BLUE LIGHT SECRETS
Official story, meet truth. Would Tony Stark lie to you? About his family & past? The true nature of his dealings w/fellow degenerate mask supergenius, Harlequin? Um, yes? Why? Is this a Clash of Titans? Conspiracy to take over the world? Oops.
(Author's Note: This is comics-verse, but, mea culpa, I like Whiplash's backstory in the movie-verse better, so the character as portrayed her will be an amalgamation, including preservation of the name Ivan rather than Anton Vanko, for story-related reasons)
Chapter One: Upsetting the Apple Cart
Mullholland Drive, Los Angeles, 1945. Near Mullholland Farm, estate of Errol Flynn
I; Tony
"Well? What are you grinnin' about? I knocked out your tooth?"
"So? That's just two bits for me! It was loose anyway."
Tony Stark, five, jumped to his feet, kicked the older boy in the shins, and then punched him in the nose.
He began running up the hill, heading for the sanctity of the former home of his playmate, Sean Flynn, who was a year younger.
Where he hoped Sean's father would be home, because he knew his wasn't.
As usual.
The older boy was down, and out, but his toadies weren't.
"Get that Stark kid! Knock his fuckin' block off!"
Tony looked behind him, and saw his pursuers, blurrily, in hot pursuit, through the eye that wasn't swollen shut.
Realising he would never make it, he crashed through a hedge, and climbed the big palm tree in the front of the house, stopping onto to fill his pockets with some of the ornamental stones that lined the path.
From his vantage point, he began pelting them his enemies with rocks.
And laughing.
Another day of grand adventure in the life of Tony Stark, Boy Wonder!
Tune in tomorrow, for the next exciting episode.
The toadies, frightened at the assault began to scatter every which way, making a clamour on the lawn as they tried to escape.
That roused the master of the house, who strode out onto his front lawn looking quite like Robin Hood.
Even in his bathrobe.
"It's Mr. Flynn! Beat it! Beat it!" one of the toadies yelled.
The boys ran like hell.
"Stay the hell off of my lawn, you monkeys! Go break up your own fathers' houses!"
Errol Flynn laughed as the boys retreated, and Tony Stark came down from the tree.
"C'n I come'n wash my face 'n your bathroom, Unca Errol? They beath me up pretty good." He lisped.
"Let me see your face, Tony."
The lad's lip was spilt, and he was bleeding something fierce from his mouth.
Flynn patted his pockets, and found a wad of tissues.
"Here, stuff these in the socket and bite down, Hard. I'll have to get you a teabag to bite on. Where's your tooth?"
"'N my pocketh. Thisth tooth justh came in, too. My Dadth's gonna murdalithe me."
"Who, Howard? He'll never notice. We'll have you all fixed up by the time he gets home. I'll take you to the dentist. And if he asks, today Sean was visting, and you two were playing, when you tripped on a roller skate, and fell down the steps, and that's' how your face got banged up. Come on. In the house with you."
Tony sniffed some blood back into his nose, took Uncle Errol's hand, and followed him into his house.
"I'm gonna get blood all over everything."
"That's alright, Tony. It won't be the first time. Blood wipes off."
"You shoulda seen me! I really got 'em. Just like in your movies, Unca Errol! Wham! Bang! Zoom!"
"Yes, but I haven't got my face that smashed up in a movie since I played opposite Bette Davis. Nora! Find me a teabag. Tony's been in another fight, and this time those little bastards knocked out one of his permanent teeth..."
II: Howard
Howard Stark didn't have much time for, or interest in, his young son.
He was a busy man.
Millioniare industrialist, inventor, scientist, Hollywood mogul.
Where did he have time for a little boy, especially a rambunctious, inquisitive, mischievious boy like Tony?
That had been his wife's province, but Maria had died earlier that year.
Howard engaged a series of governesses to look after Tony.
He didn't know what to do with him.
Whereas Howard was withdrawn, introspective, a brooding man, little Tony was bright, like he was, but he was like a human dynamo.
Howard loved his son, but he just couldn't relate to him.
Tony was too much like Maria; the pain was too much to bear.
But the governesses were better at schooling him than supervising him, and he ran wild all over the neighbourhood, indeed, all over the city.
Every day there was a message for Howard when he came home.
Tony broke a window, or went skinny-dipping in someone else's pool, got into a fight with their son, and so on.
Sometimes there were phone calls from the police, or from business owners, or associates of his.
His boy was certainly very adept for a five year old, he always found a way to get his hands on some ready cash lying around and go.
Go, go, GO!
The boy seemed to think life was like a movie, and he was the star.
He ended up all over town, whether at a hamburger stand or movie house, or at one of the studios, having somehow gone over the wall and wandered into an office, onto a soundstage, even wheedled his way in as an extra in a crowd scene.
There was, however, always an open door for him at the home of one of his father's best friends, and it was often a short run up the hill from whatever trouble he was in to Mulholland Farm.
People were far more likely to look on Tony's ways as charming and precocious, knowing that he was Howard Stark, CEO of RKO's son, and Errol Flynn's nephew.
That was how Errol introduced him around.
Flynn had a natural repore with the boy; Howard supposed he missed his own son, or maybe it was a case of like going with like, but Errol never told Tony to get lost. While he was at home, and when he wasn't, he always let Tony know where he was going to be, if he was in LA.
He took Tony to movie sets with him, and other places Howard supposed; he kept the boy out of trouble.
Tony usually finished his school lessons by noon, which gave him plenty of time for his travels, and doing his best to trail his friend's father, his father's friend, the idolized Uncle Errol wherever he could.
Tony wanted to be just like Uncle Errol when he grew up, and with his own son, Sean, held in the vice-grip of the dreaded ex-wife, the Tasmanian Devil was glad to have a bright young pupil to pass the torch to.
Howard stopped hiring governesses for Tony, and stuck to tutors.
After all, someone had to be a father to the boy.
And, matching his own long list of phobias, foibles and flaws with that of his friend and neighbour, well, better Flynn than him.
He looked at his son, while they ate dinner, and realised that the boy's face looked like ten pounds of raw hamburger.
He was eating soup.
"Tony?"
"Yea, Dad?"
"What happened to your face?"
"Sean was visitin' at Unca Errol's house. I tripped onna roller skate an' fell down a coupla steps."
"Oh? Did you, now?"
Howard Stark asked his maid to bring the telephone.
"Hello, Flynn? It's Howard. Tony tells me he had an accident at your place."
"I'm so sorry, Howard. Sean was visiting, and the boys were roller skating in the upstairs hallway. Nora tried to get them to stop, but you know how boys are..."
New York City, Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, 1966
III: Bruce
Bruce Wayne was sitting in his penthouse office at the top of the Wayne Enterprises building, talking on the telephone.
On the opposite side of the street was Stark Tower, and Tony's office was right across from Bruce's.
He was also on the phone, sitting with his feet up on his desk and a drink in his hand.
"Tony, isn't it a little early for a drink?"
"It's never too early for a drink. Are you watching me, again, Bruce?"
"I can't help it. You made sure your office was right across from mine."
"Do you watch me all the time?"
Bruce rolled his eyes.
There was a gap of ten years between him and Tony.
Bruce had first met Tony Stark's when he was a teenage wunderkind undergrad at MIT and Bruce was a wunderkind guest professor in his twenties.
They had been friends ever since.
"No. In fact, thanks to you and your childish bullshit, I have to close the blinds of my office quite often. Tell me, Tony, have you missed anybody in the secretarial pool?"
"Actually, no. I've cross checked with the personnel list. I would think you would need a drink this morning."
"Why?"
"Well, your stepdaughter did dress up in drag as a man and beat the unholy living fuck out of Ozymandias after the Watchmen meeting, last night, while the rest of the team looked on in horror. I hear that the attack was so quick, so vicious, so savage, so brutal, that hardened superheroes were frozen to the ground in shock, unable to move themselves until the assailant spat in Adrian's bloody face, and, laughing wildly, ran away."
"Tony, a lot of people in this city have a grudge against Adrian Veidt. You and me, included."
"Yes, but very few of those people, you and me, included, are crazy, violent or possess the ten gallon brass balls that last night's marauder has."
Tony stood up and started pacing around behind his desk.
"How old is Little Miss Napalm, Bruce?"
"I thought so! No, I knew it! Let me tell you something, Tony. Just because you looked up from your beer at Grossmann's long enough to see that the little tomboy you would tinker on cars with on occasion when you came to visit Wayne Manor was all grown up, doesn't mean I'm going to have a key made for you to the lock on my stepdaughter's bedroom door! She's 16, Tony. Only 16. Don't forget what happened to your mentor when they caught him with his hands in the cookie jar. Sure, she likes to drink, and drive fast cars, and run around with men. But, if you lay a finger on her, a fucking finger, Tony, I will kidnap you in your Iron Man armor and squash you under the hydraulic lift in your own garage! Slowly."
"Ouch! Calm down, Papa Bear! Actually, I was thinking with the big head. Who does she work for?"
"She's a student at NYU. A sophomore, this year. And she's Dr. Manhattan's laboratory and research assistant. She also works for S.H.I.E.L.D. They recruited her after her last...incident in the field."
"You mean in the course of her being the Harlequin, newest scourge of the city's ne'er-do-well's. The most brutal, violent and yet efficient mask to hit the mean streets since the Comedian did so, at her age in 1938. I might be impressed. Well, is she as smart as they say she is? I mean, does she really go and do all of these missions, herself? I mean she's…"
"Just a girl? Tony, this is 1966. Nobody is just a girl, anymore. Haven't you heard of Women's Lib?"
"Women's libbers burn bras. Not city blocks."
"Well, Trivelino is very liberated. Are you making an offer? Because I know she sent Stark Industries a resume."
"Well, the thing is, I got a resume from her, and I already sent her an offer. I was thinking we could start her in the secretarial pool."
Now Bruce Wayne stood up.
"Tony, my stepdaughter is in the process of earning a bachelor's degree in quantum physics, a bachelor's degree in evolutionary biology, a special certificate in history and she is already slated to do her graduate work as Dr. Manhattan's research assistant. She works with Jon, not for him. She speaks Russian and Italian fluently, and is a Level 3 S.H.I.E.L.D Agent. Covert. Trivelino is an expert marksman with a Thompson submachine gun as well as any other kind of gun you can think of. Not to mention she could kick the shit out of just about anybody, and she's been seriously wounded in her capacity as the Harlequin, twice. Earlier this year, she became the youngest ever JLA trainee. And you want her in the secretarial pool?"
"Oh come on, Bruce. I know she's tough. After all, I was there when she staggered into Grosmann's with half of her face caved in. That German surgeon her father found did a beautiful job. You wouldn't know it had ever happened. Still some of her other scars are visible, and I see the way she struts around Grossmann's. But a lot of, pardon me, Irish people from Brooklyn, let's say, are tough. Tough and smart don't necessarily go together. Come on. You can tell me if all that college bit is really true, or if she works as Jon's secretary. Or even if she got that S.H.I.E.L.D. job sleeping with mean old Eddie Blake. I'll bet he's her type. Tall, dark and homicidal."
Bruce Wayne slammed his phone down.
Anyone standing in his office in the next fifteen minutes would have seen him burst into his competitor's office, punch him out, and storm out of the building.
Pepper Potts came into Tony Stark's office in time to see Bruce Wayne across the street, angrily closing his blinds.
She noticed the fresh shiner swelling her employer's left eye shut.
"I earned this fair and square, Pepper. Would you get me an icebag? And three or four Excedrins. That was what you call the Bat-Punch. Holy hematoma, Batman! And send Bruce a nice card. Something to the affect of I'm sorry that I'm such an idiot. Oh. Did you mail that letter from Stark Industries to Miss Napier?"
"Why?"
"Well, I know Bruce. If his stepdaughter wasn't actually gifted, he never would have come over and knocked me on my pompous ass. I think I've made a mistake. I offered her a starting position in the secretarial pool. If Bruce was insulted, I'm afraid Miss Napier might fix it so I end up in twenty different Mason jars at the Fountain Avenue dump in Brooklyn."
Pepper smiled.
"Alright, Potts, what's so funny?"
"I mailed that letter three days ago. I had no idea that was what you offered her. Had I known you made such an insulting offer, I never would have. But it looks like the joke's on you. I imagine Ms. Napier got the letter yesterday."
"Oh. I see. Pepper, call my lawyers. I think I'm going to need a will. Do you think you're up to being the new CEO?"
"I practically am, Mr. Stark. I'll call the lawyers. Immediately."
IV: Liv
Now, you and I both know that my reputation, for want of a better word, sucks.
I realise that this is my fault, and, frankly my dear, I don't give a fuck.
And what I mean by that is that I can't complain if people call me a killer, a drunk, a thug and a whore. My personal life is pretty crazy, and if you told me that I spend most of my free time at my best pleasantly lit and at my worst in an alcoholic twilight, coasting from fast fuck to cheap thrill to barroom brawl and street fight to fast car and back again, hitting a lot of bars and swaggering through half of Brooklyn along the way, when my nose isn't in a book or under a hood, I would have to cheerfully agree with you.
I'm not a beauty queen, after all.
I'm a street-fighting, dirty-jobs mask.
Shit, half of my jaw is all titanium-adamantium plates, pins and screws, and all of my teeth on the left sides are titanium-adamantium implants, and I was back out on the street, working, while my jaw was wired shut.
I just laid off those pain pills and replaced them with Scotch, and I was right as rain.
But, one thing that nobody, and when I say nobody, I mean not even Adrian, who holds me, personally, in the lowest esteem, can say much about my professional reputation.
My work speaks for itself.
I have never let my personal obsessions, insanities and eccentricities get in the way of my work, in the mask or for S.H.I.E.L.D, or my scholarly pursuits, at NYU or Jon's lab.
And you don't have to take my word for it.
My academic record speaks for itself, and in the nine months I have been hitting the streets, they may have hit me back hard, but I've got the juice for it. Whether you look at arrest records, body counts, or the fact that having most of the left side of my face destroyed and taking a thirty aught six slug that went right through my bulletproof vest and into my guts hasn't slowed me down, you know that no matter what else I do, I do my fucking job.
You can talk to anybody who ever Called the Harlequin, they'll tell you I really do get the job done.
On time.
In time.
Every time.
And I have the scars and a mouthful of million-dollar experimental titanium-adamantium dental work to prove it.
Now, if you're looking not only to really piss me off, but also to truly insult and offend me, the best way to do it would be to malign my professional reputation.
So, you can only imagine how pleased I was when my reply to the packet I sent to Stark Industries, containing many incontrovertible proofs of everything I have told you here was an offer from the CEO that I take a position in the secretarial pool.
Not to knock it, because, for a lot of broads that would be a pretty groovy job. Good pay, good benefits, and the fringe benefit of probably getting at least one ride on the big boss' baloney pony, which, rumour had it, is supposed to be quite a magnificent cock.
And the guy backing it up, well, in case you are either male, a lesbian, or dead, let me inform you that Mr. Tony Stark is a big hot slice of what you might call Grade A Prime Beef.
The real deal.
100 per cent high class Park Avenue tail.
Not only is he old-time movie star handsome, movie star like, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, especially Errol Flynn, the man was practically his father, and, in a more modern sense Sean Connery, he's supposed to be one hell of a good dirty fuck.
A man with no shame.
A cocksman of great renown, the kind of guy who will take a broad to screaming, weeping heights of ecstasy by showing her just how much fun it is to get down and dirty and porno palace nasty.
Now, some people might hold this against him, but he's also a big-time drunk and a narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive asshole and all-around dick.
But in a really funny, charming, and endearing kind of way.
And, he's probably as smart, or smarter than I am.
I gotta admit, I always admired him.
I mean, when I was little, I had the biggest goddamned crush on Errol Flynn; when his movies came on I was glued to the screen.
I mean, I had the Old Man get me fencing lessons, that's how goofy I went on my swashbuckling kick.
I liked the movies, too, of course.
I'm not all pussy and no heart.
And Tony, he was kinda one of my heroes when I was a little kid, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world when I was 13 and he helped me out with my Model T when he came to visit Bruce, a couple of times.
I also gotta admit that it got me fairly hot under the collar, being that close to the Tony Stark.
You know me, by the time I was 13 it was all go with the fire down below.
The memory of that devilish twinkle in his blue eyes, with grease on his face and beads of sweat in his black hair, telling me I was a natural born gearhead, well, it kept me warm on many cold nights.
I mean, he's not my Eddie, for whom I burn with the white-hot intensity of a thousand flaming suns in supernova.
The kind of love I have for Eddie, if you want to call it that, it's hungry, it's insectile.
Like a fire that burns slowly, but with great heat.
It eats me alive like a swarm of locusts, and leaves me screaming and breathless and broken in my frustration and derangement.
Every year, it gets worse.
I would burn down the stars if it would bring me a millimetre closer to having him; I would loose entropy and chaos upon the universe to turn it all to shapeless mud; I would watch every man and beast and creeping thing burn and drown and suffer and die if I thought it would give me one moment with Eddie Blake.
And if I die in the night, when I'm out there doing my job, fighting for my soul in the streets, using the bad in me to do good, then while I lie bleeding to death in an alley full of piss and puke and beer cans and trash, saved, I'll cast a spell with my last breath, and say his name one more time.
Say it to the white moon, say it to my red blood, say it to the dark night in the darkest part of the concrete jungle.
Say it one last time before I die.
Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.
See?
I told you I wasn't all pussy and no heart.
Anyway, you can imagine that despite all this, or maybe because of it, when I get this letter I also get the urge to go to Grossmann's, call Tony out, and rearrange his handsome face right in front of half the masks in New York in the middle of 5th Avenue at lunchtime.
But, as my father always says, don't get mad before you can get even.
To whit, I put my anger to good use and I came up with an idea.
Yes, it was a wonderful, awful idea.
I took a week off of my mask work, and told Pop, yunno, Bruce, I mean, and pretty much everybody else I knew that I had some heavy work to do for Jon, and started sleeping in my cot in my office at Jon's lab.
I got his permission to do some private work, after promising him it wasn't anything diabolical.
Well, it isn't.
Not unless, of course, you happen to be unfortunate enough to be Anthony Edward Stark.
Secretarial pool, huh?
Wait until he gets a load of me.
Brooklyn, New York, 1966, Trivelino Mac's
V: Ivan
One thing that keeps a man alive in Siberian gulag is knowing who's as bad of a man as he.
So, when the conversation in the bar dulled to almost a whisper after the door banged open and shut, Ivan Vanko turned around to see who had walked in.
The fact it was a woman didn't surprise him.
In Kolyma he had known many women who were tougher, and stronger, and hardier than the strongest of men; they had a way of surviving.
She had a mass of long red hair, and wore men's clothes, dressed like a roughneck or a construction worker.
The young woman walked heavily in her big, muddy boots, with a healing split lip, and a fading shiner on the side of her face.
She made her way to the bar, to a seat that had been oddly unoocupied all night, took off her coat and plaid flannel shirt, and hung them on the chair in back of her.
He was surprised to see she was heavily tattooed in gulag style on her hands, fingers, arms, throat, and chest, but considering, not so shocked to see a grooved scar that seamed the side of her face, running down her jawline from her hairline.
"Hiya Vito. What a fuckin' night. Lemme have a Newcastle Brown and a shot of Jack. Leave the bottle." She said.
Her eyes scanned the room, and met his.
She lifted the shot glass, downed the whiskey, and smiled.
"Oh no, Vanya. Don't smile back at Napalm. You know what Napalm does? Burns things to crisp. Do your business and go on your way. And be glad you escape intact."
Ivan Stavrogin was about fifteen years Ivan Vanko's senior, and he had spent time in the same gulag as Vanko had.
They had not known each other there, but, had met recently, both working the same job at the docks.
Ivan Vanko was glad to know him.
Even after so many years, at Kolyma, Ivan the Bear was a legend.
Sometimes you would meet a man who had been tattooed by the Bear, and he would be a legend, himself, for it, if for no other reason than that he had lived so long.
The Bear, they said, was the wiliest man who ever lived. He always had one more packet of cigarettes, one more gramme of bread, one more pair of boots, and he was always willing to trade.
No one knew how, or why, and it was still a mystery how a man who was under a 25 year sentence could get paroled into the Red Army.
Word had him in all parts of the globe, but he had been living in Brooklyn since the end of the war, with two women, sisters, with whom he had a son and a daughter with one sister and a son with the other, having never married either of them.
He told the tax man he was a semi-employed garbage man, but Ivan the Bear made his living the way he always had, by his wits and under the table, all the while collecting a government check.
He worked the American system as smoothly as he had worked the Soviet system, and his younger son, "Crazy Paulie" Blake, a mountain of a young man who was as heavily tattooed as his father and went around town with hair to the middle of his back and a shaggy, brown, often braided Rasputin beard was his apt pupil.
The boy had a tattoo on his chest that said "Live Freaky, Die Freaky" with a crown and a Romanov double-eagle between the phrases, and his arms were heavy with the tattoos he wore, to commemorate what he learned from his father, Ivan the Bear, and his uncle, The Comedian.
Looking at the woman, who was even more heavily tattooed than Paul Ivanovoitch with the Bear's handiwork, Vanko wondered if she was Paul Ivanovitch's.
"She's with Paul Ivanovitch?"
"No. They are just good friends. His uncle, that's who she wants. But Napalm, she's not tied to one man. She does what she likes. To who she likes to do it to. She'll burn you, my friend. Take the money and run."
Vanko laughed.
"I like fire. I take chance."
They moved over to the empty seat next to her.
"Metallaushka, I have a friend who wants to meet you. This is Vanya."
"Little Metal One?" Whiplash laughed.
"Napalm's whole face, left side, all adamantium and titanium. All teeth on that side. Three men attack her with rebar. She crawl away. But they don't." Ivan Stavrogin bragged.
He looked at his watch.
"Well, I have business in morning. Drink one for me."
Ivan the Bear winked, put on his hat and coat, and went on his way.
Leaving Ivan Vanko alone with a hard-drinking, red-haired, heavily-scarred, heavily-tattooed young woman whose nickname was Napalm.
Who he had learned through the Bear, wanted to do business with him.
"I see you were at Kolyma, too. That's rough. Vito, bring my new friend here the best vodka you've got, and keep it coming."
She lifted her glass to him again, and toasted him in Russian
"And what would you know about Kolyma?" Vanko asked, grinning with his gold-toothed smile, continuing in his native tongue.
"Just what Ivan told me. Which was much. I was about 13. I had a long talk with some Stalinists in Central Park, and they kinda got to me. Ivan told me a thing or two. Never talked to those guys again. Now the Trotskysists, they're a whole lot of fun. And the anarchists. But me, I'm Irish and a little bit Sicilian. So I'm a Democrat."
"Is that what you are?"
Vanko switched to English, and poured himself a drink.
"You are very young girl, but you are tattooed all over, and many scars. Your face all banged up from fight. You dress like man, you fight like man, you drink like fish. But you're not stupid. I can tell."
Liv shrugged.
"I'm a woman of many parts. Some of them are rougher than others."
Vanko laughed.
"Yes. I too am of many parts. And I don't want to talk about them. So, we talk of other things. And we drink."
"What about our business?"
"I don't like to talk business in public. After we drink, we talk in private."
"Sounds good to me."
Later, the Russian was putting his clothes back on in the room over the bar, and Napalm sat on the end of her bed, still naked, reaching for the whiskey on top of the television as she turned it on.
She lit a cigarette and offered him one, which he took, and lit with his own lighter.
"So, you want copy of my father's copy of arc reactor plans, so that you can make Tony Stark look foolish. Humiliate him completely."
"Yep."
Whiplash laughed.
"For this, I should pay you! Tell me. What has he done to you, Metallaushka?"
"I've worked hard all my life to get what I have. And I've paid for it. Sometimes in blood. But you know what my tattoos mean, so you know that. I put in an application to Stark Industries. The son of a bitch has known my stepfather since he was in college. And every claim I made in that resume, I backed up with proof. Fucker offered me a job in the secretarial pool. It's like him telling me, well you say you're smart, but I don't believe you. But you're a broad, so you're good enough to suck my dick. He's gonna pay for that, Vanya. I'm gonna burn him."
"You think maybe you kill him?"
She laughed, sharply.
"If I do, I'm gonna fuck him, first."
They both laughed.
"I meet you here tomorrow. With copy of plans." Whiplash agreed.
Stark Mansion, Mulholland Drive, 1949
VI: Tony
Since his father had sort of given up being his father, with the exception of their weekly appointments for dinner on Fridays and Sundays and the occasional appearances at breakfast, and ceded the task of his parenting to Uncle Errol and Aunt Nora, the latest Mrs. Flynn, Tony Stark's life had evened itself out.
He had a pretty freewheeling life for a ten year old; he was used to fending for himself and doing what he pleased.
Within the skeleton of the rules Uncle Errol set up for him.
Never travel alone when it's dark.
Never go anywhere your father or I never took you.
If you follow me to a woman's house, stay in the living room and listen t the radio, or watch TV
Don't count your money in public or tell people you're rich.
Don't dress or act like you come from money.
Be polite and charming with everybody, unless they give you trouble. Then you put the boot in.
As the recipient of a large allowance and a monthly transit pass his father always kept current, Tony got around pretty well.
After he was done meeting with his tutors, which he made sure to complete around noon, Tony was out of the house and at Mulholland Farm like a shot, seeking his first real meal of the day.
Even if Uncle Errol wasn't around, Aunt Nora always was, and Tony was always welcome.
He tried to always wrap up his studies by noon, because if he got up the hill by half-past, then he was there when, as Aunt Nora put it, Uncle Errol had "arisen from the crypt."
On those days, he got to go to a movie set, or on some other kind of crazy voyage.
Of course, he was supposed to be home in bed at night, but he rarely was, because night was when all the really exciting stuff happened.
He made an appearance at home around seven, when his father came home, spent an hour or two doing his homework, and then he was up the hill like a shot, again.
It was no use his uncle telling him to stay in his own bed at night, because Tony would hide in the trunk of his car if he had to, so, most of the time, he got to go along for the ride.
Tony figured he'd been in just about every living room of every star in Hollywood, and in every nightclub.
It got so he was the unofficial mascot; everybody knew Flynn's nephew, Tony.
He couldn't be at Uncle Errol's elbow for all the high times, because he was only 10. So, Tony spent a lot of time in movie people and women's living rooms, or kitchens, watching their TV's or listening to their radios, or talking to their cooks, sometimes playing with their kids, but he still got to go a lot of places and meet a lot of people, and do a lot of things.
They had an understanding, the young rogue and the old master.
Uncle Errol never gave him up to the people whose windows he broke, or whose flowerbeds he trampled, or whose movie theatres he snuck into and sat in all day, on rainy days and so on, and Tony swore up and down to Nora that all Uncle Errol did when he wasn't at work was hang around with his drinking buddies, at their homes, on in nightclubs.
So, all was well until he managed, at the age of 10, to learn everything that his current tutor, who his father hired when he was five, was certified to teach him.
And she was certified to teach up to the end of junior high.
His father hired a new tutor, and the woman was a complete lunatic.
She made him wear a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit.
Velvet, no less.
Short pants, slicked back hair and the whole deal, and when she found out who he was spending much of his time with, his protests that most of it was with Mrs. Flynn and her little girl, and even Uncle Errol couldn't be out every night making like Captain Morgan, the old biddy still went nuts, and wouldn't let him out of the house.
At all.
Not even in the yard, for fear "that man" would come and steal him.
Tony hadn't spent so much time indoors since he was a baby, and it drove him crazy.
He tried talking to his father, but talking to his father was like talking to a brick wall.
Finally, after two weeks of this torture, salvation came in the form of a concerned Uncle Errol coming to the house and demanding that the tutor release Tony.
She went so far as to call his father at work, and after Howard gave his permission, she let Tony go.
He was mortified to leave the house, looking like he was.
"Gimme your coat, Uncle Errol, hurry, fa Chrissakes! If anybody sees me dressed like this, sheez, I'll hafta beat up every kid in town!"
"Here. Take it. Now, we'll mess up your hair a little. My God, Tony, what the hell are you wearing? What's that crazy broad been doing to you?"
"She's crazy! Loony tunes! And my father won't get rid of her. I am NOT going back there. I know there's some of my clothes at your house, an' I shoved a couple twenties into my pocket from the old man's nightstand while she was hovering over you when you was onna phone. I'm not goddamn well goin' back! I don't care if my father calls the police! I'll tell 'em she put her hand down my underpants!"
"She didn't, did she?"
"Her? Are you kidding? She wouldn't put her hand down your underpants."
"Tony, not every woman in the world wants to have at me."
"Really? You coulda fooled me."
Safe in his home away from home, Tony narrated the catalogue of horrors.
Other than the little fairy suit, there was the fact that all they read was the Bible, and not even the good parts, and how she was always hitting him on the knuckles and the back of the neck with a ruler, and that he for some reason had to take three baths a day.
"And that's not even the creepy part! She's always telling me how God can see you if you touch yourself. I mean, I've been doing it under the bed. Can God see me if I'm under the bed?"
Nora Flynn laughed behind her hand.
"She actually told you that? Next thing you know, she'll be crawling under the bed after you. And something like that, well it's enough to ruin your life." Uncle Errol said.
He looked shocked, and disgusted.
"So, I can come out from under the bed? God won't punish me?"
"Certainly not. Has he punished me? Do you see any hair on my palms?"
"Errol!"
"What, Nora? She'll turn the boy into an axe murderer."
"I don't think I want to hear the rest of this conversation. Tony, you can stay here as long as you want to. Eventually, Howard will notice you're gone, and come here looking for you, and Errol and I will explain what's been going on. Look at those bruises on his neck, and his hands. Howard should be more careful with his boy."
Uncle Errol waited until Nora was gone.
"You and I both know your father better than that. You'll be here until you're thirty if we wait for Howard to notice something's wrong. Listen, Tony. How would you like to see that sanctimonious bitch hoist by her own petard?"
"Boy! Would I! Somebody's got to take her down a peg or two."
"That's just what I was thinking. What time does Howard usually make his appearance, on Fridays?"
"While I'm watching Howdy Doody."
"Well, that's a little early in the day, even for me, but I think I can swing it."
"With her? I don't think she even looks at men, Uncle Errol. She's prob'ly all smooth down there, like a doll."
"She'd only like to think she is. You see, Tony, women who are like your tutor, they're the worst kind. They think sex is all sick and dirty. So, if you make them an offer that is sick and dirty, they'll just about break their necks taking you up on it."
Tony nodded.
That actually made a lot of sense.
"But how are you going to get to her?"
"You leave that to me. Just follow my lead. We'll see to her, don't worry."
VII: In Like Flynn
Mrs. Amelia Skeffington knew all about men like her employer's closest neighbour, Mr. Errol Flynn.
Why, Mr. Skeffington had been a filthy degenerate, that was why she had to divorce him.
As such, she was shocked and appalled that Mr. Stark would permit his son to associate with such a notorious person, let alone run wild all over a town like Los Angeles.
Naturally, she had seen Mr. Flynn's movies, but, they could do wonders with makeup; in person, she imagined that the man must look horribly dissipated and evil.
She was quite shocked, then, that he didn't look like some horrible ogre when he saw young Mr. Stark home, one evening.
"Tony, aren't you going to introduce me to your governess?"
Mrs. Skeffington blushed.
She was still quite a young woman, not yet thirty, and her head was turned by such a complement.
Governess?
Well!
"Yeah. This is Miz Skeffington. I gotta go to the can."
Young Mr. Stark wriggled past both of them and started running up the stairs.
"Anthony! Is that any way for you to talk! And no running on the stairs!" Mrs. Skeffington reminded him.
"Awwww, shit, ya mother wear's army boots!" Tony yelled.
Mr. Flynn look quite shocked.
"Anthony! What's got into you, boy?" he insisted.
The boy stopped flat in his tracks.
"Nothing, sir. I just, erm..."
"You had just better walk down those stairs and apologise to Mrs. Skeffington. Now."
"Yes, sir."
Amelia couldn't believe it.
She had never seen the boy so meek, mild and obedient.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Skeffington, ma'am. Can I go upstairs, now, Mr. Flynn, sir?"
"Well, only because it's an emergency. And I had better not hear about any more of your shenanigans, young man. And you are going to have dinner with your father, tonight. I expect to see you dressed for it. Go and change out of those dirty Levis and tennis shoes this minute." Mr. Flynn said, sternly.
"Yes sir, Mr. Flynn."
Anthony walked up the stairs.
Walked.
"Well, I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it! He listens to you! He doesn't listen to his father like that!"
"Would you, if you were him? The poor boy. His mother dies, and his father leaves him to be raised by a succession of silly girls. Before I took the lad in hand, he was out, running in the streets like a wild Indian. You've got to crack the whip, on a boy his age. Or else, the Good Lord only knows what they'll grow up to be like."
"Mr. Flynn, you are not like I expected you would be."
"Well, I do have my faults, Mrs. Skeffington. But I know right from wrong, and I know what's decent. I know how my father brought me up, and I'll bring Howard's son up just the same, if he's not up to the job."
Amelia was impressed.
Mr. Flynn was well-dressed, and well-spoken, and as handsome in person as he was in his films.
"Do you have to leave right away, Mr. Flynn, or can I offer you some tea in the TV room?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Skeffington."
Over tea, Mr. Flynn discussed his past with her, frankly.
"I'll admit it, in my younger years, I was a very wicked man. I wouldn't dream of saying, in front of a lady, the kinds of things I did. But, after my trial, when I was accused of a hideous crime I didn't commit, and the prosecutor was able to make it stick, because my reputation was that bad, I saw the error of my ways. Since then, I've been a changed man."
Anthony paused in the doorway, wearing a clean shirt, a tie, and dress pants.
"Can I watch TV, Mr. Flynn, sir? Howdy Doody's going to be on, soon."
"You certainly may, Anthony. But sit on your cushion on the floor, the adults are talking."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"Mr. Flynn, you have such a way with that boy."
"Well, I don't want him to go the way I did. You know, I was a year younger than him when I started running around with women? My father was a professor, he was a busy man, he didn't realise how carefully I had to be watched. How wicked I was, even as a boy."
Lies, Errol thought.
"Really? Nine years old? One would think that sort of thing didn't occur until a boy was 13 or 14?"
"Oh, by 13 or 14, I could pass for a youth of 17 or 18."
Damned lies.
"You could?"
"I did. Why, I was expelled from high school when I was 16, for having an affair with the Headmaster's wife."
Unbelievable damned lies.
"Oh, my!"
But, Amelia believed every word.
"Yes, it's awful. My life was just a catalogue of wickedness. All I ever thought about was women. And drink. Of course, when I was in New Guinea, I found that the native women were much more agreeable than white women. And the vice they introduced me to! I wouldn't describe it to you. It was sick. And dirty. But, God save me, I liked it. I used to be so proud of myself, as a man, if you know what I mean, I thought a woman should want me to have her do what I liked. Of course, in Hollywood, girls are no stranger to these kinds of things. It's shocking. It disgusts me, now. When I think, I used to drive my car while such things were going on. I might have killed myself, and any number of young ladies. But, it would have served us right. Both of us."
Mrs. Skeffington blushed to the roots of her hair.
"That's why I divorced Mr. Skeffington. He...required such things of me."
"My dear lady! What a horrible man! He should have been shot, not merely divorced!"
"Well, since my divorce from him, when I was 26, I have had no doings with any men. Of any kind. That was two years."
"As well it should be. My wife and I have two children, and we were only connected in our seven years of marriage such that we could accomplish it. Anything more is wicked. Absolutely wicked."
"Do you find, Mr. Flynn, that you are a happier man, without such things?"
"Of course not. I'm utterly miserable. You being a woman, you can't imagine the agonies a man goes through, denying himself. It's horrible. But, what's right is right."
"But surely, as a married man, there's no sin in..."
"There is always sin in any act of the flesh not intended to produce children. But, may the Good Lord forgive me, I do miss it, so!"
Mr. Flynn put his face in his hands.
"I'm such a tormented man, Mrs. Skeffington! That's why I drink. And a wicked man! A wicked, wicked man! Forgive me for speaking to you this way, but my wife...she makes demands...I fear she will divorce me...I don't know what to do."
"Well, surely, Mr. Flynn, as a married man, you don't have to mortify yourself, so. Even the Good Book doesn't deny a man and his wife the solace of each other's company. You go too far."
"You may be right. But it has been such a long time. And my appetites are so jaded. Even if I wanted to...I fear I'm just not a man, anymore!"
Mr. Flynn's voice broke, and Mrs. Skeffington saw tears rush to his eyes.
"Well, Mr. Skeffington, he required such services of me because he had some...difficulties. If it would prevent the breaking up of your marriage, and the dissolution of your happy home...perhaps..."
"No! No, please, Mrs. Skeffington, I could never ask you to do such a terrible thing. Besides, I am quite irregular in my personal parts. You might find it very difficult."
"Irregular?"
"Yes. Irregular like a mule, I should say, pardon my language."
"Then I shall do my best."
Tony heard a clanking sound, like a man's belt being hastily undone.
He turned his head from the TV.
There was Mrs. Skeffinngton, with her head bobbing up and down in Uncle Errol's lap.
He had one hand on the back of her head, and a cigarette in the other, which he put in his mouth to take a drag when he winked at Tony, and gave him the thumbs up.
Then he flicked his ash into the ashtray on the end-table.
"Fucking hell, Amelia, for a woman who thinks this is disgusting, you do it well!"
Uncle Errol pointed at the TV, and Tony looked back at it.
Tony shook his head in a mixture of awe and admiration.
He cracked that hard nut?
Tony turned the TV up.
When he grew up, he definitely wanted to be just like Uncle Errol.
At first, nothing seemed wrong to Howard Stark as he walked into the TV room.
Tony was dressed for Friday dinner, sitting on a cushion on the floor, engrossed in Howdy Doody.
Flynn was sitting on the sofa, keeping an eye on him.
But where was Mrs. Skeffington?
Then, a further look revealed to Howard exactly where she was.
He stood in front of his friend and neighbour, glowering.
"Wait...just a little... wait...almost...God.-DAMNN! Well, that was interesting. Good evening, Howard."
Mrs. Skeffington lifted herself out of Captain Blood's lap with a whoop, and ran upstairs.
Tony never turned away from the TV.
"Now that's just bad form, my dear! If you would have told me you don't swallow, I would have let you have my handkerchief!" Errol shouted after her.
He took said handkerchief out of his pocket, and tidied himself up.
"What the hell? Jesus Holy Christ, Errol, right in front of the kid?"
"What was I going to do, Howard? Ask her to stop? I brought Tony home, she asked me if I wanted tea, and I wasn't sitting here ten minutes before she was all over me. Unzipped my pants and went down like the Titanic."
"Unbelievable. That woman is about as dried up as last year's leaves. But not when you're around. Tony, did you see anything?"
"No. I was watchin' TV. But I did hear Uncle Errol say, 'Amelia, what the hell are you doing, the boy's still in the room.' I figured somethin' dirty was goin' on, so I didn't turn around. I heard her unbucklin' his belt, though. Boy, was she in a hurry!"
Howard shook his head.
"Mrs. Skeffington, you're fired!" he shouted up the stairs.
Then, after adjusting his tie and pulling down his jacket, he turned to his friend.
"Flynn, are you staying for dinner?" Howard asked.
"I might as well. Nora's at her parents' with the children. I'd better help the tutor with her bags."
"Aren't you going to zip up your pants?"
"Not yet, Howard. Might as well finish what I started, after all."
New York City, 1966. Tony Stark's Penthouse, Park Avenue
VIII: Tony
On Saturday night, Tony was at his penthouse having a few drinks and doing four things at once with the record player and the TV on, trying to decide what and who he was going to do that night, when he got a visitor.
He was intrigued that it was Trivelino J. Napier, so he put on his red silk and black velvet bathrobe, and, leaving it tied loosely, he let her in.
Now, Tony Stark didn't really know Liv Napier, all that well.
But you couldn't be a mask in New York and not at least know of her.
He ate at Grossmann's, and as such, he was used to seeing Liv, in some permutation of Levis, boots or basketball sneakers, undershirt or tee shirt, heavily tattooed and boisterous.
As much as she dressed like a 'Nam vet with shell shock, it was impossible not to notice she was a woman, what with the stupendous tits in the GI undershirt with no bra.
And he had been under the hood with her a few times, when she had probably been 13 or 14, and she had surprised him not only with her knowledge of cars, but with her command of the less savoury parts of the English language and the force, velocity, and distance of which she could hurl her tools.
That was the extent of their association, until now.
She appeared at his door in her rumpled, dirty jeans, a wrinkled black S.H.I.E.L.D fatigue shirt with motor oil, fryer grease and bloodstains on it, that said "Napier" over one pocket and had the S.H.I.E.L.D Logo for Covert on the other, not to mention a dirty pair of torn Converse basketball shoes, and the omnipresent fatigue undershirt, and dog tags with a mangled .30 calibre bullet hanging from them.
She looked him up and down with the practised eye of a seasoned lecher.
"Nice bathrobe. Love the chest piece. Goes with your eyes." She said, tapping on the metal housing with a blunt fingernail painted bright green.
The way her father's fingernails were, naturally.
He wondered if she did it in solidarity.
"Thank you."
"You'll have to excuse my appearance Mr. Stark. But I've only slept about 12 hours in the past seven days, and I've been living on bananas, donuts, beer, cheese Danish, Cokes and hamburgers."
"Big project at the lab?"
"Huge. Mind if I have a drink?"
"Be my guest."
She sat her knapsack on the couch.
She fixed herself a drink, a double Scotch, drank it, fixed herself another, this time a Scotch and Coke, and sat down on the couch.
Tony sat down beside her.
"I see you got my letter. Let me explain…"
She was still smiling, in a very cool, companionable way.
"No need for that. I get it. You are a fucking asshole. A real dick. Fortunately for you, I like guys who are assholes, or you wouldn't be lookin' quite so pretty, right now. For another, you don't take me seriously. I mean, since I'm just a girl. Even though I'd have to have the Golden Magic Pussy of Destiny to spread it around enough to get all the credentials I've got using what I'm sitting on, you still think I'm a lightweight."
She opened up the knapsack and took out a square 4.5 volt battery.
"Do you?" Tony asked, having a sip of his own drink.
"Do I what?"
"Have the Golden Magic Pussy of Destiny."
Tony had no idea what was making him flirt with a woman who dressed like a 'Nam vet with shell shock and was only slightly less tattooed than Whiplash.
It may have been her reputation as a solid gold erotomaniac who loved fucking the way most women liked diamonds, chocolate and marriage proposals.
Then again, it might have been her stupendous tits, or the way she had eyed up his cock and licked her lips and grinned.
Well, Tony, you may be able to fuck your way out of this jam.
That wouldn't be such a sacrifice, would it?
She might be hiding a whole lot under those rags.
"See what I mean?"
"I admit it. You're right. I am a complete dick, and also a real asshole. So? Do you?"
"Nope. I'm a genuine redhead. It's ginger. What about you? Do you look kind of like Errol Flynn all over?"
Oho, so she's good at sparring.
Parry, and thrust.
"Are you interested?"
She laughed.
Very nastily.
"You'll see. So? Do you?"
"Yes. And I play the piano with it, too."
"I'd like to see that."
She chuckled as she took some copper tubing out of the bag, two pieces, with metal clamps on either end, and clamped one end of both pieces of tubing to the battery.
"I suppose you heard about Adrian Veidt getting his ass handed to him." The Harlequin commented.
Casually.
"Everybody heard. Every mask in New York has been looking over his shoulder. It was a swift, professional, and vicious attack. In one fluid motion, the assailant came out of the shadows like a CIA spook, and broke his collarbone with a piece of one inch rebar. Then, while he was defenceless on the ground, the fiend beat, kicked, punched and stomped him, spit in his bloody face, and melted back into the night. Laughing. The whole thing happened so fast that none of the other Watchmen could do anything but stand there in shock and horror."
The nasty laugh came back, again, filled with undisguised glee.
"Too bad I'm not a man. I woulda fucked him in his ass while he lay there, bleedin'. Of course that's Adrian's thing, if youse asks me, so then again, maybe I wouldn't. The Comedian wasn't too horrified. He laughed, too."
Hers was an unsettling laugh, especially for a mask who had heard the Joker give voice to a similar one.
Now she took one of those monkeys that played the cymbals out of the bag and clamped the other end of one piece of tubing to the monkeys' empty battery housing.
"Do you know what he did to deserve that?" she chirped, pleasantly.
"Adrian? Well, Adrian has made a lot of enemies. I think it's his attitude that turns people off. I could go on for hours."
"No. I mean, to me."
"What?"
"Oh, he insulted me and my stepfather, he said our methods were sloppy and our work was shit. Something like that. And that's what I did to him. Can you even imagine, what I've been thinking of doing to you, for offering me a dumb cunt job in the secretarial pool?"
An edge of savagery crept into his guest's pleasant, conversational tone.
Tony began to feel a bit nervous.
"Mind if I have another drink?" he asked.
"This is your house, chief."
As she spoke, she wrapped the remaining unattached piece of copper tubing around a large square of shiny slivery metal that if Tony didn't know any better he would have suspected to be a half-pound chunk of adamantium.
A metal that Wayne Enterprises, and Wayne Enterprises, alone, did a lot of work with.
It probably was.
"Oh, I've hatched a lot of plans for what to do with you. Publicly beating the shit out of you at Grossmann's. Tampering with your suits."
Then, a nasty smile, as she looked him up and down, again.
"Rape."
She licked her lips.
"Rape? Impossible. You can't rape the willing." Tony told her.
"Willing? Did it ever occur to you that I came here to hurt you?"
"If you were going to hurt me, I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, already. You came here to prove to me that you're the woman you said you were in your resume, and then have your way with me. I'm up for both."
She gave a little snort of disbelief and grinned, a little less brutally.
"You know something, Stark? I think I just might like you. You're my kind of scum. But, first things first. A little scientific experiment. I think you'll really get a charge out of this one."
Tony's robe was open such that much of his chest was exposed.
She winked at him, slyly, and the nasty smile came back, a thousandfold.
"Tell me something, chief? Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?"
It was no trouble for Liv to simply clamp the end of the copper tubing to the adamantium-titanium housing of his chest plate.
He gasped, sharply as the soft blue light emanating from his chest dimmed considerably, and watched the monkey begin to play his cymbals.
All the colour drained from Tony's face and he began to feel incredibly weak.
"What's the matter, Tony? My monkeyshines don't amuse you?"
She frowned at her obvious pun that her father probably would have approved of.
"I'm sorry. That was too obvious. Let me try again. What's the matter, Shellhead? Didn't you ever hear of women's empowerment? Yeah, that's much better."
Then, she laughed.
Tony began to feel faint.
But still, he wasn't going to let her get one past him.
Even if these were his last breaths.
"Well, my secretary tells me that I need to have my feminist consciousness raised, but I never thought it would be quite like this." He gasped.
Liv disconnected the clamps.
Tony took a series of deep breaths.
She took a flask from her knapsack and handed it to him.
"That was a good one. It really was. You've got real class, ya know that? Have a drink. It's the real good stuff that you don't keep out here for the guests."
Tony drank.
Scotch.
His brand.
Hundred year old.
"You have good taste, Liv." He gasped.
"I also have a shitload of money. I may live like a bum without two nickels to rub together, but I never drink cheap booze. As much as I drink, it'd kill me dead. Breathe deep, Shellhead. You're alright, I only drew on you for a minute. Maybe less. If my calculations were correct, and from the way the color's coming back into your face I can see they were, that wasn't enough to do more than prove my point."
"How did you do that?" Tony finally asked.
"Well, obviously, since you're not hooked up to a wall, you're operating on Tesla's wireless electrical principles. I set the battery up with the piece of adamantium. I could have used titanium, but I didn't want to chance it, since your housing is an alloy of titanium and adamantium. So, when I clipped the cable to the housing, I completed the circuit, and drew a little power from you to give my monkey life."
Tony was looking at her like he had never seen her before.
"So, you really are a mad genius." He said, sardonically.
"That's what they tell me. Now, here's where things get interesting. You've seen the mad part. Are you ready for the genius part?"
"Is this going to hurt, too?" Tony asked.
"Only your pride. Sugar."
She winked at him when she called him, sugar, and rolled her tongue around the word in a very, very, very dirty kind of way.
Tony found it hard to believe that he still wanted to screw her.
Perhaps now, more than before.
She took off the fatigue shirt.
Around one of her wrists, the left one, where her watch wasn't, was a blue bracelet with a red button and a green button on it.
It glowed, softly, in a familiar fashion.
Tony felt his heart leap and sink at the same time.
Could it be, O irony of ironies, that the fellow mad genius of his generation, well, close to it, someone with whom he could share his most promethean visions, also happened to be a homicidal red-haired sex kitten who enjoyed good Scotch and a good fuck as much as he did?
He hoped so.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"It sure as shit ain't an' all-summer pass to Coney Island! Now, before you get riled up, this looks identical to the original bracelet I wore, and that is the exact mechanism I used to communicate with Jon. Green means I want to come to him, red is the panic button, it means I need help. That's for him, or somebody, to come to me. The old one was also blue, and glowed slightly, just like Jon. But you and I, we know this one is different. Let me give you a recharge."
When she put her bracelet against his chest plate, Tony could feel the reactor in the bracelet interacting with the reactor in his chest.
This time, Tony spoke without a hint of sarcasm.
"My God, Liv, you are a fucking genius! What does it do?"
"Besides show you I'm serious? It jumps a dead car battery, and reboots a lightbulb. I'm honestly not sure of what it will do. You'd have to tell me. It's not exactly what keeps you running, but it's an arc reactor, basically. I got my hands on a copy of your father's original blueprints, from…someone I know, and I just followed them. I made a few minor mods for my purposes. Nothing I intend to capitalise on. I just wanted to make a point. I can go back to the old bracelet, and turn this over to you, if that's what you want. I'm sure we can work something out, without the lawyers."
"I'm sure. That's a very interesting modification. No, you go ahead and keep it. As long as you tell me where you got the blueprints."
"I thought you'd want to know."
"Well, it's only that there's my father's copy which I have, and Anton Vanko's copy, and he's dead. I have my father's copy."
"Which means I must have got my copy made from Ivan Vanko's copy."
"You're friendly with Whiplash?"
"Not overly. We've had a few drinks together, we have mutual friends. I burned my copy of the copy, and for what it's worth, Vanya only made it for me because he knew I was going to use it to show you up."
Tony took another drink.
"You're a dangerous woman, Liv."
"You bet your ass."
She gestured for the flask, and Tony handed it back to her.
Napalm took a long drink, and began to pack up.
"Napalm, oh, may I call you, Napalm?"
"Certainly."
"Aren't you forgetting something? We've had the scientific experiment. And it's really not fair for you to make all these overtures that you're going to fuck my brains out, and then leave."
Now it was her turn to look shocked.
"You still want to fuck me? After what I just did?"
"More than I did before, actually. You intrigue me, Napalm. You are, most certainly my kind of scum. So, if you can forgive me for treating you like a dumb cunt, I can forgive you for almost giving me a heart attack. And for drinking with and probably fucking one of my arch-enemies."
She laughed, this time genuinely, and with no malice.
It was a much more pleasant sound.
"I kinda like the way you say that word."
"You mean the dreaded C-word? Now, that's kinky. I think I like it. Let me think. Yes. I like it."
"Now who's crazy?"
"Oh, both of us, I imagine. It's a good thing we met this way. Or else, how would we ever have known we have so much in common?"
Tony untied the knot of his bathrobe, slowly, let it fall open a little, and then removed it completely with a dramatic flourish.
Napalm whistled, appreciatively.
"Very nice."
"You know, I don't even own a hammer?" Tony told her.
"Boy, as long as you're getting pussy, you really don't care how, do you?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I am the dirtiest man in New York City. Possibly on the whole East Coast. And you seem like a bad girl. A very, very bad girl."
Liv laughed.
"That's what I hear. That despite your being a high class Park Avenue uptown kind of piece, that you're the man to go to for a good dirty fuck."
"And I hear that despite your appearance as a psychotic tattooed diesel dyke that you live for cock and your little ginger pussy's like the iron fist in a velvet glove."
Liv laughed, again, but she knew she was blushing,
"Yeah, you're pretty good. But I'm the dirtiest girl in the world. So, where's the piano?"
"Unfortunately, the piano is in my apartments at the Avengers Mansion. That's for another day. But you're right. I keep the good Scotch in the bedroom. Shall we?"
"That's the rest of what I came for."
"Good Scotch?"
"Yeah. And a good fuck."
"They do go well together, don't you think? The bedroom's this way."
"Well, I'll be God-damned! You've got the same bed I do."
"Really? What a coincidence. So, can I lead in this dance, now?"
"Huh? Oh, sure. Go right ahead."
"I showed you mine, Liv. Let's see yours."
Trivelino J. Napier naked except for wavy waist-length red hair, a knife strapped to her thigh and a snub-nosed .45 strapped to her ankle and a big lustful leer was a great improvement over her, dressed.
Her tattoos were all actually very artistic; and they and the battle scars suited her.
Naked, she looked surprisingly young and clean, with milky-white skin, ginger all over, and built like a shorter version of a '50's pinup girl.
"How old are you, my dear?"
"Sixteen. But I've been declared a legal adult. See?"
She kept the papers to prove her claim in the knife sheath on her thigh.
They looked like they had been handled.
A lot.
Even better.
She got into the bed and rolled onto her back in the middle of it.
She backed up into the many pillows, lazily spreading herself out over the sheets and fixing Tony with a lusty leer.
"You know, I'd ask you to leave that gun on, but, one of us might get killed." He said.
Tony got into the bed with her.
"May I disarm you?"
"Go ahead."
He could tell it turned her on, when he unstrapped the knife and the gun.
It turned him on, too.
This was extremely filthy.
And turning out to be a lot of fun.
Tony was, at this point, anything but disarmed.
In fact, his weapon was cocked and ready.
She noticed.
"Hey, that's a Hell of a big gun you got there, Stark. So, is it loaded? Feels like it is."
"And you get very wet, very fast don't you, Little Miss Barely Legal Burning Bush? I'm not even going to kiss you. I'm just going to drive my cock into you and see how loudly it makes you squeal."
Liv's face flushed.
"You are dirty, aren't you?"
"I am the dirtiest. And you are a real redhead. I like that. Do you taste like cinnamon, or strawberries?"
Tony licked his fingers.
Liv made a sort of growly sound, in her throat.
"Mmm, a little of both. I'm going to have to investigate that, later."
"Well? Are you going to talk to me all day, or are we going to fuck?"
Tony's heart began to beat very fast.
"Both. Do you like it this way?"
"I dunno. I never had a talker."
In one motion, Tony pulled Liv up off the bed, and thrust into her, as hard and as deeply as he could.
They both gasped, and plunged down into the mattress.
"Now you have. I would ask you if you like it, but I can tell you do. You're such a good little girl. I love the way you squeeze my cock. Do you fuck all the boys like this, or just me? Hmmm?"
Then, something happened.
Something Tony had been wanting to happen for a long time that hadn't happened for a long time.
First, she gave him a leer of thick, molten lust.
And then, she really showed him what she had.
Unconsciousness beckoned, and Tony moaned, deeply.
Just like an iron fist in a velvet glove.
Oh, yes.
"Fuck. Oh fuck." He gasped.
This was serious.
Well, if she wanted it, she was going to get it.
Her eyes opened wide, and closed again, and he felt her legs tighten around him.
And that wasn't all.
"FUCK! OH SHIT!" she cried out.
The games had begun.
New York City, 1966. Stark Tower. Night
Tony looked out the window of his office, standing high above the city in his office in the clouds, at the gleaming top of his gleaming tower, in a two thousand dollar suit drinking hundred year old Scotch from a crystal glass.
He was thinking about his father.
Both of them.
"Well, Dad, had you been around a little longer, you and I would have really got along. You would have seen that I'm truly your son. Workaholic. Alcoholic. Womaniser. Obsessive. Visionary. I think the charm and the good looks came from your father and my mother, though. But here I am, at the Top of the World. Top of the World, Pa! And I have nobody to share it with. Just Pepper. But she's at home. Asleep. With somebody, I hope. I'd hate to think Pepper has no love life, and it's my fault. But, it's two in the morning, Dad, and I'm half in the bag and still at work. You may not have been the best father. Or the best husband. But Mom loved you. And you loved Mom. At least, at the end of the day, you had each other. It's almost the beginning of tomorrow, and not a single woman I've been seeing wants to speak to me. Jesus, Uncle Errol, that was the story of your life. That's another thing we excel at. Driving women away. And I'm just not in the mood to go pick up some broad I don't know. I guess that's why you got married. Three times. To have somebody you knew would be there for you, at the end of the day. Who've I got? Nobody. I'm having this premonition, this week, that if I keep running around with the girls I've been running around with, one of them is going to give me the herp. I've had the clap three times this year and the syph once, and it's not even July. There's no cure for the herp. Maybe I should go out and buy some rubbers."
Tony had another sip of his drink.
He went over to his desk and got on the phone.
Called Bethany Cabe.
"Hello, Bethany? There's something menacing in my office. It's green and it has tentacles. Shouldn't you be here, protecting me?"
"That would be a new strain of social disease, Mr. Stark. Zip up your pants and call your doctor and the Bronx Zoo in the morning."
She hung up.
Ouch.
Unfazed, Tony dialled the Avengers Mansion, and asked Jarvis to put him through to the Black Widow.
"But Mr. Stark, sir…"
"I know, Jarvis. Call it a shot in the dark."
Most of what Natasha said was in Russian, although 'fuck yourself, asshole', in the Queen's English, came through loud and clear.
Tony looked at the phone, and put his head down on his desk.
A short while later, it began to ring.
Who the fuck is calling me at this hour of the night?
"Hello?"
"Hey, Tony. Ya know somethin'? You're the only sad, pathetic sunnuvabitch I know besides me who'd be at work, not street work, at your regular fuckin' day job, at two in the morning. God, my life is shit."
"Mine too. Are you in Washington?"
"No. I'm in my lab at home. Do you remember college?"
"Vaguely."
"Well, do you remember ever having all the time in the world to finish a complicated project and then, a few drinks, a few fucks, and a car crash or two later, all the sudden you are out of time, shit out of luck, and jolly well fucked?"
Tony winced.
"I remember that very well. What are you working on, and when is it due?"
Liv's reply was interrupted by an explosion.
"OH SHIT! FIRE!" she yelled.
Tony heard her dropping the phone, and he could hear swearing and the sound of a fire extinguisher, hissing.
He hung up, immediately.
"Well, this is as good a time as any to see if the briefcase model suit works."
Tony tried to contact Liv via radio in-flight, but he couldn't raise her.
When he got closer to Wayne Manor and began his descent, he saw Napalm on the lawn, waving him down with a flashlight.
She looked sooty and dishevelled.
"Is the fire out? Are you hurt?"
"Yes, the fire's out. And only my pride. Now, we gotta be quiet about this. If Pop finds you here, he'll blow a gasket. Follow me."
Tony followed Liv down a ramp that appeared into the ground into a part of the Batcave he never saw before.
This, apparently was not part of the Batcave at all.
It had to be Liv's workspace.
"Welcome to the Funhouse. Garage, lab, costume & research. I like the glass walls between each modular station, because when I'm doing one thing, I can think about another."
Liv was awfully cheery considering it was three in the morning and she'd just been in an explosion, but Tony was beginning to understand, that's just Liv.
He looked around, a little.
"You have a bed in your workspace?"
"I'm a drunk. I have a bed and a bathroom everywhere. Does that suit have a flap in the front? Because you look good in armor."
"I'm working on that. But this suit is the briefcase model."
Liv put on all the lights, and Tony noted that the entire space was divided into three circular spaces, with curved glass walls between them.
Considering her general state of personal disarray, they were surprisingly neat.
When she put the lights on for the garage, Tony found himself pressing his face against the glass like a little kid.
"Nice motor pool! And you have your own lift."
"You don't?"
"No. I should get one."
"Briefcase model, huh? I really like the way that works. C'mon. You can store the briefcase in the costume and research pod."
Unlike the Batcave, which was dimly lit and gloomy, the Funhouse was extremely well lit, and the paint job and décor was rather cheerful.
Very much Liv.
"What's in that milk crate by the bed?"
"Some of my mask stroke books."
"You collect dirty mask books?"
"Dirty mask comix, too."
"Do you keep a box of dirty books by all of your beds?"
"Certainly. Because I'm also a pervert."
"Do you do it a lot?"
"What? Play with myself? Yeah, actually."
Liv unlocked a cupboard where she had an extra costume and some pieces, and then pushed a button on the wall.
"Your suit will be safe with the guns."
Tony's jaw dropped.
For a few moments, all thoughts of sex completely left his mind.
"Guns? Napalm, having a couple of pistols and a shotgun or two, that's guns. Thi siis a fucking arsenal! I mean, you have five different shotguns. There must be twenty handguns in there! You've got an M-1. You've got an M-16. You've got a Tommy gun…and you have grenades. You have a grenade launcher. You have rockets. You have a bazooka and…is that a .50 caliber machine gun? Are all these yours?"
"Yeah. Bruce and Dick aren't into weaponry. But I was raised with it, yunno? My Daddy gave me my first gun and taught me how to shoot when I was six. An' my boss, at S.H.I.E.L.D, he's heavy into weaponry. I love guns. I mean, I'm an American, right? Shit, I even like the way they smell. I shoot every day, and I make sure I fire, clean, and maintain all of these weapons on a bi-monthly schedule. Well, not the artillery. But you get the picture. I'm gonna be in the lab. After you store your suit, just push the button."
"Liv, you don't think about these when you pet the fuzzy caterpillar, do you?"
Liv just laughed.
"Of course not. I'm only a pervert in the nicest possible ways. What about you?"
Tony put his briefcase in the cabinet and pushed the button.
"Well, I always like to spend a few minutes in the morning with someone I really love. Me."
"Really? I'll bet you look in the mirror while you do it, and talk dirty to yourself." Liv quipped.
"I never tried that."
"I don't believe you."
Liv was holding onto her arm, like it hurt, and Tony noticed blood running over her fingers and down to her wrist.
She was bleeding right through her shirt.
"Don't look now, Liv, but you're bleeding. Copiously."
"Oh shit!"
She took off her shirt, and Tony saw that the culprit was a piece of glass from an exploding beaker lodged in her arm.
"Shit, that's nothing. I can patch that up. But considering it's in my arm, I might need a little help. Then I can get back to work."
She took a first aid kit out of her desk, and they worked on getting her arm bound up.
"Liv, when's this due?"
"Day after tomorrow."
"And what are we doing, exactly?"
"Oh. Well, I'm doing my thesis on Tesla's particle theory and its applications to quantum theory. You see, I took my degree in quantum physics because I'm interested in space-time research. That's what Jon and I do in our spare time when we aren't doing government grunt work. I have this theory that the energy field around a simple Tesla coil can be manipulated in such a way that, if harnessed, it could be used to create small material disruptions in the space-time continuum. Well, in order to prove this, I have to first build a Tesla coil, and then a containment field around it."
Tony knocked on his chest.
"Don't I have one of those right here? And don't you have one on your wrist?"
"Not exactly. I don't need an energy-generating apparatus. I need a particle-generating apparatus."
Tony thought about it.
"So, you want to use a small Tesla coil to create a particle accelerator that, instead of focusing the particles in beams, keeps the particles in a constant state of excitation, within a closed system? You don't need to puncture space-time at this juncture, just make an apparatus that, theoretically, could."
"Yes."
"Oh. Well, that shouldn't be hard. The arc reactor uses the same closed-system principle, after all. We just need to use the appropriate metal to create a perpetual electrostatic field. Are you using an adamantium ring base?"
"Of course."
"What rare earth metals do you have access to?"
"I know where you're going with this. I just tried neodymium. Boom. I know the best possible metal would be promethium, but if that went boom, you could say goodbye to most of Long Island."
"Maybe we should stick to the basics. Try the transition metals, first."
"Well, it's no good, now. I blew the whole works sky high."
"Then it's a good thing you have me to help you."
A few minutes later, the power at Wayne Manor flickered, died and came back on again.
It was a clear night.
Anyone entering the Funhouse would have been blinded, because the entire complex was suffused in bright, glowing, purplish light, and the soft monotonous hum of a machine that made Tony and Liv's fillings ache and their hair stand on end.
The power was staying on, though.
Over the hum, wild laughter.
No so much Jack Napier laughter, more Dr. Frankenstein laughter.
"It's alive! It's alive!" they both cackled, wildly.
The purple light faded and Liv Napier and Tony Stark, in smudged, disordered, partially burnt lab coats, cockeyed goggles and soiled gloves on, cut capers around a small, tidy apparatus in the middle of a great deal of debris.
They danced wildly around the room, then, giggling, joined hands and danced in circles, chanting "It's alive, it's alive!" over and over again, interrupted only by peals of mad scientist laughter.
Then, they both abruptly removed their goggles, embraced, and crashed to the floor.
"Whoa there, Dr. Fuckenstein. There's a shitload of industrial solvents and broken glass on this floor, so unless you're suddenly into science S&M, we should clean up the lab, and then hit the sack."
"You're so resourceful, Liv."
"Yeah, yeah. I've just had it on broken glass, before. I was drunk, and I wasn't looking where I was lyin', an' it wasn't fun. Wheel that big garbage can over here, an youse better put on those asbestos gloves…"
Later that night
"Hey, Tony, can I tell you a secret?"
"Go ahead."
"Ever since I was a little kid, an' I saw The Adventures of Robin Hood on TV, boy did I have a thing for Errol Flynn. Not like the thing with Eddie, but you know."
"A lot of women had a thing for Uncle Errol. If he was still around, I'd introduce you to him." Tony chuckled.
"Yeah, well, when Bruce brought you to the house, I couldn't believe how much you reminded me of him. The foist time I met youse, I thought youse was great because youse reminded me of Robin Hood. Then, the second time, I thought youse was great because youse was Tony Stark. I just wanted you ta know that. I like you for you."
"Well, I did learn everything I know about being a man from Uncle Errol. The good and the bad. The sacred and the profane. I don't have his blood, but I'm his son, just the same."
"Yeah. I know what you mean. I mean, Pop, he's my stepfather, but I'm a lot like him, too. He taught me pretty much everything I know, too. I don't have his blood, but I'm his daughter."
They were quiet for awhile.
"Liv, let's make a little pact between us. A pact between two fine Irish drunks. If you've got nowhere else to go, you can come to me. And if I've got no place to go, I'll come to you."
"You mean, like sanctuary?"
"Yes."
"You got it, Tony."
"Then, sanctuary it is. How are you at keeping secrets?"
"I'm a mask and I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D. Covert. Pretty damn good, I'd say."
"Well then, let's make our pact a secret. To the rest of the world, you and I are strangers. Just two people who know each other in passing. But, if you keep my secrets for me, I'll keep yours for you."
"My secrets?"
"Liv, nobody makes an unlicensed particle accelerator that could, at least theoretically, slice into space-time like a switchblade through flesh for a college project, even if they do work for S.H.I.E.L.D and Dr. Manhattan."
"You figured that out, huh?"
"Yes. I did. But your secret is safe with me."
"What about yours?"
"When I need you like you needed me, tonight, I'll tell you."
Tony was about to drift off to sleep when Liv got an idea.
Liv got a wonderful, awful idea.
"Hey, Tony? I just thought of a way for us to hide in plain sight."
"What?"
"Look, if we're gonna play it like we never met, we're fucked. We're masks, remember? And my father and my stepfather are two of the moist paranoid guys in the world. They'll know about us next week. Now, I happen to know, that since you're Mr. Big Shot, S,H,I.E.L.D provides you with an official bodyguard. I also happen to know that you fucked things up with Agent Cabe. You need a new bodyguard. And who would be better than an Agent not only with street-level combat experience, but one who has the mechanical and technical know-how to fix your works, if you were ever damaged or incapacitated."
"Somebody like you?"
"That's right. I sent you a letter, applying to Stark Industries for a job. And this is the job you want to give me. Don't talk to Director Blake about it. Talk to Director Fury."
"And what about the fact that you're 16?"
"I'm a genius, remember? And I am also a legal adult. By special declaration of the State of New York. That's how come I can do mask work, and be an agent. And, unlike you and Agent Cabe, you and me are gonna play it real close to the vest."
"Cool and professional."
"Exactly."
"Because, honestly, what would The Great and Powerful Tony Stark want with a tattooed teenage tomboy like Trivelino J. Napier?"
"I ask myself that, sometimes, Tony. What is it you see in me?"
"Your secret identity."
"Yeah? Well I know You're Iron Man, too."
"Not that Secret Identity. You real Secret Identity. That underneath your guise as Napalm Brooklyn Irish Thug, you are secretly Trivelino J. Napier, Mad Genius, Fire-Haired Porno Queen of Superhero Ultravixens."
Liv laughed.
"You got me there, Tony. So, do we have deal?"
"Liv, what you are suggesting is sneaky, underhanded, fraudulent and morally reproachable. I love it. I'll do it. Come here. Your turn to be on top."
(Author's endnotes. I hope it's not just me, but Tony Stark has always reminded me or Errol Flynn. I certainly hope you know who he was, constant readers. If not, just google Errol Flynn. He was an extremely famous and insanely handsome movie star in Golden Age Hollywood who was as famous for his wild private life as for his movies. And then, I got to thinking about how Howard Stark, was supposed to be like Howard Hughes, who was a big mover and a shaker in Hollywood while Flynn's career was at it's height. And, EUREKA! The idea was born.)