The Founding of Matthew Lace

As the sky roared in a fashion that made children throughout the city of Los Angeles cower in their beds, the adult world attempted to bustle as if it were any other day only to find the force of weather to be too great. Cars lay in wreck every other block with ambulances struggling to keep tempo with the amount of emergency calls echoing from payphones and crying babes alike. This was a night of death, by death, for death.

Which made it all the more difficult for the young boy sitting in a diner with a cup of cold coffee, staring out at the rain to cope with his current situation. He wore a pair of black Edidas swishy pants and a poofy blue snow jacket to protect himself from the rain. His hair was black and messy, and his skin was lightly tanned, the trademark of a traditional LA surfer dude. His eyes were brown, yet unlike those of any male his age … cold, hard. They were the eyes of a man who hasn't just seen death, but felt it throughout every pore of his body.

The seats nearest this man were purposefully empty, and he seemed to prefer it that way. Just as no one in the diner had any desire to be near him, he too had no desire to be anywhere near people. There were those who wondered why he was here alone, and some even approached to ask. This proved to be a fruitless gesture, as any attempt to strike a conversation with the boy was repaid with a deadpan stare and frigid silence. And so Matthew Lace, unknown to the world, was allowed to remain as solitary as an oyster surrounded by a school of dumb fish.

His solitude did not last nearly as long as he would have liked, however. There was one man who was not dissuaded by the gaze of death. One man who walked into the diner, closed his umbrella, waved off the approaching waitress with a smile and a shake of his head and marched right over to Matthew's table without a shred of hesitation in his gait. Matthew was too busy staring out the window to notice, but probably still wouldn't have believed even if he had been paying attention.

After all, Tony Stark isn't a face one sees every day.

"Mind if I sit here?" asked the Iron Man, parking his rear-end across from Matthew without waiting for permission. The boy recoiled as his eyes jerked to find the intruder of what must have been an incredibly large personal bubble. "Oh sorry kid, did I scare ya? I have that effect sometimes." Tony Stark waved his hand nonchalantly as he looked around the diner. "I don't often visit dives like these. I'm more the five-star restaurant kinda guy myself, but now that I'm here it does have it's own little charms, doesn't it?"

"What do you want?" Matthew opened his mouth for what felt like the first time in days, though in reality it had been much less than that since he ran from home.

Stark shrugged. "Just wanted to have a chat. How's the coffee? People keep telling me it's better at these places-"

"Cut the shit!" Matthew slammed his fist against the table, his face growing white as a sheet. Stark slowly sat back in his chair. Matthew seethed a few more moments before lowering his fist. "... sorry." Matthew's gaze fell to his lap, where his hands lay shaking. He clenched them both into fists once more to make it stop, but to no avail.

"You look like you've seen Hell, kid. Normally I'd fool around with ya more, but I'll cut you a break." Stark pulled a few pictures out of his pocket and tossed them onto the table. Matthew recognized those pictures. He knew them all too well …

The first was that of a Caucasian male and a Filipino woman, walking with their overshirts on through an overcast Chinatown. The second was that of a young boy who looked much like Matthew, but had pale skin and red eyes, and whose hair was clearly not naturally black. The third was a picture of bedspread covered in blood and viscera. Matthew refused to look at that one.

"I take it you've seen these before?" Matthew slowly nodded, the shaking in his hands subsiding slightly. "This is gonna be tough kid, but I need you to tell me what happened."

Matthew took a deep breath.

"It all started three months ago. The school year had just started, and as usual I didn't really have anyone to talk to. Most of my buddies only come to LA during the summer and since they have their careers lined up they don't have enough free time to call. I know this doesn't sound important, but it's the main reason why I started talking to him; one of the guys I hadn't seen go to my school in the past few years I'd been there. His name was - is - Cruz Schild.

Cruz struck me as the intellectual type when I first saw him, and I was right. He aced every class, and would sometimes even get the teachers stumped with the questions he asked. He got pretty popular pretty quick thanks to that and him being albino - you know, people think that kinda special diversity is hot. He turned a lot of people down, though. Most everybody thought he was a snob, but I figured he just didn't have the time for friends.

Then one day, he comes up to me during lunch and asks to sit with me. I don't really have a reason to say no, so he takes a seat. We start having lunch together pretty much everyday after that, and it turns out he was actually a lot more complex than I thought he was. He had always strived to be the best at every subject, but he was disappointed that other people at his grade level didn't think as well as the people below it. As Cruz put it, 'they're so busy trying to be smart that they end up looking like idiots.'

I'm rambling, sorry. So Cruz and I became pretty good friends after that, and pretty soon we realized that we both live in pretty much the same area. So we started walking home together, going to each other's houses to watch shows and play games. It was the first time I can remember making such a great friend so fast … then, a couple days ago, Cruz and I were walking home, talking about Wakanda …

I was complaining about how everybody blamed the Avengers for what happened. 'There were people on the ground, too! It's not like everything would've been hunky-dory if they had done nothing at all!' I've always been a fan of you guys, so I got pretty heated talking about it. Eventually, I said something like 'I wish I could do the things they do!' … That's when Cruz told me that it actually was possible.

Cruz told me his secret, something he said he'd never told anyone but his parents before. He told me that he had an ability, something he was born with and couldn't really explain. He told me that he could give people powers. Now, I laughed in his face about it, right? I thought it was a bad joke. But then he looked at me with a cocky little smirk and said 'I can prove it to you, if you want …'

I mean, who wouldn't take him up on that? The guy was telling me he could make ME a superhero - I wasn't about to just pass that up! Even if I thought it was a joke … we went to an alley near his apartment complex and he started doing some crazy shit. He held my hand, traced out letters in some language I don't know, all the while chanting some kinda mumbo jumbo under his breath. Then he just stopped and I laughed, thinking he really was just joking. And then I saw another me, laughing right beside me.

That was … the best day of my life. I spent the whole day testing the limits of the powers Cruz gave me, and thanking him over and over again for this chance. Cruz told me he'd come by to talk to me more about this power the next day, and see what we could do about cleaning up Los Angeles … all I could think about was becoming a hero … I couldn't have known what was going to happen …

Nobody expects to wake up to find their own corpse lying in their bed …"

Tony listened to the kid's story without speaking. He loved his snark, but knew that this was most certainly not the time for it. Jesus Christ, what a mess … if he hadn't been in LA for a business meeting, he'd never have even known any of this was going on. This kid would have been left to rot, without any place to go. His parents probably think he's dead. And, as much as Tony hated to admit it, that was the way it should stay for the time being.

"Look, kid, I'm sorry I made you relive that. I'm sorry you got dragged into something you don't understand. I don't understand it, either. So how about we make a deal?" Matthew's head rose as his eyes, now filled with tears, met Stark's. "Why don't I bring you back to Stark Tower? You'll get comfortable living arrangements, and we can try to find out exactly what this thing is and if there's any way to fix it-"

"NO!" Matthew's voice cracked as he screamed the word, spit flying in Tony Stark's face. "HELL NO! I'm gonna find the asshole who did this to me and I'm going to BREAK HIS NECK!"

Tony leaned forward, folding his hands onto the table. "And then what? You're just gonna ~waltz back into mommy's house~ like nothing ever happened?" Matthew's jaw fell slowly from a grimace into slacked horror. "Killing this Cruz guy isn't gonna turn you back, and it's not gonna do your parents any favors. If you come back with me, I can help you control this thing. I can help you live a normal life."

Matthew's tears continued to stream down his face. "A normal life? I … will never have a normal life … again …" Tony leaned forward, his hand outstretched.

"You don't know tha-"

"I CAN HEAR ME!" Matthew screamed once more, his throat struggling to handle the strain of his bawling and yelling mixed together. "The whole time we've been talking … I've been hearing myself in my head … don't say anything, tell him everything, run away, go with him, survive and kill yourself - all AT THE SAME TIME!"

Matthew held his head in his hands, crying onto the table. The people inside the diner stared at him and Stark with mixed amazement and fear - several patrons had already left. Stark sighed and pressed a button on his watch, holding it up to his mouth. "Vis, come in. I'm gonna need someone to move him."

Not a second later, a man with red skin wearing a black tuxedo appeared straight out of the wall nearest the table. His eyes fell on Matthew with soft pity. He had, of course, heard the entire conversation … he could not imagine the torment the poor boy must be going through. Vision approached and patted him on the shoulder. "Come now, Matthew. Cry all you must, but we must be going. Stark Tower is the only place you'll be safe … and it's the only place that we can take you to make everyone here - your parents, the whole of Los Angeles - safe."

At this, Matthew straightened up. It was true, he could feel every 'him' trying their very best to leave - and he had no idea just how many of them he had. If it was too many, there was no way he could track them all. The city itself could be put at risk because of him. He stood out of his chair, shaking, only to take one step and fall to the ground.

Vision bent over and offered Matthew his arm. "Lean on my shoulder. Come on, that's it." Matthew stood up and, guided by two men of valor, was escorted out of the diner. Outside, he would find a chopper waiting to bring him to Stark Tower. As Matthew left, he knew that he would never return. For when the day finally came that he would see Los Angeles once more … he would no longer be the same person.