Avengers: Unbreakable

The Avengers and all related characters and settings are the property of Marvel Inc. and their respective affiliates. All rights reserved (by them, not me).

Episode 1: Confluence

Chapter 46

Stark Industries Research Vessel "Lenora," North Atlantic Ocean

Henry Pym was awake when Tony Stark and Janet van Dyne walked into his small room in the sick bay of the ship. His arms and legs were strapped down with restraints. Dr. Donald Blake was sitting on the edge of the bed checking Pym's blood pressure. He rose when the others entered.

Pym looked up first at Stark, then shifted his eyes to Janet. And kept them there.

"Janet?"

Janet looked embarrassed. "Hi Henry."

"Where am I?"

Stark interjected. "You're on my ship."

Blake looked at Stark.

"I'm sorry. We haven't been properly introduced. My name is Tony Stark. I'm the CEO of Stark Industries. You're on one of my research vessels in the North Atlantic."

Stark saw Pym's eyes dart to Blake, then back to Janet.

"You're safe here," Stark added. "We're friends."

Pym's mind was still trying to process. "How did I get here."

Stark, Blake and Janet all exchanged uncertain glances.

"We . . . flew," Stark replied.

Pym nodded. "What happened?"

Janet moved closer. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"I remember you coming over. I remember we were working together to get the melanin compound into the Device." Pym hesitated. "After that, it gets hazy. Like a fever dream. I saw Maria, alive. And she was angry at me. Then I was surrounded by insects. They were swarming all over me, in my mouth, in my ears. And there were two especially nasty ones that fought back every time I tried to squish them."

Blake and Stark looked at each other and grinned.

"It doesn't make any sense." Pym looked down and for the first time noticed his restraints. "Why these?"

Janet and Stark looked at each other. Stark drew his mouth up in a grimace. "He's gonna need to know everything. He'll find out sooner or later anyway."

Pym studied their faces. "Find out what?"

Janet sat down on the edge of Pym's bed. "Hank, that wasn't a dream. It was real."


For the next hour and a half, Stark and Janet explained to Pym everything that had happened to him, to them, to his house, and to New York City, during his psychotic break. They went slowly; at times, Pym's head would loll back, as if his brain were about to break again trying to absorb this news.

When they finished, Pym let his head drop back onto his pillow. He stared at the ceiling for a long time and said nothing. At last, he looked at Stark.

"So you're the Iron Man?"

Stark nodded.

Pym looked at Blake. "And you're the Thor character?"

Blake nodded.

Pym looked at Janet. "And you're the one who saved me."

Janet looked down, modestly.

Pym looked back at the ceiling and thought a moment more.

"And I'm the criminal."

Janet leaned forward and put her hand on his arm. "Hank, it wasn't your fault. You suffered a complete psychotic break. Which, after everything that happened to you, is understandable. That wasn't you out there tearing up the city."

"Wasn't me?" Pym raised his head and glared at her. "So there's more than one 65-foot giant living in New York?"

"She means that you weren't in control of your faculties," Blake interjected. "People who've suffered a total psychotic break have no grasp of the difference between reality and the phantasms in their minds. That's accepted medical consensus."

Pym looked at Blake, then back at Janet. "I'm sorry. I know you're trying to help. But most people aren't 65 feet tall when they have a psychotic break. They tear out their ventilation ducts because they're convinced the CIA is listening to them. I tear up three-hundred blocks of the most expensive real estate in the country."

"But Stark Industries is going to pay for that," Stark said. "All of it."

Pym looked back at Stark and said nothing for a few moments, as if his mind were trying to process this new information. Finally, he let his head sink back into the pillow.

"I can't let you do that."

"It's already done pal. The press release is going out as we speak."

Pym shook his head. "It's still my fault. How many people did I kill?"

"None," Stark said. "It's amazing. Now, there are a few who are going to be in traction for a while, but Stark Industries will cover that too."

"It doesn't matter. Even with the damages paid, I'm guilty of a hundred felonies." Pym shook his head again. "No. I'm going to have to turn myself in."

Stark cocked his head to one side. "Okay." He paused, formulating his thoughts. "But what if you could pay your debt to society another way?"

Pym glanced at him with sullen eyes. "What way?"

Stark pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. He leaned close to Pym, suddenly very intense, talking quickly in hushed tones. "Stay here with me, within Stark Industries. Go off the grid. Resume your work, only this time, with me. Let me help you perfect it, miniaturize it, harness it better."

Pym would have sat bolt upright in protest had the restraints not held him down.

"Are you kidding me? I've just destroyed the homes of hundreds of people, and I'm supposed to just resume my work like nothing happened? Just because I stumbled on the Particles doesn't make me immune to the law. I owe a debt to society. A huge one. I have to pay it!"

Stark fired back unapologetically. "And how is it in society's best interest for one of the most brilliant scientists in history to rot in a jail cell?"

"By keeping him from destroying that society!" Pym cried. "Look what I've done. Look what I became! My work is like Frankenstein!"

Janet entered the fray. "Your work is the most amazing breakthrough in human physiology in . . . forever!"

"So what!? What good is it? What am I gonna do, hire myself out to pick coconuts?"

"The practical applications aren't known yet," Janet countered. "But they will become clearer with time. Right now, Tony's right. We have to understand it better, replicate it, harness it."

As Janet talked, Stark got up and started pacing.

"Alright listen. I've been thinking about this. I want you to hear me out. I develop a suit of armor that flies, that makes me virtually invincible, that can be weaponized like a tank." He looked around at the others, but they said nothing. He was stating the obvious.

"Okay. Then, just by coincidence, at almost exactly the same time, Don – after a lifetime of fruitless searching for an artifact that any sane person would say was a fable – finds a walking stick that turns him into a Norse god."

Blake nodded, as if he could already see where Stark was going.

"Then just by coincidence, you two meet, and Janet's contributions to your research - just by coincidence - turn out to be just what you need to develop a device that shrinks or grows living beings to incredible sizes. And just by coincidence, the four people that these things happen to all live within twenty miles of each other."

Stark looked around at the others. "Is this really coincidence?"

"What are you suggesting?" Blake asked.

"That these developments are not coincidence. They all have one common denominator: they give us the abilities to do things no humans have ever done before. Abilities we can use to do good in the world."

Pym interrupted immediately. "No. No!"

"Why not?" Stark asked.

"Who decides what's good? I started out thinking my research was good. Look how that turned out."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Janet said. "Keep gifts like these to ourselves? If there's one thing my father taught me, it was to leverage my God-given abilities to try to do good for the rest of the world. These are tremendous abilities. They should be leveraged."

Pym sneered. "Let me guess: 'With great power comes great responsibility.' Is that it?"

Blake stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I think it goes further than that. With great power, and great responsibility, comes the moral imperative to do good."

Stark looked at Blake, impressed. "Is that Kant?"

Blake shook his head. "I think I just made it up."

Pym still resisted. "We may start out thinking to do good with them. Maybe we even would for a while. But other entities would eventually get their hands on them. Governments, militaries. Eventually, our 'gifts' would be turned for evil."

"Then we don't let anyone else get their hands on them," Stark said. "We keep the technologies to ourselves. Tightly controlled. Secret. Right here within the company. We never share them."

"You're crazy if you think that will work," Pym protested.

"No I'm not. I'm just brilliant. And so are you."

Stark stopped suddenly after he said this, and studied Pym hard for a minute. Then he narrowed his eyes knowingly.

"And that's why you're still arguing with us, isn't it. You know this is doable. Just as you've also observed that this is all a little too coincidental to ignore. And you're testing the argument, trying to see if there are holes in it." Stark leaned in close again. "Isn't that right?"

Pym didn't answer. But he didn't deny the charge either.

Blake spoke up. "You're saying this isn't just coincidence, Tony. What else could it be?"

"I don't know. But I'm an honest enough scientist to know I'm when looking at some kind of phenomenon, even if I don't understand it yet. Now I don't know whether you believe in God, or fate, or cosmic forces, or whatever you want to call it. But the probability that three developments like these would occur so tightly clustered in time and space is infinitesimally small. And if it didn't happen by chance, then I submit to you that there is at least the possibility that we were, in some sense I wouldn't even begin to claim to understand, meant to develop these capabilities. And meant to find each other."

Stark looked back at Pym. "And if that's true, then we are meant to do more with them than stuff them back in test tubes and let them rot in academic journals. We're meant to be something more."

Pym stared at the ceiling again. "You make it sound noble." Pym shook his head. "But I'm afraid any chance I had at nobility is gone now."

There were several moments of silence after that. Then Janet began again, softly.

"Hank, think of your wife."

Pym looked at her with sadness in his eyes. "What does she have to do with this."

Janet rubbed a hand across the bed nervously before continuing.

"Think back on the night she was murdered. Think of the men who killed her. What if you had had these abilities that night? What if you knew then what you know now? You could have stopped them. You could have fought them off with ease. And Maria would still be with you today. Now, I know you can't bring her back. But you have it within your power to prevent countless evil acts from being committed against good people just like her. You say that continuing your research would be selfish, shirking your debt to society. Well I say not continuing it would be selfish. On the contrary, using it for good in the world would honor to her memory. It would be a way she could leave a legacy of good in this world, through you."

It was clear in Pym's eyes that this line of reasoning resonated deeply with him. Tears welled up in them as he looked back at the ceiling.

Janet put her hand on his arm again. "Think of it Henry. You can become the man she always knew you were on the inside. A man of greatness. A giant of a man . . . both literally and figuratively."

No one said anything for a long time after that. Pym lay staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. Janet kept her eyes fixed hopefully on Pym. Blake and Stark remained silent.

Finally, a look of resolve began to dawn on Pym's face, and at last he looked back at Janet.

"You're right. I could do it for her."

Janet put a hand reassuringly on Pym's arm again. "It would make her proud."

Pym smiled and looked back at the ceiling. "Yes. Yes it would."

Tell you what," Stark interjected. "Why don't we get those restraints off of you, get you something to eat, and resume this conversation in the conference room." He patted Pym reassuringly on the shoulder. "We have a lot to talk about."


Janet, Blake and Pym sat at three of the four compass points around the conference room table. Stark paced at the front of the room. Pym was downing the last of five chicken salad sandwiches Stark had ordered up from the messdeck.

"So what are we talking about," Pym said. "Making the Particle Device a project within Stark Industries?"

"A whole new division, pal," Stark answered.

"Just for the Device?"

"For everything. Your device. My suit. Don's . . . whatever that is he does."

"But you just said we'd keep it secret," Blake said.

"We will. Just the four of us. No one else will have access to anything this division does."

"A whole new division of Stark just for four people?" Pym sounded skeptical.

"Yep."

"And with a whopping staff of four, we're gonna go out and 'do good' in the world?"

"Yep."

"What, like we're superheroes or something?"

"No," Blake and Janet said together.

"Yes," said Stark.

Pym rolled his eyes. "This is crazy."

Janet sat forward in her chair. "Well, crazy or not, I'm in." She slapped a hand on the table for emphasis. "Tony and I already discussed it."

Pym looked at Janet. "You did?"

Janet nodded.

Stark winked at her. Then he looked at Blake. "Don?"

Blake looked up from rubbing his chin. "Well I still have my practice to run."

"Of course." Stark got up and walked around the table toward Blake. "Plus, you have the added advantage that the world didn't see you naked at the size of a skyscraper on TV. I'm not suggesting you would have to stay here and work here like Hank and Janet. But whatever we do as a team, we would do together."

Blake looked thoughtful. "I still have much to learn about these . . . powers, whatever they are. I suppose it would be good to have colleagues help me through that." Blake looked around at the others. "And less lonely. It would be nice to finally have people who understand me."

Blake slapped his hand on the table too. "Alright. I'm in."

"Excellent!" Stark cried. "Well, since I'm the CEO who made the . . . very generous offer to pay off all that damage, fund this new division, and make my facilities available for it, I think we can assume I'm in. So that leaves only one more."

Stark looked as dramatically as he could toward Pym. Janet and Blake looked at him too.

Still, Pym hesitated. He sat motionless in his chair, head down, chin propped on his hand, thinking hard for several more moments, as if still trying to conclude some enormous internal debate. When at last he spoke, his voice was soft and calm.

"If we're going to do this, there's only one thing I ask."

"Shoot," Stark said.

Pym got a distant look in his eyes. "That as soon as we get these technologies figured out, our first mission is to go back to Serbia and settle the score with those men who killed Maria." Pym broke from his empty stare to look around at the others.

"That we avenge the murder of my wife."

Janet looked at him and nodded. "And my father." Pym nodded agreement.

"And my parents," Stark added. "And the attack on me." Pym and Janet both nodded affirmation of this as well.

The three looked at Blake, as if he should have something to avenge. He improvised.

"And the fact that my walking stick is so ugly." He slapped it up on the table. The others laughed.

"Fine," Janet said. "Then we'll call our team The Avengers."

"The Avengers," Stark echoed. "I like it. Short. Catchy. You could name a drink after it."

"Sounds good to me," Pym added.

Blake nodded concurrence.

"Alright then," Stark concluded. "The Avengers it is." He pounded a fist on the table. "Done!"

Then he leaned forward, his eyes dancing as he looked around at the others.

"Now let's get started."

THE END