was neatly written on. He put one of his hands up, effectively signaling the large crowd. Thousands of people filled the large auditorium, eager to hear Hammer's special announcement.
"Llllladies and gentleman!" Hammer's voice boomed. The crowd erupted into another loud cheer. Hammer laughed at how easy it was for him to get the crowd excited.
"Mah wife..." Hammer said. "Mah wife lived every day o' her life wantin' a better world—a cleaner world! Pollution continues ta taint us, poison us, make us sick... Ah'm here to tell y'all that—" Hammer belted the next part like he was a pro wrestler. "—Ah am sick an' tired of it! AH'VE HAD ENOUGH! Do you see ol' Normie Osborn workin' to clean the city up?"
The crowd roared, "No!"
"Do you see Stane doin' anything?!"
"No!" the crowd said again.
"What about li'l Stark, huh? Is he doin' anything?"
"No...!" The crowd said again, although that time was quite weak.
"Hell no!" Hammer spat. "Where Ah grew up, the air is always clean an' fresh! I want that for this city—the greatest city in the world, New York City!"
The crowd let out another roar. A few people were even crying.
"Ah want this city to be the best place for mah family. Mah daughter Justine, and mah granddaughter Sasha—they mean th' world ta me. That's why, as of right now, Hammuh Industries is no longuh Hammuh Industries. Now, it...is Hammuh Energy.
"Ah want ta make safe, clean, affordable, renewable energy fo' each and every person of this great city. Hammuh Energy will provide everyone with cheap, reusable power—all from a self-sustaining battery that nevuh runs outs. To do this, Ah—"
Thoooooommm!
The entire audience screamed as a blue-colored, robotic figure bust in through the ceiling and landed mere feet in front of Hammer.
"Blizzuhd," Hammer growled.
"That's right, Hammer. It's me. Bet you wish you kept me around, huh?"