Tony Stark's Guide to Scenic Cardiff - Chapter One
Author: Milady Dragon
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or Iron Man. Shame, really.
Author's Note: This is a sequel to "The Stolen Earth Incident". It's at Tony Stark's POV, even though I put it in the Torchwood Category. I was going to list this under Crossovers, but "Iron Man" isn't in the movies list for some reason.
1 November 2009
Tony Stark sighed as he made his way toward the hotel bar, slipping off the designer sunglasses as he crossed the lobby and removing his coat. He was tired after another day of fruitless searching and just wanted to get a drink.
He'd been in Cardiff for a week. He had to admit, it was a nice place, and he'd actually considered getting a home or something in the area. The city was a mix of old and new, and while Tony would deny it to his dying day the place had a certain charm. He thought about asking Pepper to take a look at property costs in the area; a vacation home might be just the right ticket.
Hell, he'd even thought about buying the hotel he was staying at, because the St David's was one of the better places he'd ever gotten a room in. Not that he really thought the owners would sell, but he had played with the idea of making an offer and seeing just how riled up he could get whoever owned the place.
When he'd first come up with the idea to come to Cardiff, he'd known he wouldn't have an easy time of it. Searching for a super-secret alien fighting organisation in a city this size was bound to have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. JARVIS had tried his hardest to narrow things down a bit, but Tony had finally decided that boots on the ground might actually get him somewhere.
Yeah, right.
And so, he'd gotten in far more sightseeing than he'd ever planned, but there hadn't been a damned thing that had screamed, Here we are!, that he could point to and proclaim his hunting over.
JARVIS was suitably apologetic at his lack of success, but Tony couldn't blame him. His AI had managed to locate whoever had sent that file on the Daleks to SHIELD once, but after that security had gotten far too tight and the electronic path that JARVIS had used had vanished. Whoever had done it was a genius on par with himself, and the idea of meeting them was the only thing keeping him in Cardiff when Pepper had been constantly on his case to return to New York for the meetings he kept missing about the new tower he wanted to build there.
Still, Cardiff had intrigued him. He'd managed enough research into the area, and he'd discovered that the city was a hotbed for weird…if the sources he and JARVIS had found online had been accurate. Just the more modern things included: the wild weather in the 70's, that had snow in June and in the next week a heatwave that had lasted almost a year; that weird hurricane back in the 1980's; the earthquake and lightning storm in 2006 that had been focussed on the city itself; more crazy weather patterns in 2008, that had rain popping up in odd places all over and then suddenly ending; and yet another earthquake just last year that mysteriously opened a trench to the ocean that flooded the local nuclear power plant, which had, according to rumour, been on the cusp of a meltdown, and then had closed itself up just as mysteriously.
That last thing had actually happened; Tony had been out to the site, and had seen the lake with its accompanying 'Keep Out – Danger' signs all over the place. A bit more research had brought up the environmental studies and a contract for clean-up being paid for by the actual, honest-to-shit, Queen of England herself.
Then there was the high rate of gas leaks, terrorist attacks, and riots that seemed to occur all the fucking time. The last had been a major attack at the beginning of 2009, which actually coincided with the earthquake that had flooded the power station. Surprisingly, there had been very little loss of life, and no terrorists had come forward to take credit. That shit didn't make sense, because Tony knew that terrorists just loved to trumpet the chaos they were responsible for.
But that wasn't all.
There was the unexplained shit.
Ghost sightings, strange lights in the sky, haunted buildings…and a TV show that had actually come to Cardiff in order to investigate dragon sightings over the city. JARVIS had tried to digitally clean up the photo that had ended up online and had triggered the TV crew to come over to check things out, but there really was only so much one could do with something taken by a low-end camera phone.
It was too bad that it hadn't been a Stark phone. Then everyone would've been able to tell what that green blob had really been, because to Tony it looked more like something from a bad 50's sci-fi movie than any sort of mythical creature.
Cardiff was a fascinating place. Tony could very easily see himself living there, if just to be on the ground floor of all that crazy.
The bar was fairly empty at that time of the day. It was after lunch and before dinner…Tony didn't quite grasp the idea of 'teatime' yet, but he was working on it. There was one bartender on duty, and he gave a large smile as the genius approached. Tony slid onto a stool near the end of the fancy wooden bar, with its warm wood and brass fittings, and returned the smile with a cocky one of his own.
"Your usual, Mr Stark?" the young man asked. Tony found himself a bit enamoured of the Welsh accent, if he was honest with himself.
"Set me up," he answered. He'd been there every day after his 'sightseeing' trip. Today, he'd spent most of it up at the castle, which would have been interesting if he'd been into history. Sure, a castle was quite possibly the last place someone would have suspected an elite alien-fighting taskforce would be hiding out, which meant it was perfect for just that sort of thing in his opinion.
The glass of Scotch was set down in front of him, on its fancy napkin. Tony took a sip, pleased at the burn it had going down. Whoever supplied the booze for the St David's had excellent taste.
"Are you going to be with us much longer?" the bartender enquired as he wiped his hands on a towel that he'd draped over one shoulder.
Tony took a moment to admire the scenery – because, really, the guy was pretty hot, and if he didn't already have a girlfriend back in New York he would have totally tapped that – then answered, "Not sure." He snorted. "Unless you happen to know where I can find a super-secret group of alien hunters…"
He'd meant the question to be completely and totally sarcastic, but the answer he got had him freezing in shock.
"Oh, you mean Torchwood then?"
His face must have shown his utter surprise, because the bartender went on, "I'm guessing you mean Torchwood, right? Because they're the only ones who match your description."
Tony narrowed his eyes. "Are you putting me on?"
The bartender shook his head, looking totally innocent for having just dropped that particular bombshell in Tony's lap. "Torchwood's the worst kept secret in Cardiff. No one knows exactly what they do, but if it's aliens that's not a surprise. All we know is they show up when weird stuff happens." He leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering his voice. "My Grandmam tells this story about a haunted dance hall, back during World War Two…she says she met this bloke back then who vanished in a blaze of light, but then she saw him again just last year, not changed a day and driving that big black car Torchwood rides around in." He stood back, shrugging. "If there's anything spooky going on in Cardiff, Torchwood is there."
No fucking way was it that easy.
"You mean to tell me," he growled, "all I had to do was mention what I was looking for and someone could have told me?"
The man shrugged. "Don't know about anyone, but yeah, sure. A lot of people know about Torchwood, especially if they grew up in the area. Like I said, it's the worst kept secret in Cardiff."
Tony would have sworn the guy was pulling one over on him, except for two things: one, he was completely and utterly sincere; and two, it sounded just outrageous enough to be true.
"So," he said, trying to act nonchalant and yet wanting to reach across the bar and shake the guy for what he wanted to know, "how do I find this Torchwood?"
"Don't know exactly where their base is, but we all know it's out on the Bay near Mermaid Quay."
Tony didn't know where that was, so he asked.
"Just down from Roald Dahl Plass," the bartender directed.
Oh, he'd passed that one on of his many rambles, trying to find that tell-tale sign that said, Secret Base Here, with a handy arrow pointing the way. He'd had JARVIS find out just who or what Roald Dahl was; he'd been surprised to know that he'd been the author of the book that Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was based on.
To be honest, he'd only known about the Gene Wilder film. Tony didn't take a lot of time to read, and he couldn't really remember the last time he'd actually sat down with a book that wasn't some sort of technical journal.
Yeah, the Plass was that place with all the fancy light poles, the water tower, and that building…the one that Tony wanted to hunt down the architect for and hire them to work on his tower in New York. Because, while he didn't much care for all that fancy lettering, the Millennium Centre looked really cool.
Well, it looked like he finally had a place to start looking, unless the bartender was the best liar in the world and he was sending Tony on a wild goose chase.
He'd finish his drink first. Just in case.