CH15: The Red
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite to violet. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and the CMYK color model, and is the complementary color of cyan. Reds range from the brilliant yellow-tinged scarlet and vermillion to bluish-red crimson, and vary in shade from the pale red pink to the dark red burgundy.
Red pigment made from ochre was one of the first colors used in prehistoric art. The Ancient Egyptians and Mayans colored their faces red in ceremonies; Roman generals had their bodies colored red to celebrate victories. It was also an important color in China, where it was used to color early pottery and later the gates and walls of palaces. In the Renaissance, the brilliant red costumes for the nobility and wealthy were dyed with kermes and cochineal. The 19th century brought the introduction of the first synthetic red dyes, which replaced the traditional dyes.
Since red is the color of blood, it has historically been associated with sacrifice, danger, and courage. Red is also the color most commonly associated with heat, activity, passion, sexuality, anger, love, and joy. In China, India and many other Asian countries it is the color symbolizing happiness and good fortune.*
At this moment, Red symbolized how absolutely fucked Ivan Vanko now was.
The cat, the alien, whatever the creature was, stood on the floor and stared at him with angry, red glowing eyes. The very air around them seemed to swell with heat and pressure, waves forming in the air as it grew. It was as if the walls began to bleed, red running down the surfaces and covering them until everything was a deep, gory crimson. The floor, walls and equipment were gone now, and the two were surrounded.
Then pressure built further until something broke. It seemed to solidify in places, fracturing like a crystal surface, the faces strobing in different shades of red. A crack formed in the surface with the sound of breaking glass and a large piece seemed to crumble away forming a window. Vanko looked through the opening, his heart pumping loudly in his ears.
He saw himself, dead on the ground, his body in pieces. What remained was scorched almost beyond recognition, the charred skin and boiled blood coating the corpse like an abstract painting. Stark stood above the body in his armor, another man standing beside him in a similar suit.
The opening closed and another opened. This one shows a field. The sky burned orange and red and the earth looked dry and broken. Bodies were strewn across the field, both young and old, of all shapes and sizes and orientations. Blood seeped into the dry cracks of dirt creating a cakey mud that was thick and putrid in smell.
The rift closed, another opened.
A city, one that was once grand and bursting with life, was barren and desecrated. Buildings collapsed and roads were torn up. Cars lined the street, rusted and broken down, their tires now flat with age, the undercarriages scraping the ground. There was no plant life within the destroyed city to soften the blow, just dust and rubble. But looking over, to the entrances of the main buildings to the side, a peak of something could be seen.
Skeletons were lying on the ground just within the structures, piles of bones stacked or laid together. The wide, empty eye sockets of a too tiny skull seemed to stare deep into Vanko's soul.
Over and over again, one after another, they opened and closed, each showing a scene more traumatic than the next. Bodies and deaths, children being torn to pieces, whole planets exploding into nothing.
Vanko could barely breathe.
The window closed and another one opened to his side, showing a sea of stars and galaxies.
Vanko peered into the vastness of space and watched as large creatures began to appear, each monstrous and horrid. Stark was there, standing before the hordes with his back to Vanko. His suit was damaged and the bit of skin he could see along his neck was purpled and cut. Stark's fists raised as he prepared to take on the hoard.
Alone.
The rift closed. The red melted away and Vanko sank to his knees, tears streaming down his face. His eyes stared at the wall, wide and unseeing. His breathing was heavy and labored, and his hands shook as he raised them to his face. Fingers brushing against skin, Vanko felt numb.
"W… what was zat?"
The cat looked up at him, its eyes no longer red and angry. Its tail flicked behind it at a slow pace. It moved over to the projection and tapped it.
'Whats to come'
That went a lot better than Corvin had been expecting.
Vanko, after a hefty mental breakdown, was now running around his workshop, putting things together. He seemed to have a plan, one that involved busting the fuck out of here and laying low.
She was so glad her emotions were not well read by humans because WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! She had been panicking for the past few hours. The moment the red stuff had started coming out, Corvin had been internally screaming like a banshee. Shit was fucked. How the hell did she do that? And WHY could she fucking do that? She had saw the movies, she knew what the fucking reality looked like. But did she get her newfound powers from the stone itself? Or was she really a mutant, experiment or alien? Corvin had no real way of finding out, but the questions bounced and multiplied in her brain until it hurt.
The sensation of the red, when it had come from her, didn't hurt. She felt tired for sure, laying down now and catching her breath like she had run a 10 mile marathon. But it was also a rush, the power zipping through her veins like adrenaline. Corvin had simply thought of what she wanted to show Vanko and her mind had expanded, her vision clouded by a light. The light had spread out like a web or lightning strike, forming little pockets of light in geometric shapes. All slotting together like a giant jigsaw puzzle and running for as far as her eyes could see. She had thought of what she wanted, needed, to show Vanko and it was like the hall rushed past her, pulling her forward until she reached a group of shapes that glowed in similar shades.
Corvin had hesitantly reached out with one of her paws and gave the center shape a tap. That is when the rifts began to open.
When she had come back to herself, she had felt off for a long time after. Like she was too big for her skin and that she'd burst out if she moved too quickly. It took awhile for the feeling to subside, slowly coaxing down into a low hum in her chest. It felt like a muscle she'd always had, but had never been aware of until she had just used it.
Honestly, she was scared to try anything with it again.
Vanko turned to her after finishing up whatever coding thing he was doing on the computer.
"I vill head for remote area for the right time," he said to her. Corvin moved over to the projected keyboard.
'Invasion man in green' she typed.
"Da, man in green will arrive and I will contact Stark, you vill have told him of you by then, yes?" Corvin nodded at Vanko's words. She'd have to find a way to break it to Tony that, while yes she was a smart cat, she was more than just that. Reality warping was going to be hard to explain. She wondered if she should stick to the alien story with him as well? Shit, she didn't know. But she had time to figure it out.
The sixth day from Vanko's revelation dawned with fire and broken buildings. He had placed the alien cat within the empty chest cavity of one of his drones, with coordinates set for a mile from the Stark estate in Malibu.
Vanko was sitting on a ball of nerves, not for the breakout or going on the run, but for the future the cat had shown him. If this was what was to come, how could he help to stop it? An invasion of that magnitude would be almost impossible to fight. The cat had reassured him, in short typed words, that all would be well if they worked together; it was a foolish person's ideology. And, while Vanko longed and dreamt for the stars, he was a man that relied on logic and what can be proven.
So, to be told by a cat that, of all things, the universe would be saved through the power of friendship, was very concerning. But, at the moment, that's all that was given to him, and Vanko had to find a way to be ok with it. The alternative was just not an option.
He had shred away at Hammer's pathetic defenses, blasting his way out of the hanger and into the open sky. Six drones followed behind him, each carrying a variety of equipment for him to set up a new lab. The seventh veered off in a completely different direction, carrying its passenger and a little message from him to Stark.
Tony had been… well, a wreck would be putting it lightly.
The situation with Ivan Vanko had him on high alert already, scouring through the networks and databases for information on him and his father and what they had done. Tony had gotten word of Vanko's death in the prison, the explosion. Was it an inside job? Or maybe a poorly executed escape attempt that, quite literally, blew up in his face? That excuse didn't sit right with Tony, the man he saw on the track and later in prison seemed too smart, too calculating to let something like a homemade bomb go off unless he wanted it to. This was the man who built a working arc reactor and weapons with no funding and in a shed in the middle of Siberia. A cobbled together bomb was nothing in comparison.
Tony wasn't upset to hear the man was dead; Vanko had tried to kill him and those he loved. So the genius had quite a bit of apathy on that subject. But, what Tony did mourn, was the man's mind. As said before, Vanko had built a working arc reactor in a shed off of a half finished blueprint. The Russian was a genius in his own right. The things that he could have done, other than being a terrorist, would have been phenomenal.
The interest in Vanko, however, disappeared quite quickly when Licorice Stick went missing.
Tony had been working on Happy's new prosthetic arm, diving into the machinery with a zeel he'd been surprised by. Working on the arm made Tony's mind expand, new ideas for other prosthetics running a mile a minute. He had Jarvis scour forums, videos and comments on artificial limbs and implants, searching for complaints that he could factor in to make the best designs he could. Stark products were number one, and he was ready and willing to deliver that in any area.
He had sent the idea off to the RnR department, flicking through paperwork and sending Pepper out to wrangle some people. He was still CEO, but Pep was his right hand woman, lifting up the other end of the heavy load that was Stark Industries like a deadlift. To be honest, she was a lot better at it than him.
Hmmm there was an idea...
Tony's thoughts had been interrupted then, by Jarvis telling him that Licorice's collar had been removed. He remembered being confused and had assumed that she had slipped the collar off. It was a non-choke collar after all.
"Call Hap- uhh, nevermind I'll go." Tony grabbed a set of keys and drove into Malibu where the collar gps was saying it was. What he found was a pair of tire skids next to the collar.
Tony had searched around Malibu for hours, analyzing the track marks to find the right tire treads and then scanning each one. He called every shelter, vet and pound in the city, but came up dry. It was aggravating and he was getting more and more upset with every hour she was gone.
Three days passed and Tony felt like shit. It was only after a lot of moping around and snapping that Pepper shooed him off looking for Licorice and took over.
The genius hammered away at a piece of metal in his workshop, letting his frustrations out. It wasn't until the piece was completely bent out of shape, far more mangled than usable, that he stopped. Tony let out a frustrated yell, tossing the hammer down. Picking up the bent scrap metal he threw it as hard as he could across the room, an eager Dumm-e racing after it.
"Whoa whoa man, what did it ever do to you?" came a voice from the door. Tony turned and saw Rhodey standing there, an eyebrow raised at his tantrum.
"You know me, crazy as a bag of cats. Always a hair's breadth away from a mental breakdown." Tony snipped back, a sarcastic smile on his face. "Lock up your kids! Lock up your wifes! Never know when the nut's about to break and rain mayhem and gynecide upon the general populace." he threw his hands up and out, presenting his disheveled shelf to the other man.
"Now that's just Fox News talking." his friend walked over, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's gonna be alright, Tones." His voice was low and soothing. It reminded Tony of their time at MIT together and all the times Rhodey had to use that voice on him to get him to stop and take a breather.
Tony let out a big sigh, slumping into his friend's hand. "I just… I feel like a part of me has been ripped away. I'm worried I'm overreacting but there is just this… thing inside of me that's screaming and it won't go away. My baby is gone and I need her back."
"You've bonded with that cat, Tony. It's not surprising that you'd feel bad that she's gone. Especially after everything that has happened. You're not overreacting, you're allowed to feel things. How you process emotions is for you, and you shouldn't let others dictate how strongly you feel about it."
"Thank you Dr Phil," Tony teased softly, bumping his shoulder into Rhodey's. His friend's words calmed him some, enough to loosen the knots in his shoulders. Rhodey seemed to pick up on this and smiled.
"Come here, I got something I want to show you." Tony said, waving him over to the side. The two walked over to a small clearing in the room and, with some hand waving from Tony, the floor opened up and something began to rise from the hole.
It was an Iron man suit, polished gunmetal grey and slightly different looking than the others Tony was seen wearing.
"New suit?" Rhodey asked, reaching out to tap at the metal.
"Yep! Just finished it yesterday, and hadn't had time to show it to you until just now."
"Sweet, any new features to this one?"
"Well, obviously. Higher processing HUD with eye tracking, reinforced struts and skeletal support. Installed arc reactor, remote piloting, and it can hold someone standing at 6'1. Can even fit his whole ego into the helmet as well."
Rhodey sucked in a sharp breath, looking at Tony with wide eyes.
"I know, such a feat, even I wasn't sure I could fit it in th-" Tony was cut off by a bone crushing hug.
"Is… is this what I think it is?" he whispered into Tony's ear. Tony returned the hug just as fiercely.
"I," he croaked, previous bravado broken, "I need you to be safe." he clung tighter to his best friend, his brother. "I can't see you get hurt. Not when I know I can help." he pulled back to look into Rhodey's eyes.
"The world is getting a whole lot more dangerous. And I need you to be safe." Tony said softly still. "You, Pepper, Happy, you're all I got."
"You got me Tones, you always got me." the taller man bumped his forehead against the other's. They shared a quiet moment together, basking in each other's presence. Tony was very thankful for his friend, and vowed never to slack on showing him, and others, how much they meant to him.
They both pulled back, a large grin forming on Tony's face.
"Test drive?"
"Oh, hell yeah!"
A few days later, Licorice was back, trotting down the road like nothing. Tony had run outside when Jarvis had told him, scooping up his kitty and spinning around.
"Oh my God, My BABY! She has returned!" he yelled, planting a million smooches on her little face. Licorice grumbled in his arms, wiggling around before pressing her face into his. Tony patted her down, looking her over for injuries or malnutrition.
All that was found was a little bow, tied to one of her feet, a slip of paper hanging from it. A note was written in a tight script.
Be seeing you, Stark - V
*ripped this shit from Wikki ayyy
AN: Send me your What If prompts about this story and ill make omakes! :D