Grampa
by Jim Smith
Disclaimer: The Thunderbolts and all other characters in this story are property of Marvel Comics and used here without permission. This story is copyright of Jim Smith, and archived at the Thunderbolts Fan Fiction Archive, at http://www.crosswinds.net/~thunderbolts/. If you want it, just ask for it.
Continuity Note: This story takes place some time after the events of THUNDERBOLTS #33. The Ogre, in case anyone's wondering, was first introduced in X-MEN vol. 1 #28, which was conveniently reprinted a few years ago because some other guy debuted in that issue. Banshee-something-or-rather, I forget...
MZZZZZZZZZEEEOO!
MMMMMZZZZZZZEEOO!
MZYOO!
The sounds of his tools whirring into life might have reminded him of the opening riffs of Van Halen's "Poundcake." Might have, if he hadn't been living under a rock for ten years.
Literally.
He called himself the Ogre, and perhaps it was a fitting title in spite of his diminutive, decidedly unfearsome appearance. Ogres weren't exactly known for being fat little mechanics, but they did tend to hole up away from humanity in mountains. Or he thought they did, anyway--he hardly had much chance to brush up on fairy tales ever since he became an operative for the mutant organization called "Factor Three." After exactly one field mission,* the Ogre was in the doghouse with his superhuman masters, and ordered back to their facility in the Colorado Rockies.
[* Way back in X-MEN vol. 1 #28]
He'd been there ever since, never questioning the commands of Factor Three, even after the group disbanded. The enormous abandoned complex within Mount Charteris had become his home by the time other armies of super-criminals began to use if for their own purposes. But now there was a new element co-existing with him in the mountain. Not so much an army as much as...
"Hey, Ogre, how's that calculator coming? I've got a trig test tomorrow, y'know!"
...A family.
"Hm?" The Ogre perked up at the sound of the young voice and answered. "Ah...yes...well...I should only require a few more minutes to repair the damage, young Helen. I...uh, apologize for the inconvenience..."
Hallie Takahama smirked at the Ogre's excessive contrition. "Inconvenience nothing!" she laughed. "Considering it fell out of my book bag when I was flying back from school--riding a contraption _you_ built me--I'm lucky you can fix it at all! Otherwise I'd have to hit Hawkeye up for the eighty bucks to pay for replacing it..."
"Fear not, Helen, it needn't come to that..." It was no normal family, Ogre considered. The fact they lived in this mountain with him was proof enough of that. The teenaged girl had no real family anymore--not since a disaster pertaining to some "Onslaught" fellow. The closest she had to a mother was a supervillain named "Moonstone," who recruited Hallie into a team of criminals called the "Thunderbolts." The closest she had to a father was a superhero--the aforementioned "Hawkeye"--who decided to turn the Thunderbolts into the heroes they wanted to be.
But did that matter? Did it matter that this "family" had nearly conquered the world under the leadership of a "Baron Zemo," that "Mother" could walk through walls, that "Father" had defended the world against intergalactic menaces using only his bow and arrows? It hardly mattered to him that Hallie spent her days wearing a colorful costume, throwing bioelectric punches and calling herself "Jolt." It was all old hat to him from his Factor Three days, except that in Factor Three he was an underling, and in the this team--
"Great! Thanks a million, Ogre!" Hallie gave him a light kiss on the cheek.
--he was "Grampa."
The second Hallie turned away and left his workshop, the Ogre became as red as a beet. At least, his cheeks did--his eyes were obscured by thick goggles, and his long, gray hair hung from his head and chin like Charlton Heston's in "The Ten Commandments." Maybe he _was_ a "Grampa," he chuckled to himself; he certainly looked the part.
He smiled and put the finishing touches on Hallie's calculator. There were some inefficiencies in the construction of the device that he had labored to correct, but he had to be careful to conceal his improvements. If Burton Canyon High School found one of their math department's instruments contained a nanotech processor, they might still charge Hallie for the cost of replacing the device that had been "tampered with." So it had simply been a matter of reprogramming it to only calculate pi to 300 decimal places when _she_ was using it--perhaps a tad superfluous for him to go to such lengths, but he appreciated the challenge.
"Nothing too good for your granddaughter, eh, Ogre?" he mumbled to himself.
"I hope I'm not interrupting..."
He nervously turned around, a little embarrassed that he'd been overheard. "Ah...no, no, Dr. Sofen..."
Moonstone stepped through the wall of Ogre's workshop and looked around. "Funny," she wondered, "I could have sworn I heard you talking to someone else...never mind. And, please--call me 'Karla,' Ogre."
"Yes...yes, of course...Karla." He adjusted his goggles at the sight of her--something about the blonde woman's space-borne powers made her as literally radiant as she was figuratively. "I was just...thinking. Out loud. Is there something I can do for you?"
"Well...I was thinking that I never had a chance to thank you for supplying that key, when I was being held prisoner here by the Masters of Evil."*
[* THUNDERBOLTS #25]
He tried not to blush again. "That? Oh, think nothing of it, my dear." Of course, it had been a considerable matter to him. The Ogre was never all that assertive, and after spending years hiding inside this mountain he'd never really done much chivalry. It was nice enough to discover a fair maiden in distress for him to daringly rescue. Her gratitude just made it all the more satisfying.
Karla smiled. "But that's not really what I came down here for," she continued. "After we defeated the Masters and took possession of this facility, you observed us and built new equipment for us without our knowing. It occurred to me that you know a lot about us from before we discovered you were living here."*
[* See T-BOLTS #29, 30, 32, and 33 for the whole story]
"I..." Ogre blinked. He had a vague idea where this was going. "Ah...yes, I suppose I would..."
She shook her head, dismissing his qualms. "No, I respect that, Ogre--I am a psychiatrist after all, and in my line of work, it pays to keep an eye the details around you...and not always let on you're aware of them. And I could use your...externalized point of view. I suppose you've noticed how I interact with Hawkeye..."
Ogre swallowed and tried to speak openly. "I'm...not sure what you're getting at, Karla, but I _do_ deeply apologize for happening upon that...that...private matter between you and Mr. Barton in the training facility a few days ago...I'll have you know I'm not some voyeur..."
Karla threw her head back and chuckled. "No, no, no...don't even worry about _that_! I should have guessed you might have been watching when I...well...flirted with Clint..." (A very tame way to describe her rash decision to strip naked during a mock-combat session with the Thunderbolts' leader,* but essentially an apt one.) "...but it's not as though I'm all that modest to begin with."
[* In the classic THUNDERBOLTS #XXX...er...that is, #30.]
"Oh," he said with a sigh of relief. "Then I'm...afraid I don't understand the...nature of this conversation. If you're looking for...romantic advice, I'm sure your teammates would be of more...assistance than I."
"I could, yes," she answered. "But the Thunderbolts all know me fairly well--the good with the bad. And I think what I can use right now is more of an outside observer. You've been watching us for a while now, Ogre--you've had years of practice studying people from afar. Do you think Clint...does he...?"
The Ogre walked up to the tall blonde and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I think, my dear, that he can tell your affections for him are genuine, and he'd be a fool not to feel the same way. Don't be afraid to tell him how you feel--not after all he's done for your team so far..."
"You...you really think so?" she asked. Moonstone was beginning to let go of her cold exterior and reveal the warm, tender person he always knew was inside. "I...appreciate that, Ogre. Thanks. You really know just what to say..."
"Just...doing the best. I can," he replied, his cheeks reddening for the second time that day. "Will you be talking to him right now? because I have some...matters I need to discuss with Hawkeye...but I could put them aside for later, in truth..."
"No...no. I need to figure out _what_ I want to say...I'll get back to it tonight. Thank you again, Ogre..." And with that, she phased through the wall in the same ghost-like manner she came.
Ogre smiled as she left, glad to be of help with the lovestruck couple, and reached into a cabinet and dug out several files. As he had stated, he headed to the gymnasium to talk to Hawkeye.
He ventured out into the bright, spacious room, still a little unused to roaming freely through the complex in plain sight. But the friendly faces of three of the Thunderbolts--Atlas, Charcoal, and Hawkeye himself--compensated, making him feel like an invited guest for a change.
"Awright now, no fair usin' your powers!" Hawkeye noted to the other two. It was a necessity for Erik Josten, whose sweatpants would have been ripped to shreds if he tried to use the growing powers that earned him his "Atlas" codename. Young Charlie Burlingame also didn't see fit to exchange his shorts for the ashen, hulking body he transformed into as "Charcoal." Hawkeye gestured to the man and the boy to stand on opposite sides of him and went on. "This is just a demonstration of what you could do if the Masters of Evil or somebody do this to you, so play along so I can show you how to do it. Now, make like you two are gonna pick me up and chuck me across the room..."
The two Thunderbolts complied, although a bit curiously. Atlas held the archer up by his shoulders, while Charcoal picked up his feet. "OK," Hawkeye continued, "now see how I'm kinda goin' limp, lettin' you pick me up? 'Cause what I'm gonna do _now_ is wait till you ain't expecting nothin' funny, and--" Without warning, Hawkeye jerked his whole body, crunching his abdomen and bringing his upper body and his legs together, nearly bringing Atlas and Charcoal's heads together with a "thud."
"Hey!" Charlie objected, putting Hawkeye down. "What're you trying do! Even at regular size, Atlas's thick skull could kill me in my human form!"
"Aww, I wouldn'ta let that happen, Briquette," Erik grinned. "I had a good idea of what the boss was showin' us. Even if I don't think anybody's likely to grab me like that in the middle of a fight..."
"That ain't the point, though, Atlas," Hawkeye noted as he nipped up to his feet. "I said the same thing when Captain America showed me that little number, and he said what matters is that you're ready for any situation. Now, you and Charlie got your powers to protect you in a fight, but by now we've fought lots of guys who are just as tough. So a little self-defense training will give you one-up on 'em..."
"...Er, Hawkeye? Sir?"
"Huh? Oh, just a sec, Ogre..." Clint motioned to the others to come to the doors of the gym, where the Ogre and some bottled water was waiting. "What's up?" he asked the smaller man after picking up his refreshment.
"Ah...not much, sir...Hawkeye...sir..." he stammered. "I thought these would be helpful for the team--maps of the interior of this mountain, diagnostics of some of the equipment contained therein..."
"Yeah, sure," Clint replied, and stepped back to dump the rest of his water bottle over his head. The cold water dripped off his blond hair down to his bare chest, cooling off the former Avenger. "'Scuse me, Ogre...you were sayin'?"
Erik grinned. "Geez, boss," he said, "can'cha go five minutes without thinkin' about Moonstone?"
"If she does that whenever _she_ thinks about _him_," Charlie joked as he pointed to Clint's drenched chest, "I think I'd rather have my training sessions with her..."
"Yeah, yeah...wait till you get a few years behind ya, kid," Clint retorted. "She's a little outta your league..."
Ogre was somewhat befuddled by the change of conversation. Were these the sort of issues people discussed in the society he had been hidden from for so long? "Perhaps I...ah...should come back at another time..."
"Naw, don't sweat it, Ogre," Clint told him. "We're all guys here, it ain't nothin'."
"Yeah," Erik added. "I've been jerked around by pretty faces enough to know not to take it too seriously. I mean, I've known Karla and Melissa longer'n any of you guys, an' they're just friends, but sometimes I just ask myself...if I had my choice...
"Moonstone," Charlie smirked. "Hands down."
Clint quirked an eyebrow at his young teammate. "Really, now?"
Charlie's smile became a bit sheepish--it was obvious to everyone in the room which Thunderbolt had the strongest interest in Karla. "Welllllll," he amended, "if I had to choose between those two, that is. I mean, if Joystick isn't an option..."
"Joystick?" Erik laughed. "The girl from the Masters of Evil we knocked out when we used their costumes to infiltrate this base? The one who wasn't wearin' any underwear?* See, Briquette, when you get to be my age, you'll be able to appreciate a little subtlety."
[* No lie. See THUNDERBOLTS #25.]
"Riiiight," Clint commented. "So that would mean..."
Erik shrugged. "Melissa, natch. I guess you guys just never notice--when she's in her Songbird outfit and she's standin' _just so_..." He chuckled and dismissed the thought. "So what about you, Ogre? You've gotten to know the ladies..."
"Er...ahhh...with all due respect, sirs," Ogre mumbled, "I wouldn't feel...comfortable casting aspersions about either Dr. Sofen or Ms. Gold..."
The three younger men looked to each other, and Clint patted Ogre on the back. "Hey, don't sweat it, pal--if it don't float your boat, you don't hafta talk about it..."
"It's no big deal," Charlie added.
Erik nodded. "Yeah, Ogre's probably right anyway. If Melissa found out about us talkin' like that, she might put solid-sound force fields on all the toilet seats or somethin'!" He shook his head and chortled.
"Yes...ah, quite," Ogre agreed timidly. "Well, ah, here are all the files, Hawkeye, you may peruse them at your leisure while I attend to the more exhaustive schematics..."
Clint waved to him as he headed out the door. "Sure, no problem, Ogre...don't work too hard now!"
Ogre headed out and back to his lab, eager to find something else to put his mind on. He enjoyed the company of the men, but their youthful exuberance tried his patience at times. He couldn't complain, though--he was fortunate to have made friends who accepted his feelings about such things...the "generation gap" between themselves and "Grampa."
He spent the rest of the day there, taking Clint's advice and trying not to devote too much of his time to the maintenance of the Thunderbolts' base. After a few relaxing hours searching for a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem, he suddenly realized he'd lost track of time. Checking his clock, he discovered it was half past two in the morning, and here he was still fiddling with his calculations!
He shook his head and pulled his goggles off. Years of living inside this mountain--with no sunshine or starlight to organize his day around--had left him a little unsynchronized with the rest of society's daily routine. (For all he knew, someone had already proven Fermat's Last Theorem while he was holed up here.) That hadn't been a problem when he lived alone, but now he'd have to adjust to waking up when the Thunderbolts woke up, if he planned on being one...
He had his own room now, and he stumbled through the low-lit corridor to get to it--to the bed he now slept on. They'd gotten pajamas for him, so he wouldn't have to sleep in the old Factor Three uniform that he still insisted on wearing during the day. He took the purple jumpsuit off slowly, still unaccustomed to these simple luxuries...
"Ogre? You awake?"
He jerked his head around to face the source of the voice--still accustomed to hiding from anyone who happened upon him--but quietly sighed when he discovered it was Melissa Gold. "Ah...Songbird," he answered, hurriedly grabbing a robe. "How may I...help you?"
Her hair--which was curiously shock-white, except for two streaks of her natural auburn color--was tussled and tangled, and she ran a hand through it as she realized how she might look. Not that it mattered; Melissa always seemed warmly pleasant to those who got to know her. "Um...I don't know...I just couldn't sleep," she explained. "I guess I was lonely. I saw your light on..."
"Oh...come sit down, my dear, it's no matter. I...stayed up late, I am not acclimated to the team's routine yet..." He welcomed her to a spot on the end of his bed, and headed for the door. "Shall I find you some warm milk? A...sedative, perhaps?"
She shook her head. "That's fine, Ogre, I'm okay. I just wanted to talk to somebody, I guess. It's been getting real hot lately, I was too warm in my bed..."
Ogre gave her a look of shock and dismay. "The environmental controls! Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Songbird, I haven't checked them in _weeks_! The Masters of Evil monitored it when they were here, and when they left I was distracted and forgot to--"
Melissa grabbed his arm before he ran off to fix the imagined problem. "Ogre, hold up! It's not the environmental controls--Hawkeye found those as soon as we moved in. It's just that it's summer, and we're living inside a giant silo." She smiled sweetly. "Don't worry about it!"
"Don't...worry about it?" He looked at her quizzically.
"It's okay," she nodded. "You know, you don't _have_ to fix _everything_ to make us happy." She threw her arm around his back and gave him a friendly squeeze. "We like you just fine!"
He was blushing again, confound him! "I...ah...that is..._thank you_, Songbird. I...appreciate the thought."
She giggled at his bashful response. "Don't mention it. Come to think of it, is there anything we can do for you?"
"Me? Oh...well..." He fumbled for an answer. "You've already done so much, giving me this room and these clothes..." He stroked his long beard and contemplated how to tell her it wasn't necessary...
"You know," Melissa pointed out, "you need a haircut."
"Eh?"
"As hot as it's getting outside, you must be burning up under all that hair. And--well, no offense, Ogre, but I can't look at you without wondering which of the Seven Dwarves you're supposed to be." She smiled again. "Just kidding..."
Ogre got up and looked into the mirror his new quarters provided him. "No...I suppose you're right, Songbird. I...hadn't really given it much thought...in the time I've lived here. Actually, when my beard began to grow, I rather fancied myself like Sir Alec Guinness. But I've never had much reason to keep it trimmed." He paused. "You know...of all the groups that have used this base, I don't believe any of them ever left scissors lying around..."
"I carry my own," Melissa smirked, and in a split second her sonic carapace--the cybernetic apparatus on her neck and shoulders that transmuted her voice into solid-sound constructs--had created a pair of scissors in her right hand. "So how about I do _you_ a favor, for a change?"
Ogre shrugged and smiled, and allowed her to go to work. Using her carapace, Melissa created a pair of disembodied sonic hands to pull back Ogre's hair, and when the makeshift ponytail was taut, she transmuted the hands into a small ring to hold it in place. Then with her scissors, she began to cut the bulk of Ogre's beard away. He leaned his head back and left her to her work, feeling somewhat refreshed to have his hair pulled back from his face.
"Whoops, made a mess there," Melissa said after a few snips, and wiped away the trimmings from Ogre's robe. He was a bit surprised by the forward nature of his "stylist," but found he didn't mind too much. "OK, looking better already," she told him, "but I need to shave it to even it up." With an inaudible change in the frequency her bionic larynx hummed into the carapace, the scissors became an electric trimmer.
After a couple of half-hearted attempts to run the trimmer over Ogre's face, Ogre heard the device cease its buzzing (how was a sonic field replicating the sounds of a solid electrical instrument?), and lifted his head up to discover Melissa getting up from beside him to readjust her position--to his lap. "This'll work better, I think," she grinned, straddling Ogre's midsection and cutting the beard with more enthusiasm. What had been rather forward was now fairly intimate, and the Ogre now found his gaze locked into Melissa's eyes, staring down at his face from on top of him. "Mmm-hmmm," she mused, "Muuuuch better."
"Song...Songbird?" he mumbled.
"She dissipated her trimmer and took off the carapace. "Melissa," she told him. "Call me Melissa..."
"She let the carapace drop to the ground (what was she even doing with it in the first place, if she'd been sleeping before she came in?) and kissed him passionately, using her shoulders to wriggle out of her robe (had she been wearing a robe when she came in?) while her hands pushed Ogre's back down onto the bed. Ogre was confused, perhaps, but not ungrateful for the affections. It wasn't as if he had some crush on her since the Thunderbolts moved into the mountain, but he certainly wouldn't complain if a pretty young woman like Melissa wanted to think of him as more than just a Grampa...
...Grampa...
"...so how you doing in there, Grampa? Hope you don't have to pee, because I'm afraid you'll be in that stasis tube for a long time..."
P. Norbert Ebersol called himself "The Fixer" because he was good at fixing machines. Now that he _was_ a machine--a result of his body being killed and his mind being downloaded into his equipment*--that moniker was a tad indirect, so he fixed that with another name: "Techno."
[* In the landmark THUNDERBOLTS #8.]
He was a Thunderbolt--or he had been, before the others decided to go straight. That didn't sit well with him a the time--he'd become a criminal in the first place because it fixed the problem of not getting the challenges and excitement he demanded from life. So he went off on his own, only to discover the Thunderbolts were having a more interesting go of things than he was having. Not a problem, though--not one he couldn't fix, anyway. He just rejoined the team.
"Hey, Ogre?" A voice came over the comm-line. The Thunderbolts' leader in their efforts to reform, Hawkeye. "Needja to do me a favor, you listenin'?"
Now, of course, rejoining a team Techno had tried to kill when he left--a team with a meddling do-gooder in charge, who didn't approve of his methods in the first place--would have been a considerable challenge, even for a talented, dashing, debonair young robot like himself. But he'd fixed that. "Ah...ahem...yes, Hawkeye?" he acknowledged, modulating his voice to sound like the Ogre's. "I am...uh...here."
"Crescent fresh," Hawkeye answered. Just need you to come up to the hangar bay, work on the T-Bird for a few. We'll need something on board the ship to detect gamma radiation."
"Gamma radiation, sir?"
"Yeah, we're just goin' out to arrest the Hulk. Nothin' major, right? Don't worry, just 'cause you're a T-bolt doesn't mean you're comin' with us. Just get the doodads doin' and we'll handle the rest! Hawkeye out..."
At this point, replacing the Ogre might fall apart for some substandard super-genius. But Techno was not unprepared. He knew how to do all sorts of tricks with his robotic body, including changing its form into a surprisingly realistic imitation of the Ogre's. As far as the Thunderbolts could tell, the man they only got to meet for about ten minutes had been their resident engineer for almost a week.
Every couple of hours, Techno would head down into the bowels of the mountain facility, and make sure his counterpart was still safely sedated in the cryogenic stasis tube he found in a sub-basement. That's why he was here when Hawkeye's summons came, and he afforded himself a few more moments to observe the Ogre before he headed up to the hangar. The glass was not soundproof, the fluids within would carry Techno's voice, and the Ogre's state of unconsciousness would allow his brain to interpret at least some of the things he heard from within the chamber. For 3.740068 seconds, Techno considered the possibility that the Ogre was dreaming about the stimuli he received from here, but ultimately concluded it was irrelevant.
"Don't sweat it, old man," he quipped as he left to attend to Hawkeye's request, "maybe someday you'll get out of that tube--I haven't really thought far enough ahead to say I won't let you. In the meantime, don't worry too much about your buddies. I've known the Thunderbolts a long time, and I took good care of 'em. Well, other than that time I tattled on Atlas when he made an unauthorized call to his girlfriend. Or the time I tried to kill Moonstone and she called me a 'miserable little puke.' And then there was the time I had Hawkeye under mind-control to help Baron Zemo conquer the world, so I told Songbird she'd be my reward for assisting him."* He chuckled at the irony, and almost hoped Ogre could hear him. "Sayyyy...I wonder if Melissa's available now that MACH-1's in prison**...heh heh heh..."
[* All that stuff happened in THUNDERBOLTS #11.]
[** Songbird's lover went to prison in THUNDERBOLTS #23.]
And the Ogre laid in his stasis tube quietly, unflinchingly inert as the only people who ever showed him kindness--for however briefly--remained in danger. All he could do was sleep, and be there for his "family" in his dreams...
THE END...?
by Jim Smith
Disclaimer: The Thunderbolts and all other characters in this story are property of Marvel Comics and used here without permission. This story is copyright of Jim Smith, and archived at the Thunderbolts Fan Fiction Archive, at http://www.crosswinds.net/~thunderbolts/. If you want it, just ask for it.
Continuity Note: This story takes place some time after the events of THUNDERBOLTS #33. The Ogre, in case anyone's wondering, was first introduced in X-MEN vol. 1 #28, which was conveniently reprinted a few years ago because some other guy debuted in that issue. Banshee-something-or-rather, I forget...
MZZZZZZZZZEEEOO!
MMMMMZZZZZZZEEOO!
MZYOO!
The sounds of his tools whirring into life might have reminded him of the opening riffs of Van Halen's "Poundcake." Might have, if he hadn't been living under a rock for ten years.
Literally.
He called himself the Ogre, and perhaps it was a fitting title in spite of his diminutive, decidedly unfearsome appearance. Ogres weren't exactly known for being fat little mechanics, but they did tend to hole up away from humanity in mountains. Or he thought they did, anyway--he hardly had much chance to brush up on fairy tales ever since he became an operative for the mutant organization called "Factor Three." After exactly one field mission,* the Ogre was in the doghouse with his superhuman masters, and ordered back to their facility in the Colorado Rockies.
[* Way back in X-MEN vol. 1 #28]
He'd been there ever since, never questioning the commands of Factor Three, even after the group disbanded. The enormous abandoned complex within Mount Charteris had become his home by the time other armies of super-criminals began to use if for their own purposes. But now there was a new element co-existing with him in the mountain. Not so much an army as much as...
"Hey, Ogre, how's that calculator coming? I've got a trig test tomorrow, y'know!"
...A family.
"Hm?" The Ogre perked up at the sound of the young voice and answered. "Ah...yes...well...I should only require a few more minutes to repair the damage, young Helen. I...uh, apologize for the inconvenience..."
Hallie Takahama smirked at the Ogre's excessive contrition. "Inconvenience nothing!" she laughed. "Considering it fell out of my book bag when I was flying back from school--riding a contraption _you_ built me--I'm lucky you can fix it at all! Otherwise I'd have to hit Hawkeye up for the eighty bucks to pay for replacing it..."
"Fear not, Helen, it needn't come to that..." It was no normal family, Ogre considered. The fact they lived in this mountain with him was proof enough of that. The teenaged girl had no real family anymore--not since a disaster pertaining to some "Onslaught" fellow. The closest she had to a mother was a supervillain named "Moonstone," who recruited Hallie into a team of criminals called the "Thunderbolts." The closest she had to a father was a superhero--the aforementioned "Hawkeye"--who decided to turn the Thunderbolts into the heroes they wanted to be.
But did that matter? Did it matter that this "family" had nearly conquered the world under the leadership of a "Baron Zemo," that "Mother" could walk through walls, that "Father" had defended the world against intergalactic menaces using only his bow and arrows? It hardly mattered to him that Hallie spent her days wearing a colorful costume, throwing bioelectric punches and calling herself "Jolt." It was all old hat to him from his Factor Three days, except that in Factor Three he was an underling, and in the this team--
"Great! Thanks a million, Ogre!" Hallie gave him a light kiss on the cheek.
--he was "Grampa."
The second Hallie turned away and left his workshop, the Ogre became as red as a beet. At least, his cheeks did--his eyes were obscured by thick goggles, and his long, gray hair hung from his head and chin like Charlton Heston's in "The Ten Commandments." Maybe he _was_ a "Grampa," he chuckled to himself; he certainly looked the part.
He smiled and put the finishing touches on Hallie's calculator. There were some inefficiencies in the construction of the device that he had labored to correct, but he had to be careful to conceal his improvements. If Burton Canyon High School found one of their math department's instruments contained a nanotech processor, they might still charge Hallie for the cost of replacing the device that had been "tampered with." So it had simply been a matter of reprogramming it to only calculate pi to 300 decimal places when _she_ was using it--perhaps a tad superfluous for him to go to such lengths, but he appreciated the challenge.
"Nothing too good for your granddaughter, eh, Ogre?" he mumbled to himself.
"I hope I'm not interrupting..."
He nervously turned around, a little embarrassed that he'd been overheard. "Ah...no, no, Dr. Sofen..."
Moonstone stepped through the wall of Ogre's workshop and looked around. "Funny," she wondered, "I could have sworn I heard you talking to someone else...never mind. And, please--call me 'Karla,' Ogre."
"Yes...yes, of course...Karla." He adjusted his goggles at the sight of her--something about the blonde woman's space-borne powers made her as literally radiant as she was figuratively. "I was just...thinking. Out loud. Is there something I can do for you?"
"Well...I was thinking that I never had a chance to thank you for supplying that key, when I was being held prisoner here by the Masters of Evil."*
[* THUNDERBOLTS #25]
He tried not to blush again. "That? Oh, think nothing of it, my dear." Of course, it had been a considerable matter to him. The Ogre was never all that assertive, and after spending years hiding inside this mountain he'd never really done much chivalry. It was nice enough to discover a fair maiden in distress for him to daringly rescue. Her gratitude just made it all the more satisfying.
Karla smiled. "But that's not really what I came down here for," she continued. "After we defeated the Masters and took possession of this facility, you observed us and built new equipment for us without our knowing. It occurred to me that you know a lot about us from before we discovered you were living here."*
[* See T-BOLTS #29, 30, 32, and 33 for the whole story]
"I..." Ogre blinked. He had a vague idea where this was going. "Ah...yes, I suppose I would..."
She shook her head, dismissing his qualms. "No, I respect that, Ogre--I am a psychiatrist after all, and in my line of work, it pays to keep an eye the details around you...and not always let on you're aware of them. And I could use your...externalized point of view. I suppose you've noticed how I interact with Hawkeye..."
Ogre swallowed and tried to speak openly. "I'm...not sure what you're getting at, Karla, but I _do_ deeply apologize for happening upon that...that...private matter between you and Mr. Barton in the training facility a few days ago...I'll have you know I'm not some voyeur..."
Karla threw her head back and chuckled. "No, no, no...don't even worry about _that_! I should have guessed you might have been watching when I...well...flirted with Clint..." (A very tame way to describe her rash decision to strip naked during a mock-combat session with the Thunderbolts' leader,* but essentially an apt one.) "...but it's not as though I'm all that modest to begin with."
[* In the classic THUNDERBOLTS #XXX...er...that is, #30.]
"Oh," he said with a sigh of relief. "Then I'm...afraid I don't understand the...nature of this conversation. If you're looking for...romantic advice, I'm sure your teammates would be of more...assistance than I."
"I could, yes," she answered. "But the Thunderbolts all know me fairly well--the good with the bad. And I think what I can use right now is more of an outside observer. You've been watching us for a while now, Ogre--you've had years of practice studying people from afar. Do you think Clint...does he...?"
The Ogre walked up to the tall blonde and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I think, my dear, that he can tell your affections for him are genuine, and he'd be a fool not to feel the same way. Don't be afraid to tell him how you feel--not after all he's done for your team so far..."
"You...you really think so?" she asked. Moonstone was beginning to let go of her cold exterior and reveal the warm, tender person he always knew was inside. "I...appreciate that, Ogre. Thanks. You really know just what to say..."
"Just...doing the best. I can," he replied, his cheeks reddening for the second time that day. "Will you be talking to him right now? because I have some...matters I need to discuss with Hawkeye...but I could put them aside for later, in truth..."
"No...no. I need to figure out _what_ I want to say...I'll get back to it tonight. Thank you again, Ogre..." And with that, she phased through the wall in the same ghost-like manner she came.
Ogre smiled as she left, glad to be of help with the lovestruck couple, and reached into a cabinet and dug out several files. As he had stated, he headed to the gymnasium to talk to Hawkeye.
He ventured out into the bright, spacious room, still a little unused to roaming freely through the complex in plain sight. But the friendly faces of three of the Thunderbolts--Atlas, Charcoal, and Hawkeye himself--compensated, making him feel like an invited guest for a change.
"Awright now, no fair usin' your powers!" Hawkeye noted to the other two. It was a necessity for Erik Josten, whose sweatpants would have been ripped to shreds if he tried to use the growing powers that earned him his "Atlas" codename. Young Charlie Burlingame also didn't see fit to exchange his shorts for the ashen, hulking body he transformed into as "Charcoal." Hawkeye gestured to the man and the boy to stand on opposite sides of him and went on. "This is just a demonstration of what you could do if the Masters of Evil or somebody do this to you, so play along so I can show you how to do it. Now, make like you two are gonna pick me up and chuck me across the room..."
The two Thunderbolts complied, although a bit curiously. Atlas held the archer up by his shoulders, while Charcoal picked up his feet. "OK," Hawkeye continued, "now see how I'm kinda goin' limp, lettin' you pick me up? 'Cause what I'm gonna do _now_ is wait till you ain't expecting nothin' funny, and--" Without warning, Hawkeye jerked his whole body, crunching his abdomen and bringing his upper body and his legs together, nearly bringing Atlas and Charcoal's heads together with a "thud."
"Hey!" Charlie objected, putting Hawkeye down. "What're you trying do! Even at regular size, Atlas's thick skull could kill me in my human form!"
"Aww, I wouldn'ta let that happen, Briquette," Erik grinned. "I had a good idea of what the boss was showin' us. Even if I don't think anybody's likely to grab me like that in the middle of a fight..."
"That ain't the point, though, Atlas," Hawkeye noted as he nipped up to his feet. "I said the same thing when Captain America showed me that little number, and he said what matters is that you're ready for any situation. Now, you and Charlie got your powers to protect you in a fight, but by now we've fought lots of guys who are just as tough. So a little self-defense training will give you one-up on 'em..."
"...Er, Hawkeye? Sir?"
"Huh? Oh, just a sec, Ogre..." Clint motioned to the others to come to the doors of the gym, where the Ogre and some bottled water was waiting. "What's up?" he asked the smaller man after picking up his refreshment.
"Ah...not much, sir...Hawkeye...sir..." he stammered. "I thought these would be helpful for the team--maps of the interior of this mountain, diagnostics of some of the equipment contained therein..."
"Yeah, sure," Clint replied, and stepped back to dump the rest of his water bottle over his head. The cold water dripped off his blond hair down to his bare chest, cooling off the former Avenger. "'Scuse me, Ogre...you were sayin'?"
Erik grinned. "Geez, boss," he said, "can'cha go five minutes without thinkin' about Moonstone?"
"If she does that whenever _she_ thinks about _him_," Charlie joked as he pointed to Clint's drenched chest, "I think I'd rather have my training sessions with her..."
"Yeah, yeah...wait till you get a few years behind ya, kid," Clint retorted. "She's a little outta your league..."
Ogre was somewhat befuddled by the change of conversation. Were these the sort of issues people discussed in the society he had been hidden from for so long? "Perhaps I...ah...should come back at another time..."
"Naw, don't sweat it, Ogre," Clint told him. "We're all guys here, it ain't nothin'."
"Yeah," Erik added. "I've been jerked around by pretty faces enough to know not to take it too seriously. I mean, I've known Karla and Melissa longer'n any of you guys, an' they're just friends, but sometimes I just ask myself...if I had my choice...
"Moonstone," Charlie smirked. "Hands down."
Clint quirked an eyebrow at his young teammate. "Really, now?"
Charlie's smile became a bit sheepish--it was obvious to everyone in the room which Thunderbolt had the strongest interest in Karla. "Welllllll," he amended, "if I had to choose between those two, that is. I mean, if Joystick isn't an option..."
"Joystick?" Erik laughed. "The girl from the Masters of Evil we knocked out when we used their costumes to infiltrate this base? The one who wasn't wearin' any underwear?* See, Briquette, when you get to be my age, you'll be able to appreciate a little subtlety."
[* No lie. See THUNDERBOLTS #25.]
"Riiiight," Clint commented. "So that would mean..."
Erik shrugged. "Melissa, natch. I guess you guys just never notice--when she's in her Songbird outfit and she's standin' _just so_..." He chuckled and dismissed the thought. "So what about you, Ogre? You've gotten to know the ladies..."
"Er...ahhh...with all due respect, sirs," Ogre mumbled, "I wouldn't feel...comfortable casting aspersions about either Dr. Sofen or Ms. Gold..."
The three younger men looked to each other, and Clint patted Ogre on the back. "Hey, don't sweat it, pal--if it don't float your boat, you don't hafta talk about it..."
"It's no big deal," Charlie added.
Erik nodded. "Yeah, Ogre's probably right anyway. If Melissa found out about us talkin' like that, she might put solid-sound force fields on all the toilet seats or somethin'!" He shook his head and chortled.
"Yes...ah, quite," Ogre agreed timidly. "Well, ah, here are all the files, Hawkeye, you may peruse them at your leisure while I attend to the more exhaustive schematics..."
Clint waved to him as he headed out the door. "Sure, no problem, Ogre...don't work too hard now!"
Ogre headed out and back to his lab, eager to find something else to put his mind on. He enjoyed the company of the men, but their youthful exuberance tried his patience at times. He couldn't complain, though--he was fortunate to have made friends who accepted his feelings about such things...the "generation gap" between themselves and "Grampa."
He spent the rest of the day there, taking Clint's advice and trying not to devote too much of his time to the maintenance of the Thunderbolts' base. After a few relaxing hours searching for a proof to Fermat's Last Theorem, he suddenly realized he'd lost track of time. Checking his clock, he discovered it was half past two in the morning, and here he was still fiddling with his calculations!
He shook his head and pulled his goggles off. Years of living inside this mountain--with no sunshine or starlight to organize his day around--had left him a little unsynchronized with the rest of society's daily routine. (For all he knew, someone had already proven Fermat's Last Theorem while he was holed up here.) That hadn't been a problem when he lived alone, but now he'd have to adjust to waking up when the Thunderbolts woke up, if he planned on being one...
He had his own room now, and he stumbled through the low-lit corridor to get to it--to the bed he now slept on. They'd gotten pajamas for him, so he wouldn't have to sleep in the old Factor Three uniform that he still insisted on wearing during the day. He took the purple jumpsuit off slowly, still unaccustomed to these simple luxuries...
"Ogre? You awake?"
He jerked his head around to face the source of the voice--still accustomed to hiding from anyone who happened upon him--but quietly sighed when he discovered it was Melissa Gold. "Ah...Songbird," he answered, hurriedly grabbing a robe. "How may I...help you?"
Her hair--which was curiously shock-white, except for two streaks of her natural auburn color--was tussled and tangled, and she ran a hand through it as she realized how she might look. Not that it mattered; Melissa always seemed warmly pleasant to those who got to know her. "Um...I don't know...I just couldn't sleep," she explained. "I guess I was lonely. I saw your light on..."
"Oh...come sit down, my dear, it's no matter. I...stayed up late, I am not acclimated to the team's routine yet..." He welcomed her to a spot on the end of his bed, and headed for the door. "Shall I find you some warm milk? A...sedative, perhaps?"
She shook her head. "That's fine, Ogre, I'm okay. I just wanted to talk to somebody, I guess. It's been getting real hot lately, I was too warm in my bed..."
Ogre gave her a look of shock and dismay. "The environmental controls! Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Songbird, I haven't checked them in _weeks_! The Masters of Evil monitored it when they were here, and when they left I was distracted and forgot to--"
Melissa grabbed his arm before he ran off to fix the imagined problem. "Ogre, hold up! It's not the environmental controls--Hawkeye found those as soon as we moved in. It's just that it's summer, and we're living inside a giant silo." She smiled sweetly. "Don't worry about it!"
"Don't...worry about it?" He looked at her quizzically.
"It's okay," she nodded. "You know, you don't _have_ to fix _everything_ to make us happy." She threw her arm around his back and gave him a friendly squeeze. "We like you just fine!"
He was blushing again, confound him! "I...ah...that is..._thank you_, Songbird. I...appreciate the thought."
She giggled at his bashful response. "Don't mention it. Come to think of it, is there anything we can do for you?"
"Me? Oh...well..." He fumbled for an answer. "You've already done so much, giving me this room and these clothes..." He stroked his long beard and contemplated how to tell her it wasn't necessary...
"You know," Melissa pointed out, "you need a haircut."
"Eh?"
"As hot as it's getting outside, you must be burning up under all that hair. And--well, no offense, Ogre, but I can't look at you without wondering which of the Seven Dwarves you're supposed to be." She smiled again. "Just kidding..."
Ogre got up and looked into the mirror his new quarters provided him. "No...I suppose you're right, Songbird. I...hadn't really given it much thought...in the time I've lived here. Actually, when my beard began to grow, I rather fancied myself like Sir Alec Guinness. But I've never had much reason to keep it trimmed." He paused. "You know...of all the groups that have used this base, I don't believe any of them ever left scissors lying around..."
"I carry my own," Melissa smirked, and in a split second her sonic carapace--the cybernetic apparatus on her neck and shoulders that transmuted her voice into solid-sound constructs--had created a pair of scissors in her right hand. "So how about I do _you_ a favor, for a change?"
Ogre shrugged and smiled, and allowed her to go to work. Using her carapace, Melissa created a pair of disembodied sonic hands to pull back Ogre's hair, and when the makeshift ponytail was taut, she transmuted the hands into a small ring to hold it in place. Then with her scissors, she began to cut the bulk of Ogre's beard away. He leaned his head back and left her to her work, feeling somewhat refreshed to have his hair pulled back from his face.
"Whoops, made a mess there," Melissa said after a few snips, and wiped away the trimmings from Ogre's robe. He was a bit surprised by the forward nature of his "stylist," but found he didn't mind too much. "OK, looking better already," she told him, "but I need to shave it to even it up." With an inaudible change in the frequency her bionic larynx hummed into the carapace, the scissors became an electric trimmer.
After a couple of half-hearted attempts to run the trimmer over Ogre's face, Ogre heard the device cease its buzzing (how was a sonic field replicating the sounds of a solid electrical instrument?), and lifted his head up to discover Melissa getting up from beside him to readjust her position--to his lap. "This'll work better, I think," she grinned, straddling Ogre's midsection and cutting the beard with more enthusiasm. What had been rather forward was now fairly intimate, and the Ogre now found his gaze locked into Melissa's eyes, staring down at his face from on top of him. "Mmm-hmmm," she mused, "Muuuuch better."
"Song...Songbird?" he mumbled.
"She dissipated her trimmer and took off the carapace. "Melissa," she told him. "Call me Melissa..."
"She let the carapace drop to the ground (what was she even doing with it in the first place, if she'd been sleeping before she came in?) and kissed him passionately, using her shoulders to wriggle out of her robe (had she been wearing a robe when she came in?) while her hands pushed Ogre's back down onto the bed. Ogre was confused, perhaps, but not ungrateful for the affections. It wasn't as if he had some crush on her since the Thunderbolts moved into the mountain, but he certainly wouldn't complain if a pretty young woman like Melissa wanted to think of him as more than just a Grampa...
...Grampa...
"...so how you doing in there, Grampa? Hope you don't have to pee, because I'm afraid you'll be in that stasis tube for a long time..."
P. Norbert Ebersol called himself "The Fixer" because he was good at fixing machines. Now that he _was_ a machine--a result of his body being killed and his mind being downloaded into his equipment*--that moniker was a tad indirect, so he fixed that with another name: "Techno."
[* In the landmark THUNDERBOLTS #8.]
He was a Thunderbolt--or he had been, before the others decided to go straight. That didn't sit well with him a the time--he'd become a criminal in the first place because it fixed the problem of not getting the challenges and excitement he demanded from life. So he went off on his own, only to discover the Thunderbolts were having a more interesting go of things than he was having. Not a problem, though--not one he couldn't fix, anyway. He just rejoined the team.
"Hey, Ogre?" A voice came over the comm-line. The Thunderbolts' leader in their efforts to reform, Hawkeye. "Needja to do me a favor, you listenin'?"
Now, of course, rejoining a team Techno had tried to kill when he left--a team with a meddling do-gooder in charge, who didn't approve of his methods in the first place--would have been a considerable challenge, even for a talented, dashing, debonair young robot like himself. But he'd fixed that. "Ah...ahem...yes, Hawkeye?" he acknowledged, modulating his voice to sound like the Ogre's. "I am...uh...here."
"Crescent fresh," Hawkeye answered. Just need you to come up to the hangar bay, work on the T-Bird for a few. We'll need something on board the ship to detect gamma radiation."
"Gamma radiation, sir?"
"Yeah, we're just goin' out to arrest the Hulk. Nothin' major, right? Don't worry, just 'cause you're a T-bolt doesn't mean you're comin' with us. Just get the doodads doin' and we'll handle the rest! Hawkeye out..."
At this point, replacing the Ogre might fall apart for some substandard super-genius. But Techno was not unprepared. He knew how to do all sorts of tricks with his robotic body, including changing its form into a surprisingly realistic imitation of the Ogre's. As far as the Thunderbolts could tell, the man they only got to meet for about ten minutes had been their resident engineer for almost a week.
Every couple of hours, Techno would head down into the bowels of the mountain facility, and make sure his counterpart was still safely sedated in the cryogenic stasis tube he found in a sub-basement. That's why he was here when Hawkeye's summons came, and he afforded himself a few more moments to observe the Ogre before he headed up to the hangar. The glass was not soundproof, the fluids within would carry Techno's voice, and the Ogre's state of unconsciousness would allow his brain to interpret at least some of the things he heard from within the chamber. For 3.740068 seconds, Techno considered the possibility that the Ogre was dreaming about the stimuli he received from here, but ultimately concluded it was irrelevant.
"Don't sweat it, old man," he quipped as he left to attend to Hawkeye's request, "maybe someday you'll get out of that tube--I haven't really thought far enough ahead to say I won't let you. In the meantime, don't worry too much about your buddies. I've known the Thunderbolts a long time, and I took good care of 'em. Well, other than that time I tattled on Atlas when he made an unauthorized call to his girlfriend. Or the time I tried to kill Moonstone and she called me a 'miserable little puke.' And then there was the time I had Hawkeye under mind-control to help Baron Zemo conquer the world, so I told Songbird she'd be my reward for assisting him."* He chuckled at the irony, and almost hoped Ogre could hear him. "Sayyyy...I wonder if Melissa's available now that MACH-1's in prison**...heh heh heh..."
[* All that stuff happened in THUNDERBOLTS #11.]
[** Songbird's lover went to prison in THUNDERBOLTS #23.]
And the Ogre laid in his stasis tube quietly, unflinchingly inert as the only people who ever showed him kindness--for however briefly--remained in danger. All he could do was sleep, and be there for his "family" in his dreams...
THE END...?