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cap_ironman2010-02-13 08:47 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-02-13 08:47 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 6)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 6 (sequel to ‘Juke Box Hero’)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otherhazards
Beta:prettyarbitrary
Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: R
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Graphic superhero violence, brief het, Luke Cage’s accent.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Danny/FC implied, Harry+Mary Jane implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Nick Fury, and Luke Cage.)
Summary: Rise of the Midnight Racer
===========================================================
The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:02 AM.
Steve ducked his head under the shadow of a broken, blackened beam, and stood. The gutted warehouse was silent yet not, the whole unsafe structure still settling with faint crunches and whispery groans. Some sections of the roof had burned and fallen in entirely, others were bare grates of unbroken beams with the cold morning sky showing through them.
Steve gave the fragile roof an appraising glance as he walked into the roofless space in the center, red boots crunching on drifts of cinders.
“Over here, Cap,” a grizzled fireman signaled him, pointing to a half-buried strip of corrugated steel on the ground.
“Good morning, Lt. Farrell. What have you got?” Steve asked.
“See for yourself,” the fireman replied, and levered the thin steel sheeting aside with a crowbar.
It was scorched, warped in places and disjointed from what looked like something in the center blowing up and burning, but what the thing -had- been was chillingly clear. Hover-pads on the exposed underside, manta-wing silhouette exaggerated with wickedly sharp fairings along the leading edge...
And since this warehouse fire had taken place on the day before the Green Goblin’s firebombing spree, it left another question.
“...How many more have you found?” Steve asked, straightening.
“Two more of the Goblin’s gliders, and... part of a machine we don’t understand at all. We’re also standing on a carpet of blown munitions, and there were a couple of live pumpkin-bombs up in that southeast corner that the bomb squad took care of early this morning. -I’d have called you earlier, but until the bomb squad cleared the building my boys couldn’t get in, and... well, Cap, we’ve been busy.”
“I know.” Steve put a red-gloved hand on the fireman’s shoulder.
“So...” Lt. Farrell took out a cigarette and lit it with a match, “-who do you think burned out the Green Goblin?”
“I’m going to find out,” Steve promised, frowning down at the charred glider again.
“Anybody you wanna bring in for a look at this stuff? -Before- we call in the shmucks that lost it in the first place, I mean?” Lt. Farrell asked.
“Actually, there is...” Steve began.
-
The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:31 AM (same day).
“-Exhaust system’s different...” Tony muttered, brushing ash off the second Goblin glider with his fingers, “-the other one would’ve been faster, but it probably turned like a seven-forty-seven...”
“Are you saying these were prototypes, or just modified?” Lt. Farrell asked, crouching in the piled cinders with him.
“Who tha hell let a civilian into my crime scene?” Nick Fury demanded, before Tony could answer.
Lt. Farrell swore softly under his breath.
Steve glanced up at Fury, folded his arms across his chest, and looked vaguely guilty.
Tony stood, dusting off his hands, and regarded the approaching director of SHIELD with no favor.
“Tony Stark. I shoulda known,” Fury growled, glancing venomously between Steve and Lt. Farrell.
“You have a rat problem,” Tony interrupted him, pointing down at the glider significantly.
“Ya think I don’t know that? Now get out,” Fury ordered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the doorway. “-It ain’t like I don’t have -your- prints and boots on file...”
“Fine,” Tony said curtly, making a hands-off gesture, “-I’m gone.” His glance shifted to Steve and he added, “-I’ll be right outside.”
“Right,” Steve agreed, and looked back at Colonel Fury.
Tony left.
“DID it-” Fury snarled, fists on his hips, “-at any point occur ta you two cowboys that I might be smack in tha middle of a delicate internal investigation here? Tha kind that’s set back six months or MORE if some yahoo drops a line to the press about it?”
Both Steve and Lt. Farrell had been familiar with rank structures long enough to know a rhetorical question when they heard one.
“Cap-” Fury continued, stabbing Steve in the chest with a finger, “-if that goddamn hippie breathes a word of what he saw here today, I’m holding you personally responsible. Lt. Farrell, if forensics tells me any o’ this evidence is fucked up now, your ass is in a sling, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lt. Farrell.
“Whadda you think, Cap?” Fury challenged, “-or do you gotta go talk it over with somebody -first-?”
“Sir, may I speak with you in private?” Steve asked, as professionally as he could.
“Ya know what? I -like- that idea. C’mere, let’s you and me go have a little ‘chat’...” Fury growled.
-
Outside the burned building in the warehouse district, NYC, 9:45 AM (same day).
Tony gave Lt. Farrell the rest of his thoughts on the two Goblin Gliders and the wrecked vapor-atomization chamber outside, and... waited. He sat on one of the fire truck’s highly-polished steel running boards in jeans and a green, open-collared shirt he’d borrowed from Danny Rand that morning and felt decidedly... -naked-.
Unarmored.
“Hey- you’re Tony, right?” One of the younger firemen asked, pausing next to him.
“That’s me,” Tony agreed, casually.
“Thanks for leavin’ that note with Sergeant Gillespie about not sendin’ his guys into your place if it ever caught fire. -It woulda been my Cousin Louie’s turn to kick in the door the other night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony smirked, “-but I’m glad no one got hurt.”
“Heh. Right, right...” the young fireman grinned, clapping him on the shoulder, “-I’ll see you around, man.”
“You too-” Tony glanced at the young man’s name tag, “-O’Conner.”
O’Conner climbed up past him onto the truck.
Tony spotted a bright flicker of red white and blue coming out of the warehouse.
Steve’s back looked stiff, and he was holding his shield an inch or two up and closer to his body than he usually did. Tony frowned mentally and slid down off the fire truck, meeting him halfway.
“So... how did it go?” Tony asked.
“Colonel Fury can be a very... difficult man sometimes,” Steve sighed.
“Are we done here?”
“Yes,” Steve nodded, glancing back at the warehouse uncomfortably.
-
The Docks, NYC, 1:37 AM.
It was hard to say who was more startled, Luke or the criminals he’d walked in on.
They were looting- -or possibly exchanging- -the contents of a large wooden crate, but the moment they saw Luke come around the corner two of the five produced guns, and one was an M-14 machine gun.
Lead rain cut across Luke’s face and chest with all the impact of a handful of thrown pea-gravel. Luke squinted. He had only caught a bullet in the eye once, but having one of those suckers stuck under his eyelid while still hot from the barrel wasn’t something he -ever- wanted to try again, even momentarily.
“-You guys just don’t learn, do ya?” Luke yelled back at the shooters, and charged.
They scattered like bowling pins with the impact, and three of them made off into the shadows. One of the two left spotted a forklift nearby, and scrambled into the driver’s seat, firing up the engine.
Luke caught the oncoming forklift’s rising horizontal tines with the dexterity of a seasoned bull-leaper, and halted its ramming maneuver by bracing his feet and lifting straight upwards. The forklift’s wheels lost traction and spun, glaring headlights picking out the mahogany sweep of unbroken muscle through a wide tear in Luke’s yellow shirt, and glinting off his steel headband in the darkness.
“LAST STOP, SUCKAH!” Luke snarled, turning the open-sided vehicle ninety degrees and giving it a good shake.
The thug fell out onto the pavement with a cry, and lay there holding his head.
Luke set the slightly bent forklift down, and looked around for stragglers. The one who’d gotten the worst of the earlier collision was getting his bearings now, but he took one look at the forklift driver, then another at Iron Fist dragging his three remaining allies out of the shadows by two right wrists and a -foot-, and surrendered quickly.
Luke added the forklift driver to the growing pile of semiconscious bad guys, and stood glaring down at them, hands on hips.
“We’re lookin’ fo the Green Goblin. Now which one a’you punks feels like talkin?”
“I don’t know where he hangs out man, that guy’s a freak!” The thug who’d surrendered first yelped quickly, “-he keeps to himself, and who tha hell wants him, yanno?”
“-I- want ‘im,” Luke declared. He prodded the forklift driver with the toe of his boot, “-hey! Toro! You seen the Goblin around here, or what?”
“F$*#! off...”
Luke smiled, picked up a length of steel signpost-pipe lying a short distance away, and bound the forklift-driver’s arms to his sides with it.
“Now...” He said, “-let’s try that one again...”
“Luke,” Danny interrupted, quiet but clear.
“Whadda you got, Fist?” Luke asked, without looking up.
“There’s somebody flying around near that bridge,” Danny pointed, focusing far out over the glassy black water of the harbor.
Luke took a stride back from their captives, and looked. The repairs to the Manhattan Bridge were nearly complete, but the part under construction was lit at night, and- ...nothing.
“You sure it was a dude?”
“Well, it could have been a woman,” Danny admitted, “-but I definitely saw someone riding a glider.”
Luke pressed the stud on the side of one of his heavy steel wristbands down.
“Power Man to Iron Man. You up there?”
“-fzkkkk- -Just wrapping something up here, whadda you got, Powers?” Tony replied, after a good six second pause.
“Glider. Manhattan Bridge. Don’t know who it is yet, but get yo jets out here.”
“Kk-On my way,” Tony acknowledged.
Less than two minutes later, Iron Man was there. And gone, a fading blue-white spark streaking out over the water.
“Ckk-I’ve got him on radar...” Tony reported.
“SHIELD?” Luke asked. ...They’d nearly been arrested for hassling two glider-mounted SHIELD agents already...
“No be- kkk- on,” Tony said, with what sounded like satisfaction.
“Go get ‘im, man!” Luke shouted into his wristband, putting a boot gently but firmly on the neck of one of the thugs who had begun to inch away.
“Shkkkkrsshhh--lfway home-” Luke’s radio replied, distractedly... before static strangled the channel entirely.
Luke frowned down at his wristband, and pressed the button down again, as firmly as he dared. It was rated for a hundred and fifty pounds of pressure before keying anyway, but it was so easy to misjudge these things...
Static.
Luke turned to Danny, standing stock still against the lights of the harbor.
“Hey. You got your radio on you?”
“You know it messes with my ki...” Danny began.
Luke sighed, took his wristband off, and delicately slid the control bar inside to a different channel.
“Krcc-Power Man to Spider-Man, come in.”
“Powers! What just ate Iron Man?” Peter demanded, with a noise in the background that sounded like wind.
“Be cool. We can see ‘im from the docks. Somethin’ must be fudgin’ up his station,” Luke assured him.
“Okay, okay, GOOD, I’ll be there in a-chchk-'" -Thwip-! “-Hey guys,” Peter said, plopping down onto a mooring bollard.
“S’up, Spider,” Luke grunted.
“Where are they-” Peter peered out towards the lights of the bridge, and spotted movement, “-ah, there, right. See ya-” -Thwip!-
...And he was gone again.
“I -hate- it when they do that...” Luke began.
“Send a dragon to fight a dragon,” Danny shrugged, and folded his arms, still watching.
Erratic flickers and darts of pale light could be seen from time to time, but little else.
“Is Iron man fightin’ the Green Goblin out there?” One of the thugs that Danny had taken down asked, rising cautiously to his elbows for a better view.
“What’s it to ya?” Luke asked.
“Well, it’d be fun to see Iron Man get his can kicked, but the Goblin’s fuckin’ dangerous, ya know?” The thug admitted, with a grin that showed a gleam of gold on the right hand side.
“What do you know ‘bout it?” Luke asked.
“Shut your %*&*! mouth, Paulie. We don’t owe this guy -nothin’-,” the forklift driver snapped.
“Screw YOU, man! What if that fire had spread, huh?” Paulie shot back.
Luke paused with his fist cocked back, and decided to let them fight.
“Yeah, dat freak’s crazy, we don’t owe him nothin’ either,” the coward from earlier agreed.
“C’mon, man, let the capes dust ‘im so we don’t have to,” Paulie argued.
“You brain-donors are gonna get us -waxed-. If tha boss hears you pissed off tha Goblin, you’re gonna pay,” the forklift driver began, angrily.
“I’m startin’ ta think YOU work for the Goblin, Mitch you name-droppin’ sonofabitch,” Paulie cut him off.
Luke wrapped a massive hand across the driver’s mouth, and looked back at the other two.
“You were sayin’?” He prompted.
“Well... -You want the Green Goblin, you can have ‘im. That fucker brings the heat down anyway. Word is he torched that warehouse he was usin’ himself an’ flew off in different threads.”
“What does he look like now?” Danny asked.
“They say he’s gotta helmet,” the coward volunteered.
“Yeah, a black helmet with a visor that hides his face, and leathers like wunna them street-racin’ biker punks,” Paulie elaborated.
“Did -you- see this?” Luke asked.
“Well no, but- -word gets around, you know what I’m sayin? Especially when the fruitcake blows up halffa Manhattan Island just ‘cause he’s pissed off...”
Suddenly there was a flash of light out on the center of the bridge, then a bright point of light chasing a more subdued one through the girders away from Manhattan.
The watchers on shore weren’t even sure who was chasing who anymore, but the speed of both fliers seemed a deadly impossibility. Then they vanished, disappearing into the forest of buildings on the other side.
-
Westcorp parking garage, NYC. 2:10 AM (same night).
“ARRRAAAAaagggggh!”
Tony threw his helmet across the basement parking garage in which he’d taken refuge, bouncing it once off the concrete floor and narrowly missing a Cadillac.
He stood, still trembling, and raked a hand back through his sweaty hair.
“Almost... fucking... had him...” Tony hissed, softly.
And he -had-.
Before his quarry had flown straight into- -and apparently through- -the teeth of a SHIELD ambush. Oh, the agents had given it the old college try... but they’d only had standard gliders, not whatever that thin, sled-looking thing was, and they hadn’t known about the multiband jamming.
Visual contact HAD to be maintained at all times, or-
Tony shut his eyes, and swallowed painfully.
They wouldn’t have been able to head him off -either-, if that hot-dogging terrorist hadn’t woken them all up first...
Or...
Had he been chasing the Green Goblin at all?
The evidence hinted at yes, but some of the details weren’t right. Weren’t...
The tech was a logical progression of what he’d seen in the burned-out warehouse, the speed and reflexes matched, but...
The guy just didn’t -act- like the Goblin. And he flew like... he enjoyed it?
Could well be the Goblin playing head games with a new persona, but-
“Oh, shit...”
Tony instantly ducked his head out of line with the garage security camera, and shielded his face with his arm. The damage, if that thing was on, had already been done.
And if course, he saw from the red monitor light, it was.
Tony sighed, smirked without much humor, and collected his helmet from behind the wheel of a white Jeep, keeping his face shielded in case there were other cameras.
Once he had his helmet back on, he took in the security cameras and wiring system.
Okay.
Okay, this could be worse, it was just a dummy system. No motion-tracking hardware, and nine times out of ten the signal fed only into a videotape in the security room, wherever that was. Or there could be an insomniac security guard who worked for the Maggia and was on the phone blowing his identity right now. One never knew.
Tony found the stairwell, gimmicked the lock, and walked up quickly. He snuck around the carpeted upper levels of some kind of office building until he found a building plan on the wall, and let himself into the security room.
Perfect.
Little more than a closet full of stacked videotape decks, all recording, and a shelving unit.
Tony thought briefly of magnetizing his repulsor disks and erasing everything in the room, but that might be noticed in the morning...
No.
He stopped all the tapes, and peeled the white handwritten labels off carefully with a thin blade hidden in the index finger of his left gauntlet. Then he swapped the labels with those on a set of tapes recorded a month ago, and put last month’s tapes into the corresponding machines, cued up to the same time. There would be a momentary glitch, but nobody really watched these things at normal speed anyway...
Tony magnetically erased the videotapes that might have had his face on them, fixed on the old labels, and stuck them in last month’s tape cases.
There.
The tampering might be discovered -someday-, but not anytime soon, and what would it really tell them if blank tapes from a month ago -were- discovered?
He...
Needed to get out of here. Now.
Tony avoided the security cameras in the stairwells by going out a window. He pushed it shut behind himself carefully, and magnetically re-locked it. Then he cut power, dropped eight stories, and caught himself just in front of the garage entrance as if he’d never seen it before, dropping lightly to the ground and walking away until he could-
Power instability warning light. Oh, that fucking figured...
“Fzzzt- -Hey, boss?” Tony’s radio crackled.
“Kkck-...Yeah, Spider, what?” Tony replied tiredly, reaching up to key his radio.
“Okay, he... got away, right? Are you coming back, or are you still, um...?”
“I’m taking the long way back,” Tony sighed, “-kkch-I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh. Well, I know a guy who wanted to talk to you, so I’ll just send him by where you are with a bag. Goodnight!” Peter told him cheerfully, and vanished off the channel.
“SPI-DER!” Tony snarled.
Soft, dead airwaves.
Tony snorted, and let go of the comm. button.
-
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 7:00 AM (later that morning).
Peter’s alarm clock went off.
He patted ineffectually at the snooze button, and accidentally hit the corner of the clock with the base of his palm.
-Thwip!-
The alarm clock fell on the floor, still buzzing and now silly-stringed in web.
It was going to be one of those days, Peter reflected with a sigh.
He got up and unplugged the clock, shoving it under the bed to deal with later. He got dressed, costume first, then street clothes on over it.
Peter scooped the textbooks on his desk into his backpack, stuffed his mask in against the spines, and tried to remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday.
...Wednesday, he decided, and half-ran downstairs.
Peter looked through the contents of the fridge critically, and thought about pancakes, and about omelets with salsa...
A slight noise behind him brought Peter’s spider-sharp senses to screaming wakefulness, and he whirled around, poised.
Harry had fallen asleep in the leather chair by the balcony doors again, and was just now waking up.
Slowly.
“...When’d you get in?” Harry asked, frowning against the morning sunlight.
“A little after two,” Peter replied, letting out the breath he’d taken.
“-Oh,” Harry said wryly, after a long moment of mental arithmetic.
“When did -you- get in?” Peter asked, settling on a cherry pastry and tearing open the wrapper as he walked over.
Harry was in his pajamas and bathrobe, and judging from the ungelled wavy chaos of his hair he must have showered at least a few hours ago...
“Ah... late. Later. I couldn’ find a cab,” Harry explained.
“...Are you drunk?” Peter realized, as he caught the scent of bourbon.
“Not anymore. I- I don’t think...” Harry replied, with a more truthful so-so motion of his hand.
“Great. We’ve got class in half an hour,” Peter stated, flatly.
“M’sorry, man,” Harry said, shutting his eyes, “-you can web, right? Or... take a bus?”
“Yeah, that’s...” Peter broke off and sighed, taking up one of Harry’s long-fingered hands and squeezing it. He wasn’t really sure what to -do- with the hand afterwards, so he put it down and took a step back. “-Just... sort yourself out and meet me in the quad for lunch, all right?”
“I can do that,” Harry nodded, looking up. He paused a moment, “-no, screw that, I’m -buying- you lunch. I’ll uh- -I’ll call and see if MJ wants to come out with us too,” Harry promised.
“That would be cool...” Peter agreed, perking up at the thought in a way that just made Harry’s head hurt worse.
-
Luke Cage’s apartment over the Gem Theater, 9:20 AM (same day).
Smooth sheets, and smooth skin beneath the fingertips of Tony’s left hand.
The backs of creamy-soft thighs with a tan that might be either natural or studiously nude beach...
The backs of his fingers just tracing her, mapping the sweet curves of her upturned ass.
Shifting, squirming appreciation, and a stifled whimper.
God she was beautiful, lying there under diffuse, cloud-tempered light that somehow told him they were in London...
A day to stay in, and see what it would take.
To enjoy the feel of her, and the scent of her body reawakening, beneath whatever the hotel used that smelled like dry roses.
Tony lay on his right side and stomach feeling warm and sleepy, right forearm tucked under his chin while his left hand played.
Bits of conversation came to him, a memory within a memory. They weren’t important.
Skin had a give, a complexity of texture that no machine could fully match, even where shapes and outward geometry could be duplicated. It held a fascination for him that he wasn’t about to try explaining out loud. An organic singularity.
Another shift of her hips, a catch of breath, and a knee drawn up slightly.
Tony’s fingers followed unhurriedly, skimming lightly across open country, sometimes stroking unapologetically into the warm, fascinating shadows her body presented him with...
A strange impression, both of skin and smooth-woven cloth.
Tony’s fingers curled around both, and he woke up in a loose pile of blankets and floor pillows in the lounge corner over by the stereo.
There was a fading scent of incense in the still air, and the distant, orderly confusion of mid-morning traffic below on forty-second street.
Steve’s brown bomber jacket was gone. -He would be at Avengers tower by now.
Luke was asleep in his bed on the other side of the room, snoring like a hibernating bear.
Danny sat on the new hardwood floor just off the edge of the lounge corner rug, legs folded in a challenging meditation pose.
Tony flexed the fingers of his left hand around a fold of the blanket he’d slept on, and inhaled deeply. The faint scent of desirable woman and complex rose perfume remained.
“Danny Rand, what have you been doing on this blanket?” Tony murmured, looking up with a smirk.
Danny blinked, and glanced down at him.
“...Why do you ask?” He replied, after a telling pause.
Tony balled up the blanket in question, and threw it at Danny’s head.
-
Downtown NYC, 4:40 PM.
Tony almost missed it.
He was flying low, below the level of the New York skyline, and barely faster than the cars on the street over a dozen stories down.
A window-washer, twelve feet below his securely cabled platform and partly upside-down in an attitude of falling.
Tony reacted instantly, braking and coming up under where the man would be, and... looked up.
The window washer looked down at him uncomfortably, still suspended in midair by some unseen force.
“-Am I missing something here?” Tony asked, maneuvering up to within arm’s length of the man and hovering.
“Can you, uh, gimme a hand?” The window-washer asked, apologetically.
No weapons or external-source energies, Tony’s scans told him.
“Sure,” Tony locked wrists with the man, and returned him to his suspended platform.
“Thanks,” the window-washer breathed, sliding down with his back against the window glass, as far from the edge of the platform as he could get.
The wind-toughened face above the window-washer’s light blue cold-weather coveralls was pale, and sweating.
Tony glanced at the weight rating sticker on the platform’s frame, then touched down beside him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just- -lemmie catch my breath, here...” the man nodded.
A radio bungee-corded into place on one side of the platform was playing The Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’.
Tony examined the side-gate that had come unlatched. A little bit corroded from the rain, the gate’s latch hadn’t fully closed. Tony played with the catch, wiggling it back and forth a few times until it worked, at least for the moment.
“-That needs to be replaced,” he stated, pointing out the latch.
The window washer nodded, smiling wryly.
“The name’s Jerome Perkins. Thanks for the hand up.”
“No problem. You were doing a lot better than most people do anyway...” Tony smirked behind his faceplate.
“Yeah, that’s ah... I can kinda opt out of gravity when I think about it real hard, but then I’m just stuck there, you know? I can’t fly for real,” Jerome explained.
“Well, you’re in the right profession,” Tony said, considering, “-lemmie make a call here...”
He reached up and pretended to key his left helmet radio.
“Hey base, this is Iron Man.”
Pause.
“No, things are fine, but I got a question for you,” Tony said, still talking to himself.
Pause.
“Okay, I’m talking to this guy who can cancel out gravity, but then he just floats there like a soap bubble and he can’t- -yeah, I’ll ask-”
Pause.
“-Can you be blown around by the wind?” Tony asked, turning back to Jerome for a moment.
“Yes, I hate it when that happens,” Jerome replied.
“-He says yes,” Tony said, pretending to return to his conversation.
Pause.
“Uh-huh.”
Pause.
“Okay... I’ll tell him. Thanks.”
Pause.
“-Heh.”
Tony pretended to let go of the helmet radio’s button, and turned back to Jerome.
“You need an air horn.”
“But I’m tryin’ -not- to get noticed. My boss doesn’t exactly know about this...” Jerome sighed.
“Well, actually all you need is a compressed gas cylinder,” Tony explained, “-a can of PAM or hairspray would work too.”
“Come again?” Jerome replied, now completely lost.
“Okay, you saw the moon landing, right? Once there’s no gravity, astronauts turn their space capsules around with maneuvering jets. You take the top off the air horn or whatever, point it away from the direction you wanna go, and press the valve so it sprays,” Tony instructed, “-there’s your maneuvering jet.”
“Well, shit...” Jerome considered, “-I’m gonna have to try that in the garage at home first.”
“Mm. Probably a good idea,” Tony admitted.
Jerome got up, and the two of them looked out over the city for a while.
“You weren’t on your way somewhere, were ya?” Jerome asked, finally.
“No, I was out looking for the Green Goblin. ...Come to think of it, you window guys probably see a lot up here, don’t you?” Tony guessed.
“Yeah, I’ve seen the Goblin out a few times- -not today, though. I’ve seen you, your best pal War Machine, The Human Torch, Spider-Man lots of times, some punk on a flying skateboard...”
“Wait- -black leathers, full-face helmet?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Jerome nodded.
“What was he doing?”
“It was right at dawn, when I was up on the roof setting up my gear. He was just flying in a straight line, you know? Like he had somewhere to be. I think he was comin’ up from somewhere east of here, maybe across the river.”
Manhattan Bridge, Tony thought with a thrill of predatory excitement.
“Which way was he headed?”
“Soho, it looked like, but he coulda turned off later,” Jerome admitted.
“Soho?” Tony echoed, thoughtfully.
“Yeah. -Go figure, huh?”
“Crkk- -Cap to Iron Man.”
“-‘Scuse me, I gotta take this-” Tony said, holding up a hand and keying his scrambled-channel left hand helmet-radio for real. “-Iron Man here, go ahead.”
“Are you busy?” Steve asked.
“Not really, why?”
“Good. Meet me at the Tyrannosaurus sculpture in Central Park, I want to show you something,” Steve said, sounding pleased with himself.
“Kkcrk--Okay, I’ll see you there,” Tony grinned.
The radio clicked off.
“You gotta go?” Jerome guessed.
“Duty calls,” Tony said seriously, glad he didn’t have to say it with a straight face.
“Thanks again for earlier,” Jerome said, offering Iron Man his hand.
“No problem Jerome,” Tony smiled, shaking the proffered hand carefully with his own metal-gauntleted one, “-if you see the Green Goblin or the Midnight Racer out again, give the Avengers a call for me, would you?”
“-‘The Midnight Racer’?” Jerome repeated.
“Captain America named him that,” Tony said, pausing in mid-air to answer, “-we were all tired of calling him ‘that biker guy’ anyway...”
“Oh, I gotcha. -Well, watch that first step,” Jerome smiled, waving.
“You too, man.”
Tony took off skywards.
-
Partially converted warehouse near Central Park, NYC. 5:03 PM (same day).
“What the hell happened in here...?” Tony asked, staring around at the walls of the empty warehouse. The red brick was scorched in some areas, and newly replaced in others. Some of the marks on the concrete floor were burned chalk-white. Cooked-off ammunition, maybe?
“Remember when ‘The Sons of the Serpent’ crashed the World Music Festival last year?” Steve began.
“Oh, this is where you finally tracked them down to?” Tony guessed, looking at the room with greater interest.
“Yes. -Come on upstairs with me,” Steve said, smiling.
Tony thought about how easy it would be to make the wings on Steve’s cowl swivel and rise or droop to match his facial expressions, and smirked.
“-Have you figured out why we’re here yet?” Steve asked as they climbed the loud, metal-frame staircase.
“No, it’s just- -good to see you.”
The door at the top of the stairs led into a long hallway with two far-spaced doors on the opposite side, perhaps offices. Steve took a key out of a small pocket hidden along his waistband, and opened the nearer one.
Tony fell silent.
What he could see of the room within was two large sets of multi-paned windows, -clearly built into the warehouse’s high brick wall in the first place- and a smooth expanse of old but well well-kept hardwood floor, glowing in the afternoon sunlight.
Hm.
-Cha-clunk-.
Steve looked over questioningly, then corrected his gaze an inch or so higher for the extra height Tony’s roller-skate wheels gave him.
Tony glided out across the room, paused with his gauntlets on the low brick windowsill, then pushed off and skated backwards. He turned, reversing direction, and looked around more, still skating.
The room was a long rectangle of open floor with large windows spaced evenly along the entire length of the outer wall. It reminded Tony of a dance studio or martial arts dojo, except for the kitchen built into the short left-hand wall, and the modest pile of cardboard boxes surrounding Steve’s old Army foot locker against the right-hand one. There was a doorway set into the right-hand wall as well, open and shadowed.
Steve came in, and shut the door behind him.
Tony stopped in the center of the softly gleaming wooden floor with an efficient twist and took his helmet off, his back to the high windows.
“When did you get this place?” He asked, fascinated.
“I picked up the keys this morning,” Steve replied, “-do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful...” Tony told him frankly, “-but what made you decide to go looking for an apartment in the middle of a goblin-hunt?” He added, skating closer and stopping again.
“A conversation I had with Pietro, actually,” Steve admitted, “-you see, his room is right next to mine...”
“-Ah,” Tony nodded once, amused.
“Anyway, the owner hasn’t been able to rent this place out since the ‘Sons of the Serpent’ were arrested here, but it’s not like they scare -me-, so it all worked out great.”
“-Who owns this place?” Tony asked, suddenly.
“Danny’s company, Rand-Meachum,” Steve replied guilelessly.
“O-kay, you just broke a truce I had with Luke, but you didn’t know about it, so I’m pretty sure this won’t count,” Tony calculated, optimistically.
“But Luke was there when I signed the lease,” Steve frowned, “-I would have said he looked happy about it.”
“Great. It must only apply to me, then,” Tony said, carefully.
Steve decided not to mention the part about Luke telling him he was ‘doing them all a favor’. He was quite familiar these kinds of running ‘you’re an easy lay’ jokes from traveling with the Howling Commandos during the war, and while he trusted Tony not to resort to the use of actual explosives, letting this come to a head now could only serve as a distraction. And they had a Goblin to catch.
Except the man was like smoke, like he didn’t even exist unless he was out wrecking havoc. The Green Goblin had had a lair in the past though, and it was a good bet he had one again, -somewhere-...
Somewhere like...
“Tony, how many other buildings does Rand-Meachum own?” Steve asked.
“A lot. Why do you ask?” Tony replied.
“How many of those can have been leased out since the Green Goblin’s old hideout burned down?” Steve pointed out.
“I love you,” Tony said decidedly, then more to himself, “-how the hell did I miss that...?”
There had to be -dozens- of real estate companies in New York City, but within a time window of less than two weeks...
Tony seized his helmet, and put it back on.
“Kckk- -Iron Man to Iron Fist...”
The sun had set into a red haze behind the city skyline.
Tony sat happily on the floor in boxers and Steve’s blue bathrobe, eating General Tso’s chicken out of a take-out carton by the light of his arc reactor. The only other light in the room came from a small bulb under the range hood, ill-equipped to illuminate even the whole kitchen. The diffuse light of the city beyond the windows was more than enough for Steve’s keen night vision though, and Tony liked watching him move in low light, a big pale shadow, light on his feet, and topped with shifting hints of reflected gold and silver.
Steve returned with a handful of records, and sat back down beside Tony.
“Two of these are yours,” he said, setting them down on his sleeping bag and picking up the open carton of sweet and sour pork.
“Mmh. Yeah, I was hoping you hadn’t brought those back yet...” Tony said, picking them up eagerly.
‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’. -Not his absolute favorites, but not bad.
-Whatever jazz record Steve had put on in the meantime wasn’t bad either, but he’d be damned if he’d admit that without a decent break-in period.
“How did you fit all these in the Jukebox, anyway?” Steve asked, tapping the top edge of ‘Jailhouse Rock’.
“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” Tony warned.
“-Oh. Well, that’s all right then...” Steve smiled.
“I’m kidding. I’ll show you when I re-build it,” Tony promised, and leaned over to kiss him.
Steve tasted like root beer and Chinese food... and something else that had always reminded him of mineral water but wasn’t. The serum had done a lot of things to Steve’s body chemistry, and Tony was pretty sure that some of them were still undocumented. ...Had the -shape- of Steve’s lips changed too, Tony wondered, or would Steve have felt like this- -tasted like this- in the late thirties?
Hard to concentrate on that question.
Nice lips, definitely. Well shaped, and the lower one was full.
Didn’t usually kiss like it was a contest either, although he could...
Warm silk, with a hint of fine-grit sandpaper around the edges.
...Damn......
The kiss finally broke, and Tony breathed, eyes shut.
“...Where did that come from?” Steve asked, his voice a little rough.
“I don’t know,” Tony swallowed, “-want another one?”
“-Yeah...”
The late thirties could lump it, Tony decided.
-
The roof of the World Trade Center’s south tower, 9:38 PM (same night).
War Machine crouched unmoving at the edge of the roof, scanning. His silhouette was slight and boxy against the starry night sky, obviously just another piece of the monolithic new skyscraper’s high-tech security equipment.
Except he wasn’t.
The modular camera that folded into the heavy armor of his left shoulder was already recording, patiently awaiting the command to synch its precise servo-driven movements with the direction of his eyes. If the pattern of the last few days held, his target would be passing by within an hour or so.
It was windy this high up, and a faint tracery of frost had already formed across the cooling surfaces of War Machine’s two-tone gray armor. A cold front was moving in, and it was cold inside the armor too. War Machine left his suit’s environmental controls alone. Heat would make him stand out to an infa-red scanner, and he’d taken worse cold in an unpressurized cabin over the English Channel.
-There-.
War Machine ordered the camera to zoom in sharply, and kept his eyes trained on the quick-moving black shape as it doglegged between the buildings three blocks north of his current position. So, the Midnight Racer was learning, no longer traveling in straight lines and relying exclusively on speed. That fit his profile perfectly, but it probably wouldn’t be very effective against the Green Goblin...
Peter clung to the warm shadowed wall beneath a nearby office building’s side ventilation duct, and watched the lurking silhouette above him silently. Something like a small weapon on War Machine’s left shoulder had suddenly come to life, tracking. Had he seen the Goblin? Why wasn’t he reporting it? Peter’s Spider-comm. remained silent... though admittedly, right across from the north tower’s massive radio antenna was not the best place to send a clear transmission...
War Machine unfolded himself after a long moment, standing tall above the railing of the roof, then jumped clean over it into the deep gulf of air below, no jets. He fired them barely thirty stories from the ground, caught himself, and cruised away unobtrusively in the direction his shoulder-weapon had tracked earlier. War Machine -had- the Avengers’ communication frequencies already, and even if he couldn’t decode Tony and Peter’s private channel, it would probably get his attention.
“All right, ‘Big Brother’, what are you up to...?” Peter muttered, webbing cautiously after him once War Machine had turned a corner up ahead.
---
Author:
otherhazards Beta:
prettyarbitrary Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: R
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Graphic superhero violence, brief het, Luke Cage’s accent.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Danny/FC implied, Harry+Mary Jane implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Nick Fury, and Luke Cage.)
Summary: Rise of the Midnight Racer
===========================================================
The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:02 AM.
Steve ducked his head under the shadow of a broken, blackened beam, and stood. The gutted warehouse was silent yet not, the whole unsafe structure still settling with faint crunches and whispery groans. Some sections of the roof had burned and fallen in entirely, others were bare grates of unbroken beams with the cold morning sky showing through them.
Steve gave the fragile roof an appraising glance as he walked into the roofless space in the center, red boots crunching on drifts of cinders.
“Over here, Cap,” a grizzled fireman signaled him, pointing to a half-buried strip of corrugated steel on the ground.
“Good morning, Lt. Farrell. What have you got?” Steve asked.
“See for yourself,” the fireman replied, and levered the thin steel sheeting aside with a crowbar.
It was scorched, warped in places and disjointed from what looked like something in the center blowing up and burning, but what the thing -had- been was chillingly clear. Hover-pads on the exposed underside, manta-wing silhouette exaggerated with wickedly sharp fairings along the leading edge...
And since this warehouse fire had taken place on the day before the Green Goblin’s firebombing spree, it left another question.
“...How many more have you found?” Steve asked, straightening.
“Two more of the Goblin’s gliders, and... part of a machine we don’t understand at all. We’re also standing on a carpet of blown munitions, and there were a couple of live pumpkin-bombs up in that southeast corner that the bomb squad took care of early this morning. -I’d have called you earlier, but until the bomb squad cleared the building my boys couldn’t get in, and... well, Cap, we’ve been busy.”
“I know.” Steve put a red-gloved hand on the fireman’s shoulder.
“So...” Lt. Farrell took out a cigarette and lit it with a match, “-who do you think burned out the Green Goblin?”
“I’m going to find out,” Steve promised, frowning down at the charred glider again.
“Anybody you wanna bring in for a look at this stuff? -Before- we call in the shmucks that lost it in the first place, I mean?” Lt. Farrell asked.
“Actually, there is...” Steve began.
-
The Warehouse District, NYC, 9:31 AM (same day).
“-Exhaust system’s different...” Tony muttered, brushing ash off the second Goblin glider with his fingers, “-the other one would’ve been faster, but it probably turned like a seven-forty-seven...”
“Are you saying these were prototypes, or just modified?” Lt. Farrell asked, crouching in the piled cinders with him.
“Who tha hell let a civilian into my crime scene?” Nick Fury demanded, before Tony could answer.
Lt. Farrell swore softly under his breath.
Steve glanced up at Fury, folded his arms across his chest, and looked vaguely guilty.
Tony stood, dusting off his hands, and regarded the approaching director of SHIELD with no favor.
“Tony Stark. I shoulda known,” Fury growled, glancing venomously between Steve and Lt. Farrell.
“You have a rat problem,” Tony interrupted him, pointing down at the glider significantly.
“Ya think I don’t know that? Now get out,” Fury ordered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the doorway. “-It ain’t like I don’t have -your- prints and boots on file...”
“Fine,” Tony said curtly, making a hands-off gesture, “-I’m gone.” His glance shifted to Steve and he added, “-I’ll be right outside.”
“Right,” Steve agreed, and looked back at Colonel Fury.
Tony left.
“DID it-” Fury snarled, fists on his hips, “-at any point occur ta you two cowboys that I might be smack in tha middle of a delicate internal investigation here? Tha kind that’s set back six months or MORE if some yahoo drops a line to the press about it?”
Both Steve and Lt. Farrell had been familiar with rank structures long enough to know a rhetorical question when they heard one.
“Cap-” Fury continued, stabbing Steve in the chest with a finger, “-if that goddamn hippie breathes a word of what he saw here today, I’m holding you personally responsible. Lt. Farrell, if forensics tells me any o’ this evidence is fucked up now, your ass is in a sling, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lt. Farrell.
“Whadda you think, Cap?” Fury challenged, “-or do you gotta go talk it over with somebody -first-?”
“Sir, may I speak with you in private?” Steve asked, as professionally as he could.
“Ya know what? I -like- that idea. C’mere, let’s you and me go have a little ‘chat’...” Fury growled.
-
Outside the burned building in the warehouse district, NYC, 9:45 AM (same day).
Tony gave Lt. Farrell the rest of his thoughts on the two Goblin Gliders and the wrecked vapor-atomization chamber outside, and... waited. He sat on one of the fire truck’s highly-polished steel running boards in jeans and a green, open-collared shirt he’d borrowed from Danny Rand that morning and felt decidedly... -naked-.
Unarmored.
“Hey- you’re Tony, right?” One of the younger firemen asked, pausing next to him.
“That’s me,” Tony agreed, casually.
“Thanks for leavin’ that note with Sergeant Gillespie about not sendin’ his guys into your place if it ever caught fire. -It woulda been my Cousin Louie’s turn to kick in the door the other night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony smirked, “-but I’m glad no one got hurt.”
“Heh. Right, right...” the young fireman grinned, clapping him on the shoulder, “-I’ll see you around, man.”
“You too-” Tony glanced at the young man’s name tag, “-O’Conner.”
O’Conner climbed up past him onto the truck.
Tony spotted a bright flicker of red white and blue coming out of the warehouse.
Steve’s back looked stiff, and he was holding his shield an inch or two up and closer to his body than he usually did. Tony frowned mentally and slid down off the fire truck, meeting him halfway.
“So... how did it go?” Tony asked.
“Colonel Fury can be a very... difficult man sometimes,” Steve sighed.
“Are we done here?”
“Yes,” Steve nodded, glancing back at the warehouse uncomfortably.
-
The Docks, NYC, 1:37 AM.
It was hard to say who was more startled, Luke or the criminals he’d walked in on.
They were looting- -or possibly exchanging- -the contents of a large wooden crate, but the moment they saw Luke come around the corner two of the five produced guns, and one was an M-14 machine gun.
Lead rain cut across Luke’s face and chest with all the impact of a handful of thrown pea-gravel. Luke squinted. He had only caught a bullet in the eye once, but having one of those suckers stuck under his eyelid while still hot from the barrel wasn’t something he -ever- wanted to try again, even momentarily.
“-You guys just don’t learn, do ya?” Luke yelled back at the shooters, and charged.
They scattered like bowling pins with the impact, and three of them made off into the shadows. One of the two left spotted a forklift nearby, and scrambled into the driver’s seat, firing up the engine.
Luke caught the oncoming forklift’s rising horizontal tines with the dexterity of a seasoned bull-leaper, and halted its ramming maneuver by bracing his feet and lifting straight upwards. The forklift’s wheels lost traction and spun, glaring headlights picking out the mahogany sweep of unbroken muscle through a wide tear in Luke’s yellow shirt, and glinting off his steel headband in the darkness.
“LAST STOP, SUCKAH!” Luke snarled, turning the open-sided vehicle ninety degrees and giving it a good shake.
The thug fell out onto the pavement with a cry, and lay there holding his head.
Luke set the slightly bent forklift down, and looked around for stragglers. The one who’d gotten the worst of the earlier collision was getting his bearings now, but he took one look at the forklift driver, then another at Iron Fist dragging his three remaining allies out of the shadows by two right wrists and a -foot-, and surrendered quickly.
Luke added the forklift driver to the growing pile of semiconscious bad guys, and stood glaring down at them, hands on hips.
“We’re lookin’ fo the Green Goblin. Now which one a’you punks feels like talkin?”
“I don’t know where he hangs out man, that guy’s a freak!” The thug who’d surrendered first yelped quickly, “-he keeps to himself, and who tha hell wants him, yanno?”
“-I- want ‘im,” Luke declared. He prodded the forklift driver with the toe of his boot, “-hey! Toro! You seen the Goblin around here, or what?”
“F$*#! off...”
Luke smiled, picked up a length of steel signpost-pipe lying a short distance away, and bound the forklift-driver’s arms to his sides with it.
“Now...” He said, “-let’s try that one again...”
“Luke,” Danny interrupted, quiet but clear.
“Whadda you got, Fist?” Luke asked, without looking up.
“There’s somebody flying around near that bridge,” Danny pointed, focusing far out over the glassy black water of the harbor.
Luke took a stride back from their captives, and looked. The repairs to the Manhattan Bridge were nearly complete, but the part under construction was lit at night, and- ...nothing.
“You sure it was a dude?”
“Well, it could have been a woman,” Danny admitted, “-but I definitely saw someone riding a glider.”
Luke pressed the stud on the side of one of his heavy steel wristbands down.
“Power Man to Iron Man. You up there?”
“-fzkkkk- -Just wrapping something up here, whadda you got, Powers?” Tony replied, after a good six second pause.
“Glider. Manhattan Bridge. Don’t know who it is yet, but get yo jets out here.”
“Kk-On my way,” Tony acknowledged.
Less than two minutes later, Iron Man was there. And gone, a fading blue-white spark streaking out over the water.
“Ckk-I’ve got him on radar...” Tony reported.
“SHIELD?” Luke asked. ...They’d nearly been arrested for hassling two glider-mounted SHIELD agents already...
“No be- kkk- on,” Tony said, with what sounded like satisfaction.
“Go get ‘im, man!” Luke shouted into his wristband, putting a boot gently but firmly on the neck of one of the thugs who had begun to inch away.
“Shkkkkrsshhh--lfway home-” Luke’s radio replied, distractedly... before static strangled the channel entirely.
Luke frowned down at his wristband, and pressed the button down again, as firmly as he dared. It was rated for a hundred and fifty pounds of pressure before keying anyway, but it was so easy to misjudge these things...
Static.
Luke turned to Danny, standing stock still against the lights of the harbor.
“Hey. You got your radio on you?”
“You know it messes with my ki...” Danny began.
Luke sighed, took his wristband off, and delicately slid the control bar inside to a different channel.
“Krcc-Power Man to Spider-Man, come in.”
“Powers! What just ate Iron Man?” Peter demanded, with a noise in the background that sounded like wind.
“Be cool. We can see ‘im from the docks. Somethin’ must be fudgin’ up his station,” Luke assured him.
“Okay, okay, GOOD, I’ll be there in a-chchk-'" -Thwip-! “-Hey guys,” Peter said, plopping down onto a mooring bollard.
“S’up, Spider,” Luke grunted.
“Where are they-” Peter peered out towards the lights of the bridge, and spotted movement, “-ah, there, right. See ya-” -Thwip!-
...And he was gone again.
“I -hate- it when they do that...” Luke began.
“Send a dragon to fight a dragon,” Danny shrugged, and folded his arms, still watching.
Erratic flickers and darts of pale light could be seen from time to time, but little else.
“Is Iron man fightin’ the Green Goblin out there?” One of the thugs that Danny had taken down asked, rising cautiously to his elbows for a better view.
“What’s it to ya?” Luke asked.
“Well, it’d be fun to see Iron Man get his can kicked, but the Goblin’s fuckin’ dangerous, ya know?” The thug admitted, with a grin that showed a gleam of gold on the right hand side.
“What do you know ‘bout it?” Luke asked.
“Shut your %*&*! mouth, Paulie. We don’t owe this guy -nothin’-,” the forklift driver snapped.
“Screw YOU, man! What if that fire had spread, huh?” Paulie shot back.
Luke paused with his fist cocked back, and decided to let them fight.
“Yeah, dat freak’s crazy, we don’t owe him nothin’ either,” the coward from earlier agreed.
“C’mon, man, let the capes dust ‘im so we don’t have to,” Paulie argued.
“You brain-donors are gonna get us -waxed-. If tha boss hears you pissed off tha Goblin, you’re gonna pay,” the forklift driver began, angrily.
“I’m startin’ ta think YOU work for the Goblin, Mitch you name-droppin’ sonofabitch,” Paulie cut him off.
Luke wrapped a massive hand across the driver’s mouth, and looked back at the other two.
“You were sayin’?” He prompted.
“Well... -You want the Green Goblin, you can have ‘im. That fucker brings the heat down anyway. Word is he torched that warehouse he was usin’ himself an’ flew off in different threads.”
“What does he look like now?” Danny asked.
“They say he’s gotta helmet,” the coward volunteered.
“Yeah, a black helmet with a visor that hides his face, and leathers like wunna them street-racin’ biker punks,” Paulie elaborated.
“Did -you- see this?” Luke asked.
“Well no, but- -word gets around, you know what I’m sayin? Especially when the fruitcake blows up halffa Manhattan Island just ‘cause he’s pissed off...”
Suddenly there was a flash of light out on the center of the bridge, then a bright point of light chasing a more subdued one through the girders away from Manhattan.
The watchers on shore weren’t even sure who was chasing who anymore, but the speed of both fliers seemed a deadly impossibility. Then they vanished, disappearing into the forest of buildings on the other side.
-
Westcorp parking garage, NYC. 2:10 AM (same night).
“ARRRAAAAaagggggh!”
Tony threw his helmet across the basement parking garage in which he’d taken refuge, bouncing it once off the concrete floor and narrowly missing a Cadillac.
He stood, still trembling, and raked a hand back through his sweaty hair.
“Almost... fucking... had him...” Tony hissed, softly.
And he -had-.
Before his quarry had flown straight into- -and apparently through- -the teeth of a SHIELD ambush. Oh, the agents had given it the old college try... but they’d only had standard gliders, not whatever that thin, sled-looking thing was, and they hadn’t known about the multiband jamming.
Visual contact HAD to be maintained at all times, or-
Tony shut his eyes, and swallowed painfully.
They wouldn’t have been able to head him off -either-, if that hot-dogging terrorist hadn’t woken them all up first...
Or...
Had he been chasing the Green Goblin at all?
The evidence hinted at yes, but some of the details weren’t right. Weren’t...
The tech was a logical progression of what he’d seen in the burned-out warehouse, the speed and reflexes matched, but...
The guy just didn’t -act- like the Goblin. And he flew like... he enjoyed it?
Could well be the Goblin playing head games with a new persona, but-
“Oh, shit...”
Tony instantly ducked his head out of line with the garage security camera, and shielded his face with his arm. The damage, if that thing was on, had already been done.
And if course, he saw from the red monitor light, it was.
Tony sighed, smirked without much humor, and collected his helmet from behind the wheel of a white Jeep, keeping his face shielded in case there were other cameras.
Once he had his helmet back on, he took in the security cameras and wiring system.
Okay.
Okay, this could be worse, it was just a dummy system. No motion-tracking hardware, and nine times out of ten the signal fed only into a videotape in the security room, wherever that was. Or there could be an insomniac security guard who worked for the Maggia and was on the phone blowing his identity right now. One never knew.
Tony found the stairwell, gimmicked the lock, and walked up quickly. He snuck around the carpeted upper levels of some kind of office building until he found a building plan on the wall, and let himself into the security room.
Perfect.
Little more than a closet full of stacked videotape decks, all recording, and a shelving unit.
Tony thought briefly of magnetizing his repulsor disks and erasing everything in the room, but that might be noticed in the morning...
No.
He stopped all the tapes, and peeled the white handwritten labels off carefully with a thin blade hidden in the index finger of his left gauntlet. Then he swapped the labels with those on a set of tapes recorded a month ago, and put last month’s tapes into the corresponding machines, cued up to the same time. There would be a momentary glitch, but nobody really watched these things at normal speed anyway...
Tony magnetically erased the videotapes that might have had his face on them, fixed on the old labels, and stuck them in last month’s tape cases.
There.
The tampering might be discovered -someday-, but not anytime soon, and what would it really tell them if blank tapes from a month ago -were- discovered?
He...
Needed to get out of here. Now.
Tony avoided the security cameras in the stairwells by going out a window. He pushed it shut behind himself carefully, and magnetically re-locked it. Then he cut power, dropped eight stories, and caught himself just in front of the garage entrance as if he’d never seen it before, dropping lightly to the ground and walking away until he could-
Power instability warning light. Oh, that fucking figured...
“Fzzzt- -Hey, boss?” Tony’s radio crackled.
“Kkck-...Yeah, Spider, what?” Tony replied tiredly, reaching up to key his radio.
“Okay, he... got away, right? Are you coming back, or are you still, um...?”
“I’m taking the long way back,” Tony sighed, “-kkch-I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Oh. Well, I know a guy who wanted to talk to you, so I’ll just send him by where you are with a bag. Goodnight!” Peter told him cheerfully, and vanished off the channel.
“SPI-DER!” Tony snarled.
Soft, dead airwaves.
Tony snorted, and let go of the comm. button.
-
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 7:00 AM (later that morning).
Peter’s alarm clock went off.
He patted ineffectually at the snooze button, and accidentally hit the corner of the clock with the base of his palm.
-Thwip!-
The alarm clock fell on the floor, still buzzing and now silly-stringed in web.
It was going to be one of those days, Peter reflected with a sigh.
He got up and unplugged the clock, shoving it under the bed to deal with later. He got dressed, costume first, then street clothes on over it.
Peter scooped the textbooks on his desk into his backpack, stuffed his mask in against the spines, and tried to remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday.
...Wednesday, he decided, and half-ran downstairs.
Peter looked through the contents of the fridge critically, and thought about pancakes, and about omelets with salsa...
A slight noise behind him brought Peter’s spider-sharp senses to screaming wakefulness, and he whirled around, poised.
Harry had fallen asleep in the leather chair by the balcony doors again, and was just now waking up.
Slowly.
“...When’d you get in?” Harry asked, frowning against the morning sunlight.
“A little after two,” Peter replied, letting out the breath he’d taken.
“-Oh,” Harry said wryly, after a long moment of mental arithmetic.
“When did -you- get in?” Peter asked, settling on a cherry pastry and tearing open the wrapper as he walked over.
Harry was in his pajamas and bathrobe, and judging from the ungelled wavy chaos of his hair he must have showered at least a few hours ago...
“Ah... late. Later. I couldn’ find a cab,” Harry explained.
“...Are you drunk?” Peter realized, as he caught the scent of bourbon.
“Not anymore. I- I don’t think...” Harry replied, with a more truthful so-so motion of his hand.
“Great. We’ve got class in half an hour,” Peter stated, flatly.
“M’sorry, man,” Harry said, shutting his eyes, “-you can web, right? Or... take a bus?”
“Yeah, that’s...” Peter broke off and sighed, taking up one of Harry’s long-fingered hands and squeezing it. He wasn’t really sure what to -do- with the hand afterwards, so he put it down and took a step back. “-Just... sort yourself out and meet me in the quad for lunch, all right?”
“I can do that,” Harry nodded, looking up. He paused a moment, “-no, screw that, I’m -buying- you lunch. I’ll uh- -I’ll call and see if MJ wants to come out with us too,” Harry promised.
“That would be cool...” Peter agreed, perking up at the thought in a way that just made Harry’s head hurt worse.
-
Luke Cage’s apartment over the Gem Theater, 9:20 AM (same day).
Smooth sheets, and smooth skin beneath the fingertips of Tony’s left hand.
The backs of creamy-soft thighs with a tan that might be either natural or studiously nude beach...
The backs of his fingers just tracing her, mapping the sweet curves of her upturned ass.
Shifting, squirming appreciation, and a stifled whimper.
God she was beautiful, lying there under diffuse, cloud-tempered light that somehow told him they were in London...
A day to stay in, and see what it would take.
To enjoy the feel of her, and the scent of her body reawakening, beneath whatever the hotel used that smelled like dry roses.
Tony lay on his right side and stomach feeling warm and sleepy, right forearm tucked under his chin while his left hand played.
Bits of conversation came to him, a memory within a memory. They weren’t important.
Skin had a give, a complexity of texture that no machine could fully match, even where shapes and outward geometry could be duplicated. It held a fascination for him that he wasn’t about to try explaining out loud. An organic singularity.
Another shift of her hips, a catch of breath, and a knee drawn up slightly.
Tony’s fingers followed unhurriedly, skimming lightly across open country, sometimes stroking unapologetically into the warm, fascinating shadows her body presented him with...
A strange impression, both of skin and smooth-woven cloth.
Tony’s fingers curled around both, and he woke up in a loose pile of blankets and floor pillows in the lounge corner over by the stereo.
There was a fading scent of incense in the still air, and the distant, orderly confusion of mid-morning traffic below on forty-second street.
Steve’s brown bomber jacket was gone. -He would be at Avengers tower by now.
Luke was asleep in his bed on the other side of the room, snoring like a hibernating bear.
Danny sat on the new hardwood floor just off the edge of the lounge corner rug, legs folded in a challenging meditation pose.
Tony flexed the fingers of his left hand around a fold of the blanket he’d slept on, and inhaled deeply. The faint scent of desirable woman and complex rose perfume remained.
“Danny Rand, what have you been doing on this blanket?” Tony murmured, looking up with a smirk.
Danny blinked, and glanced down at him.
“...Why do you ask?” He replied, after a telling pause.
Tony balled up the blanket in question, and threw it at Danny’s head.
-
Downtown NYC, 4:40 PM.
Tony almost missed it.
He was flying low, below the level of the New York skyline, and barely faster than the cars on the street over a dozen stories down.
A window-washer, twelve feet below his securely cabled platform and partly upside-down in an attitude of falling.
Tony reacted instantly, braking and coming up under where the man would be, and... looked up.
The window washer looked down at him uncomfortably, still suspended in midair by some unseen force.
“-Am I missing something here?” Tony asked, maneuvering up to within arm’s length of the man and hovering.
“Can you, uh, gimme a hand?” The window-washer asked, apologetically.
No weapons or external-source energies, Tony’s scans told him.
“Sure,” Tony locked wrists with the man, and returned him to his suspended platform.
“Thanks,” the window-washer breathed, sliding down with his back against the window glass, as far from the edge of the platform as he could get.
The wind-toughened face above the window-washer’s light blue cold-weather coveralls was pale, and sweating.
Tony glanced at the weight rating sticker on the platform’s frame, then touched down beside him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just- -lemmie catch my breath, here...” the man nodded.
A radio bungee-corded into place on one side of the platform was playing The Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’.
Tony examined the side-gate that had come unlatched. A little bit corroded from the rain, the gate’s latch hadn’t fully closed. Tony played with the catch, wiggling it back and forth a few times until it worked, at least for the moment.
“-That needs to be replaced,” he stated, pointing out the latch.
The window washer nodded, smiling wryly.
“The name’s Jerome Perkins. Thanks for the hand up.”
“No problem. You were doing a lot better than most people do anyway...” Tony smirked behind his faceplate.
“Yeah, that’s ah... I can kinda opt out of gravity when I think about it real hard, but then I’m just stuck there, you know? I can’t fly for real,” Jerome explained.
“Well, you’re in the right profession,” Tony said, considering, “-lemmie make a call here...”
He reached up and pretended to key his left helmet radio.
“Hey base, this is Iron Man.”
Pause.
“No, things are fine, but I got a question for you,” Tony said, still talking to himself.
Pause.
“Okay, I’m talking to this guy who can cancel out gravity, but then he just floats there like a soap bubble and he can’t- -yeah, I’ll ask-”
Pause.
“-Can you be blown around by the wind?” Tony asked, turning back to Jerome for a moment.
“Yes, I hate it when that happens,” Jerome replied.
“-He says yes,” Tony said, pretending to return to his conversation.
Pause.
“Uh-huh.”
Pause.
“Okay... I’ll tell him. Thanks.”
Pause.
“-Heh.”
Tony pretended to let go of the helmet radio’s button, and turned back to Jerome.
“You need an air horn.”
“But I’m tryin’ -not- to get noticed. My boss doesn’t exactly know about this...” Jerome sighed.
“Well, actually all you need is a compressed gas cylinder,” Tony explained, “-a can of PAM or hairspray would work too.”
“Come again?” Jerome replied, now completely lost.
“Okay, you saw the moon landing, right? Once there’s no gravity, astronauts turn their space capsules around with maneuvering jets. You take the top off the air horn or whatever, point it away from the direction you wanna go, and press the valve so it sprays,” Tony instructed, “-there’s your maneuvering jet.”
“Well, shit...” Jerome considered, “-I’m gonna have to try that in the garage at home first.”
“Mm. Probably a good idea,” Tony admitted.
Jerome got up, and the two of them looked out over the city for a while.
“You weren’t on your way somewhere, were ya?” Jerome asked, finally.
“No, I was out looking for the Green Goblin. ...Come to think of it, you window guys probably see a lot up here, don’t you?” Tony guessed.
“Yeah, I’ve seen the Goblin out a few times- -not today, though. I’ve seen you, your best pal War Machine, The Human Torch, Spider-Man lots of times, some punk on a flying skateboard...”
“Wait- -black leathers, full-face helmet?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Jerome nodded.
“What was he doing?”
“It was right at dawn, when I was up on the roof setting up my gear. He was just flying in a straight line, you know? Like he had somewhere to be. I think he was comin’ up from somewhere east of here, maybe across the river.”
Manhattan Bridge, Tony thought with a thrill of predatory excitement.
“Which way was he headed?”
“Soho, it looked like, but he coulda turned off later,” Jerome admitted.
“Soho?” Tony echoed, thoughtfully.
“Yeah. -Go figure, huh?”
“Crkk- -Cap to Iron Man.”
“-‘Scuse me, I gotta take this-” Tony said, holding up a hand and keying his scrambled-channel left hand helmet-radio for real. “-Iron Man here, go ahead.”
“Are you busy?” Steve asked.
“Not really, why?”
“Good. Meet me at the Tyrannosaurus sculpture in Central Park, I want to show you something,” Steve said, sounding pleased with himself.
“Kkcrk--Okay, I’ll see you there,” Tony grinned.
The radio clicked off.
“You gotta go?” Jerome guessed.
“Duty calls,” Tony said seriously, glad he didn’t have to say it with a straight face.
“Thanks again for earlier,” Jerome said, offering Iron Man his hand.
“No problem Jerome,” Tony smiled, shaking the proffered hand carefully with his own metal-gauntleted one, “-if you see the Green Goblin or the Midnight Racer out again, give the Avengers a call for me, would you?”
“-‘The Midnight Racer’?” Jerome repeated.
“Captain America named him that,” Tony said, pausing in mid-air to answer, “-we were all tired of calling him ‘that biker guy’ anyway...”
“Oh, I gotcha. -Well, watch that first step,” Jerome smiled, waving.
“You too, man.”
Tony took off skywards.
-
Partially converted warehouse near Central Park, NYC. 5:03 PM (same day).
“What the hell happened in here...?” Tony asked, staring around at the walls of the empty warehouse. The red brick was scorched in some areas, and newly replaced in others. Some of the marks on the concrete floor were burned chalk-white. Cooked-off ammunition, maybe?
“Remember when ‘The Sons of the Serpent’ crashed the World Music Festival last year?” Steve began.
“Oh, this is where you finally tracked them down to?” Tony guessed, looking at the room with greater interest.
“Yes. -Come on upstairs with me,” Steve said, smiling.
Tony thought about how easy it would be to make the wings on Steve’s cowl swivel and rise or droop to match his facial expressions, and smirked.
“-Have you figured out why we’re here yet?” Steve asked as they climbed the loud, metal-frame staircase.
“No, it’s just- -good to see you.”
The door at the top of the stairs led into a long hallway with two far-spaced doors on the opposite side, perhaps offices. Steve took a key out of a small pocket hidden along his waistband, and opened the nearer one.
Tony fell silent.
What he could see of the room within was two large sets of multi-paned windows, -clearly built into the warehouse’s high brick wall in the first place- and a smooth expanse of old but well well-kept hardwood floor, glowing in the afternoon sunlight.
Hm.
-Cha-clunk-.
Steve looked over questioningly, then corrected his gaze an inch or so higher for the extra height Tony’s roller-skate wheels gave him.
Tony glided out across the room, paused with his gauntlets on the low brick windowsill, then pushed off and skated backwards. He turned, reversing direction, and looked around more, still skating.
The room was a long rectangle of open floor with large windows spaced evenly along the entire length of the outer wall. It reminded Tony of a dance studio or martial arts dojo, except for the kitchen built into the short left-hand wall, and the modest pile of cardboard boxes surrounding Steve’s old Army foot locker against the right-hand one. There was a doorway set into the right-hand wall as well, open and shadowed.
Steve came in, and shut the door behind him.
Tony stopped in the center of the softly gleaming wooden floor with an efficient twist and took his helmet off, his back to the high windows.
“When did you get this place?” He asked, fascinated.
“I picked up the keys this morning,” Steve replied, “-do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful...” Tony told him frankly, “-but what made you decide to go looking for an apartment in the middle of a goblin-hunt?” He added, skating closer and stopping again.
“A conversation I had with Pietro, actually,” Steve admitted, “-you see, his room is right next to mine...”
“-Ah,” Tony nodded once, amused.
“Anyway, the owner hasn’t been able to rent this place out since the ‘Sons of the Serpent’ were arrested here, but it’s not like they scare -me-, so it all worked out great.”
“-Who owns this place?” Tony asked, suddenly.
“Danny’s company, Rand-Meachum,” Steve replied guilelessly.
“O-kay, you just broke a truce I had with Luke, but you didn’t know about it, so I’m pretty sure this won’t count,” Tony calculated, optimistically.
“But Luke was there when I signed the lease,” Steve frowned, “-I would have said he looked happy about it.”
“Great. It must only apply to me, then,” Tony said, carefully.
Steve decided not to mention the part about Luke telling him he was ‘doing them all a favor’. He was quite familiar these kinds of running ‘you’re an easy lay’ jokes from traveling with the Howling Commandos during the war, and while he trusted Tony not to resort to the use of actual explosives, letting this come to a head now could only serve as a distraction. And they had a Goblin to catch.
Except the man was like smoke, like he didn’t even exist unless he was out wrecking havoc. The Green Goblin had had a lair in the past though, and it was a good bet he had one again, -somewhere-...
Somewhere like...
“Tony, how many other buildings does Rand-Meachum own?” Steve asked.
“A lot. Why do you ask?” Tony replied.
“How many of those can have been leased out since the Green Goblin’s old hideout burned down?” Steve pointed out.
“I love you,” Tony said decidedly, then more to himself, “-how the hell did I miss that...?”
There had to be -dozens- of real estate companies in New York City, but within a time window of less than two weeks...
Tony seized his helmet, and put it back on.
“Kckk- -Iron Man to Iron Fist...”
The sun had set into a red haze behind the city skyline.
Tony sat happily on the floor in boxers and Steve’s blue bathrobe, eating General Tso’s chicken out of a take-out carton by the light of his arc reactor. The only other light in the room came from a small bulb under the range hood, ill-equipped to illuminate even the whole kitchen. The diffuse light of the city beyond the windows was more than enough for Steve’s keen night vision though, and Tony liked watching him move in low light, a big pale shadow, light on his feet, and topped with shifting hints of reflected gold and silver.
Steve returned with a handful of records, and sat back down beside Tony.
“Two of these are yours,” he said, setting them down on his sleeping bag and picking up the open carton of sweet and sour pork.
“Mmh. Yeah, I was hoping you hadn’t brought those back yet...” Tony said, picking them up eagerly.
‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’. -Not his absolute favorites, but not bad.
-Whatever jazz record Steve had put on in the meantime wasn’t bad either, but he’d be damned if he’d admit that without a decent break-in period.
“How did you fit all these in the Jukebox, anyway?” Steve asked, tapping the top edge of ‘Jailhouse Rock’.
“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” Tony warned.
“-Oh. Well, that’s all right then...” Steve smiled.
“I’m kidding. I’ll show you when I re-build it,” Tony promised, and leaned over to kiss him.
Steve tasted like root beer and Chinese food... and something else that had always reminded him of mineral water but wasn’t. The serum had done a lot of things to Steve’s body chemistry, and Tony was pretty sure that some of them were still undocumented. ...Had the -shape- of Steve’s lips changed too, Tony wondered, or would Steve have felt like this- -tasted like this- in the late thirties?
Hard to concentrate on that question.
Nice lips, definitely. Well shaped, and the lower one was full.
Didn’t usually kiss like it was a contest either, although he could...
Warm silk, with a hint of fine-grit sandpaper around the edges.
...Damn......
The kiss finally broke, and Tony breathed, eyes shut.
“...Where did that come from?” Steve asked, his voice a little rough.
“I don’t know,” Tony swallowed, “-want another one?”
“-Yeah...”
The late thirties could lump it, Tony decided.
-
The roof of the World Trade Center’s south tower, 9:38 PM (same night).
War Machine crouched unmoving at the edge of the roof, scanning. His silhouette was slight and boxy against the starry night sky, obviously just another piece of the monolithic new skyscraper’s high-tech security equipment.
Except he wasn’t.
The modular camera that folded into the heavy armor of his left shoulder was already recording, patiently awaiting the command to synch its precise servo-driven movements with the direction of his eyes. If the pattern of the last few days held, his target would be passing by within an hour or so.
It was windy this high up, and a faint tracery of frost had already formed across the cooling surfaces of War Machine’s two-tone gray armor. A cold front was moving in, and it was cold inside the armor too. War Machine left his suit’s environmental controls alone. Heat would make him stand out to an infa-red scanner, and he’d taken worse cold in an unpressurized cabin over the English Channel.
-There-.
War Machine ordered the camera to zoom in sharply, and kept his eyes trained on the quick-moving black shape as it doglegged between the buildings three blocks north of his current position. So, the Midnight Racer was learning, no longer traveling in straight lines and relying exclusively on speed. That fit his profile perfectly, but it probably wouldn’t be very effective against the Green Goblin...
Peter clung to the warm shadowed wall beneath a nearby office building’s side ventilation duct, and watched the lurking silhouette above him silently. Something like a small weapon on War Machine’s left shoulder had suddenly come to life, tracking. Had he seen the Goblin? Why wasn’t he reporting it? Peter’s Spider-comm. remained silent... though admittedly, right across from the north tower’s massive radio antenna was not the best place to send a clear transmission...
War Machine unfolded himself after a long moment, standing tall above the railing of the roof, then jumped clean over it into the deep gulf of air below, no jets. He fired them barely thirty stories from the ground, caught himself, and cruised away unobtrusively in the direction his shoulder-weapon had tracked earlier. War Machine -had- the Avengers’ communication frequencies already, and even if he couldn’t decode Tony and Peter’s private channel, it would probably get his attention.
“All right, ‘Big Brother’, what are you up to...?” Peter muttered, webbing cautiously after him once War Machine had turned a corner up ahead.
---
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But I won't spoil it. (G)
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I was a little confused about what was going between Luke and Danny and Tony about the building, but I might have missed something obvious or maybe it's supposed to be somewhat vague?
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The building thing is more complex. In canon, Luke was uncomfortable with Danny throwing money around, because... well, a lot of reasons, most of them a matter of where Luke grew up and pride, and Danny being totally clueless about the value of money on Earth and about adult Earth cultural sensitivities in general.
In JBH, Tony was around, and since he can't keep good advice to himself much, he taught Danny a lot about what money was, and about what could be done with it ...if Danny chose to.
The problem is, Luke found Danny becoming more comfortable with the proper uses of money on the advice a a guy who's lost ONE company already rather disturbing.
Add to that the fact that Luke wasn't sure Tony was a friend until later, and...
Well, he wanted to protect Danny. As he does in Canon.
So he basically told Tony that if he ever profited by any money or property that was Danny's, or entered into a business venture with him, Luke would hang him up by the short hairs.
Basically.
Tony also, (in Luke's opinion, anyway...) had a well established reputation for being easy. Hence,
"Heah we go again..." back when Steve had just seen Tony's helmet off for the first time...
And telling Steve that Tony 'ran the village bike shop'...
And the recent comment about how Steve was 'doing them all a favor' (by taking Tony home)...
Luke's kind of being a dick actually, and as Tony let slip while he was drunk, Luke probably doesn't have as much room to talk as he pretends to.
(“Where-” Tony sniffed, looking up, “-where’s Spider?”
“I sent him home with Luke and Danny hours ago.”
Tony snorted abruptly, and dissolved into a helpless giggling fit.
“-What?” Steve asked, looking into his face with concern.
“Nothing, I- -I’m sure Peter’s safe,” Tony managed, then cracked up again and added, “-I jus’ hope he remembers some advice I gave ‘im...”)