A Tale of the Marvel Universe
by DarkMark
Part 3
Gary Gilbert figured he was getting all too comfortable in a three-piece suit. But, after all, that was the uniform he wore now. Not the one of red and yellow-painted metal. You couldn't walk into a boardroom in that and be very convincing.
He shifted through a handful of reports as he walked into the office of his father. Simon Gilbert looked up from his desk. The old man'd been giving dictation to his secretary. Gary figured he gave her something else on the side, too, or wherever he could get it. But he only smiled briefly at the 50ish businessman in the blue suit. "Hi, Dad."
"Susan, we wish to be alone," said Simon, gently. The blonde secretary in the short green dress took up her steno pad and walked. She gave Gary an appraising gaze as she went past. He looked her over coolly and decided that it wasn't worth it, right now.
"So," Simon said, putting his elbows on his desk and knocking his fists together idly. "What've you got for me?"
"Oh," said Gary, moving over to the laminated surface of the desk, "good tidings and joy. Take a look at these." He dumped the reports on Simon's desk. The old man glommed through the item on top.
"My God, Stark's share is shrinking!"
"What did you expect it to do?" Gary asked, softly, hands in the pockets of his tailored pants. "He's just given up weapons manufacturing. That was his bread and butter. He's trying to retool for domestic industry, space exploration, and all that. But that'll take time. Time we've got, time he hasn't." Gary shrugged.
Simon looked up. "All because of a bunch of protesters."
"All because Stark is sick of the war he got wounded in," said Gary. "And we pick up the business he leaves."
Simon smiled, widely. "You know, son, two very smart things happened within the last two years. One: you quit being a leftie. Two: you persuaded me to leave Stark and start up our own company. And to think, these ideas came from you."
Gary chuckled. "Hey, you can't eat a revolution. We've been through all that."
"Yeah. You came to your senses."
"I just woke up and smelled the money in the air," Gary said. "If it was that close, I had to find a way to reach out for it. I'd say we did, wouldn't you, Dad?"
Simon sat the report down and looked at his son with pride. "I'd say you did an exceptional job. I would never have imagined you wanting to go into weapons production."
"We have enemies, Dad. Just like everybody else."
"True. Even ones who aren't named Stark." Gilbert paused. "So. What do you foresee, for both of us?"
Gary leaned back against a Formica chair, his arms folded. "We become very, very rich. We leave Stark's stock prices to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. In ten years there won't even be a Stark Enterprises."
"Don't discount him. Stark is tough."
"Yeah. But he's worn down. You know the buzz, Dad. He's getting sick of the entire company."
"The buzz is one thing. Reality is another. I never confuse the two, son."
"No," said Gary, quietly. "Never lose sight of reality. Anything else before I leave?"
Simon Gilbert smiled. "Only that you've made me very, very proud, son. More than you can ever imagine."
Gary smiled back and said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet, Dad."
For a moment, Simon wanted to question his judgment. He saw something in the kid's eyes that he didn't like. But maybe it was just his tiger-instinct kicking in at the prospect of dismembering Stark's company. Yeah. That had to be it.
He dismissed Gary with a wave of his hand, watched him go out the door, and then turned back to the morning's paperwork.
-M-
Tony Stark threw his Iron Man helmet at the wall. It rebounded with a clang, and Stark was glad he had the walls reinforced and soundproofed.
"Damn!" The curse exploded from him as he crashed his red-metal gloves against his chestplate. He wondered if he could, with these mechanized fingers, if he could rip the thing to pieces. For ages, he had not dared to take it off. It had been the only thing that kept him alive.
Now, his heart had been repaired with artificial tissue and it seemed that the only thing the Iron Man suit was good for was for getting other people dead.
He could take it all the way back to Professor Yinsen, who had helped him make the first Iron Man armor. He could follow it through Drexel Cord, his daughter Janice, the Mandarin's lover Mei-Ling, Vincent Sandhurst, the Minotaur, Blaine Ordway, that idiot Monster-Master, that alien the Foreman, the White Dragon, probably others he didn't even remember. Some villains, some friends, one, Janice, his lover.
But the one he remembered most was the one who had died most recently: Kevin O'Brien, the Guardsman.
Kevin. A friend, an employee. A man he'd trusted with his life. A man who'd been driven insane by the Guardsman armor he'd worn, who had turned on Iron Man in battle during a student protest of Stark Industries for its manufacture of weapons for the Vietnam War.
A man who had died.
Stark stood in his inner office, breathing heavily, Iron Man in all but his head.
God, he was so tired...
He tried to tell himself it was a delayed reaction from that Skrull-Kree War and the great battle in Olympus, both with the Avengers. But he couldn't convince himself. He had never been good at self-lying.
Stark poured himself a paper cup of water from the dispenser, drank it, opened a cabinet along the wall, took out a bottle of Seagram's, filled the same cup with it, and threw it down. It was, thankfully, better than the water. He drank another one for dessert. Then he dragged the office chair over, was glad it was reinforced with the same steel that lined the walls, and sat down, roughly. The jointed metal of his trunks did not harm its surface.
He looked at the empty cup in his hand. "Oh, papa," he mused. "Do you think your only son has become an alcoholic?"
An exec with a drinking problem? Hell, that was allowable. About 25 per cent of the CEO's he knew had a sometime or fulltime problem with their liquor. But a boozehound super-hero? No, that wasn't allowable. Not ever.
But while he was half-in, half-out of costume, perhaps it was okay.
He needed the stuff now. Kevin's death, the protestors, the decision to take Stark Industries out of the war business, the lurching stock quotes...all of it.
He'd even asked Marianne Rodgers to marry him, and she'd said yes. But he hadn't called her in a week. He was wondering if
(say it)
he should have asked her in the first place. Sooner or later she'd have to know about the other man she was marrying. The one he kept mostly in the attache case.
With the armor in it, that damn thing was heavy. You could probably knock a man in the head with it and kill him. James Bond should have the weaponry he carried around in that little case. But he probably wouldn't do any better with it than Tony Stark had.
What had Tony Stark done?
He had lost both parents to death, for one thing.
Then he had taken over Howard Stark's company, used his own inventive genius and talent for organization, and tripled it within five years. It was the midst of the Cold War, and contracts from Uncle Sam were coming in like waves on a Carribean shore. He could design just about anything that the government wanted with which to kill Commies. And nobody--nobody--ever called him dirty names about it. Not back then.
On his off-hours, he raced fast cars as a hobby, and chased faster women. Didn't have to chase the latter too far, either. Just had to make new ways of getting rid of them once they had served their purpose. Jim Aubrey had taken pointers from him in that department. Falling in love? Hell, yes. He'd done that, and gotten hurt by it when his father and Creighton McCall had pulled him and Meredith, and their hearts, apart.
And it didn't get any better when he lost Pepper Potts, years later, to Happy, although he admitted he probably never had her and she was better off with Hap Hogan, anyway. Or when a later, more intense love, the damned love of his life, Janice Cord, had been unlucky enough to be there in the middle of a three-way battle between Iron Man, the Crimson Dynamo, and Titanium Man, and had gotten killed.
Now, there was Marianne.
Was she next on the list?
He looked at the helmet, lying sideways on the floor, nudging the wall of his office.
Must there be an Iron Man?
The question seemed so much clearer in 1963. Yes, there absolutely had to be an Iron Man. To avenge the Vietnamese scientist who had helped him create the armor. To fight the Communists and their super-powered agents. To be an Avenger, and help save the world.
But now, he wasn't sure it was a world he wanted to save anymore.
Ten years. Ten years, and what had he gotten?
A company starting to spiral down, and a bunch of enemies in union suits that wanted to kill him.
Correction: that wanted to kill Iron Man.
On the other hand, there was an offer somebody had made a few weeks back. At first, he'd scoffed at it. Barely brought himself to tell Miss Greer to send them a polite refusal. But now...well, things might just be changed.
Things always changed. It was time to change them for the better.
Stark wheeled himself back to his desk and pressed an intercom button. "Yes, sir?" came Miss Greer's voice.
"Jen, I'd like you to contact someone for me, keep it confidential," he said, in his best executive tone.
"Oh, absolutely, Mr. Stark," she said.
He took a deep breath, let it out, and continued. "Contact Noah Dietrich. Tell him...tell him I'd like to talk to him about Mr. Hughes's offer."
There was a pause before Jennifer Greer said, "Are you sure, Mr. Stark?"
"I'm sure, Jen. I'm sure. Do it."
"Yes, sir."
Tony Stark got up, poured himself half a cup of Seagram's, drank it, crumpled the cup, and threw it in the wastebasket. Then he started to get out of the suit.
He hoped he wouldn't ever have to put it on again.
-M-
Thor looked down upon the borough of Manhattan from the top of a tall building and wondered, with a bit of Don Blake's mind, if he and the woman clasped in his left arm would interfere with television transmissions.
Sif rested her hand on his chest, easily, and lay her head on his massive shoulder. "Prithee, beloved, tell me what thou thinkest at this moment," she said. "When thou looketh upon this isle-city,what dost thou think?"
"I think," said Thor, slowly, "of the millions of people whose fate oft rests on that shoulder thou maketh your pillow. Though I would not they displace thee, no, not for a moment."
The Asgardian woman smiled. "Reassuring, that is. Yet, be that all thou callest to mind?"
He did not look at her. "What dost thou think? Indeed, Sif, tell me of what you envision, as you look."
She sighed. "Thou must ask?"
"I must."
"I think of the golden spires of Asgard, from which thee and I were so recently thrust."
"I also."
"I think of our fellows, who were exiled here with us. Of Fandral, and Hogun, and Volstagg, and Balder, and Hildegarde. Even of Tana Nile, the Rigellian."
"Aye. But only that?"
"Nay," she admitted. "I think of Odin, who recently returned from Hela's realm. And of his wrath, at you calling his judgment cruel. And how he then proved it, by exiling us here." She disengaged herself from him, went to the edge of the building's roof, and sat down.
In a moment, Thor joined her. "Verily, I think my woman a newmade telepath," he said. His hammer dangled from the thong on his wrist, but he did not let its head strike the building wall.
Sif shook her head and smiled sadly. "One needs no mind-reading talents for such, my love. Only the shared experience of we six, late of Asgard. And one wonders when Odin's judgment will relent."
"In time, Sif," said Thor, entwining the fingers of his left hand with hers. "In time, his wrathful judgment always ebbs. But only in his time."
"Thor?"
"Yes, milove?"
"When we...when we once again seeth the halls of Asgard..."
"Yes?"
Sif clutched his hand more firmly. "Dost thou think t'would not be a good idea if we never left them again?"
Thor turned his head away. "I cannot say such a thing, fair Sif. Thou knowest my dual nature, and the half of me which is entwined with this world. And with its people."
"Don Blake hath been absent from Earth for months at a time," Sif pointed out. "And if half of thee be entwined with this world, canst thou forget the half which is bound with Odin's?"
"Nay. No more than could I forget the heart which is bound with yours."
Sif leaned over and kissed him. He returned the kiss, and embraced her with arms that could, with little effort, bring down the skyscraper on which they sat.
After they broke the kiss, but kept the embrace, Sif whispered, "That thou wouldst allow us to leave this world, and be my husband. That thou wouldst do this, and more, for me, as I would for thee."
Holding her more tightly, the god of thunder said, "Whether we return or not, 'tis up to Odin. But the other part, good Sif, one can..."
"Yes, Thor?"
"...One can promise."
"Say it again, Thor. Say it so that mine ears can not mistake it for a trick of the wind, or a lie of the heart."
He held her at arms length. "Thou wishest the Thunder God in marriage, Sif?"
"As the night wishes for the dawning sun, Thor," she breathed. "As the wintry lands wish for the spring to wash them clean of white."
"Then, such thou shalt have," said Thor. "And when Odin dost admit us to the Realm Eternal again, he will admit us as god and wife."
"Oh," said Sif, and was unable to say more. She buried her head in Thor's shoulder and wet it and part of his cape with her tears.
Thor stood, still holding her with one arm, and lifted his good right arm to the heavens. With a tried and practiced motion, he whirled Mjolnir at a certain pitch and velocity. When it had reached the proper speed, he threw it, holding onto the thong at its end. The two of them were towed behind the flying hammer like a kite's tail. Their capes billowed in the rushing wind.
But Sif's mind held another metaphor than a kite's tail. She recalled seeing a wedding of mortals, in her short stay here, while passing by. The married couple had boarded their motorized chariot, which had a big JUST MARRIED sign on it, and taken off, trailing a string of tin cans behind them.
The metaphor seemed as absurd as it was fitting.
All Thor could think of was Odin. If they married without first gaining his permission, the gates to Asgard might be forever shut to them.
Just so.
Defying his father was, fortunately or not, getting to be a habit with him.
-M-
"By the Hosts of Hoggoth hoary,
As the Flames of Faltine burn,
Let the Orb of Agomotto
To its housing now return."
The glowing globe floated eerily away from its spot above the table and went to the container where it was normally hidden. The top of the Orb's housing closed over it again. Prince Namor breathed normally. Strange was an ally, but he never liked sorcery.
"Well, Strange?" Namor entwined his hands before him, resting his elbows on the table. "Is there any reason for your summoning?"
Dr. Strange, sitting to the Sub-Mariner's right, shot a glance at his ally. Four of them were present, and they were all hard to keep in a unit. Were they even a team? It was hard to say. All they had was a grudging respect for one another...most of them had it, anyway...sometimes a common cause, and a group name which was more a convienience than a reality.
"There is always a reason, Namor," the magician reassured him, resting orange-gloved hands on the table. "Even if the cause is only vibrations of unnatural and intense origin in the very ether. It is best to be on hand, and have nothing happen, than to--"
"NO!"
All three of the others shot a glance of concern at their fourth partner. His face was a mask of rage, one they had seen all too frequently. He raised a great green fist which was larger than most human heads and continued to bellow.
"Dumb magician brings Hulk from desert to big town. Should be people to fight, to smash! Hulk came all this way for nothing? Hulk will smash ANYWAY!"
He raised the other fist and began to bring both of them down. "Hulk!" shouted Dr. Strange.
"Oh, dear," gasped Wong, Strange's servant, who had just come through the door with a water pitcher for Namor. Clea poked her head in and gaped, the white wiggles of curls from her hairdo shaking.
The mighty fists of the green goliath came down with the force of small-yield nuclear weapons. But before they could reach the table's surface, one of them was grasped by the Sub-Mariner, the other by the gleaming hands of the Silver Surfer.
"Cease and desist, Hulk!" cried Namor. "This is the home of Dr. Strange! He is your friend!"
"The Hulk HAS no friends!" roared the behemoth.
"If you do not ease your wrath," said the Surfer in his unearthly tone, "your statement will prove a true one."
Clea cast a spell from her outstretched forefinger as Dr. Strange shot forth a beam from the amulet at his chest. As the two others struggled with the Hulk's juggernaut arms, Clea's beam struck the Hulk's eyes, and dazzled him optically and mentally. He shook his head in wonder. At the same time, the beam of the Agomotto Amulet struck him in the chest, easing the pounding of his heart. Strange focused all of his will on the task, reinforcing it with beams of mystic power that sprang from his hands. That which had seemed so distant a goal when he was studying with the Ancient One years ago was now accomplished almost without thought.
Almost.
He wasn't even sure he could accomplish this, but he was determined to try it. The power he forced into the Hulk's being was designed to soothe his nature, to regress his wrath. And, as Namor and the Surfer grasped his arms, they each thought that they felt his power slacken.
"What is dumb magician doing?" asked the Hulk, out loud, as his eyelids began to droop.
"Whatever it is, Stephen, keep doing it," said Clea.
The sorceror did not answer. Sweat dotted his brow, and the red Cloak of Levitation on his back began to billow without wind. He had matched wills with the likes of Dormammu and Baron Mordo before, and in this contest, he would prevail. Or...
No, he didn't like the idea of an "or".
The Surfer's board began to levitate, as its master prepared to use it as a bludgeon against the Hulk, if necessary. But before their eyes, the great green Goliath began to lessen in size. The countermetamorphosis started, as the Hulk's great frame and green skin regressed to the normal body and flesh of Bruce Banner, nuclear scientist.
The nuclear scientist stood before them in ill-fitting purple pants with the knees ripped out, bare feet, and bare chest. He looked at them in concern. "Uh," he said at last. "Did he do something wrong?"
Namor looked at Banner evenly. "Not quite," he said, and released his grip on Banner's wrist. The Surfer did the same.
Banner collapsed into a chair. "I'm sorry," he said. "What are we here for?"
The Silver Surfer gestured towards Dr. Strange. "The sorceror said he detected some category of magically-based menace. We were summoned, I believe, to deal with it when he found out where it resided."
"Yet, now," said Namor, resting both fists on his hips, "we find out no danger existed. Except that which came from the Hulk."
Strange tented his hands before him. "The Orb of Agomotto has never been wrong before, gentlemen. Yet, my mystic probes have not played me false ere now, either. So, for the moment, I am as bewildered as yourselves."
Clea said, "I suppose it's better to have no danger and be prepared for it, as you said, Stephen, than to have real danger and be unprepared. Well, should we have Wong prepare refreshments for our guests?"
The Sub-Mariner shot a cold glance at her, then pointed at Strange. "I have said to you before, spell-weaver, that the next time I was summoned, I would not come. My words played me false, since the need was great. But hear me now. I am the sovereign of an empire. I am the ruler of a people. I am the husband of Lady Dorma, and soon to be father of an heir. Should you ever--ever--summon me again without cause, prepare for wrath as great as any the Hulk could have unleashed!"
The Surfer grasped his hovering board in one hand, and set it beneath his feet. "I cannot join in Namor's sentiments, Dr. Strange. For my part, however, I will caution you: my time on this world is distasteful enough without having it unnecessarily wasted. Even by one of the few humans I have come to respect. Farewell." The surfboard floated him through the open doorway, and thence down the hall to an open window. He cloaked his exit from the Greenwich Village brownstone with an aura of invisibility, and took to the skies once more.
"Remember my words, Strange," said Namor, and quietly left the room. He, too, left the home of Dr. Strange seconds later, by the same window.
The master of the mystic arts stared at the weary Bruce Banner before him, then looked at Wong and Clea. What, indeed, could have drawn his attention? A flareup of evil magic that had so quickly died down again?
Or perhaps it was a threat that only impinged upon those realms he monitored?
There was more than met the eye. Even the Eye of Agomotto.
Clea broke the silence. "Can we get you something to drink, Dr. Banner?"
Bruce Banner sat up a bit straighter in the chair and rubbed his temples, smiling wanly.
"Tea would be nice," he said.
-M-
The workday was over at Gilbert Industries. In his Long Island home, Gary Gilbert decided to put in a little time at his moonlighting job.
But first, he went to a special area of his sub-basement, opened a titanium steel door with his handprint, and looked in at what was inside. Among other things, a suit of red and yellow armor hung on the wall.
A suit not unlike Iron Man's. Except it had been worn, once upon a time, by the Firebrand.
That was before Gary Gilbert had realized you could do a lot more operating under the radar of those idiots who propped up the Establishment in their stupid costumes. To do that, you had to quit wearing a stupid costume yourself. And quit using a stupid name.
"Firebrand" wasn't quite that stupid a name. But he'd put it aside, just like he'd put aside the armor.
But his politics? His views? His aims and purposes?
Concealed, yes.
Put aside?
He laughed, to himself. Then he reached inside the chamber and took a communicator device from a table. He activated it.
A voice came from its speaker. "Password," it demanded.
Gary Gilbert answered it.
"Fire," he said.
To be continued...