50 Shades of Tony
By Rey

Chapter 23
Tony Stark and the Discoveries of Special Children

Warnings for:
General: Heavy Teens: Mad Science, Human Experimentation, Human Cloning
Piece 551: Heavy Teens: Failed Human Experimentation
Piece 552: Heavy Teens: Discussion of Euthanasia
Piece 560: Heavy Teens: Abuse
Piece 561: Teens: Implied/Referenced Abuse
Piece 565: Teens: Implied/Referenced Abuse

Isla Sorna, Costa Rica, Middle of December 2015

549. Ledge
Isla Sorna. An island 84 miles off the island-park, full of wild dinosaurs. And rogue InGen people cleverly surround their activities with these naturally dangerous creatures, hiding in a lush, barely touched rainforest jungle. Tony, encased in his stealth-suit, surveys one of their buildings from high up on a ledge.

550. Join
"The military wants you to join us?" Tony asks Rhodes in his neutralest voice once the figurative dust has settled from the raid. The man came and joined the operation just after Tony's back from scouting, in the suit Tony once gave him, and Tony feels mixed about it all.

*551. Prisoner
Tony finds it hard not to "go medieval" on the prisoners when, in the deep sweeping of the secret mad-science facility, the hotchpotch team encounters cages of hybrids between veloceraptors and human children. Not all the experiments have been… quite successful, at that. Some are grotesque, crippled, or even dying.

*552. Stand
Tony has one clear, unshakable stand on things: You, on full cognisant, have ultimate right on your own body and mind. He wouldn't dream of robbing it from anybody, especially the little raptor hybrids, who have been robbed empty of this basic freedom all their lives. Even when regarding euthanasia.

553. Disaster
The data retrieved from the facility refers to "Emil," which leads to "Lockwood Estate," which leads to "Eli Mills" and a project for militarised dinosaurs for the highest bidder. The hybrid children and two other prototypes are meant for warfare. Tony feels sick. "We never learn, don't we? S'a disaster."

Lockwood Estate, Northern California, United States, Middle of December 2015

554. North
Cap and Tasha visit Sir Benjamin Lockwood, the employer of Eli Miles, with the half-truthful guise of funding a safe place for displaced "special" children to live. Rhodes in a borrowed stealth-suit shadows them, while Tony checks the Lockwood Estate at large in detail. And, north-wise, he finds something… interesting.

555. Machine
Bunkers, labs, testing areas: Tony knows such facilities pretty much, from having and using them himself and visiting others. These lack the machines that he uses to churn out awesome tools… but they're in line with the ones from Isla Sorna. "Folks, I found it," he broadcasts to the team.

556. Auspicious
Tony listens with one ear as Lockwood talks auspiciously to Cap and Tasha about atoning for past wrongs and helping pave the way for a great future for humankind. `Apparently 'atoning' and 'great future' involves human cloning,` Tony thinks, amused and bemused, as he finds the data in the server.

557. Bed
And,snooping in the manor proper, Tony finds the cloned being, an ordinary little girl, huddling under a bed, terrified of him. He's incensed. It's been so long since the last time any child was scared of him. `This won't do!` So he dilligently gets to work to win her over.

558. Loud
Lockwood may be old and refined, usually, but he's loud when he sees his "granddaughter" hanging fearlessly on a special harness on Tony's stealth-suit as it flies in overhead, while Tony strolls in in his best business suit and suave manner below. Then the team presents him Eli Miles' deeds….

559. Gamble
The team's gamble strikes true… although Lockwood nearly got a heart attack from the shocking problems and betrayal he's faced with. He takes steps to rectify the matters, under the team's advicement: quietly, to – hopefully – not stir up the world's problems even more and incite retaliation from the candidate buyers.

*560. Tour
A second tour through a mad-scientist lab doesn't make it easier to bear, Tony finds. Especially when he finally discovers the "specimens" created in this lab, as specified in the data he and JARVIS previously dug, kept and starved in small, dark cages. `Damn. There's human in them, however slight!`

*561. Violence
The team's prepared to be met with violence from the rescuees, given the prior treatment the mad scientists gave them. But, thankfully, the violence seems to be centred more on the food the team's giving them instead of the team members. "Hmm, maybe Vovo can give'm some TLC?" Tony muses.

562. Squint
The big, white hybrids and the small, black ones are much more dinosaur than human, the data says. They do appear as the amalgamation of dinosaurs that they are. But Tony disagrees. No need to squint to see the human in how they interact with each other and the team.

563. Key
Imprinting is the key to these hybrids' humanity. Henry Wu, the leading scientist of the island-park who's gone missing since the sabotage catastrophe months ago (`Either voluntarily or not.`), confirms this when Tony finds him hunkered in a tiny, armoured lab+hatchery+nursery just off the cages. And Wu is the imprinter.

564. Elementary
It's elementary work to claim to his kidnappers that he could make sure things are up to par through "careful and controlled monitoring," Wu says, and Tony believes him. Not because his words alone, though. Everyone from Eli Mills down indeed seem so desperate as to believe almost everything.

*565. Mercy
Lockwood's inclined to show mercy to Mills for the betrayal, after a few days. Tony's not. `After all this work and all the victims and my sacrifices? Oh no no no no no, old man!` He gets Tasha and Cap to convince Lockwood otherwise, through footages of the hybrids' "trainings."

566. Boulder
Tony'd rather finish work as soon as possible than babysitting a child, truthfully, but he can't help it when Maisie, Lockwood's "granddaughter," drags him to play among the boulders in the nearby stream. Apparently, she's just as affected by the tense, grim atmosphere round the manor these few days.

567. Gown
It's Maisie's fifth birthday. 21st December. She wants a gown and a party with friends; something that she's known only from books and films. So, in addition to the hybrids from both the estate and Isla Sorna, Tony gets her a day with… well, his children, all said and done.