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200 Park Avenue and East 45th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, May 28, 2012
+17 Days after the Battle of New York, Memorial Day
Author's Notes: 1,000 reads in 6 days? I must have done something right. Love and props for all the faves, follows, reviewers, and anyone who looked at the summery and went no freaking way! This story has become my fastest popular story, and might break my personal best monthly record (set with Mass Effect: Of Lions And Angels' ARC known as The Battle Of LaGrange Point Two (Feros) of 3,700+ views in a month). I have already conquered NANOWRIMO (but for June), already topping 50,000 words for this story in approximately a week.
BTW, I wrote 'the chapter'. I think you know which I might be referring to concerning whom the main character is. But we still have a movie to plow through before I reach it.
Trying to creep back home was best left to teenage daughters who went out when they weren't suppose to. Trying to creep back into one of the most secured and observed buildings in the world was an exercise best left to super spies like James Bond or Jason Bourne. Trying to creep back home when home was located somewhere in the top ten floors of Stark Tower, populated with a couple of neurotic superheroes, hosting an ever-vigilant AI, temporarily headquartering a secret clandestine Agency, and owned by a multi-billionaire who got a kick out of digging for dirt just to exasperate people? That was evidently left for Southern Californian lawyers who just spent a three-day holiday weekend with a man they had just met that Friday night.
Jennifer Susan Walters, Esq., felt the elevator stop at the eighty-ninth floor to see the doors opening up to reveal a redhead.
Oh God, please do not let this turn out to be a Walk of Shame…
"So." Natasha Romanoff was smiling way too big and her green eyes wayyyyy too bright. It was like the cat who caught the canary. Or the spider the fly. Jenn wasn't exactly thrilled with either reference. "Good weekend?"
"You're asking me like I wasn't tailed, my cell phone tracked, and probably satellite imagery, too." Walters shot off, feeling a little burlesque. She was a grown woman, not some teenage girl who ran around with a boy that horrified fathers. "And yes, good weekend."
"Very good?" There was a smirk on those ruby red lipsticked lips, an eyebrow going up, the look all-too knowing. "Very… fulfilling?"
"Who put you up to this? Clint or Tony?"
"Neither, actually." The only female member of the Avengers replied, the smirk still there. "Tony spent all weekend playing with ChiTech and coming up with improvements for his new Mark VIII Iron Man suit. Clint took some time off himself, and only just came back. I kept soft tabs on you just in case something happened, nothing invasive. But I do have to ask…
"Rick Jones? How the hell did you pull that one off?" The redhead asked with a smile. The tone said it all; she was impressed.
I'm about to have girl talk with the Black Widow, Jenn realized as she exited the elevator with Natasha right by her side as the lawyer headed towards 'her' bedroom. Sooner or later she was going to have to call a realty agent to look for a condo or something in the City for her, but that would mean dealing with the pain of entering and exiting the containment area of Midtown twice a day. Moving out could be put on hold for the time being.
"Boltzman Club, and he came onto yours truly." Walters relented and told the spy. "I wouldn't have suspected you would be an A-Bomb fan."
"I had all their CD's. It was… after grunge." The redhead admitted, and Jenn was more than wise enough to leave it at that. "Still good looking?"
"Almost criminally." It was Jenn's turn to smirk as they made their way to the guest wing where most of the members of the Avengers stayed. "And yes, very good and very fulfilling."
"I can tell. You're glowing still." Romanoff was certainly amused. What was that saying about others living vicariously what they couldn't do themselves? Jenn heavily suspected that Natasha probably had some relationship hang-ups concerning her… suspected past. In that, the Esquire wouldn't blame her if half of what she suspected was true. The Black Widow probably couldn't really trust or endure herself to a stranger, so her coping mechanism was likely the sister act with or for someone else. It wasn't the most fun thing to have around, but Jenn thought about what General Thaddeus Ross had wanted out of her cousin; the creation of the 'Super Soldier', the ultimate killing machine. The Juris Doctor didn't have a doubt in her mind that was exactly what someone had done with Natasha Alianovna Romanoff, turned what was likely a young girl into a sleeper cell agent, an espionage operative, or a precision assassin. Likely, all three. Keeping tabs on her 'friends' and enjoying what she probably couldn't bring herself to do was likely Natasha's version of fun. Scary thought, but Jenn would allow it. Natasha Romanoff was the one to shut off the portal and stop the Chitauri Invasion after all; not a God, not a man of iron, not a super soldier… a normal, if exceptionally trained, human woman.
"That's probably because the whole 'parting is such sweet sorrow' evolved to 'where did you shoot my bra off to?'." While it hadn't been exactly that, it hadn't been that far off, either. Jenn had spent a good deal of a three-day weekend with Richard Milhouse Jones and his condominium in Tribeca. Mornings were spent very much in each others' company, moving onto showers together and breakfast. Days got reserved for tourists attractions, Rick taking Jenn to see some of the world-famous sights in New York, ranging from Lower Manhattan to Central Park. Lunches and dinners were done at a variety of restaurants in a city where every ethnic-flavor could be found from Afghani to Zimbabwean, different parts of the city hosting so many different cultures and rarities. Evenings were entertainment as Rick showed Jenn more than a few locations where in-crowd couples could be found, and Jenn didn't find any real issue with that particular line of thought as they club-hopped New York City. Between the lights and the many attractions, Jennifer Walters found herself becoming quite attached to the Big Apple, so different from LA. Nights were spent in each others arms, and Jenn would never, ever admit to Natasha that being with Rick almost made her feel like that teenage girl again, special inside and a dream come true.
A girl had to have her secrets. Likely, the redhead suspected. Probably why she was still smirking.
"Heya, Jenn." Doctor Robert Bruce Banner was padding down the same hallway as they, but in the opposite direction, looking at a StarkTab before noticing the two women. "Good weekend, I take it?" The lawyer merely looked to Natasha and signaled to the other woman that this would be a private conversation between family members. The redhead pretended to pout with those ruby-red lips of hers, but winked regardless before walking off. Jenn had to remind herself to pat anything and everything she owned for listening devices. Just to be safe.
"Yeah, sightseeing and… I think I met someone." Before the incident, it hadn't been unusual for Bruce and Jenn to talk with one another about such things. She remembered his relationship with Doctor Elizabeth Ross, and he remembered her almost-marriage with John Jameson. "Still early to tell, but certainly a weekend worth remembering."
"Considering the hours and work you put in, I'm glad you got something to show for it." Jenn almost winced at that, knowing that Bruce… couldn't. They both knew what triggered a transformation; adrenaline and adrenal responses. While most people knew that nerves and neurons traveled exceptionally fast, almost seemingly instantaneous, the body's chemical processes were a great deal slower. Fear and anger were emotional states that occurred in the mind, true, but the triggering of adrenaline was a chemical process that originated in the adrenal glands, people feeling the cold 'wash' of dilation that was the fight-or-flight instinct as everything in the body became momentarily heightened and increased. A panic attack could trigger a transformation for her cousin, and while it hadn't been tested out, Bruce worried that a spike in heart rate could also do the same. It would be extremely unfortunate if in the throes of passion, the Hulk emerged. That would be… messy. "Hey, I'm happy for you, kid. It's good to see you with a smile on your face."
"Thank you. I just… hate bringing up the things that you can't do anymore or we worry about. It feels like rubbing it in or dangling it in front of you." Jenn admitted. It was akin to teasing someone with a disability; one just didn't do those kinds of things. Bruce had to live a regimented life, and bringing up things that he couldn't do anymore just seemed wrong.
"At first, yeah, that was a bit of how I felt when I saw other people." The physicist replied, shrugging his shoulders. "I know you might not agree with me on this one, but… I earned a little of this." Walters was about to debate that, but her cousin held up his hand. "Jenn, I knew what that Project was about; recreating the Super Soldier Serum. Yes, Ross was the asshole that turned a noble effort into a next-generation weapons project, but I still signed up for it." The Esquire frowned at that. That was… hard to countermand. "I've thought about it. I know I felt like I was the only one who could do it, and I felt like I was doing it for noble reasons." Jenn's Dad, Sheriff Morris Walters, practically worshiped everything that was Captain America. That had transfered to his nephew when they took in Bruce. "I could have walked away knowing they never would have succeeded. Yes, it might have still ended up a disaster or, worse, a bunch of failed human experiments because someone skipped out on the ethics portion of the exam," that had the Esquire snort, "but I could have sabotaged it like Odysseus' wife, made bad batches, inserted errors into formulas that no one else was solving but me. I… was a part of it. I might not like the burden I bear, but it is the burden I was a part of and earned. Anyone else…?" Bruce shrugged his shoulders.
"Yeah, might be the thing we feared Ross would want or something even worse." That had certainly come in the form of the Abomination. Jenn knew what Bruce was saying. To stop uninformed test subjects in the form of volunteer soldiers soldiers told they were going to be the next Captain America but end up genetic soup ranging from minor defects to living horrors. Both Bruce and Jenn knew what happened after Project: Rebirth happened, the United States Government using African-American Soldiers to recreate the Super Soldier Serum that they only had pieces of, only five of three hundred surviving the horrific project. Doctor Bruce Banner had dug up the location of its only survivor, Isaiah Bradley, who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1943 and was pardoned by President David Eisenhower on the day of President John Kennedy's inauguration. Bruce had heard the man's story, having not aged a day in sixty years, and yet not forgetting what had happened to his fellow human beings in the name of science. Doctor Bruce Banner had sworn up and down to the black Captain America that he would never, ever let that happened.
Bruce had kept his word. Like the man whom he gave that promise to, her cousin suffered for it.
"C'm here, you." Jenn pulled Bruce in for a hug, still having to make up for eight years of absences and fretting over the man she had seen as a brother and a hero, knowing only in an academic manner what he suffered. "I'm going to be here for you, Bruce. You and the big guy." She whispered to him as she held him, feeling him relax. How he did it, she'd never know.
And until the day they could cure it, fix it, or at least change it until it was much more manageable, Jenn wouldn't leave his side again.
Tuesday had come, and the first of several legal strikes were sent like laser-guided bombs.
Jennifer Walters said that the strikes in question, being subpoenas, inquests, counter-suits, and legal injunctions, were meant for the clients in question to scramble. When one went head-to-head with an insurance company, dirty tactics were necessary as she filed for direct representation of the chairmen of the Board of Directors of American Insurance Group, Shulman's Group, and the Hartmann Group. The lawyers of those companies would do what Jenn said they would do; file for extensions and clauses for legal representation. That would buy time.
Major Maria Jacoba Hill personally drove the Esquire to 60 Center Street where the New York State Supreme Court Building where the lawyer (whom Tony jokingly called the Avenger-in-Law) went to war on a legal scale that probably looked like a tactical nuclear strike on several fronts. Maria had to admit, Jenn didn't lack gumption.
"That was quick." The SHIELD Deputy Director of Operations said as she waiting for Jenn to leave one of the various courtrooms of the Supreme Court Building before noon, the woman in question having texted her that the proceedings (all seven of them) were complete.
"This was a play-for-time tactic." The Esquire replied as Hill took to the woman's side, noting the differences in Jenn from when she first met the woman the Sunday before last and today. The business suit that she wore was a business casual, but it exuded power and confidence, having been ordered from Nordstrom's catalog and shipped to a convenient location that wasn't Stark Tower so the poor UPS or FedEx deliverer wouldn't have to suffer the containment entry procedures while driving a delivery vehicle. That was a process even worse than just attempting access with a personal vehicle for obvious reasons. "Insurance companies hate cases, and will generally settle out-of-court instead of slugging it out and possibly paying more than is proper. You want to win against an insurance claim where you stand a chance? Sue them for a million dollars and you'll likely walk away with four hundred thousand dollars if you're patient."
"That sounds about right." She was reminded of that one woman who sued McDonald's' for spilling hot coffee on her own lap and walking away with a ridiculous amount of money because the coffee cup didn't declare coffee hot. What was really mind-boggling was that the case had a jury; twelve people in a jury box had agreed to that retardation! Jenn had mention that about two-thirds of 'lawyering' was the art of the jury selection. Typical lawyer bullshit; slam cops for profiling people, but then turn around and exploit profiling to win cases. "How much time?"
"Four weeks for AIG, three for Shulman's and Hartmann's." Walters delivered as they walked through the plaza-like lobby of the Supreme Court Building, with its marbled floors, many circular staircases, and iconic displays of legality and justice. Really, it was a pit of vipers dressed in robes and suit. "That buys them time, and buys me time. They're going to join forces, pull out the big guns, and they're going to sweat me out while dangling a settlement in front of my face so Stark Industries and the Avengers don't get plastered all over the media. You'd be surprise how many will cave to the threat of a public relations disaster."
"No I wouldn't."
"No, I suspect you wouldn't be surprised." Jenn mused as they left the building, the taller woman having opened the door for Maria. Technically, Hill was Walters' 'protection' for the day. While no one really suspected that the Esquire had gotten onto anyone's shit list and wouldn't be recognized as one of the Avengers (hero or staff), it really was a matter of time. Chances were, that cat would be out of the bag in a few weeks or so with the creation of Avengers, Incorporated and The Avengers Foundation that was already filed through the state and the final approval being awaited for. Her name was clearly marked on that paperwork several times over, especially for 'founder' and the nominal position of 'Director'. Yes, someone could be voted officially later on without issue, but as Jenn put it, she was probably one of the few in the Penthouse that legally had enough separation from Stark Industries, SHIELD, and the Avengers themselves that could officially 'lead' without a thousand cases coming up against her with any involvement on her part. Her one real sin had been the extraction of her cousin Doctor Bruce Banner out of America nine years prior, and even SHIELD had no idea how she did it.
They had really lucked out with the lawyer.
"So what's next?" Hill asked as they walked down the flag steps of the court, seeing the warm weather had really brought out the Civic Center area into full bloom. One would have never known that there had been an alien invasion over two weeks prior.
"Meat. We're hiring." Jenn said with a smile as Maria led them to one of the government-oriented parking lots where a black 2011 Chevy Impala awaited them with government tags that were registered for the Department of Homeland Security. "There's no way in hell I can run an organization and fight all of its legal battles, too. One doesn't need a degree in business to start one, but it would be particularly stupid to run one that's probably going to be in the net worth of several million dollars in the next few days without a few certified public accountants, a couple of business managers, a couple of paralegals, some information distribution personnel, and a public relations officer. In terms of manager-to-employee ratio, we're probably going to have the worst ratio of overhead in existence with probably two dozen people to manage six." Maria snorted at that, but she found herself unable to counter anything Jenn was saying. "Then it's the team-building I need to work on.
"I need them to work together, not merely in the same general area at the same general time."
"Have a plan for that?" Hill asked as she pulled out the keys to the Impala and pressed the unlock button on the fob before she got into the drivers' seat while Jenn went to the passenger side. Jenn had a point; Tony and Thor alone had some rather substantial egos, and the team had done nothing but bicker and snipe at one another on the Constellation. The Battle of New York might have brought them together, but something needed to cement them into staying together. Each of them had their issues and problems to solve (legal and otherwise), and they had remained for the aftermath of the Battle because, for the most part, the public adored them. But if one saw them in the Penthouse, not much time was spent bonding or as a team.
"The best way to get a bunch of guys into the same room is to put a pretty girl right at the front of it." Jenn smirked as she looked at the Agent. "Normally, you'd get someone who is oriented towards the same business or occupation to garner interest and cohesion; an expert who has the credentials to back up their methods. Sadly… there isn't really anyone out there who can hold a claim to that."
Well, there was Doctor Henry Pym.
While Maria didn't know the details, she knew that the Doctor had lost his wife stopping a nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Janet Van Dyne giving her life saving America from a nuclear attack. It was a hell of a way to go, but that left a husband having to bury his wife and his heart. Hank had left SHIELD a year later, the Ant-Man Suit and its corresponding technology going out the door with him. As Maria understood it, Director Howard Stark had let it happen out of respect for the man who had fought for America and SHIELD for something like twenty years.
"There… might be someone. But he'll be highly resistant towards anything considered SHIELD or Stark." Hill said slowly as she put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot and began heading into the midday traffic of New York City. "I wouldn't guarantee response or politeness, but there was a man who crafted a technology on his own that let him safeguard the world and was SHIELD's… hmmm, let's just call him the smallest trump card, that we had in our arsenal. After negotiations and politics failed, but before it came to bullets and war?
"We had the Ant-Man."
Maria knew Jenn was staring at her while her eyes were on the traffic.
"I don't know the details, but if there's someone who might understand what you're having to deal with? Someone who wants to stay out of SHIELD's hands but also do the job? Doctor Henry Jonathan Pym would be the man you might want to talk to." Difficult would be an understatement, but that would be Jenn's cross to bear, unfortunately.
"I'll look into it."
Two hours later, Jennifer Walters sat in her very own personal office in Stark Tower. It didn't lack for money, technology, or posh.
Two weeks ago? She was writing dispositions and legal memos on normal cases as well as doing research on a damages suit involving some workers with questionable paperwork on the topic of being allowed in America. She had merited her own office before she left the Law Office of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Holliway, having earned it cutting her teeth on Personal Injury cases along with a slue of other ones that the Firm sent her way to make her a better lawyer. When she opened her own practice, Jenn continued the multi-disciplinarian routine and sent some of the minor cases to her two junior Associates that she had picked up from UCLA Law and Berkeley Law, intending the same. The corner office she had now on the ninety-second story of Stark Tower, residing in the Penthouse, and under only the Loft that was solely Tony's domain, Jenn Walters was, quite figuratively, sitting on top of the world.
Now she was looking at the convoluted legal nightmare that was Captain America's paycheck.
Seventy years of back pay as an O-3 through the United States Army equaled quite a bit, especially when back pay came at current dues and not historical ones. Eight hundred and forty months at fifty-seven hundred dollars each month equaled quite a lot. Four million and eight-hundred thousand dollars (give or take a few numbers for rounding), to be honest.
The man in question sat across from her in her office, on the other side of her ultramodern glass-and-metal desk. Captain Steven Grant Rogers looked stunned at the news. And the number.
"I'm a millionaire?" The Captain asked, his tone a little… apprehensive. Jenn had no idea what the average paycheck looked like back in 1942, but probably a dozen or so dollars a day was probably considered decent. Telling a man who use to pay a nickle for a gallon of gas that he now had nearly five million dollars had certainly flummoxed the man.
"And that's not including the fact that people have more or less using 'Captain America' as a brand product for the past seventy years without bothering to get anyone's permission." Jennifer continued, Captain Rogers looking at her with a frown. He was just learning of the extent of the icon that Captain America had been post-World War Two. "Now I'm not going to start suing everyone under the sun; we'd never get anywhere. But what I am going to do is put a stop to unauthorized usages of your name and image by every politician and company under the sun. Not to mention the more extremist political parties, separatists, and wackos who think you stand for deportation of immigrants and the advocation of the Second Amendment in a more violent manner."
"Oh." Poor guy had woken up to a much different world, and the past three months hadn't been exactly kind to him. What had SHIELD done when they pulled him out of the Arctic Ocean? Stuffed him into a hole? The Esquire wasn't even sure if the Division had bothered to update him or even just getting him slowly back into the world. "I'm not exactly… comfortable with all that."
"Which is why you are here, and why I am talking to you about it." The lawyer replied with a smile. "You can donate that money to charity organizations if you feel like you don't want it or deserve it." That perked the Captain up a bit; something like that would certainly catch the notice of a World War Two-era man use to rationing and buying savings bonds. "The fact of the matter is that while you are of a unique status, people are going to want to use that to their benefit. It's my job to prevent that, or at least unrestricted control of that. You are a hero for a great many people, Steve, but there was absolutely no control over who used you and what for. God knows several of the movies sucked."
"M-movies?" Oh boy.
"There's been… seven? Eight?" Jenn winced at that. Had no one gotten around to telling Captain Rogers that there were feature films about him, the first one back in the early-50's, a black-and-white montage that looked like a poor boxers' reel? "I… assume that either Howard Stark or Peggy Carter had some sort of say or legality involved in it. The concept of Captain America seemed to be much more under controlled for about thirty years or so until the Republican Party began using some jackass in your costume to promote their policies for Reganomics."
"Rega… what?"
"Oh, when Ronald Regan was President. It's…", ancient history was what she was about to say, but Jenn recovered herself from that tactless observation, "a moot point. People have been using you from selling cereal for children to promoting racist propaganda for seventy years, Captain. Now that you're up and awake, it should be up to you on how that image is managed. There's a whole new generation of little boys up there now listening to their granddaddies talk about you with renewed interest, after all. Little girls, too."
"Yeah, kids." Steve looked to one side of the new office, one that Jenn hadn't really had time to decorate that much. There was a desk and a computer that was well-above what she could find on the shelf at a computer store, and not one filing cabinet or bookshelf, everything digital. There was an entire digital library that she had jokingly called LCARS where Jenn could pull up just about anything she wanted on either the Stark servers, being guarded by what an actual fucking Artificial Intelligence named JARVIS. Beam me up, Scottie was her general code phrase whenever she used the elevator. "Might be a bit antiquated." Rogers observed.
"Maybe we could use the reminder. A fresh perspective of a time when men and women were expected to do more." Walters offered, making the super soldier look thoughtful. "Besides, just because you're considered the 'perfect' soldier doesn't mean you're only just a soldier. Your generation had actors and baseball players who served, came back home, and went to become great men that the public adored." There was an entire generation of athletes, actors, politicians, business owners, and figures of note who were just that, the Greatest Generation driving America forward for the next thirty plus years. No less than seven Presidents had served in some capacity during World War Two, including George Herbert Walker Bush being the youngest Naval Aviator, John Fitzgerald Kennedy a Navy Cross-recipient, and David Dwight Eisenhower a five-star General that was in charge of the European Theater. "Perhaps we've all gotten a little blase and jaded, distracted by technology and whatnot. Perhaps we could do with a little more good old-fashion moral fiber and a gold standard to set the bar. Charities, volunteer work, getting people involved. Being a hero doesn't always require a uniform, after all. But it does require giving out a helping hand."
"That's… actually pretty good." The time-displaced man replied, a bit of a goofy grin on his face.
"My dad, actually. He was a Sheriff in California, pretty huge fan of yours, like most of his generation." Sheriff Morris Walters had grown up with the stories of the Howling Commandos, those paragons of freedom and manliness. Jenn had watched all those movies with her Dad when she was a little girl, and she wasn't embarrassed to admit to it. Her Dad had looked up to those heroes, and to Jenn, her Dad was the hero. She went into Law based upon his work and efforts enforcing it, taking the courtroom venue as her means to do so. "Get yourself some ideas on what you'd like and run with it. World is out there, and it's not going to wait around for you to get off your ass." Steve frowned at that. Oh yes, lady language. "Kinda digging the thought of seeing you as a little league coach or a Boy Scout Troop Master. I'm trying to imagine earning a merit badge for… dear God, anything from Captain America. In my mind, it's worth so much more when you don't have to pay for it."
"I'll look into something like that." She certainly noted that Rogers perked up at the idea of being a hero for kids. Hell, George Herman Ruth had been a drunken lecher and kids had absolutely adored the Babe. Something like that wouldn't happen today with social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook… not that Steve had any ideas what those were. Poor guy needs a modern liaison, she thought sadly as she watched the very well-defined physique of Captain Steve Rogers leave her office, putting just about ever man in existence to shame. It was strange to think that Tony Stark was the 'smallest' of the men amongst the Avengers, still being quite athletic but not super-defined. Well, he did have a suit of some sort of gold/titanium alloy with a power core attached to his chest.
Well, the easy assignment was done. Now it was onto the dregs of legal minute involving an extradition case against a certain archer and events in Germany. And then evidently the Black Widow was being sued by a Russian 'businessman' with more shady business than a third-world dictatorship. And then there were the suits against the Avengers themselves, numbering at least four hundred. There was a punitive case where several persons 'traumatized' by the attack were blaming the Avengers (under the impression that they had manufactured the attack, absurdly), the damages to the city one, another where the the city's insurance manager was suing for future repartitions, and several businesses joining forces to get compensation due to building damages when a Chitauri Leviathan crashed into their structures by either flight or force. And then there was the fact that the Hulk put rather meaty fists in a ton of buildings jumping back and forth.
Actually, Jenn could solve most of those in a few months with a list of inquiries, subpoenas, drafts, and some legal finagling. Perhaps the thought of having the threat of the Incredible Hulk (and not Doctor Bruce Banner) on the stand as a material witness might prove a credible force into scaring off most of the money-grabbers (she shouldn't think that way, but it did make her chuckle). But Jennifer didn't doubt that it would be the last she would have to deal with the New York attack. Like the tried-and-true torts cases such as mesothelioma or asbestos, someone was always trying to start a case; be it a damaged party or some law office looking to make some easy money with cheap commercials to pull in the class-action tours cases. Plenty of people ready to jump on that bandwagon to make a buck, forgetting that torts lawyers took their forty percent cut first and spread the rest over the many liable cases, some people ending up with mere thousands of dollars when tens of thousands of dollars worth of punitive damages had been done. Practically legal piracy, but lawyers got away with it all the time.
Jenn sighed as she looked at her next line of business; the 'buy out' of her personal practice in Southern California.
Jame Morgan, her oldest subordinate, had been told the news about what she was doing, and had tentatively offered both him, her other associate Veronica Rylee, and several of the staff of Walters and Associates retainer services for what was to become Avengers, Incorporated, while her personal self was to end up in the Tower. Her poor secretary Linda Carter was probably going to need a big raise for all the work that was about to come her way since Jenn hadn't had time to get herself a staff in New York. Might have been smarter to have them work here, but that would require everyone picking up and moving their entire lives to the State of New York (or in close proximity of it). Jenn would need a legal team, and though they didn't have to be in the Tower, the distance and time zone differences were telling.
Too much to do, only so many hands to do them with. Not to mention she had an appointment with Norway.
No use daydreaming about that now; she had a lot of work to do. And a nation to take to court in the name of a Norse God.
It was time to bring the thunder, so to speak.
Author's Note: Isaiah Bradley was, in fact, a Captain America invented in 2003 explain the origins of a 40's-Era retest of the Super Soldier Serum. Marvel Comics Retconned several Captain Americas and Bucky Barnes to cover the various 'resurrections' into being people who were look-alikes but generally didn't last very long. I think there were four Captain Americas and five Bucky Barnes going up to the Vietnam War. Isaiah Bradley is the grandfather of Elijah 'Eli' Bradley/Patriot of the Young Avengers, a recipient of his grandfather's blood when Eli took a gunshot for Captain America/Steve Rogers. Isaiah lost his mind while in solitary confinement for seventeen years, regressing to a child-like state. Like Steve Rogers, he ages quite slowly.
Doctor Pym is being introduced early on. I think some of you might figure out why.
If one is captured or declared missing in action while serving in the US Military, that person still draws a paycheck. If they are reported as killed in action but are found otherwise alive (and not having ran off and faked their death), the same is true (though I don't know if it has happened, but I suspect so). So Prisoners of War (say, John McCain, one of the most famous ones) was paid for his time in service while a POW for North Vietnam. Captain Rogers technically never left the Army, was reported killed in action, but found to have survived but incapacitated. Legally, he would be paid for his 'service' as a Capsicle, reinstated at the time of his reported KIA, and then summarily paid every month thereafter until his revival and potential discharge.
Biofan09 offered me a course correction about the blurb concerning Liebeck vs. McDonald's, or the McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit. McDonald's coffee was served hotter than everyone else's, the woman in question did get third-degree burns and skin grafts, and was ultimately awarded $640,000 in punitive damages by the judge instead of the $2.86 million that the jury bumped it up to (the original case was for medical, which was $160,000, but the jury jumped punitive damages to $2.6 million). There was an obvious smear campaign turning this case into the poster child of what was ugly about torts cases and was used to spearhead torts reform. Stella Liebeck (who passed away in 2004, nearly a decade later) unfortunately was labelled as the problem when she had tried to settle with McDonald's several times out-of-court (McD's initially offered $800 for $10,000 worth of medical damages) but McD's said they had no involvement with the incident itself; the car was parked, the lid was labeled as 'hot', and the woman did dump the 180 degree F coffee into her own lap. The news picked up the case and reported it rather erroneously due to word count limit (for news papers) and time limit (for television). Sorry, no Onion Reporter, Yahoo News!, or social media back in the Dial-Up Internet Age of 1994!
For a good long while, the Stella Award was a semi-fictitious awarded to frivolous lawsuits in commemoration.
Norway vs. Thor is next! It's Hammer Time!