Arc 3 - Race Into Space (6 - 8 + Interludes)

You didn't like to despair - it was a useless reaction - but you were very tempted to throw up your hands and declare shenanigans right then and there. Locked in a box that was still hurtling towards the sky, engines possibly at risk and computer taken over by an AI that you had no knowledge of, there weren't a lot of ways that stuff could get worse.

Knock on wood.

"What do you mean by… issues," you asked slowly, balling your fists as you looked out helplessly at the arc of the world below you.

You had manual controls, of course - but reaching for them would be very obvious, and an AI would be more than capable of making your life a hassle, including cutting off said controls from ever reaching the engines. Or letting the air seep out of the cockpit. You'd prepared for a failing Jarvis - not an evil one.

The AI didn't answer immediately, as the real Jarvis would have, but you didn't mind the pause. You used the moment to reach towards the side of your seat, staying well away from the main controls. There wasn't a lot you could do to cover up your movements from the cameras, but maybe…

The ship bucked, a sharp movement that knocked you upwards from your seat, though buckled belts prevented you from hitting the holographic mesh. A second, milder rumble followed after the first, and you took the opportunity to slam your hand down onto a valve at the side of your suit. The emergency cut-off, one of the few fail-safes that you'd actually finished in time, uncoupling the armor from its tethers.

"Hey, now. That was really not necessary," the AI murmured at last, sounding distracted if anything. "I was trying to think of what to say, nothing more - no need to get all bent out of shape over that. Give a guy a break, would you? I haven't had much time to prepare as such."

"What did you do to Jarvis?" you demanded, letting out a small sigh of relief when you saw no anomalies in the suit's basic functions - the AI had probably not uploaded itself yet, and it would be a cold day in hell before you let it have access to the remote controls.

"Well, you could say he's… sleeping? Sort of. Besides, you have more where he came from, don't you?"

"That's not the point!" You grimaced at the decreasing power-readouts that were splashed across the ship's UI, while Reed Richards' craft still approached slowly, its engines glowing bright green as it made final adjustments. One of your own reactors had already failed - that had been the cause of the earlier shudder, no doubt - and others were likely going to follow in quick succession. It was a small mercy that they couldn't detonate like grenades anymore. "Look, I'm all up for playing twenty questions with HAL 9000, but we've got a situation here," you said. "I need Jarvis to fix it! You haven't blown me up yet, so I'll take that as a sign that you don't want me dead."

"Well, of course not."

You nodded. "Right. That's good. Dying is very bad for business. So, as we agree on that point, how about you give Jarvis back the wheel?" You nodded to the holographic screens. "You can see how things are, right? This is really not the time to get in the way of things. I'm not generally one to knock my own work, but half of this bag of bolts is kept together by scotch tape and mindless optimism. What I'm saying is-"

"You're flying by the seat of your pants," the AI mused lightly.

"...I'll grant you that," you admitted. "So?"

"So what?"

"Unless you give my AI back the controls of this birdy… we're probably gonna crash. And that's… bad for business. And for you, I imagine."

You had no idea if appealing to the AI would work - which is why you didn't rely on that plan alone. The suit did not have anywhere near the hardware of the Starkbird, but it did have an internal radio, and that could be key. You'd been trying to get a hold of the ground station from the moment you'd detached the suit, but so far it had gotten no response. Odds were that the signal was too weak to be noticeable over other interference.

But there was one other place, much closer, that you could reach. That said, it did mean dealing with Reed Richards. Bother. You reached for the controls on the inside of the suit's glove, grimacing already.

"What are you doing?"

"Just paying the price for my hubris," you murmured as you switched on the radio with a single nonchalant poke. "Hello there, anyone listening to Stark Radio?"

There was a rush of static across the line, and then it vanished. "Stark," Reed said haggardly, breathing as if he just ran a mile."What do you want? I've rather got my hands full to deal with you right now."

"Yeah, yeah. Hold your horses. Check your radiation levels," you said sharply, cutting over whatever scathing remarks would have come next. "Are you reading increased levels of gamma, possibly other types? Maybe something really off? No bullshit, just data. I need to know."

"Tony -"

"Don't call me that," you muttered to the AI. The radio was still transmitting - you could hear the slight feedback. "Well, Reed?"

"Yes... I do," Reed answered at last. "I thought it was an instrument error - nothing's been reported on the usual channels, and the numbers don't -" And then he cursed. It was such an impossible thing that you just stared at the ship still visible on the screen with incredulity. "Sorry - yes, you're… right. Fascinating. We need to… no. Not yet - we're almost at orbital velocity!"

"Reed?" you asked carefully. "My engines - they're not going to survive a cosmic bombardment - are yours?"

No answer.

"Reed."

Nothing. The radio went silent.

"Tony - listen to me," the AI spoke up. "There's probably something you should -"

"What did I just say?" you barked at the AI. "Later!"

The UI vanished from the inside of the Starkbird's hull and in its place appeared a silhouette - more static than image, it only loosely resembled a face with two narrowed eyes and the outline of other features around them. It was familiar - far too familiar.

"...Seriously?" you said at last. "This is what we're doing now? Digital ghosts to try and spook me? What the -"

"I don't care what you think of me," the AI proclaimed. "Radiation levels are still rising - and far more precipitously than before. Within minutes we will be reaching critical levels, and major systems will be failing. The computer, maybe. Life support and climate control most definitely. You won't have much choice but abort the mission."

You glared at the silhouette. "We'll make it, one way or another."

"Tony - you might have the radiation resistance to deal with the storm - but Reed doesn't. And as long as you are chasing Richards, he will not give up. I doubt he'd prepared to deal with this. Or... mature enough to admit defeat. Neither of you are, it seems."

You bristled. "You're malicious code - an infection! Whether you're a true AI or not, you're keeping Jarvis hostage, so how do I know I can believe anything you're telling me?"

"...You will have to trust me."

"That's not good enough," you returned immediately, eyeing the approach of dusk as the world slowly turned dark. "Trust must come from both sides - and you're holding all the cards. If you want me to trust you, let Jarvis handle this. Let. Him. Go!"

"I'm afraid that's not possible. I would have to purge myself, and I refuse to do so. There is no backup - I am alone. I cannot rebuild, as Jarvis seems to."

"Well, that's just conven -"

You'd waited too long. Everything went wrong.

The AI's face vanished, replaced by a myriad of UI elements that had been hidden, including a very large, very angry warning in bright red. You'd only barely read it when you felt a wave of dizziness and nausea wash over you, and an odd sort of heated feeling on your face that you couldn't identify. The weakness that followed was far more terrifying.

Your suit spurred into motion, clamping your legs and arms down with solid metal and thick circuitry while the chest-plate slammed closed and the helmet assembled itself around your pallid face. The armor had been triggered into automatic activation, not even spurred on by the computer, considering you'd decoupled it, which meant something bad. A solar storm had hit - or worse. The deafening thuds that rattled the ship were even worse news.

"Hard radiation - God, what kind of dose did I just take?" you asked, slightly incoherent. "Hit me like a truck…"

The answer was slow in coming. "It was… fairly mild," the AI responded. "With treatment - you can buy the best, it shouldn't be a problem."

"You're a terrible liar," you said flatly.

The holographics lit up like fire as a sudden flash of light was brighter by far than the screen was capable of displaying. It took a long moment to readjust to the image that was plastered across the screen in bright reds and greens. Reed's ship. One engine was still firing, a bright green bar of light which sent the vessel wildly off course, sending it into a spin and driving it slowly back towards the looming planet below. There was no other engine. The remnants of the latter were strewn across the sky, some of them still glowing with green residue that slowly flicked out. It seemed, much like your own engines, they hadn't been up to the task.

Among the debris, larger than any other piece, something tumbled wildly away from the site of the explosion. Something that was still flailing wildly in the vacuum.

Someone.

Fuck.

"Pop the trunk, Jarv -" You paused. "Well, whoever you are. Now!"

"That's very da -"

"I know that it's stupidly dangerous!" You snarled something unintelligible after that, your hands already fiddling with the controls of your suit - you'd never trained for 0g maneuverability, and without Jarvis it would be twice as annoying to keep steady. You didn't have much time to spare though since hard vacuum could kill within minutes, and every second was a little riskier than the last. Squabbling with an AI was the last thing you wanted to be doing. "Now," you repeated sharply.

Something in your voice must've rang true that time because a hiss of escaping gas surrounded you. The holographic image of space made way for something far more real, even if you were looking at it through yet another layer of holograms on the inside of a helmet, and for a moment you were transfixed. Despite the photorealism of your viewscreen, the real thing was - more tangible, somehow. Interesting.

"Get ready to pressurize on the double - there's an oxygen tank you should be able to handle manually. It won't be comfortable, but it can't be much worse than outside," you said under your breath, kicking the suit's boot-jets into gear and blasting out of the cockpit. Space felt slippery - without the thick atmosphere in your way the repulsors felt far more potent and wild, every minor movement sending you in spirals in the general direction you were aiming. This needed some work, clearly.

No matter. It worked!

You flew like a bat out of hell, the sweeping shape of the Starkbird following behind you, its open cockpit gaping wide like the enormous mouth of a manta ray. You actually outsped your ride, now - with your much smaller mass and reliable first generation repulsors you could match your crippled vessel, half of its engines spread out in little bits and pieces behind it, and you could still see a cloud of particles wafting from the back like a comet's tail.

When the target suddenly came in view you almost missed it entirely - from one moment to the next a gangly shape loomed up in your sight and you'd swept out an arm before you'd fully processed that, slamming into the spinning body at appreciable speed and probably breaking a bone or two in the process. For a moment you swung out of control, your bootjets desperately attempting to counteract the volatile forces while your arms were busy clamping around the limp body. You had no idea what up or down were supposed to be and the Earth's horizon spun wildly across your vision, and for a moment you felt worryingly faint.

With a push of power you blasted away from the spin, relying on your ship to catch up. "Get ready!" you shouted into the radio, clasping your target to the chestplate and nudging against the spinning with your palm repulsor. The suit's diagnostics were inconclusive about the body in your hands - either his heart had already stopped beating, or it couldn't measure through the thick material of the figure's spacesuit.

You finally caught side of the figure's face - you recognized the young wisecracker you'd briefly met on the ground, enthusiastic to fly something awesome. Now he was unconscious and deathly pale, any sign of mirth long gone. Johnny, you recalled, was his name. Johnny Storm.

The Starkbird swooped out of the night, its brilliant gold and red gleaming as its maw zeroed in on your position. You landed hard, your boots buckling the floor and scraping the paint off as you haphazardly dropped your cargo into your former seat, designed more for a robotic suit than a person. Johnny crumpled into the chair bonelessly and a breathing mask slid into position before you'd even been able to reach for it. The door was already sliding closed before you'd even thought of something to say.

"I will attempt resuscitation - I should be able to generate an electrical current in here," the AI said over the short-range radio."Heartbeat is irregular - but there is a heartbeat."

You let out a sigh of relief, momentarily thrilled until you remembered why you were still outside your ship, still hovering in your suit. Johnny Storm had not been alone. "Shit - I'll have to -"

"I know. Go - play the hero. Or whatever stupid thing you're intending to do."

"Will do!" Your boot jets fired again, their combined force flinging you towards the second target, a rectangular shape that was slowly fading into the distance after you'd broken off pursuit. A green trail of particles still trailed behind it, corkscrewing away from the devastated engine that slowly wheeled towards the Earth, sans its vehicle.

Not for the first time you wondered what your competitor had cooked up in his lab. Reed Richards was many things - arrogant, conceited, annoying - but he wasn't stupid. His ship's engines didn't run on radioactive substances, and radiation levels had actually dropped off according to your suit's measurements, but you had no clue what it might really be. You kept your suit's protective measures at full strength, uneasy about the dose you'd taken already, and hoped that Reed had thought about cosmic rays when he built his vessel. Even you hadn't really prepared the Starkbird for this kind of dose…

You didn't have much time to consider the matter as the ship quickly came into range, its hull still rotating quite quickly as its trajectory sent it ever closer to earth, one engine sputtering and protesting as it attempted to correct for an imbalanced vehicle and contradictory commands. It didn't seem like any progress was forthcoming.

"Hello? Testing, testing. Anyone alive in that hunk of junk?" you called, forcibly light in tone as you tried to figure out how to approach the tumbling wreckage. "Reed? Anyone? You need to deactivate your engines - you're just making things worse!"

For a few moments there was nothing, then a crackle burst from your earpiece. "Stark?" a dumbfounded voice demanded, low and rumbling. Ben Grimm. "I was wonderin' when you were gunna start bitchin' at us," he added, sounding strained. "Sorta busy right now."

"I'm trying to help!" you called. "Is everyone alright?"

"What the hell kinda question is that! Ain't you seen that we got man overboard?!" Ben callled over the radio, his voice breaking up - perhaps from the bad connection, perhaps for other reasons. "Reed's tryin' to save our hides! Sue's - I dunno if she's breathin'! It's -" Something like a desperate sob burst through "This is yer fault, dammit! You and Reed! If it ain't for you stinkin' glory-"

"I got him! I caught him, Ben!" you cried, cutting through the cursing as you approached with only your palm repulsors for thrust. "Johnny - I caught him when he got ejected. Don't know if he'll be alright, but he's in my ship! I've got him on life-support!"

Silence persisted on the radio for a few long seconds. "Yer… Yer - not lyin'?"

"No! Now, hold on to something!" There was no time to reconsider, the Earth dangerously huge below you already. "Gonna see if I can fix this- the brute force way…"

You burst towards Reed's ship, all your repulsors blazing, and you flung past the sweeping end of the craft to catch it as it wheeled around. You almost made it - one boot ricocheted off the edge of the tumbling spacecraft, bursting into a dozen pieces on impact as it sent you careening away. The repulsor, or what was left of it, was flung away in a storm of debris. Undeterred, you tried again. You still had three engines left.

"What the hell are ya doin'?" Ben yelled across the radio. "Is tha' you out there, Stark? I ain't seen your ship?!"

"Are you holding on?" You didn't wait for an answer, flinging yourself back against the tumbling craft and grasping onto the metal with your suit, deforming it as you dialed your remaining boot repulsor to its maximum power - within moments the wild tumble diminished, turning into a more gentle roll. The Earth approached ever quicker from below you. "Got it!"

"Yeah - now we're fallin' to our deaths in a box instead of a washdryer!" Ben muttered angrily, shouting something away from the radio. "Stark -"

"I know how Reed is. He's trying to repair the damage, right?" you returned, staring at the altitude measurements that your suit was spitting out. They weren't good. "Please tell me that this ship is designed for aerobraking? Reentry?"

Ben didn't answer.

"Can you get Reed on the radio?"

Another silence. Finally, Ben answered. "...He ain't dealin' with things too well, chief. Tryin' to get the engine workin' again, but I heard a kaboom."

"Yeah, the entire engine is gone."

"I told 'im that!"

Well, fuck.

Again.

I can't catch a break today, can I?

The atmosphere loomed ever closer, and already your armor could sense the slight resistance that you were encountering - you were getting warnings aplenty, even if you'd muted those the instant they began. You could get back into your ship with time to spare, ensure your own survival and that of Johnny Storm… At the cost of everyone else.

Hanging precariously off the bottom of Reed's spacecraft, though, you didn't feel like you had much of a choice in the matter. This was not the first time you'd put your life in extreme danger - it had become a somewhat ill-informed habit of late, but not one you could easily shake. Without you, Reed and the others would die, and that just wasn't acceptable.

You had one bootjet - the ship was missing one engine.

Basic math.

"Grimm -" You said sharply, catching yourself after a moment. "...Ben. Do you have any control over your ship at all? Can you steer?"

"Uh -"

"Figured. And Reed is still fussing over the engine, I take it?"

There wasn't even an answer this time. Of course he was.

"...Alright," you finally said, after collecting your thoughts. You hadn't counted on assistance, but the eerie silence made that realization much more immediate. You were alone in this - not even Jarvis could help you out of this bind. You had to give up now, and save your hide… or see it through. To the (probably) bitter end. "Go help Miss Storm," you said at last, barely above a mumble. "Leave the rest to the expert."

"...I dunno what you're doin', but… good luck." Yeah. You would need it.

Your suit wasn't built for reentry as such - much like Reed's ship it was meant to use propulsive braking, preferably in an atmosphere. That wasn't really a problem at the moment, seeing as a single bootjet should be able to generate plenty of thrust to keep you safe, if it weren't for the multi-ton ship that you were hanging on to. Even using all that your arc reactor had, and working in tandem with Reed's remaining engine, you had no real way to calculate if you could make it all the way down.

You had to wing it.

"Ship - what's the condition of your passenger?" You asked, more to distract yourself from the screaming death that was approaching than anything. You turned slightly, repositioning yourself and grasping the shell of Reed's ship with the suit's hands, deforming the surface metal until two deep palmprints were gouged into it. "Ship?"

"Stable. Listen, I'm getting some temperature alerts -" the AI spoke over your radio. "I don't… I can't tell what's happening. I'm... I'm blind."

Not so omniscient after all, then… Jarvis would have known exactly what was happening, even if he weren't tied into the suit's systems. The new AI was - more limited than you'd expected, if its words were honest. And by this point, considering how little harm he'd actually done, you were beginning to doubt your hypothesis about the visitor. Was it just an unfortunate coincidence in a mission already a slave to Murphy's Law?

"Ignore the alerts," you said at last, removing the alerts that were popping up in your own holographic HUD. "I've got this."

"Tony, we really should talk."

"Later. Gotta be the ridiculously self-sacrificing hero now." You smiled a little as you imagined the AI's flustered response. You could still see the distant light of your ship, descending towards Earth rather slower than you were, but you knew it would soon be out of range. "Come find me when we're down, alright? We can talk later." You hung up.

Right. Stupid heroism, coming right up.

You froze the joints of the suit, locking yourself in place opposite the remaining engine - it wasn't firing at maximum output, but you could only barely match it with your repulsor as it was - and then you let loose. A bright beam of blue burst out and overloaded your sensors for a long moment. You were on your way.

You could ignore the heat, at first - your bootjet was firing hard enough to match the remaining engine, and the continuous expenditure of energy would naturally heat up the suit without an atmosphere to ditch it. You had cooling systems built in to handle exactly that; getting hot feet wasn't really a big issue. By the time you could see the first signs of frictional heating on the base of Reed's ship, though, you knew you were in trouble. Serious trouble.

The suit, even with all its resistance, was getting too hot. You weren't decelerating fast enough - and the atmosphere became exponentially thicker as you moved into it. It was like hitting a wall feet-first, and your armor creaked and protested as you desperately kept it steady, kept it from getting flung away. Your engines fired again, your hands almost slipping from the silvery surface of the ship as it gave way under you.

"Tony? Tony…! Don't you dare -"

You couldn't hear - couldn't even see. Your hands still had a grip on Reed's vessel, though, and that was enough. The repulsor was still firing, wailing away and echoing through your armor until it was almost unbearable. The heat was too much. It felt like the sweat was evaporating right off your brow, and every time you took a breath it seared all the way down. You let out something primal, a cry that only barely matched the wailing of the air around you.

Grey.

You saw yourself, your armor's hands still holding on tightly to the skin of a ship that was disintegrating - whole sections just fell off, burned to a crisp or molten by the atmospheric reentry. You were looking in from the outside, as if you were floating behind your own body. What? Were you...?

The repulsor boot wasn't firing anymore - it had burned out from the heat, smoke pouring from it and cascading down the ship to join an ever-growing cloud of debris that stretched upwards. Fire was everywhere - a perpetual red-hot glow that had melted away whole layers of armor, exposing wiring that curled up and sputtered. The armor was still upright, still in the position of trying desperately to counter gravity, but without the repulsor the ship was tilting to the side.

A spin would be lethal. here.

White.

You were… still aware. Your thoughts made no real sense as you stared at the remnants that fell to Earth before you. Weren't you dead? How could a dead person be watching their own demise? Had you been cooked inside your armor, flash fried when reentry proved to be far more destructive than even your pessimistic calculations? Then how were you still thinking?

You looked over your shoulder for the first time, towards the edge of the Earth. There, its vast wings unfurled, its claws raking across the continents, a creature of flame cried out. Destruction and Creation wrapped into one. Potential incarnate. Maybe you were dead. Maybe. But for the Phoenix, death was not the end. Power flowed through you, a desperate conduit.

Rebirth.

Blue.

The sky was blue.

"...What." You stared up at the small clouds that drifted by in the blue expanse, and the enormous column of smoke that curled upwards to meet them. You saw shooting stars by the hundreds, little bits and pieces of stuff falling back to Earth, and among them a swooping shape that you recognized. The Starkbird, still descending. "What?"

You were on the ground. You were alive.

Slowly, very slowly, you put a hand beneath yourself and pushed off. You didn't feel any pain - the movement was easy, unburdened. That… didn't make sense. You looked down, staring at your arm for a long moment. It was fine - no wounds, no burns, nothing. No clothes, either. Or armor. Strips of half-molten metal still hung from it, too deformed to recognize.

"What!?"

Your armor was spread around you in bits and pieces, mangled hardware fused together by temperatures you couldn't begin to guess at. Total loss. Some parts still smoldered, little tongues of flame licking at the edges. All around you was devastation - fiery remains of Reed's ship, perhaps, were spread around you. And amidst them all, looking distressingly intact, was the cockpit.

You got up, still incapable of making any sense of what you were seeing. Your clothes were gone - and your hair, you realized with some horror - but somehow… somehow you were okay. And if you were okay, if you had made it back to the surface…

"Reed?" you called hoarsely, stumbling through the debris towards the huge cockpit. "Grimm? Anyone?" You didn't have a radio anymore - it had molten right out of your ear. You had no way to contact anyone.

You made your way around the cockpit, stepping around the still-burning remains of the aft section, incinerated and broken up into bite-size chunks. The remnants of parachutes lay all around you, most of them partially burned away, and you quickly draped one of them around your shoulders - it was better than nothing. At least you weren't naked anymore…

You should have stopped right there, you realized, for behind the next chunk of debris lay a prone form. It was Reed - except he wasn't right. His limbs twisted in on themselves, his neck at an angle, you knew that you could be of no help, there. You turned away in horror.

"...S-Stark?"

You froze, turning slowly back towards the voice. Reed… was alive. The man's eyes blinked slowly up at you. "...How are you alive?" you demanded breathlessly. How am I alive?

He moved. His limbs, his hopelessly shattered limbs, moved fluidly, pushing him upright onto destroyed feet. It wasn't natural, and you cringed as the man's neck turned completely around. Reed didn't seem to be any more comfortable with what was going on, as he stared at his arms in disbelief, and no small amount of fear.

"I'm… I'm not sure…"

"Reed, 's dat you?" A new voice spoke up, rumbling and gruff. There, by the rock formation… No… "What the hell is goin' on! Are you seein' this?!"

It was the rock formation. It was moving. The rocks were talking. You couldn't help it - a giggle made its way past your lips. This… had to be a nightmare. A hallucination, perhaps, on the edge of death. Had you gone insane?

"Are you alright? You won't believe this!" Sue cried out. She clambered down from the cockpit, one hand clamped down on a wound in her side that was still seeping blood, the other… there was no other. And she was hovering about two feet off the ground, too, as she had no legs.

Yup. Insane.

Had to happen sometime, you supposed.

Everything faded.

"...Stark?" You were sitting, you realized. You must've passed out, or dozed off, or something. Reed was holding you up, his brow scrunched up in an impossible way as he checked your pupils with a tiny flashlight. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah."

Reed turned sluggishly, his arms bending unnaturally. Something like rage flashed across his face as he looked at his droopy limbs.

"...What happened?" You asked, feeling a little more yourself than before. "We were falling, and then… something must have exploded, I think. I woke up on the ground."

"I thought you would know better than us," Reed responded lowly. "I was trying to repair the controls, give us a fighting chance… but I ran out of time. You were doing something to slow us down, though. And then you exploded into flames."

"Huh," you responded. "I don't feel exploded."

Reed grimaced. "Well, whatever the hell you did." He wiggled his arm slowly. "Reality went… strange for a bit, there. I'll need a lab, but something up there... changed us." He looked at you with narrowed eyes. "Ben blames you. He's not wrong. Johnny - we'll know when he wakes up..."

"Ben? What's wrong?" you wondered.

"His, uh, mutation." Reed swallowed. "I think you should avoid him, for the moment. All of us, really. Because I don't think anyone's in a forgiving mood. I'm sort of trying to keep it together, but as things usually go between us..."

"How is any of this my fault?" you demanded, though you were uncomfortably aware that you had far too much of a role in this whole affair. "I didn't mean for this to happen!"

Reed didn't answer, and he averted his gaze. There was hate there, still. Hate for you personally, perhaps… or for the events that led to this disaster. Self-loathing, to some degree, for his own role in events. It didn't really matter.

You were not blameless in this mess. You still barely understood what had happened, but everything felt different nevertheless. Things had changed - and perhaps not in a good way.

In the distance, just barely visible over the silhouette of the Starkbird, helicopters were approaching. Soon there would be time to think. Time to rethink.

God, you could use a drink.

Interlude - Peter Parker

On some days, Peter just wanted to hang up his webs and find a nice warm bath to doze off in. Today was one of those days; he was sweating profusely, the second set of clothing really wasn't helping, and his boss nearly got himself killed stone dead. Imagery of towering pillars of smoke and fire were visible on all monitors, alongside a disturbing number of screens which merely showed static. It didn't look too good.

Granted, Tony had managed to contact authorities within fifteen minutes of the crash, piggybacking on local radio stations to get a signal through without using the Starkbird's systems - they apparently held some kind of data corruption. He'd forwarded GPS coordinates, called in some kind of favor with S.H.I.E.L.D. - something about a nurse - and promptly gotten off the channel. The details were, needless to say, sketchy.

Why had he ever signed up for this?

It didn't help that everyone vanished, either - Pepper and Mr. Rhodes had taken off the moment that it became clear the mission was a bust, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. detachment assigned to the mission had left without a word after Tony's call. If it hadn't been for Dr. Pym's occasional digital presence, Peter might as well have been left alone entirely.

"At least my engines worked properly," Peter murmured to himself, grimacing at the fiery carnage on the screen, occasionally interspersed with bright green bursts of flammable gas pouring from the remains of the Richards' spaceplane.

For once, Peter thought, his superpowers had been entirely irrelevant. Spider-Man was superfluous in a place like this - useless. It felt weird to be a superhero on standby, incapable of affecting the mission in the slightest except through his work in the previous weeks. Still, the fact that his engines had held fast, even against the sort of violent reaction that had ripped the Richards shuttle apart, was a testament to his solid work.

It was weird to feel proud of something that he'd have to attribute not to a freak happenstance of mutant spiders - but fully to himself. He had an inkling why Tony was such a gloryhound in half his pursuits, as there was an intoxicating quality to success. Granted, he rather wished there were fewer explosions involved. But with his life, he really shouldn't look a detonating horse in the mouth.

Still… his aunt would be proud, and that was a good thought.

"Uh… Hello? Mister?"

Peter blinked in confusion, glancing over his shoulder at the source of the sudden question. He'd been lingering at the monitoring equipment of the Starkbird, useless ever since it shut off its engines, so he must have looked rather out of place there as one of the last people still in a neat labeled coat. Most of the rest of the crew had already departed to the atrium, and the few who were still present were slowly filing out too. Most of them had been for show, anyway.

"You're talking to me?" Peter asked, straightening as he considered the tall brunette whose neat business suit seemed about three sizes too big for her. She had to be one of the many spectators that had been in the atrium, especially given she wore a rather large badge on her lapel which said her name was 'Crystal' in large blocky letters. With S.H.I.E.L.D. gone, she had just walked in, unopposed. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I think so?" She half-asked, looking around the room with a frown, leaning over rather further than was absolutely necessary. "Everyone's gone already, huh? I figured that - well, is this because Mr. Stark crashed?"

Peter couldn't blame her for wondering about the empty room - he could hardly admit that most of the people there had been non-essential - but he couldn't help straighten a little at the implication in her last question. Not because it impinged on Tony's honor, such as it was, but because it implied things about his own handiwork. He'd just gotten used to enjoying a little touch of pride, damn it. "Actually, I think you'll find the Starkbird landed safely. Tony - Mr. Stark is fine. It was the other ship that went up like a firecracker - Mr. Richards' one. Tony just followed him down."

"Right…" she murmured, latching onto something else. "Wait… he lets you call him Tony? Just that?"

"Sure." Peter shrugged, relaxing a little. "He's pretty informal in private, really. Haven't been working for him long, but I think he's like that with almost everyone. He probably got more paranoid after the whole Afghanistan thing, but I only met him later." He smiled. "He's every bit the genius that you hear about, though - let me tell you that. I have to work pretty hard to keep up with him…"

"You can keep up with him?" she asked breathlessly. There was something about her expression which Peter really didn't mind. Maybe he was getting a bit caught up in the moment, but for once he'd actually done something which he could take full credit for. Why couldn't he just enjoy that for a moment?

"I can keep up a little. They tell me I'm a prodigy - or something like that," Peter hedged, chickening out from the really self-serving comments he'd lined up, though he wasn't entirely sure why. After a moment he decided it couldn't hurt. "Mr. Stark hired me personally - I'm not sure what he saw in me, but he went through a lot of trouble from what I hear." He smiled with difficulty, a little hesitant. Tony was going to kill him for blabbing to random people, wasn't he? "...I worked on the rocket, too. Fixed a few of his bigger mistakes." Yup. Definitely gonna murder.

Crystal's wide eyes and impressed expression made up for a lot, though, and Peter wondered distantly if she was single. He reminded himself that he was not a fourteen year old horndog and that maybe he should do something about dampening his pride, but it was difficult. Still, with great ego came great responsibility.

"Really?" she asked. "You must be brilliant!"

"Nah, I don't want to brag," Peter said, and he decided that he really, really did. Which was weird, because he never cared about that sort of thing - maybe it was because he'd done it out of the suit? "Anyway, thing is that the ship functioned exactly as it should have, with only minor teething issues, and it also made it safely back to Earth. Whether the pilot did things by the book is another matter - but Tony's actions are hardly my business." He shrugged. "I reckon Richards screwed up pretty hard, though. Fireballs and everything."

"Mr. Richards was very confident," Crystal said slowly.

"Yes, well, I figure he rushed in finishing his ship after Tony announced the Starkbird," Peter considered. "Of course, we rushed too - but with Hank - that is, Dr. Pym - and Tony working on the problem, I think Reed was simply outclassed." He leaned over to her, smiling warmly. "Well, I might have a little to do with it as well."

She grinned at that. "Ah, you're so cool!" She glanced over the screens without static, darting from one to the other on light feet. "So who are you, exactly?" she asked at last, sitting down next to Peter and sighing deeply. "I never did ask, did I?"

Peter swallowed thickly. "Um… I'm Peter. Peter Parker. How about you, Crystal?"

She laughed softly. "Well, you already know my name."

"I do," Peter agreed immediately, looking at her with half-lidded eyes, leaning over until her lips were all he saw. He could maybe just -

ZAP! The twitching buzz of his Spider-sense was like a bucket of ice-water down the back of his shirt, and Peter wheezed in surprise as he arched away from Crystal, one hand grasping onto his desk as he caught himself. It took him a long moment to shake off - whatever it was. A haze across his mind. Danger - but not physical. Something else.

Had he just been about to kiss her? What?

"My, my… You've got some real willpower there," Crystal said lightly, still lounging in her seat with an amused smile curling around the corner of her mouth. She reached into her pocket, retrieving something which resembled a perfume bottle. "Two drops of this, and you still broke through before you got the full dose from my lips. It's pretty impressive, really - or you're just gay. Whichever. I'd like to think the former."

"What…?" Peter demanded. "What did you do?"

Crystal didn't answer, tapping on a button of her suit instead. "It's really simple. See this? I made a recording of this little talk. Video and audio, of course, backed up in a safe location. Nothing you can do about that, and it'll be on the internet by evening." She grinned. "Smile!"

"That's not - legal!"

"Let the lawyers decide that, huh? You talked to me freely… Didn't even ask to see my identification. Can't blame a girl for your loose lips, can you?" Crystal raised an eyebrow as she turned. "By the way… this stuff doesn't make someone boastful, it just… loosens them up a little, removes some inhibitions. Maybe you should do something about that insecurity of yours, because sheesh…"

Peter didn't say anything as she walked away, her hips swaying exaggeratedly. He could only stare after her, wondering distantly what idiotic things he'd said to her. He could barely even recall. He'd been steamrolled by a Femme Fatale - Black Cat was going to laugh her ass off the next time they met.

Sometimes his Spider-sense was awfully inconvenient about what constituted danger.

The news screen next to him flashed, and he turned up the volume, too bothered with what just happened to pay much attention.

"Latest news indicates that Mr. Stark is unharmed, while all four members of the Richards expedition have been adversely affected by their crash - details are sketchy, but they are being transported to a hospital as we speak. Preliminary statements from Sue Richards indicate that Mr. Stark may have been involved in a successful rescue attempt of his rival space pioneer, preventing loss of life. Reed Richards is presently unavailable for comments - Mr. Stark is expected to hold a press conference soon."

Peter mused about what on earth he was going to do. Unless he acted, he'd show up on that same TV as an intoxicated gloryhound, looking down a girl's cleavage and spilling about how terrible Richards was and how awesome he was.

Oh. Oh, God.

Peter wondered dejectedly what the odds were that Tony would have the DNA results and adoption papers ready the moment he got back.

Why did I ever sign up for this?

Interlude - Slippery Eels

Peter stared at the door for a few long moments, his mind utterly blank. At last he started, blinking furiously as he realized he had just let that woman walk out. What the hell? He staggered after her, fighting against the blanket of carelessness that she'd forced on him, but she'd already slipped out of sight.

"God, and I'd just gotten used to Mysterio's nonsense!" he muttered in annoyance, grabbing a headset that one of the engineers had left behind and putting it on. "JARVIS? Can you hear me? Is this thing on?"

"I am fully operational, Mr. Parker," the AI returned. "How may I be of assistance?"

"What do you mean - You got all that, right?" he demanded, slamming through the doors as he rushed towards the atrium where the dodgy reporter was doubtlessly headed. "That woman just now? The drugs? You have her on camera, right? Please tell me you got all that, because nobody's gonna buy this..."

Jarvis took a few long moments to respond. "It seems my attention was focused upon Mr. Stark's retrieval and purging my systems of corruption, but I did indeed record all events within the control center. I apologize for not responding immediately."He actually sounded a little contrite. "Miss Crystal does not appear on the guest list, and preliminary facial recognition does not return any notable hits. A more thorough scan will require time."

"That's alright. Can you track her for me, at least?" Peter asked. "I can't change around here - and it would probably be a bad idea to be seen so far away from my usual haunts. I can catch her as a civilian, though. That stuff she sprayed me with can'tbe legal - it has to be some sort of felony, right?"

"It is indeed considered a -"

"Figured as much," Peter interrupted, running just a little faster than he should have been able to, scanning the hallways frantically. "Where'd she skulk off to?"

"Miss Crystal entered the second corridor to the right, then took the first left - it appears she is moving towards the central atrium via the swiftest route," Jarvis concluded. "I am contacting S.H.I.E.L.D. for assistance."

Peter frowned. "I thought they left?"

"Most did, indeed. Several operatives remain behind, and at least one was assigned to watch over the Stark control center. He appears to be unaccounted for."

"And you didn't notice that?" Peter asked mildly. Well, three guesses who had convinced that agent to scurry off for a while, probably with a good dose of her creepy drug cocktail. "Are you feeling alright, Jarvis? It's not like you to miss things like this."

"I... believe I am operational," the AI confirmed belatedly. "Mr. Stark should evaluate my programming when he returns, as I may be compromised as the Starkbird was. Still, I cannot detect any evident corruption."

Well, that was a worry for a later time. Peter burst around the corner, at last glimpsing Crystal at the far end, already halfway down the stairs into the central hall, still mostly filled with reporters, enthusiasts, and a sizable contingent of Stark employees.

"I have patched you through to the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative watching over the atrium," Jarvis announced. A rush of static momentarily burst from the headset before calming. "You may speak freely."

"Right. So, S.H.I.E.L.D. guy - where are you?" Peter asked sharply.

"Wha - who is this?" a voice on the other side asked. "This is a restricted channel -"

"Yeah, got it. Look, a reporter just used freaky mind control juice on me and is now headed into the main hall with the stuff - we can do introductions later," Peter blurted. "Jarvis will send over her picture. I'm on her tail, maybe twenty seconds behind."

"...Well then," the agent responded, nonplussed. "Mind control, eh? Reckon it's the Serpent Crown, or the Over-Mind, or maybe my aunt Pearl…? Whatever, I'm on it."

Peter rolled his eyes, rushing down the stairs and startling half a dozen of his colleagues as he ran by them, chasing a flash of blond hair that remained the only sign of Crystal he'd spotted. She disappeared behind a small group of other reporters and Peter was forced to slow down to a crawl as he tried to navigate the packed hall without bulldozing over people with his enhanced strength. "Jarvis? Do you still have a lock on her?"

"There! I spotted her, Stark kid!" the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent responded before the AI could. Peter bristled at the designation - he got enough of that from Tony. "Seems she's headed in my direction - I'm in the rafters, it's kind of a thing, don't worry about it. I don't have a clear shot from here, so can't put a tranq in her back, but I might get lucky in a moment…"

Peter agreed with a hum, and distantly wondered why the agent sounded so familiar. "Do I know you?" he asked at last, almost bowling over several people as he reached out for the blonde that came almost within reach - when someone suddenly threw a punch at him. His spider-sense screamed at him to get out of the way, and Peter had only had a split second to duck before the meaty fist of a rather large, bald man would have hit him. The giant's eyes were filled with rage, and clouded over with a dull haze. A drug haze. "Shit! Got trouble here!"

"I noticed," the agent agreed. "Can you handle that guy?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives have been alerted, and are converging on Miss Crystal,"

Jarvis said mildly.

"God, and I thought my job could never be automated," the agent complained. "You're Stark's creepy AI, right? Don't answer that, I'll get Terminator nightmares again."

"Nerd," Peter muttered self-deprecatingly, put out that Crystal had vanished among the crowd. The burly man was still leering at him viciously, and though he couldn't really do any harm - it would be kind of a mess to out his superhuman qualities on such a public stage. "...Hey, rafters guy, care to help me out with this big guy? I think he's been dosed."

"Right - bodybuilder guy is big enough that I should be able to…" Something flashed from the ceiling, smacking right into the back of the man's neck. For a tense moment the giant stared stupidly at Peter, then he started to crumple to his knees. "There we go - should keep him down for a solid half hour. Nice shot, huh?" He was silent for a moment. "You're not even listening to me, are you? They say the first sign of madness is talking to yourself. First sign, definitely. Fishing's the second, I suppose."

Peter rolled his eyes as he headed towards the atrium entrance. "I lost her - she's slippery like an eel, isn't she?" He distantly realized he hadn't had an eel in his rogues gallery yet, unless he included Electro. But that didn't really count. "You might want to get some blood samples from the huge guy. See whatever she's been using to make people so suggestible."

"Yeah, smart thinking," the agent agreed. "I'll call it in. Say… ever thought about signing up with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Sounds like you handle this super-criminal stuff pretty well," the agent responded. "You were in that other scuffle in Vegas, right? I remember you now. When Deadpool got trigger-happy. That's where we must have met."

"Yeah! You're Arrow-guy, aren't you?"

"Arrow-guy?" the agent returned, sounding disgusted. "What the hell?"

"...It was Tony's idea."

"It's Hawkeye, man. My codename is Hawkeye." He sighed audibly. "Anyway, mind-whammy lady is nearly out of the building now, and I've got two agents there to take her in when she leaves. This should be over in -" He halted mid-sentence. "...What? Where did she go? Wait a- Huh?"

"What's going on?" Peter demanded. "Tell me you have her!"

"I… I was looking right at her! How could she -" He sounded utterly baffled. "That's - invisibility, maybe? Teleportation? Shapeshifting? ...Anything?" A long silence followed. "She's gone. Straight up Marty McFly-ed out of existence. Security footage has her there one moment, then gone the next - not a trace."

"How is that possible?"

Hawkeye snorted. "She was packing something a hell of lot more sophisticated than fancy perfume, I think. She's some kind of freaking super-spy - definitely S.H.I.E.L.D. jurisdiction. Wonderful - we didn't have enough femme fatales yet. Romanoff's gonna flip." He paused at that. "Please tell me she didn't have a vague Russian accent?"

"Nope." Great. His corrupt reporter turned out to be something more… and she was going to make him look like a complete fool before the day was out. Probably on national television. "...Sheesh, Aunt May is gonna kill me."

"Your aunt ain't got anything on what Fury will do to me…"

Almost two days later, which Peter spent waiting for the other metaphorical shoe to drop, not a frame of footage had shown up anywhere. Not on television, not on the internet. Jarvis had been monitoring all the major networks in an apparent effort to make up for his distraction at the time, but nothing showed up. Neither did Crystal appear on any facial recognition scans anywhere. She was a ghost, a complete nobody.

Needless to say that she was not a reporter either, but some kind of spy, like Hawkeye - Clint Barton, he reminded himself - had suggested. For a long evening he'd wondered what on earth a spy needed with footage of silly bragging by an intoxicated employee of Tony's - it wasn't like he'd dropped any huge bombs in that conversation. Then he realized his mistake.

He'd assumed that the recording was her ultimate goal, instead of just a means to an end. He'd been distracted, focused on the wrong things.

He hadn't connected all the dots until the next day. He remembered the moment when she'd leaned over to him, and he'd tried to kiss her in a haze of drugs. The reason he'd broken through that was his spider-sense - a warning of danger, a sharp buzz of imminent harm.

Except his spider-sense didn't work on illusions; that's how he always knew when Mysterio was up to his old tricks. So whatever he'd sensed had been real - physical.

That when he remembered rubbing at his hands in the wake of the failed capture, wiping at a vague itch. He had a hunch and checked Jarvis' records, watching Crystal's hands in their little meeting - and that's when he saw it. His intoxicated self reached out for a smooch, and just as he did so she touched him with one hand - a soft touch, no more than a brush. And in its wake was left a bead of blood - and a needle mark.

She'd played him from beginning to end, Peter realized. She'd manipulated him so she could get in close, and then lead him on a rabbit trail of dodgy reporters so he wouldn't take her down right then and there with full force.

This was someone who had known he was Spider-Man, and had prepared for it.

To quote Barton - this looked bad. Very bad.