Warning: Spoilers content for American Gods. It had to come up sooner or later, but, I assure you, there is a reason for it. Just wait. I promise. And, possibly, go buy yourself a copy of it if you want to play DUMPSHOCK the home game! You have been warned, so please don't blame me and say I "ruined" AG for you.

DUMPSHOCK - INTERNET TREATISE

"Tony..."

She whispered his name in a husky voice, low and sultry. Her thin lips pursed slightly, as though begging- begging for him!- from her pale, freckled face framed with long, loose, ginger locks. Her eyes gazed into his longingly, and, in those depths, he saw home. The woman stood before him in her usual business attire, but her jacket hung open, unbuttoned, demure yet risque and suggestive in a way, considering Virginia "Pepper" Potts was never perfectly pressed and primped with her hair neatly pulled back and dressed to the nines. In a way, it felt somehow more provocative than anything in the world- even the couture lingerie that had been personally modeled for him by twelve Maxim cover models.

"Pepper," he breathed even as she looked up at him, as thought afraid to dispel whatever magic had strung them together in that moment.

Much to his surprise, she threw herself at him, wrapping her long arms about him. Those hands of hers snaked about his back and held him tight. She pressed herself against him as though needy and desperate for the warmth of his body. He blinked in surprise. He'd always wanted Pepper, somewhere deep down inside, and, now that she held him so... so intimately, it felt so utterly right. He drew his arms about her and embraced her warmly.

Tony felt her hot tears against his chest.

"Where are you, Tony?"

He nuzzled against the side of her head, drawing in the deep scent of her. Flowers. Perhaps jasmine and vanilla orchid. Tony was never very good with feminine things to tell such things. He was much, much more adept at identifying alloys, equations, and potential stress points than he was at determining whatever unique mixture made the lady-like aroma about Pepper Potts. In fact, on the rare occasion when he had needed to select a present for a woman, he merely waited for Pepper to simply supply him with it, even if it was for her like that icy blue dress of hers- paid for with his credit card, of course. Yet, underneath that floral perfume, Tony caught the faintest of hints of something else, the warm, mellow scent of old paper. While Tony couldn't place the shampoo or the perfume, it seemed quintessentially Virginia "Pepper" Potts.

The woman suddenly tensed, clutching Tony tighter to herself as her hands balled into involuntary seeming fists. "Tony..." She shuddered, drawing in an almost ragged breath as though sobbing before she asked again, "Tony, where are you?"

"I'm right here," he whispered into her ear in as low and soothing of a voice as possible.

"Why did you leave?" she rasped.

Tony shook his head as confusion settled upon him. "I didn't go anywhere."

"Why did you die?"

The millionaire jumped back and away from her, and, as he did, he could see himself reflected in the windows of his palatial Malibu mansion behind her. His body withered right before his eyes in a breath. It started with his skin, as it drained of color to a sickly, grey pallor, covered in a sheen of glistening, clammy sweat. His muscles began to shrink away as his skin slowly pulled taut as a drum over his bones. Even the flesh of his cheeks sunk inward in emaciation as the hollows of his eyes deepened, leaving a skeletal face staring back at himself.

"No..."

xxxx

The inventor jerked awake in the darkness from the question as the dream shattered about him, replaced with the cold reality of the small cell, the aches of both his body and his mind, and the fitful sounds of his unwilling companion dreaming from the far side of the cell. Tony slowly sat up, feeling his muscles stiffly protesting against one another as he moved in the pitch black. He let himself slump weakly against the wall, feeling bone weary despite however long he and Kitten had been sleeping off the trials and experiments. Tony drew his knees up and hugged them to his chest.

"Pepper..."

The name left his lips somewhere in the hazy realm between a whisper, a prayer, and a whimper. Tony frowned as he strained to vividly recall her face, her eyes, her smile, and her voice. Professional. Elegant. And yet utterly sincere and somehow compassionate. He tried to ignore the disastrous ending of the dream and focus on her and her alone. Demure, yet entrancing and sensual.

The man shuddered to himself. The day before had been abusive on him to say the least. Jonas and Obadiah had been demanding him to hack servers with active firewalls. When his mind had come into contact with the firewalls, they had reacted instinctively to the alien intrusion. The programs had moved with an almost predatory grace and an almost human knowledge, hunting down his presence on the server in an attempt to boot what was obviously perceived as a network security threat. The firewall had been calculating, strong, and brutally accurate in its retaliation. The real world effect, however, was not as simple and elegant, leaving Tony feeling like he'd been hit by a freight train. He didn't remember being brought back to the cell, nor Kitten being taken. Instead, Tony awoke some hours later when the guards dumped the unconscious girl into the cell before drifting away once more.

Instinctively, Tony reached out in the darkness. His fingers skimmed over the chilled tile floor until they found the soft edging of his prize perhaps only a few inches away in the void. The man took it and brought it close to him protectively. American Gods. It was funny; just a few days earlier, Tony had almost hated the book, seeing it as nothing more than a hard earned trophy from another Kitten fight. Yet, after another particularly bad session that had ended in a not too different outcome, Tony had felt his life slowly spinning away from him in a swirling haze of pain and disorientation. It was only then that he had taken a page from Kitten and cracked open his half of American Gods. The inventor settled in to read and, since then, he'd found himself equally as engrossed with the novel as Kitten seemed.

It wasn't a bad book, really. In fact, it was quite intelligently woven, from what Tony could tell. Neil Gaiman painted a picture of the modern American landscape, complete with apartments crowded with foreigners, cheesy tourist traps like the House on the Rock, all sorts of places.

American Gods told the story of Shadow Moon, an ex-convict due for parole, only to be released early due to the untimely demise of his wife, Laura. While on a red eye flight back to his home town, Shadow was propositioned by a mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who attempted to hire him as his right hand man. Unnerved, Shadow got off the plane a stop early and did not get back on. He took careful note that he was the only passenger to leave that particular flight and watched it take off. As such, was more than mildly unnerved when he ran into the very same Mr. Wednesday in the bathroom of a tacky bar and restaurant not far from the airport. Tony found that to be more than mildly amusing and only enjoyed it all the better when a Southern Comfort drinking leprechaun by the name of Mad Sweeney walked into the picture.

Just as Shadow Moon became inescapably pulled into Mr. Wednesday's employ, Tony felt himself slowly being hauled into the book. By the end of the bar scene, the inventor felt himself completely engrossed by the novel. Every waking moment, he read more and more, despite being completely aware of the dreaded break in the novel where his half ended and Kitten's half began. When the two weren't preoccupied with their sordid trials, unconsciousness, or brawling, they both sat with their noses firmly rooted in the pages. It wasn't often that he could muster the effect to read for what felt like perhaps an hour or two, but Stark had always been a fast reader, consuming the carefully crafted words with great relish.

He had particularly liked how utterly ingenious Mr. Wednesday was. When he needed to pay Shadow for his services, Wednesday proceed to go to the nearest Kinkos and print up a few things. Then, he dressed in a business suit and went to the nearest bank ATM, with Shadow camped out across the street in a local grocer. As Shadow watched, Wednesday put up signs at the ATM proclaiming it out of order, and went about collecting the intended deposits of people, even having them sign for their money. When the police showed up, as they were bound to, Mr. Wednesday made a great big show of handing them the business card of his employer at a security company. When the police called this mystery employer to ensure that everything was as it should be, Shadow picked up the phone across the street in the store and vouched for his own employer. A perfect two-man con that even Tony Stark had to admit was nothing less than slick and well executed.

The further he got into the book, the more and more he felt like Shadow Moon. Mr. Wednesday, it seemed, represented the gods of old living in America, although Tony hadn't quite worked all of them out in his mind, while their rivals, modern gods of television, media, and more, were out to destroy the old. The inventor had almost actually laughed out loud when the televised Lucille Ball asked if Shadow had ever wanted to see her tits, during the scene where the gods of new tried to sway Shadow to their side while talking through an old episode of I Love Lucy. Yet, there was always Mr. Wednesday there, cautiously working his magic and turning people, swaying them to his needs. Tony couldn't help but feel manipulated by Mr. Wednesday as he sympathized with Shadow, as though Obadiah Stane were his own Mr. Wednesday. The more and more he thought about it, the more and more Stark liked Shadow, and the less and less he trusted Mr. Wednesday.

There was something so sickly unsettling about the way Obadiah watched Tony when they trotted out Jonas to work with him and coax the reactions they needed from the inventor. The older man maintained a steady, hungry gaze upon his once business partner. Tony could almost see Stane calculating just how profitable a pet technomancer could be for Stark Industries and specifically for Stane. After all, who needed to worry about such trivial concerns as profit sharing and market trends to stay in the black when you could just alter electronic bank accounts? Among that lay a bit of comfortable disdain and distance, as though Stane saw his captives as both potential profit and as inhuman lab animals. It frightened Tony in a way he couldn't completely explain, as he wondered what lengths Obadiah would go through to get whatever it was the man wanted from Kitten and Tony.

Tony held American Gods up to his chin, breathing in the deep and suddenly intoxicating scent of the newsprint as his mind recalled the undercurrent to Pepper's scent. His mind drifted, almost picturing Pepper reading American Gods, perhaps even curled up on one of the couches of the mansion with the novel. The more he allowed himself to slip into the thought, the more vivid it became, right down to the details of Pepper in her pajamas, cradling a mug of cocoa as she read. It didn't feel right to think of the woman in such an almost intimate and tender sense in his home, nor did the mental image truly fit the persona of the woman he knew so well. Yet Tony Stark was never one to begrudge anyone- least of all himself- of a fantasy or two. Pepper Potts, hair down, out of her pressed suits, relaxed, and in his own home, at ease with him enough to show a soft side. It was a fantasy Tony could have almost died in if he could just will it. Tony lulled in the mental image as long as he could, no matter how unlike Pepper it seemed, enjoying the tenderness of it much more than any fickle, passing sexual fantasy in his life. He held tight to the image, vowing to give Pepper a copy of the novel, new mug, and pajamas, if they managed to make it out of there alive.

And, then, a small quiver hit Tony. Pepper. The man had been so caught up in his own survival over however long Obadiah had held them, that he hadn't even thought about Pepper except for his own mental and emotional comfort. The last time Obadiah came after Tony, he'd gone after Pepper as well. While Tony couldn't be certain anymore of Obadiah's mental state considering how careful the man behaved around his test subjects, he could be sure of one thing; any affection or sentimentality that had once been between Obadiah Stane and Pepper Potts had died a slow and grizzly death long ago. Tony groaned inwardly and pulled his knees tighter to his chest as his mind reeled with the vast and seemingly infinite array of evils Obadiah could possibly be inflicting upon the woman even in that moment.

"Pepper," he whispered.

His mind spun utterly out of control, spiraling towards oblivion with all the possibilities. Pepper hurt, bruised, bleeding and broken as she stumbled and ran down a dimly lit corridor from an unseen assailant. Pepper seriously maimed, shot in the heart or stabbed in the gut, viscera spilling from deep, angry wounds upon the floor as she fell to the ground. Pepper crippled like Rhodes, her hands clawing out to drag her useless legs behind her in a desperate bid for freedom and safety. Her eyes broke his heart, those piercing and haunting eyes of her, as, in his mind, she cried scarlet tears of blood and begged for some mercy. And, in those eyes, reflected back, was her assailant, shifting between the shadowy image of Obadiah, Jonas, Aurelius, both the Mark II and the Mark III suits, and even himself.

Tony hadn't even realized that he had begun to cry at some point until his chest tightened in small, lurching and painful sobs. The inventor bit his lip and held it in his teeth, trying to push down the sorrow that had suddenly cropped up. He couldn't afford to cry or be emotional. Not then. Tony could ill afford to show any weakness in front of Stane, Aurelius, Jonas, or Kitten, for tears and fears were only for broken creatures that were slowly becoming resigned to their fate. Tony was neither broken nor accepting of the situation, yet, no matter how bad it seemed to be. Nor could Tony afford the time to be emotional anymore. He stifled his own emotions and roughly wiped away his hot tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand.

Besides, Tony knew for a fact, if anyone dared even raise a hand to Virginia "Pepper" Potts, she would end them there. Pepper was a wild tigress masquerading as a house cat, and Tony knew it. She's gone toe to toe with corporations, businessmen, politicians, generals, and tabloids that would have made any lessor woman cry, and all the while with a cool, sophisticate detachment. His lips curled in a smirk when he thought of his personal assistant threatening his own corporate security with a can of pepper spray and even daring to stand in the face of the Iron Monger. No. He couldn't and wouldn't dwell on any thoughts of Pepper hurt or injured, not when he knew the woman would probably fight to the end and most likely even come out in the end on top without even putting a run in her perfectly prim stockings.

"I thought big boys didn't cry," Kitten teased in a low, mocking hiss in the void before him as he calmed himself.

"They don't."

The assassin let out a slight chuckle. "Then what was that all about?"

Tony worked for a moment to pull himself back together and compose himself, a skill he'd earned well in his years from having to give quite a few speeches and lectures while absolutely inebriated. Subconsciously, he shifted his jaw but forced his body to loosen up and relax, sprawling out. It took only a minute at the most to put on his very best facade before he even considering answering her. He wouldn't be played so simply, and especially not by the likes of Kitten.

The inventor smirked. "Y'know, for someone who set a no heart-to-heart rule, you seem to like breaking it a lot." He laughed, a barking, unconvincing sound escaping his mouth. "What are you? A walking episode of Fullhouse?"

"Hey, I'm not the one crying like a little nancy," Kitten snapped.

Tony shrugged in annoyance. "I'm not the one who has nightmares."

"No, but I don't look like I fell out of Lifetime movie."

The man drew in a hiss between his teeth of feigned insult. "Ouch. A Lifetime movie? I'm hurt. I don't even warrant that Jack guy from Lost?"

"No. Jack cried a lot, but he had his epically, bad-ass moments, too." But he could hear the smirk on her face. "I mean, c'mon, Jack went out to hunt down the Others how many times and went toe to toe with Ben. What the hell have you done to earn that?"

"I wouldn't know," Tony replied with a dark edge to his own voice. "I'm not exactly up to speed on Lost."

Between any two other people on the planet, it would have sounded like nothing more than the sort of vicious banter that goes back and forth between two absolute enemies at family reunions amid quick requests to pass the mustard. Scathing and with calculated aim, but completely indirect and utterly condescending at the same time. It was a game between them, and one in which Tony knew he could best anyone else in the world except for Pepper Potts. He shot her a cutting glare, despite not seeing her, and despite knowing she could see him, like the black sheep of the family that just wouldn't follow the herd in what was safe, expected, and rational.

Over the years since his parent's death, several thousand people contacted Tony Stark claiming to be his family each year. Pepper Potts took the time to painstakingly sort them along with the various paternity claims. Over time, she'd devised a rather clever system, in his opinion. "Fakers." "Real, but only looking for money." "Real, but only looking to punch you in the face." "For Real." That last designation, however, was sorely lacking in any candidates. Tony made a mental note as he thought of Kitten sitting at a family reunion to single handedly locate all of his family if they got out of this mess, slug each and every one of them square in the jaw, and, then, buy them a round to hear their life's story over. Family, even the family that only cared about money, somehow seemed infinitely better than Kitten's companionship.

Kitten dropped that line of bickering rather quickly and pointedly. "So, who's Pepper?"

Tony could have kicked himself. "No one."

"Couldn't be no one if you're crying over her," Kitten observantly pointed out in clear self satisfaction. She pressed, obviously enjoying touching such a definite nerve in retaliation for her precious but currently halved book, "So, what? Girlfriend? Wife? BDSM sex slave? Secret love-child that even the paparazzi and the Inquirer haven't found out about? Spill it."

He shifted his weight uneasily, barking, "Drop it."

"Oh, come on. Inquiring minds are dying to know," Kitten crooned in her most tempting voice. "Who is she?"

"No one," Tony growled, surprised at the feral darkness to his own voice, sharp and cold in a way he rarely ever heard from himself.

Kitten snorted from where she lie across the cell. "Aw, don't want to talk about it? Not up to sharing today?"

"Kitten. Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

Now, that startled Tony himself. Kitten had been going to the jugular of their verbal sparring, even if she didn't realize it. The assassin had merely been going for the one thing that seemed to bother Tony the most, much as he had settled into attacking her for the book. And, just as Tony had done to her, Kitten had managed to root out the one way to truly irk her unwilling companion in the worst possibly way. She had just wanted revenge, petty and simple, and Tony had to admit to himself that he had deserved it. In fact, ever since the book had been split right down the spine, Tony had been waiting for Kitten to take her opportunity to hurt him as much as he had accidentally hurt her in destroying the book. He just hadn't expected himself to react so sharply in return. There was a vicious anger and a roughness to his voice that just wasn't Tony Stark, nor was it really Tony Stark to swear. She'd gotten him bad.

"Fine. Suit yourself, dickhead."

With that, Kitten gave a quick grunt and went silent. He heard the sounds of her moving in the dark, presumably rolling back over to return to her slumber. Tony bitterly thought of the shadowrunner grinning in the dark at her own, small victory over him. He imagined her relishing the thought of goading him into a rage. Yet, within moments, her breathes became low, steady, and even, the respiration of someone who had slipped back to sleep, leaving Tony to his jumbled, disorganized thoughts. Tony sighed as she did, feeling a tension melt away from him as she did.

Tony let his head rest against the cool wall behind him. He found that, if he really focused and spent the time to allow his eyes to adjust, even the meager light of the small leds from the security cameras on the other side of the polymer wall was enough to make out basic shapes in the dark. Sure enough, after a time, when Tony peered into the dark, he could just barely spy the prone form of Kitten on the floor. He couldn't tell if it was her back to him, or if she had nestled her head down. Tony sighed to himself at the stillness of her, wondering how she could sleep through the night every night before recalling that, between the two of them, Kitten was the one who regularly came back from whatever they did to her looking near warmed over to death.

Tony wondered how long it had been since they'd been down there, in the darkness. He had been trying to make sense of the time, to try to make the days. Sadly, the only real measure of time was the trials they had been through, and some of those Tony could only partially recall in a drug blurred haze. The pain and the medications made it hard to accurately remember things in any detail, let alone enough clarity to sort out how long it had actually been.

He glanced over to the clump of shadow that was Kitten and sniffed to himself. The calvary. She had said she was waiting for the "fucking calvary." Some calvary. No one was coming for them. Not Rhodes. Not S.H.I.E.L.D. And least of all Jonas or Stane, the traitorous bastards that put them in that mess. Whatever calvary Kitten was waiting for sure as hell wasn't coming. It was a fact the girl would have to face sooner or later.

Tony turned his head to the side, glancing to the door and to the electronic lock there. He'd been working with Jonas so long now, daring the impossible when it came to hacking that it had just never hit him before. Tony licked his lips with anticipation. It was an electronic lock, after all. A tiny computer. He'd been so dumb not to see it before, so blinded by the situation. There was the physical lock there, but, even if he couldn't figure that problem out, maybe Kitten had some trick up her sleeve to handle that.

Tony shifted and slipped across the floor, crouching on his side of the door and focusing intently on the lock. It took a moment for his mind to find the string of code dangling there, but, as he did, the tiny node of information opened like a flower before him. It wasn't complex, bending and twisting to his will in no time at all. It only required a small verification before releasing the heavy bolts. At first, Tony tinkered with the code here and there, trying to find the right string to release the door to no avail. He'd learned some from Jonas, but not nearly enough just yet to make any difference. However, a small plan formulated in his mind. All he had to do was wait patiently, as patiently as Kitten waited for whatever her calvary was, only his plan would actually work.

Tony slunk back to his corner and curled up to drift to sleep, a very small, drawn, and plotting smile spreading across his face.

xxxx

At the very same moment that Tony slipped back to dreams of rescue, safety, and blessed escape, Pepper Potts had something entirely different on her mind. Her thoughts were focused entirely upon cool steel in her hands and shadowed forms closing in on her position. The silhouettes circled and turned, but Pepper just stood her ground. But she remained calm and collected, as cold as ice. She had all the time in the world to wait for them to come to her, make her job easier. Pepper inhaled, applied ever the slightest touch on the trigger and fired. The Walther went as she fired off rounds in quick succession emptying the clip at her unseen foes. The world yawned about Pepper as she exhaled and silence prevailed.

Someone clapped behind her, slow and approvingly. As the lights began to snap on around her, the woman couldn't resist the urge to bring the pistol up and blow nonexistent smoke from the barrel, a coy smirk upon her face. Too easy and too boring. Pepper had been at this game for what felt like months now, training and practicing. She had held the gun at first gingerly, as though a deadly viper, her motions jerky and impulsive. Now, the pistol felt at home in her grip, as welcomed as the low applause from her usual one man audience after her sessions.

Pepper ejected the clip and set it down for a fresh one. "Again, I take it?"

She didn't have to turn, didn't have to hear him speak to his unseen companion behind her; Pepper knew it would be Nick Fury even before he addressed the other man. "Mr. Mitsuhama, may I present Miss Pepper Potts."

The woman did not turn to face Mitsuhama with the respect she was certain he had become accustomed to receiving even in America. She had learned a thing of two from working with the smug, self-centered Tony Stark. Never tip your hand before you've seen theirs. Never let them have control of any matter in any situation, especially if you're about to be paying for something. Oh, yes, Tony had taught her exceedingly well, even if it had never been overtly stated. It had taken over a month to arrange this little meeting of theirs, a month of serious thought, planning, and practice at the training range located at another base entirely. And, even then, on that day, it had taken three hours to get there by plane, just enough to ensure that no one knew where they'd come from. Mitsuhama could wait just a moment longer.

"Taiga Mitsuhama," Pepper greeted carefully, keeping her voice impassive and as distant as possible. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

"I assure you, the pleasure is all yours, Potts-san," the man replied.

Pepper took a long, tense moment to study the Walther before setting it down on the table. "It could be," she admittedly, dropping her voice to a low and sultry tone as she turned about to face the rival arm's industrialist and fix him in an icy, professional gaze. "Mitsuhama-san, word of your corporate security expertise and Zero-Zone policy is fabled even here in America, land of the free and the brave."

The asian folded his arms across his chest. "I find myself flattered, Potts-san." He smirked, in an almost feral manner that didn't befit his suit and tie. "But flattery is not why you arranged this meeting, is it not?"

"I want to contract MCT Corp Sec," Pepper conceded, maintaining her glare upon him. "

Mitsuhama nodded slowly, stroking the bottom of his chin in thought. "And what, Potts-san, could you possibly offer me that I do not already have?"

Pepper handed him a small piece of paper with a number already written on it. It was more money than she could have ever dreamed of seeing in her entire life, let alone earning. Yet, there Pepper was, offering to just hand it all away, almost all of Tony's net worth after paying legal expenses, purchasing a rather lengthy list of potential supplies, and liquidating much of what he'd left to her rather quickly and quietly. It seemed a small price for his life.

However, Mitsuhama raised an eyebrow in limited reaction. "I can only surmise that you wish to contract my corporation for some enterprise you cannot handle, lending me to believe that it is... unsavory at best." He scoffed. "I can make this much money in a month. Why would I dare risk my American holdings and personal freedom for such a pathetic sum?"

Pepper smirked, cocking her head to one side like a cat with her prey in sight; she had a trump card to play, thanks in part to some rather cunningly pooled information courtesy of Nick Fury.

"Ares Industries."

The man went silent but stoic, putting up an excellent poker face, giving a small nod. "Now, that we can talk business over." His lips curled into a plotting smirk. "Well, Potts-san, would you care to discuss this over a nice drink? I know the perfect place."

xxxx

When they came for him, Tony was ready. He spent the morning hours carefully crafting the lines of code in his own mind, sorting out the right program and deploying it at the best possible point. After that, all Tony could do was wait and hope it would work.

No. Not hope, for Tony Stark's programs and designs never failed. Granted, they occasionally didn't work out the way he initially anticipated, but the inventor had always thought of even his setbacks as learning situations. The repulsors for his gauntlets, for example, had initially been intended merely as a flight stabilizers, yet his first firing of the prototype had demonstrated the potential of using the repulsors as a nonlethal weapon. Tony had focused on the discovery as opposed to dwelling on the bruises from his impromptu fight. He just needed to focus on what he learned from failures and use that knowledge to his advantage. This wasn't nearly as fine tuned as any of his previous projects, offering less chance of catastrophic failure, but it didn't need to be.

Tony stood and waited as the guards unlocked the tiny cell. He chanced a quick look at Kitten over his shoulder to where the girl had balled up. She just sat and ignored the approach of the heavily armed Ares-Stark corporate security team. Her eyes were glued to her half of American Gods, resigned to her lot in life. He frowned, knowing he could never, would never allow himself to become as tamed as even she had.

It was time. The key was in the lock and the guards on the ready. Tony's muscles tensed involuntarily as he kept his face impassive and emotionless as possible. He'd been waiting now for some time. As soon as the door opened, the inventor dropped low on his haunches and hurtled forward, throwing his shoulder into the nearest guard and knocking even the bulky and well armored man back and away in surprise. Yet Tony kept right on, until he felt the the big guard slam into the wall behind him and heard something metallic clatter to the ground. Tony blinked in surprise when he noticed the baton that had landed on the cold tiles but took his opportunity to scoop it up as he went to charge through the rest of the pack.

Tony had never wielded a baton before, not in the strictest sense of the word. He had found them to be useful on occasion in dire situations when push came to shove. Yet that didn't mean Tony had any formal skills in them. So, it was to his great surprise when the inventor managed to land a blow or two. The baton had a satisfying heft in his hands, and Tony swung like a hellion as he scrambled and ducked between startled guards. Each slam that drove home on the guards felt glorious as it hammered down the nerves in his arm, thunder rolling through his muscles. He was almost through the bundle of guards too densely clustered in too small of a hall.

He felt himself grinning madly through it all. "Lucky day..."

It wasn't a coherent thought, nor did it have any time to really coalesce in his mind into anything more substantial, not when something weighty crashed between his shoulder blades. Tony staggered forward, his weight thrown off by the blow. The inventor stumbled and tripped, landing on the cold ground and rolling to see that one of the guards had unslung his rifle, cracking Tony in the back and sending the prisoner down before whipping the gun about to aim it right in Tony's face.

"Drop it."

It was an order, but it sounded less like it had been intended for Tony Stark, millionaire inventor and Ironman, and more intended for Spot, the dog that decided to steal its master's best slippers. The guard growled it at Tony, glaring with cold eyes that spoke volumes as to how they saw Kitten and Tony. The two captives were nothing but animals to the guards. Nothing. They were wild beasts that deserved their fate and the darkness of that place.

At first, Tony just froze, but, when he didn't immediately comply, the guard brought the rifle about once more and brought it smashing down onto Tony's cheek with a controlled ferocity. Lightning sparks flashed in the man's vision as white hot pain flared in his cheek. The guard brought the muzzle about again, aiming it right in Tony's face in a heartbeat once more. Startled by the impact, Tony let the baton slip from his fingers as the fight drained out of him. The guard kept his aim on their captive as he kicked the baton away.

Behind him, Tony could hear a soft, yet approaching and utterly rebuking applause, sarcastic in its speed and tone. He let his head slump back onto the hard tile so he could peer, upside down at whoever it was that approached. As Tony did, rough hands reached down and hauled the inventor to his feet so he could stare in the face of his audience, one Obadiah Stane, who looked rather cross at that particular moment.

"Tony, Tony. You've forced my hand."

Despite the sudden chill in the air from those words, despite the agony flashing through the side of his face from what could have very well been a broken cheek bone, Tony couldn't help but smile vaguely at Stane. Tony had him beat. He knew it; Obadiah just didn't know it yet. But he would soon.

"Worked like a charm."

.

XXXX

Author's Notes: Yeah, s'been a while, but I has excuses! Good ones! Firstly, I went to Otakon. Then, I got to working on some things aside from this, including a little ditty with 100 Bullets. And, as promised, I've been working on streamlining Kitten's history... so I hope you guys are prepared to find out some things about our pet mercenary eventually!!