Chapter 3:
"What is it?" Dr. Abhinaya Narayanan asked. The unconscious figure on the operating table before her had mostly normal human anatomy: arms, legs, hair, a face. But as she shoved her gloved hands in between his limp lips to open his mouth, she saw the glint of fangs. The thing's whole body was covered in smooth blue fur, except for its belly, which, to Abhinaya's inappropriate amusement, had a very human-looking eight-pack. Dr. McCoy opened the patient's eyes, revealing blank, almond-shaped yellow eyes. Its ears were pointed, there were only two tapered fingers on its hands besides the opposable thumb, and a long tail hung limp from its coccyx. Large splashes of blood decorated its strange clothing, a dark maroon and black body suit. With some effort, the five doctors in the O.R. cut through the material and peeled the cloth away from its matted, fuzzy skin.
The damage was sickening, but Dr. Narayanan had seen much as one of the attending surgeons at this "superhero hospital," as the students had fondly dubbed it. She immediately identified several patches of severe burns on his right wrist and his ankle. The deep cut ran from its neck the middle of its back, and when one of the doctors lifted its legs, Abhinaya could see that the back of its knees were slashed. One of his feet was burned to an unrecognizable mess. The area under its rib cage pumped purple blood like a disgusting horror movie, and although the patient's face was a dark indigo, it was beginning to look sick despite his unconsciousness.
"Oh. It's a boy," Dr. McCoy said gruffly as he tugged the pants off its legs. Abhinaya glanced at the newly uncovered area, which looked human and male enough. But her attention was on the massive amount of blood the thing was losing. She pointed at the thing's face. "Are those acid burns?"
McCoy took a closer look. "Yes, I think they are."
"We've gotta operate. He won't make it if we don't act fast."
"But what are we going to do?" McCoy asked, sticking an I.V. needle into its arm. Abhinaya could tell her coworker was praying he had hit a vein. She thought quickly. There was one procedure the Board at the hospital had discussed briefly. Although she wished she had a more assuring resolution for this surgery, there wasn't much else that could be done.
"Get the suit parts."
"Dr. Narayanan?" one of the nurses said nervously. Of course, she had no idea what she was talking about.
"Move out of the way, greenhorn," McCoy said, pushing past the young blonde nurse toward a steel cabinet that was tucked discreetly into the corner of the operating room. "If you're not going to be useful, get the hell out of here."
He grabbed several parts of the disassembled Iron Man suits and placed them on the operating table next to Dr. Narayanan's tools. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"No...but there's nothing else we can do. This is the only option that has any chance of saving him," she answered. The rest of the room waited with bated breath as the orthopedic surgeon removed the damaged foot from the end of the patient. Dr. Narayanan inhaled deeply in her mind to calm her adrenalin and steady her hands before she began to attach the metal foot to the patient's ankle. McCoy quickly cauterized the area as she finished and moved onto the next damaged body part.
"One of you lumps move your ass and stop the bleeding from his torso, goddamn it!" he snapped at the rest of the doctors who just stood by as Dr. Narayanan slowly transformed the formerly doomed patient into a real-life cyborg.
She was getting near the worst parts, and the other doctors could see the panic creep into her eyes. "Someone get the chief, right now," she ordered, her voice rising from distress. Abhinaya had no idea how to approach this part of the body, being an orthopedic surgeon. The Chief of Surgery at Stark University Hospital was a world-renowned plastic surgeon who restored Iceman's frosty skin after his infamous battle with Pyro several years earlier. Even though Iceman had vanquished his longtime rival, he sustained massive skin injuries, and Tony Stark had him flown rapidly to Stark University Hospital just so he could be operated on by the plastic surgeon Tony had picked especially for her expertise with supernatural beings.
The doctor who had fled to retrieve the chief quickly returned, panting.
"What's going on?" the Chief demanded. She was young, only twenty-seven years-old, a true testament to her skill. Her short black hair was contained in a scrub cap that was embroidered with her initials S.C. Standing at only 5'4", she was only a few inches taller than Dr. Narayanan. Her large, Asian eyes were alert, vibrant, and a little sardonic above the edge of her surgical mask. Her confident presence was enough to calm the rest of the doctors.
"Chief, I need you to graft the metal chest plate to the patient's rib cage, and that bit of the Iron Man mask to the head where the acid is eating away at its skin."
The Chief didn't waste any time. She grabbed the Iron Man suit parts and got to work, issuing directions to the rest of the doctors. As everyone set about to their assigned job, she spoke to Dr. Narayanan.
"I would have thought you would be able to handle this, as making Iron Man cyborgs of dying patients was your idea."
"Yes, Chief. I thought more suited hands would increase the patient's chance of survival."
"Your lack in confidence in yourself disturbs me, Dr. Narayanan," the Chief said calmly. "I'm certain you would've been able to do this yourself."
"Yes, Chief. I'll learn from you how to do it now."
"Excellent idea, Dr. Narayanan. Cauterize this area, please, I'm done. And for God's sake, someone cover up that anterior region. It's distracting me," the Chief ordered. A doctor draped a cloth over the blue figure's hips.
The Chief took the upper part of the Iron Man mask, the only piece of suit left, and she carefully fitted it to the patient's face before she began to burn it on. The other doctors had removed the decaying and eroded flesh to slow the acid's burning, and Dr. Narayanan's theory was that the indestructible material of the Iron Man suit would stop the acid's progress altogether. The gold of the mask contrasted with the patient's blue skin. Slowly, the Chief began to merge the edge of the mask onto the face. Everyone else in the O.R., even McCoy, stood completely still, as if making any sort of motion would mess her up.
"Almost done," the Chief said, keeping her eyes on her work. "He's going to make it."
The whole room exhaled in relief. Everyone was smiling at each other gratefully. The tight knot in Dr. Narayanan's gut unwound. The procedure had been a success. And her theory was correct--as the Chief finished grafting the gold-colored adamantium metal onto the face, the skin around it began to look more stable. Whatever this creature was, he had resilience that wasn't human.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open.
"Holy shit!" the Chief exclaimed as the yellow eyes looked at her in shock and confusion. The doctors jumped back as the creature flexed his three-fingered hands and three-toed feet and found that he could move. He sat upright, bending his new torso in one unnatural motion. The unfamiliar faces seemed to upset him even more.
"Calm down, sir, calm down!" Dr. Narayanan shouted. Her raised voice didn't have any kind of soothing effect on him whatsoever. The blue creature began to jabber quickly in German, swinging his head in every direction to figure out where he was.
"WHY DID NO ONE ADMINISTER ANESTHESIA?" the Chief demanded, having given up trying to subdue the patient. The creature looked at her because of her authoritative tone. He pulled out the I.V. and ripped off the leads that had connected him to the monitor.
"Wo bin ich? Wo bin ich?" he demanded in German.
"We can't understand you," Abhinaya said slowly, holding up her hands to him. "Does anybody in this place speak German?"
"The German language professor across campus would," the Chief answered dryly.
"Wo bin ich?" the creature said, jumping off the operating table to his feet. He stumbled immediately from the unfamiliarity of his metal foot, and several gloved hands reached out to push him back onto the table. He seemed to panic even more from the approach of the hands, and closing his eyes tightly, gritting his teeth, the cyborg patient disappeared, leaving a cloud of black smoke and the distinct smell of brimstone behind.
"What the fuck was that?!" one of the doctors exclaimed after everyone was done coughing.
"After a year, Dr. Laurie," the Chief said, impatiently waving smoke away from her face, "this kind of shit won't surprise you."
Remy walked into the Interrogation classroom and leaned against the back wall. He saw Kathleen looking at him a few feet away, smirking. She approached him, dressed in heels, a long black leather skirt, and a matching, slightly revealing leather shirt. Remy imagined that on anybody else, the outfit would have looked tacky and ridiculous, he could tell, even being as fashion un-savvy as he was. But on Kathleen, it looked too appropriate. And he could see she was packing heat under her leather jacket.
"Aren't you here to learn, Remy? Why aren't you taking notes?"
"Aren't you supposed to be teaching somewhere?" he combatted, ignoring her question.
"I never plan my classes during Eli's interrogation seminars," she answered.
"Why not? Are they really that interesting?" he asked, making a face. He never was a fan of psychological interrogation techniques. Then again, he'd never had a problem with getting answers since he possessed a supernatural hypnotic charm.
A hypnotic charm that Eli seemed to be immune to.
"Yes, they are. But that's no the reason I come to every one of them."
"...Go on," he prompted.
"One year there was a terrorist undercover as a student here, and he almost set himself off in her classroom when she used him as an example. She'd had an idea of who he was, but didn't want to alarm the other students by revealing that he was a suicide bombing maniac. So she had to shoot him."
"Wait. She didn't want to alarm the students, so she shot the student in front of them? In class?" Remy asked, befuddled.
"You don't understand. These are students of Iron Man University. Their very first class is how to understand and deal with 'necessary villain murder.' They would've panicked if she hadn't shot him first and explained later."
"Wow," Remy said, turning back to watching Eli explain the slides on the projector. "I didn't want to believe she was that cold."
"You don't know anything," Kathleen snapped. He looked back at her in surprise. It was the first time he had seen Kathleen lose her composure. But by the time he was trying to read her face, Kathleen had returned to her cheerful self.
"Explain?"
She sighed in response, and crossed her legs as if that would prepare her for something.
"At the time, she wasn't even completely sure until the moment he lost it and was going to set himself off. Shooting the bastard was an instinctual move, and she's never really gotten over it," she said. The look on her face said that she didn't want Eli to know that she was telling Remy this. "That day shook her more than anything I've ever seen. And she and I have been through a lot together."
He looked back at Eli, this little woman who fascinated him. She was wearing black again, her long hair pulled back into a high ponytail that swung from her head like a whip. She laser-pointed at a picture of an interrogation technique where the victim was hung from his wrists behind his back. Remy felt a swell of something in his chest for her as she explained the illogicality of this technique as if it was common sense. Eli looked at Kathleen briefly, and Remy thought he saw her make eye-contact with him, but she was looking back at her slides before he could blink or verify.
"So...I come to her classes just in case something like that ever happens again. Unlike Eli, I have no problem shooting terrorists," Kathleen said with a little bit of pride and bitterness. "She just needs to tell me which one might be the little bitch."
Remy nodded his head. It made sense to him.
"Don't get me wrong," Kathleen continued suddenly. "It's not the shooting that bothers her. She can shoot just fine. It's just that she's that kind of person who'd rather shoot to injure and cripple and torture, you know, 'don't kill them, because then it ends and they don't suffer anymore' kind of thing? Eli has never wanted to shoot to kill. Except..."
Remy waited for Kathleen to continue, and when she didn't, he didn't feel like pressing it. Kathleen looked guilty, as if she had said too much.
Kathleen wanted to tell him everything because she knew that if Remy knew the psychological goings-on that made Eli who she was, he would love her more than his former wife. She had obtained Remy's ex-wife's identity from Tony, texting him the question directly and succinctly. He answered without question. When it came to getting these two together, Tony and Kathleen were definitely allies.
She watched as Remy listened to Eli's lecture with rapt attention. The corners of his mouth turned down as he saw her flinch at the picture of water-boarding. What really baffled him was why this woman, who didn't have much of a stomach for gruesome things, would choose a profession that involved her in torture practices.
"You know," Kathleen began, examining his face intently. "When you find out why she's so serious about her work, you'll really love her."
Remy wasn't so sure. He didn't want another damaged woman, like Marie had been. Damaged equaled insecure and unstable. It didn't help that she seemed to put her work before everything else in her life, except for maybe her friend Kathleen. Remy had needs, and at this point, looking at Eli debunk water-boarding stoically, he wasn't sure Eli could satisfy him. He wasn't sure she had enough experience for him. Marie had been a tigress in the bedroom, despite her pitfalls in public. Eli looked about as experienced as a nun.
But he was still so taken with her.
Galia sat at her desk, processing messages and organizing files. She typed quickly with her left hand while forking pieces of vanilla cheesecake with her right. Yes, she was working during the hour that was supposed to be her break, but the vanilla cheesecake the dining hall lady brought her was making everything okay.
"Mr. Warren Worthington III, a new employee...," she said absently to herself as she filed the new aerospace professor's information. Holding up his picture that would go on the Stark University website, she examined his face. "Attractive."
The cheesecake was so good, she was eating it slowly so it would last the whole hour. The next tiny bite was about to go into her mouth when a loud "bamf" shook the room, making her scream.
Being an employee at a school founded by a superhero, she was used to most things. Whole buildings coming down in one sweep of a misfired rocket. Young men clumsily flying for the first time with flight stabilizers above campus. She had even seen the minority of humanoids that had recently enrolled in the school walking around in a band like the Rat Pack. But this sound and the flash of black smoke, the strong whiff of brimstone, was so out of place and unexpected. And during was her break, too.
The sight in front of her registered slowly. Galia didn't really know what it was. It wasn't until the thing swiveled its head to take in its surroundings that she made out the top from bottom. It was a man. Sort of.
It was blue, and looked furry. Its pointy ears stuck out underneath his black hair. Its yellow eyes blinked several times in his daze. It had appeared in the middle of the air and fallen a few feet onto the ground, where it rubbed its behind in pain. Galia could see that he only had three fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot.
And that was completely naked except for patches of metal on his skin.
And then she realized that those pieces of metal were supposed to be his skin as well.
It was like some kind of alien cyborg. She couldn't tell its gender, or what it wanted, so she just sat in her chair, completely still, the forkful of cheesecake still a few centimeters away from her face.
"Fich, mein arsch," it muttered, still massaging its butt. Galia guessed it was a guy because its voice vibrated low in its lean chest, and sounded definitely male. Not to mention protruding appendage hanging in between his legs. He didn't seem to notice her, so she abruptly stood up from her desk.
He, whatever he was, jumped back in surprise. His almond eyes were wide as they stared at her. Galia flushed as she realized that his gaze was traveling in a southern direction, and he seemed to soak in every inch of her.
"Who are you?" she asked slowly. She was pretty sure that he had just said some choice German swearwords, so she hoped he could understand English. The thing didn't react immediately. His head looked downward--he must have felt some sort of breeze in its nether regions. A mortified cry came out of his throat, and he struggled to cover up.
Galia took President Volker's long coat off of the coat hanger and offered it to him. She tried not to look, but it was pretty prominent in her peripheral vision. He blushed just as she did. Instead of wrapping the entire coat around him, he just wrapped it around his waist. This only made Galia focus on the lean arm muscles that he flexed unconsciously as he held the coat tightly in place.
"Who are you?" she asked again.
He looked around himself. He looked outside the glass doors, where students hadn't noticed him appear in the building. It was a few seconds more before he spoke.
"My name is Kurt Wagner," he answered in a thick German accent. "But in deh Bavarian circus I vas deh incredible Nightcrawler."
"Kurt. That's easy enough," Galia said to herself. As she took a closer look at him, she saw that he had metal on his face, and a part of a chest plate starting on his pectorals and stopping just above his eight-pack of abs. One of his forearms was completely sheathed in more red metal, and one his feet was completely bionic. His prehensile tale, which writhed behind him, had a gold, spearhead shaped piece of metal on the end. The weight of the metal didn't seem to bother him, and just as she was, he seemed to be noticing the metallic parts of him for the first time.
"Vut happened to me?" he wondered aloud. He sounded a little dismayed.
"I don't know."
Galia began to recognize the metal parts of Kurt to be exactly like an Iron Man suit. If Dr. Hank McCoy's clone shaved and gene-spliced with an Iron Man, Galia thought, this would be the result.
"Who are you?" Kurt asked. "Where am I?"
"I'm Galia. I'm the secretary of the administrative office, which is this building," she answered patiently. "You're at the Stark University campus, in Malibu, California."
"Malibu?" he repeated.
"Yes."
All of a sudden, a deep rumble erupted from Kurt's stomach. He rubbed his two fingers and opposable thumb over it.
"Uhhgh. I don't think I have eaten in days. Maybe veeks," he said.
Galia cleared off the papers on her desk.
"Come sit here."
"On deh desk?"
"Yes," she insisted. He still looked defiant. "Just do it!"
Kurt obeyed, adjusting the coat so that it was draped over his broad shoulders and still covered up his private parts. He approached the desk carefully, his legs bending more like an animal's than a humans. His legs were incredibly muscled, from what Galia could see sticking out from under the coat, which seemed shorter around the lean, tall Kurt Wagner. In one fluid motion, he jumped onto the desk. His back curved as he crouched, as if his spine was more flexible than a humans.
"Oh-kay. I am on deh desk now," he said. He looked curious and confused.
"Here," she said, holding out the rest of her cheesecake to him. But Kurt just stared at it.
".....Vut is it."
"It's cheesecake. It's really good," she said. Taking the fork, she scooped a bite and held it out to him. Extending his neck, he clamped his teeth over the fork and ate it. Galia saw the flash of his fangs. Kurt chewed slowly, swallowed, and licked his lips.
"Dat was delicious!" he cried. When she held the plate out to him, he tried to take it from her, but his hands were shaking too much. He tried to flex his right hand, but the metal around his forearm seemed to be doing something to his muscles. He suddenly became very nervous again, baring his teeth and hissing.
"I'll feed it to you," Galia said, assuaging his nervousness. Bite after bite, she fed him cheesecake, and he ate it like a baby bird.
"So what are you?"
Kurt swallowed before he answered. His breath smelled like cheesecake when he spoke.
"I don't know. I have been told I am a demon."
She offered him the last bite of cheesecake. "I don't think you're a demon."
Kurt surprised her by taking the fork unsteadily with his left hand and offered the cheesecake to her instead.
"I'm sorry I ate your....'cheesecake.'"
Galia placed a hand over Kurt's around the fork to help him hold it steady. After eating the last bite on the fork, she chewed, swallowed, and smiled.
Berthold Volker was looking for somebody, and no matter how long it took him to find this person, he was going to stay. So the little boy staring at him was going to be very bored.
"Do you need something, little boy?" he asked, turning his face to stare right back at the child. The precocious little thing just stood there for a few seconds before saying anything.
"Why do you have a scar on your face like Frankenstein?"
Volker's face twisted into a forced smile. The semi-circle scar that peeked out from under his hair when he didn't comb it over did make him look like he had been patched together, but normally people took care to not point it out.
"I was in a little accident."
The little boy just stood there with this unnervingly perceptive expression on his face. Berthold tried to ignore him, but he could see the boy's outline in his peripheral vision. Eventually he skipped away, bored with the scowling man.
Every once in a while Berthold looked at the door labeled "Employess Only." His muscles tensed in anticipation whenever the door opened, and it took a little more than twenty of these instances to occur before the man he wanted to see walked into the exhibit.
Hiroyuki Kanegawa was abnormally tall. His black blue hair was slicked back, showing off a large forehead, dark eyes, and thick eyebrows. His face was generic but at the same time had a hardness to it that suggested people should get out of his way. There was nothing about him that gave away his position as museum curator, and he quietly observed the museum goers that decided to visit his exhibits in their free time.
Berthold decided that enough time had been wasted. In several long strides he was in front of the man. Hiro, a man who wasn't surprised by anything, just looked down his nose at this white man.
"Mr. Kanegawa."
"Am I supposed to know you?"
The question had its implications. Weeks ago, Berthold had had the chance to email Hiro and tell him what he was going to tell him in person, but decided against the electronic messaging. But Hiro wasn't ignorant of legends. It was obvious he knew the rumors about his past.
"My name is Berthold Volker. I'm the President of Stark University."
"Are you German?"
Hiro's questions seemed to be answering all of Berthold's.
"Yes, I am."
The Japanese man's mind could slice through any bullshit Berthold might have made the mistake of pulling out. Like a magic trick, Hiroyuki flipped a business card out of thin air.
"I've read much about you, Mr. Volker. My card…"
It seemed Berthold didn't need to say anything. Hiro was much smarter than he thought he would be, which was an advantageous development.
Everything was going above and beyond well.